kserra's emini trades

[kserra]

Quote from Trend Fader:

Let me contribute what I believe is a gold nugget for trading..

U keep on referring to your losses as errors or mistakes... thats a big problem.

A mistake is when u hit the wrong key by accident or screw up an order accidentally.

When u place a trade.. u are making a decision based on all the facts given at that exact moment.. the fact that u get stopped out is not a mistake or error. If the market doesnt do what u thought it would do.. again that is not an error. When u look at individual trades success one at a time.. whether they turned out profitable or not is not a matter of doing the right thing or making an error.

I understand your point here, however the majority of my losers from last week were basically impulse trades, trying to enter early. The way I see it when I enter early, and then there is no confirmation of this early entry via the MAs that I watch then the signal should not have even been taken in the first place. These are bad trades, not mistakes, if I referred to something like this as a mistake then please excuse my syntax errors, but please do not mull over the semantics of what I say here. This to me is trading error and is an example of poor trade management.

Not only should these signals not have been taken, but once they were taken the signal should be watched for confirmation of the position. This is where I went wrong. In other words, early entry has hurt me much more than it has helped me.

Another falacy.. is believing that when u lose $ its because u made a mistake and didnt follow your plan. In reality its not a mistake.. its just that your plan really is not clear enough for u to follow.

Because a handfull of your most recent trades worked using a certain technique.. that should not give u enough evidence that they will continue working. If u keep on doing this.. u will end up curve fitting a system simply based on your most recent performace. When the market changes its rythem u will get smoked.


Hope this info helps.. it sure helped me.
-MIKE

This is a very good point and actually brings up another interesting point in my trading.

As of late I had been using the 3 minute chart for early entry into my trades. THis was working most of the time, enough to get me to use this entry technique instead of my original technique, thus violating my discipline set forth in my trading plan. By catching a couple of lucky moves I got off track and began to trade away from my plan eventually this caught up to me and resulted in last weeks breakdown.

Look at the FED day last week, I kept trying to call the bottom and play the reversal but a quick review of my charts show that there was not even a clear signal in that direction (a moving average cross).

The worst part of all of this is that the early entries I was taking were not better fills most of the time if I had just waited for the confirmation via the 5 minute chart.

I do believe that my analysis of my past trades that succeeded via trading levels that were predefined by me BEFORE the trading day began points to something I should pay attention to. Of course I already knew this and that is why I track pivots as well as support and resistance. I find they are great numbers to trade from and even stronger setups for the system I am currently using.

 

[PetaDollar]

k... Why don't you come up with mechanical trade management rules for after you open your trade. It helped me a lot. It's hard to be discretionary 100% of the time. Why not concentrate your discretion on one portion of the thing, and have the rest on autopilot.

 

[kserra]

Trades for 2-3-04

Did not have too much time to trade today as a result only took one (paper) trade.

Trade #1: Long @ 1133.00, cover @ 1134.5 +1.5 pts

11:55: Entered trade on a valid cross off the 5 minute. Good timing with my entry, and patient with my exit. I wanted more out of this move, but was happy with 1134.5 because of such a small range day.

As I was leaving I saw a potential short right after this trade however it never set up. I plan on firing a few live trades tomorrow afternoon. I have now setup my schedule so that it no longer interferes with my trading.

 

[porgie]

Every loss is our mistake or error. Only we are responsible for when we trade....we pull the trigger....we win or lose...If you don't have a system that has proven to work most of the time, and in all markets, then why trade real money??.unless you don't care if you lose. Losing is critical to making progress in this business..If you can't tolerate losses, or if they bamboozle you, study until you are sick of studying. Develop a system that you have total confidence in. You miss too much if you have a limited system.

I am sell biased for some strange reason, probably because those runs are usually stronger. I am working on that. If you have one entry signal that is the best you have discovered, then patiently wait for it for a few days....

Grow your confidence, experience, and trading account.

 

[kserra]

Trades for 2-4-04

Today I did two trades both of which were live trades. Overall I would say that the few days I took off this past week have helped my discipline, however I did face some different problems today.

Trade #1: Entry 1125.75, initial stop point 1123.75 moved to 1124.75, stoppped out -1 pt

11:33 Got into this trade off a valid signal off of the 5 minute chart, no sign of any itch to get in early on this one. Then I decided for no apparent reason to move my stop (deviation from trading plan) in after the trade had gone in my favor a bit. Unfortunately this proved to be a poor decision on my part and I had no reason to do this whatsoever. Resulted in me getting stopped out of a what could have been a really good trade (profit target was 1127.75 with order placed there). To be honest I am not sure whether I would have had the patience for this trade anyways seeing as price see sawed back and forth for another 25 minutes after my original entry point.

Trade #2: Entry 1126.00, stop @ 1127.5, exit @ 1125.75 +.25 pts

12:37: Another good entry waited for confirmation from price and MAs on five minute chart. After being in this trade for a while (yes twenty minutes is a while for me) I began to get anxious around the close of the cash indexes and decided to get out with one tick to cover commisions for the day of course immediately after I did this price ran down to my profit target of 1125.00. Not too bad of a trade overall, but had a poor risk to reward and was rather late in the day as well.

-.75 pts

Tomorrow I have two goals:

- enter trades and sit on hands until either a profit target is achieved, stop point or signal to stop and reverse appears

- Be profitable

 

[kserra]

chart for today

 

[kserra]

Trades for today 2-5-04

Today trading went as planned unfortunately my profitability did not follow along.

Trade #1 Short @ 1128.00, stop and reverse @ 1129.00 -1 pt

10:54: This turned out to be the beginning of a ranging period I got a signal to stop and reverse, so I did at 1129.00. Overall there was not too much wrong with this trade I was careful with my entry and exited according to the plan.

Trade #2 Long @ 1129.00, cover @ 1128.75 -.25 pt

11:18: Carry over from stop and reverse from previous trade. This turned out to be a false signal and I got out of the trade after the MAs failed to hold their cross. Decided to stay flat until I got a really good signal.

Trade #3 Long @ 1127.75, cover @ 1128.25 +.5 pts

12:20: Talk about FRUSTRATING, I had a profit target set to 1129.75 and an order placed there, but apparently a lot of other people had the same idea as me. I did not get filled on my target and price began to drop really quickly, this ended up in me leaving quite a bit of profit on the table. I immediately got up and ended my trading day after this trade. This was a really great setup and a really great trade just the exit did not pan out as I had planned, Could have turned today into a profitable day.

You may notice the trend lines added to my chart. I have found these helpful in filtering out bad signals throughout the day. They also help me from trying to fade the trend.

- .75 pts on the day

Tomorrow

- Be profitable, I took some good trades today especially the last one, tomorrow is another day

- Be patient, There were many false signals today that I completely avoided as a result I stayed out of some losing trades. There were so many times I wanted to jump in "to get a peice of the action" but I sat on my hands literally and stayed out.

 

[nkhoi]

Quote from kserra:


12:20: Talk about FRUSTRATING, I had a profit target set to 1129.75 and an order placed there, but apparently a lot of other people had the same idea as me. I did not get filled on my target and price began to drop really quickly, this ended up in me leaving quite a bit of profit on the table. ...

now you find out how long the line is, the next step is how to get in line quicker.

 

[kserra]

Quote from nkhoi:

now you find out how long the line is, the next step is how to get in line quicker.

I placed the order to sell directly after getting long, besides placing the order before I even get the trade going I don't think there was much I could do, but this would be next to impossible utilizing the methodology I have been using. This type of stuff will happen, but how do you deal with not getting filled ? Do you just sit around and hope it will come back ? That is what I did at first, but it became very obvious that I was not going to get the price I wanted so I just got out.

 

[kserra]

Trades for 2-6-04

Today only got one trade however it was pretty low probability for a number of reasons, I still took it despite this fact ended up being a loser.

Trade #1 Short @ 1139.25, cover @ 1141.00 -1.75 pts

12:20 - Took a valid signal off the 5 minute, there were a lot of things about this trade that were not good going into it, however we had just bounced off of 1142 which was R4 and this seemed like a good number to trade off of. Trin was trading very low .6, which indicates a close at or near the daily highs, tick was raging out of control and had not even crossed the zero line, All indicators had confirmed recent highs. On top of all of this the risk to reward on this trade was very poor, was risking 1.75 pts for 1.25 pts. Despite all of this I still took the trade, the signal looked good and setup perfectly, but did not play out in my favor. Exited and decided not to take stop and reverse signal because of how late in the day it was.

-1.75 pts on the day