My journey to profitable trading: NQ price action journal
- Thread starter VV Cehpei
- Start date
Quick question. You said you're with Ninja Trader Brokerage... and you trade 2 contracts, yet your account was just at $1,100 at one point. Is this enough to trade 2 contracts? I think I saw some brokers who advertise needing only $500 to trade one contract but wow... those are crazy margins!
Oh wow.. that's great. I would never think to trust these $500 per contract brokers, but I see no reason to not trust Ninja Trader... so that is excellent. If you're trading 2 contract though, you don't have a lot of breathing room for the trade to go against you. Of course if you're scalping you won't take more than a few points loss, but of course dropping to below $1000 in equity would probably auto close both your contracts I'm guessing. But the equity curve is going up at least! 
IMHO trading 2 contracts with an account only slightly above 1k is a suicide. I think you should only trade 1 contract unless your strategy specifically calls for scaling out.
I learned the hard way... Everytime I tried scaling up my size without having sufficient equity to back it up I lost. I don't care what my broker says , I impose "my own" margin requirement which is currently 1 contract per 5k account equity (trading the ES).
I learned the hard way... Everytime I tried scaling up my size without having sufficient equity to back it up I lost. I don't care what my broker says , I impose "my own" margin requirement which is currently 1 contract per 5k account equity (trading the ES).
Hey thanks for the reminder guys, and I agree. Some people would say I have no business being in the markets with a 1K account trading one contract, nevermind two!
So, it looks like I'll be making more changes going forward starting on Monday. I'll go back to trading one contract only. And I don't think I will continue with the exact method of scalping that I was doing. Rather, I think I will aim for trades anywhere from 1.5pts at a minimum up to perhaps 10, depending on the circumstances.
I have the rest of the weekend to think about things further, but I think I will go back to calling the live trades, but this time I'll just call my entry price. I won't have a hard stop in place, and as long as I don't plan to exit the trade within seconds, I'll post my exits too. Have a good weekend all!
So, it looks like I'll be making more changes going forward starting on Monday. I'll go back to trading one contract only. And I don't think I will continue with the exact method of scalping that I was doing. Rather, I think I will aim for trades anywhere from 1.5pts at a minimum up to perhaps 10, depending on the circumstances.
I have the rest of the weekend to think about things further, but I think I will go back to calling the live trades, but this time I'll just call my entry price. I won't have a hard stop in place, and as long as I don't plan to exit the trade within seconds, I'll post my exits too. Have a good weekend all!
No, that's just what chart Ninjatrader generates when I right click the day's trades and select 'chart'. However, I have been using the 1 min charts a lot more than I used to lately because of the handful of scalp trades that I've done. I mostly trade off of the 5 minute though, but I also always look at all the higher timeframes throughout the day as well.
Not a good day today.
My first trade should have been a gain of 1.5pts instead of .25. I tried one of the 'ATM strategies' with Ninjatrader where my stop would move to b/e+1 after a certain number of ticks, then at another point I would trail a stop tick for tick. I tried to set it up for scalps, and I think everything was just too tight together for a fast-moving price.
Well I used this strategy for one of my scalps, and things happened too fast and I guess the price moved below my old price while it was moving up my buy stop and the order was rejected. So it ended up closing me out at my b/e + 1 tick.
I don't have much to say for the second and third trade. I'm not going to bother posting a chart. I tried 2 shorts, and they didn't work out. I basically jumped in front of a moving bus and was ran over.
It was at it's worst for the first couple of hours after the losses, but I'll be honest and say that some doubts crept into my mind today about my ability to succeed at this. I'm a little better now, but for the first couple of hours after the losses it was bothering me, even though I got up and left the computer. I also feel like I have drifted kind of far from my original plan. I started off with the 1:2 r/r trades. I tried to model what I was doing after an old journal by a member named "geez". And now I've moved into trying a few scalps as well. So now I don't feel like I have a solid plan with structure like I did when I first started this journal.
I really like the idea of scalping and taking a few points here and there, but as of yet I haven't figured out any set method for stops. And if I'm only taking 1 or 1.5 points, then stops the same size get triggered too often, and using larger stops would kill the r:r and make it not profitable. So I really don't know what to do about that. What I'd really like is a mentor, or at least someone I could talk to or bounce ideas off of here and there. This is a tough game!
Today's results:
3 trades
1st: +0.25pts
2nd: -3.0pts
3rd: -3.0pts
Net P/L: -$126.34
My first trade should have been a gain of 1.5pts instead of .25. I tried one of the 'ATM strategies' with Ninjatrader where my stop would move to b/e+1 after a certain number of ticks, then at another point I would trail a stop tick for tick. I tried to set it up for scalps, and I think everything was just too tight together for a fast-moving price.
Well I used this strategy for one of my scalps, and things happened too fast and I guess the price moved below my old price while it was moving up my buy stop and the order was rejected. So it ended up closing me out at my b/e + 1 tick.
I don't have much to say for the second and third trade. I'm not going to bother posting a chart. I tried 2 shorts, and they didn't work out. I basically jumped in front of a moving bus and was ran over.
It was at it's worst for the first couple of hours after the losses, but I'll be honest and say that some doubts crept into my mind today about my ability to succeed at this. I'm a little better now, but for the first couple of hours after the losses it was bothering me, even though I got up and left the computer. I also feel like I have drifted kind of far from my original plan. I started off with the 1:2 r/r trades. I tried to model what I was doing after an old journal by a member named "geez". And now I've moved into trying a few scalps as well. So now I don't feel like I have a solid plan with structure like I did when I first started this journal.
I really like the idea of scalping and taking a few points here and there, but as of yet I haven't figured out any set method for stops. And if I'm only taking 1 or 1.5 points, then stops the same size get triggered too often, and using larger stops would kill the r:r and make it not profitable. So I really don't know what to do about that. What I'd really like is a mentor, or at least someone I could talk to or bounce ideas off of here and there. This is a tough game!
Today's results:
3 trades
1st: +0.25pts
2nd: -3.0pts
3rd: -3.0pts
Net P/L: -$126.34