Each trade should be evaluated for where it's at on a 15 minute chart. Added that to the list of things to keep track of.
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Maintaining Self Discipline
- Thread starter studentofthemarkets
- Start date
Made 31 ticks. 1 win and 2 losses.
I'm still using -28 ticks for a stop loss, move to -14 ticks after reaching 30 ticks and a 60 tick target, but I'm paying attention to which trades would have worked with a larger stop loss and which trades would have gone farther than a 60 tick target and eventually will make some rules for when to have a larger stop loss and larger target.
I'm still using -28 ticks for a stop loss, move to -14 ticks after reaching 30 ticks and a 60 tick target, but I'm paying attention to which trades would have worked with a larger stop loss and which trades would have gone farther than a 60 tick target and eventually will make some rules for when to have a larger stop loss and larger target.
Made 34 demo ticks. 1 winner and 1 loser. If I have a positive day tomorrow then I can go back to trading live.
Lost 87 ticks. 3 full stop outs.
Why?
First trade I planned carefully, but it was still in a range and wasn't ready to break out.
Second trade I got back from my 5 min break and saw movement and jumped in, thinking finally, this thing is moving. If I had been watching it I might have gotten in sooner, but even if I had, only a really good entry would have made it to 60 ticks.
Third trade. Really had a hard time staying away from the computer, kept glancing at it, and didn't stay away the full 5 min. A lot can change in a few minutes. However, I think this trade had some things right. It didn't take off right away as I'd hoped and retraced a little, taking out my stop. Had I gotten in where I got stopped out, the trade would have been profitable, but it still wasn't the beginning of a larger drop, as I thought it would be.
The way I trade 30 sl and 60 tp I need a very fast moving market so that the momentum keeps the trade from retracing and taking out the stop loss and also, 60 ticks can be reached quickly. Today's ranging behavior wasn't the best for using this. Also, the set ups I rely on are best in a trending market, not as good for ranging. Perhaps today would have been best to stay out of, or just wait and wait and be much more selective in entries.
Taking trades immediately after a short break is not how I intend to trade. I want to space the 3 trades throughout the morning, giving a better opportunity to find price action that is what I'm looking for. I didn't wait.
Not allowing for any adjusting is forcing me to really evaluate how I'm entering trades. It was easier, when closing trades quickly if they didn't do what I wanted, to enter in places that might work, thinking I could get out if they didn't. Although I'm tempted to go back to that, it has the danger attached to it that I will definitely begin to overtrade and possibly never learn accuracy in taking trades.
Seems like I'm making slow progress and after today, it feels like I'm regressing, but I think I've been learning and relearning the following:
1. Watch out for semi-ranging behavior when I'm using techniques for trend trading.
2. If I'm going to use a tight SL, I have to time the entry perfectly. Getting the direction right isn't enough. Wait for the right set up and trigger or stay out.
3. Just waiting 5 minutes between trades is still trading in the same market structure. Try to space the 3 trades throughout the morning, approximately every 30 minutes or so.
Why?
First trade I planned carefully, but it was still in a range and wasn't ready to break out.
Second trade I got back from my 5 min break and saw movement and jumped in, thinking finally, this thing is moving. If I had been watching it I might have gotten in sooner, but even if I had, only a really good entry would have made it to 60 ticks.
Third trade. Really had a hard time staying away from the computer, kept glancing at it, and didn't stay away the full 5 min. A lot can change in a few minutes. However, I think this trade had some things right. It didn't take off right away as I'd hoped and retraced a little, taking out my stop. Had I gotten in where I got stopped out, the trade would have been profitable, but it still wasn't the beginning of a larger drop, as I thought it would be.
The way I trade 30 sl and 60 tp I need a very fast moving market so that the momentum keeps the trade from retracing and taking out the stop loss and also, 60 ticks can be reached quickly. Today's ranging behavior wasn't the best for using this. Also, the set ups I rely on are best in a trending market, not as good for ranging. Perhaps today would have been best to stay out of, or just wait and wait and be much more selective in entries.
Taking trades immediately after a short break is not how I intend to trade. I want to space the 3 trades throughout the morning, giving a better opportunity to find price action that is what I'm looking for. I didn't wait.
Not allowing for any adjusting is forcing me to really evaluate how I'm entering trades. It was easier, when closing trades quickly if they didn't do what I wanted, to enter in places that might work, thinking I could get out if they didn't. Although I'm tempted to go back to that, it has the danger attached to it that I will definitely begin to overtrade and possibly never learn accuracy in taking trades.
Seems like I'm making slow progress and after today, it feels like I'm regressing, but I think I've been learning and relearning the following:
1. Watch out for semi-ranging behavior when I'm using techniques for trend trading.
2. If I'm going to use a tight SL, I have to time the entry perfectly. Getting the direction right isn't enough. Wait for the right set up and trigger or stay out.
3. Just waiting 5 minutes between trades is still trading in the same market structure. Try to space the 3 trades throughout the morning, approximately every 30 minutes or so.
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All three trades weren't placed right with one of my main indicators. Seems like once a week or so I see that I need to use this indicator more. I do for a while, then I forget. So, I added a space for it on the list. Need to focus on making this a habit to watch for.
No trades taken today. I was determined to look for a certain scenario and have all the indicators line up perfectly before taking a trade, and it didn't happen just right.
Also, I wasn't so sure I could get a trade that went 60 ticks without retracing 30 first. Today had some really nice price action, a trend up and a trend down, and scalping opportunities. I drew lines where I wanted to trade. If I had scalped them....not waited for 60 ticks, but closed when I thought they might turn around, and moved the stop loss to BE quickly, I would have done well. That makes me feel a lot better about this week, especially after yesterday's trades. If I can't consistently get the 30 sl and 60 tp to work, I might go back to regular scalping and work on the self discipline issues I have with overtrading that make me want to avoid scalping. I could also only scalp around where I think a trend could be starting and then let the trade continue if it actually works. But for now, I plan to continue with the 30 sl 60 tp and see if I can get a better win rate. It would be a good skill to learn.
I'll post my chart with the line trades. Not sure how interested anyone is in looking at where I was placing lines, I wasn't intending to share them until about halfway through and I realized they were working OK....however, if they had been bad trades, I wouldn't be showing them to anyone.
I also drew lines for trades in the premarket. Those were not good trades and I won't be showing those.
For the week:
No premarket trades taken, just lines drawn. The lines show I don't trade it very well, and I don't want any demo trades to go against my stats....especially since I'm really trying to get 3 positive days in a row so I can go back to live trading....although the longer it's taking the less certain I am that I should be trading live.
Demo trades: Somehow, even with yesterday's losses, I'm only down by 22 ticks for the week.
Also, I wasn't so sure I could get a trade that went 60 ticks without retracing 30 first. Today had some really nice price action, a trend up and a trend down, and scalping opportunities. I drew lines where I wanted to trade. If I had scalped them....not waited for 60 ticks, but closed when I thought they might turn around, and moved the stop loss to BE quickly, I would have done well. That makes me feel a lot better about this week, especially after yesterday's trades. If I can't consistently get the 30 sl and 60 tp to work, I might go back to regular scalping and work on the self discipline issues I have with overtrading that make me want to avoid scalping. I could also only scalp around where I think a trend could be starting and then let the trade continue if it actually works. But for now, I plan to continue with the 30 sl 60 tp and see if I can get a better win rate. It would be a good skill to learn.
I'll post my chart with the line trades. Not sure how interested anyone is in looking at where I was placing lines, I wasn't intending to share them until about halfway through and I realized they were working OK....however, if they had been bad trades, I wouldn't be showing them to anyone.
I also drew lines for trades in the premarket. Those were not good trades and I won't be showing those.
For the week:
No premarket trades taken, just lines drawn. The lines show I don't trade it very well, and I don't want any demo trades to go against my stats....especially since I'm really trying to get 3 positive days in a row so I can go back to live trading....although the longer it's taking the less certain I am that I should be trading live.
Demo trades: Somehow, even with yesterday's losses, I'm only down by 22 ticks for the week.
Today was just another reminder that this is going to take a really long time. I didn't actually do anything right during the RTH. So the best thing to do is ask why?
Why did I take 3 trades against the clear trend down in the first 30 minutes after the open?
Because the overall trend was up, the premarket trend had been up, and I was hoping to get in after price made it's last low before turning up again and I haven't been trusting my plan to get me into a trade with a small stop loss. I thought that if I followed my plan, the entry would likely need a much larger stoploss and I'd also be getting in too late.
Instead of stopping after 3 trades, I decided to just trade to try to get it right. The thought that was going through my mind was that maybe some of the problem is that I'm trying to trade 2 methods combined. I want to trade bottom edges, not a retracement into a trend. So, I figured I'd let myself try. Well, that didn't go very well either, because it was still trending down and to get the bottom edge, of course, it would be trending down, so, getting it, and moving to break even didn't work often due to the down trend. Besides, I rarely actually took the very bottom, but got in a little above, which needs more of a stop loss too, so I wasn't actually moving to break even very quickly, the way I would want to for a bottom edge trade.
So, after many losses...217 ticks and 12 trades, the 13th trade was the bottom edge....except I even got that one late....34 ticks higher than the bottom edge. Price never went against it. It was the perfect entry....made 318 ticks, zero draw down in the trade. But it cost me 217 ticks with all the losses beforehand AND I fell back into the bad habit of overtrading. Is it something that has potential, that I should work at to get better at? I'm going to say no. Bottom edges look nice on charts, look easier than they are to get into (at least for me), but without a directional push, it's very risky too.
The first 15 minutes or so are still really hard for me to trade. I might just determine to stay out then....I know, I keep changing my mind about whether or not to trade it. I have made some good trades during that time, but it's so unpredictable that overall, I don't read it very well.
The next thing I can do is just stick with the plan that I have. It would have allowed me to go short after the open and take the trend back up, after it actually started going back up, and I should have listened to what my rules say about interpreting what's happening on the charts.
Had I actually waited for a long and taken any one of the many long opportunities after the direction switched, the price never went against a logically placed stop loss. However, because my plan is based on a retracement into a trend, it didn't give an entry close to the bottom edge.
If I had focused on trading the bottom edges as the trend moved up, I could have had plenty of 30 sl 60 tp trades, or trailed the profits.
I don't want to be the kind of trader that takes risks to get a runner, but the way I made 101 ticks today was full of risks....by trying to avoid risk, I took on extra risk.
I made the decision to break my rules today because I wanted to see if I could get it right and figure out what I was doing wrong. But then, did I really need to break rules to find that out? I can do the work to find where my plan calls for trade entries on historical charts. I should be spending more time finding my entries on still charts and making adjustments to rules at that time, if there are any that need to be adjusted, rather than during the trading day. So, I guess today was truly a failure, due to failure to follow my plan. I'm sure somebody out there must be wondering why it's so hard for me to follow my plan. I'm really not sure of that either, but I just don't trust it to always work to give good trade entries. The NQ has patterns, but there are always variations to them, and it's a little tricky to match my plan exactly with what the NQ is doing. I really need to spend that time on the charts seeing the plan work time after time.
So, that's my goal for later today: For the month of December I plan to go through each day and mark on my charts trades that followed my rules. I should mark them according to the trade type too, such as scalping (a 60 tick target) when already in an established trend vs. getting into a retracement near the beginning of a trend, and trailing.
I don't want to show my chart today but here is the list of trades:
I took 2 line trades in the Premarket. Since they are just lines, I can evaluate them for how I should exit based on 1, 2 or 3 contracts. There were a lot of variations for how they could have been played out, but overall, both trades were right, taken in the direction of the trend. I closed the first trade early, at a loss, but if I had kept the original stop loss line, then the 2nd trade wouldn't have been taken and the first trade would have gone into a good profit. However, I did mark the trade as a loss, and re-entered, and then pretended to have several contracts and got out at various targets, and trailed some too. Easy to do when it's trending...it's the non-trending premarket that I'm not sure about and want to see how those days turn out. But overall, I might switch to premarket only, depending on what I'm most consistent with (profitably consistent, that is) and which session I'm less likely to lose self-control in or overtrade in.
I've decided I won't be posting any premarket charts in the future. It's not because I don't want to be accountable, but it's just that if I do get it right, and learn to trade it well, it's something I'd rather not put out in the open. However, I will be following my same plan....the one that I can't seem to have the self-discipline to follow. I do plan on posting my trades list and evaluations for the premarket when I began taking demo trades.
Why did I take 3 trades against the clear trend down in the first 30 minutes after the open?
Because the overall trend was up, the premarket trend had been up, and I was hoping to get in after price made it's last low before turning up again and I haven't been trusting my plan to get me into a trade with a small stop loss. I thought that if I followed my plan, the entry would likely need a much larger stoploss and I'd also be getting in too late.
Instead of stopping after 3 trades, I decided to just trade to try to get it right. The thought that was going through my mind was that maybe some of the problem is that I'm trying to trade 2 methods combined. I want to trade bottom edges, not a retracement into a trend. So, I figured I'd let myself try. Well, that didn't go very well either, because it was still trending down and to get the bottom edge, of course, it would be trending down, so, getting it, and moving to break even didn't work often due to the down trend. Besides, I rarely actually took the very bottom, but got in a little above, which needs more of a stop loss too, so I wasn't actually moving to break even very quickly, the way I would want to for a bottom edge trade.
So, after many losses...217 ticks and 12 trades, the 13th trade was the bottom edge....except I even got that one late....34 ticks higher than the bottom edge. Price never went against it. It was the perfect entry....made 318 ticks, zero draw down in the trade. But it cost me 217 ticks with all the losses beforehand AND I fell back into the bad habit of overtrading. Is it something that has potential, that I should work at to get better at? I'm going to say no. Bottom edges look nice on charts, look easier than they are to get into (at least for me), but without a directional push, it's very risky too.
The first 15 minutes or so are still really hard for me to trade. I might just determine to stay out then....I know, I keep changing my mind about whether or not to trade it. I have made some good trades during that time, but it's so unpredictable that overall, I don't read it very well.
The next thing I can do is just stick with the plan that I have. It would have allowed me to go short after the open and take the trend back up, after it actually started going back up, and I should have listened to what my rules say about interpreting what's happening on the charts.
Had I actually waited for a long and taken any one of the many long opportunities after the direction switched, the price never went against a logically placed stop loss. However, because my plan is based on a retracement into a trend, it didn't give an entry close to the bottom edge.
If I had focused on trading the bottom edges as the trend moved up, I could have had plenty of 30 sl 60 tp trades, or trailed the profits.
I don't want to be the kind of trader that takes risks to get a runner, but the way I made 101 ticks today was full of risks....by trying to avoid risk, I took on extra risk.
I made the decision to break my rules today because I wanted to see if I could get it right and figure out what I was doing wrong. But then, did I really need to break rules to find that out? I can do the work to find where my plan calls for trade entries on historical charts. I should be spending more time finding my entries on still charts and making adjustments to rules at that time, if there are any that need to be adjusted, rather than during the trading day. So, I guess today was truly a failure, due to failure to follow my plan. I'm sure somebody out there must be wondering why it's so hard for me to follow my plan. I'm really not sure of that either, but I just don't trust it to always work to give good trade entries. The NQ has patterns, but there are always variations to them, and it's a little tricky to match my plan exactly with what the NQ is doing. I really need to spend that time on the charts seeing the plan work time after time.
So, that's my goal for later today: For the month of December I plan to go through each day and mark on my charts trades that followed my rules. I should mark them according to the trade type too, such as scalping (a 60 tick target) when already in an established trend vs. getting into a retracement near the beginning of a trend, and trailing.
I don't want to show my chart today but here is the list of trades:
I took 2 line trades in the Premarket. Since they are just lines, I can evaluate them for how I should exit based on 1, 2 or 3 contracts. There were a lot of variations for how they could have been played out, but overall, both trades were right, taken in the direction of the trend. I closed the first trade early, at a loss, but if I had kept the original stop loss line, then the 2nd trade wouldn't have been taken and the first trade would have gone into a good profit. However, I did mark the trade as a loss, and re-entered, and then pretended to have several contracts and got out at various targets, and trailed some too. Easy to do when it's trending...it's the non-trending premarket that I'm not sure about and want to see how those days turn out. But overall, I might switch to premarket only, depending on what I'm most consistent with (profitably consistent, that is) and which session I'm less likely to lose self-control in or overtrade in.
I've decided I won't be posting any premarket charts in the future. It's not because I don't want to be accountable, but it's just that if I do get it right, and learn to trade it well, it's something I'd rather not put out in the open. However, I will be following my same plan....the one that I can't seem to have the self-discipline to follow. I do plan on posting my trades list and evaluations for the premarket when I began taking demo trades.
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As a "student of the markets", I'd like you to study this chart pattern, and watch for it as you look back through your own charts...
Note the timestamps at the bottom, which are USA Eastern Time...
Rickshawman likes to use the line, "It's the same thing over and over and over" when he speaks of the overnight rise bit. Well, you will see the above pattern over and over and over again, much of the time. Drop into the RTH mid-morning, with a rise into the afternoon.
Familiarize yourself with the pattern. Get intimate with it, and look for it in your studies.
Thanks! I do see that pattern playing out quite a bit.
Nice renko chart btw....shows the clear down and up for the day. I used to try to trade those a little, but they aren't very exact for entries and that bothers me. I suppose that's still better than trying to buy a downtrend as I did this morning.
So, new rules for my plan. After looking over charts from this last month, I've decided to try this for at least a day:
Do not look at anything smaller than a 5 minute chart.
Rely on my 2 main 5 min indicators for trend direction. The trade must be rightly aligned with at least one of the indicators, with the other indicator being almost right.
Use the right stop loss size for the trade....not a set number.
Trail using my usual trailing plan.
How many trades? As long as the trade meets the rules, I can take up to 5. However, I can't re-enter after any trade is stopped out until there is new structure....meaning wait, like at least 20 minutes or so.
Oh, and one more change....depending on how price is behaving, I might trade a little later than 11 am central....not sure I'd want to take a new trade around there, but if I'm already in something, maybe see if it will continue for another hour or so.
Just want to see how well this works.
Do not look at anything smaller than a 5 minute chart.
Rely on my 2 main 5 min indicators for trend direction. The trade must be rightly aligned with at least one of the indicators, with the other indicator being almost right.
Use the right stop loss size for the trade....not a set number.
Trail using my usual trailing plan.
How many trades? As long as the trade meets the rules, I can take up to 5. However, I can't re-enter after any trade is stopped out until there is new structure....meaning wait, like at least 20 minutes or so.
Oh, and one more change....depending on how price is behaving, I might trade a little later than 11 am central....not sure I'd want to take a new trade around there, but if I'm already in something, maybe see if it will continue for another hour or so.
Just want to see how well this works.