Need Advice

[trader99]

Finally compiled my stats for today. After a HORRIBLE day like Monday, these are much welcomed numbers.

The first trade of the day, I lost 66 YM pts in 54 seconds! It was crazy! Then followed by 39 YM pts in another 54 seconds. I was like WTH?!

But luckily, I did NOT lose my calm. I waited for my signals. Then bam! 119 points followed by 71 points. Both of them would have been higher if I closed at the lows rather than wait for the rebound to exit. Then a bunch of smaller trades.

I finally met all 3 of my goals:

1) Min < Max -66 points < 119 points
2) Average point is posting and increasing 8.7
3) Avg Winner > Avg Loser 35 > -30.75 for a PF of 1.71!!!

What a way to turn around a negative day. I still got a ways to make up the crazy losses on Monday.

Just gotta be patient and not try to predict prices. Go with the flow...

 

[trader99]

Good progress today! I didn't lose money despite the Dow losing a 1000 pts. I learned from my mistakes! I did short in the morning but I was looking at the microstructure and got out too soon else I would have at least made 400-600 pts! Lesson learned. Sometimes being too detailed and micro you miss out on the big trend.

Surprisingly enough I also made money on the long side too and didn't get destroyed. I picked my spots carefully.

But the BIGGEST improvements was setting up HOT KEYS with pre-defined stop losses! Thanks to @Xela to recommend me doing that. I can't believe I didn't do that all these years. Now I feel very confident on entering positions because I have pre-defined losses and potentially much bigger upside. So all of my losses are fixed(+/- a few points due to slippages). But in no uncertain terms will the losses be that crazy as Monday.

Let's review the stats against the goals

1) Min < Max -17 < 32
2) Avg Points is small today because I was experimenting with hot keys and various stop levels and it kept getting hit. I had to expand so it's not too tight. So there were a bunch of small losses that drove down the average
3) Winner Points 154 > Losing Pts -132. PF is low because today I was experimenting.

I had a client meeting(non-trading business) this morning. Then I had to run an errand too.

The BIGGEST IMPROVEMENTS are :

1) Trading with the price direction. I shorted when I should be shorting. I went long when I should go long. I should have made more. But that's a totally different topic and point of improvements. So my entry is at least directionally correct. I need to improve my exits.

2) Implemented HOT KEYS with automatic stop loss(big improvements)

Keep doing the right things and the profits will come.

 

[IVx]

Years ago, one of the reasons I tolerated spot forex for so long (perhaps wrongly, but I got away with it, as it turned out) was that I was reluctant to trade only single contracts of futures until I was better funded.

Can I ask, do you trade the same setups now that you used to trade in spot forex? In terms of the price action I mean ...

Thanks in advance

 

[trader99]

Can't believing this is happening again to me...

 

[lawrence-lugar]

After a HORRIBLE day
Just gotta be patient and not try to predict prices. Go with the flow...

Can't believing this is happening again to me...

When the Going gets Tough...
The Tough. Gets Going,

Hang in there, and try to look at every detail of your trading game plan goal dynamically...all the potential variables that make it dance, or move along the chart, the way it does,...

Billy Ocean sings about Mountains...ocean and mountain, Deep and High...See the Big Picture in trading,

 

[Xela]

Can I ask, do you trade the same setups now that you used to trade in spot forex? In terms of the price action I mean ...

Yes - but from differently constructed charts (the periodicity of the bars on my charts now is defined by the transaction of a pre-selected volume-quantity, rather than by a pre-selected time-interval).

 

[777]

Hey Guys,

I need your collective wisdom and advice on this. I've been on ET on/off for years. As some of you might know, 2015 was my breakthrough. Finally became net profitable.
While I was net profitable, the amount was very small compared to my corporate salary. It's more like a nice yearend bonus.

This was all because I was doing it part-time while holding down a very nice corporate job in the tech industry. So no pressure to make money all the time and all the associated benefits(both psychologically and monetarily that goes with that).

So, I got laid off from a tech company a few months ago. And I've been trading a little in the morning in between recruiters calling, interviewing, vacationing, and some side gigs I'm doing.

I have two strategies. In my daytrading strategies, I can average a few hundred bucks a day easily. $100-$500. Without being too aggressive. Of course, there are down days too.

On my longer term trades, it has been disastrous! Holding on to losers for too long on large size on one account. But on another account, my long term trades are good(riding a good trend). I know it's a bit schizo. Long story. On my good(meaning net profitable though still somewhat volatile) long trading account, I recently got margin on it through Robinhood. So now I can swing pretty large amount of capital. I was thinking maybe I should be more aggressive on that longer term account? But I don't want to lose money like the other longer term account that has been decimated. Not sure how best to proceed..

I guess I haven't quite figure out this longer term thing yet. While the daytrading is steady, the profits are small. I'm not banking big like in my volatile swing trading account. I'm not sure how to scale it up without erasing that steady small profits. Meaning if I put on a lot of shares/futures contracts I'm sure the equity curve will not be as steady & smooth given the psychological element of holding large positions.

I'm very hesitant to do this full-time, because even at $100-$500/day it's still SIGNIFICANTLY below my corporate job salary in the tech sector.

Should I be MORE AGGRESSIVE in my daytrading and try to get above $1k+ daily? If I do that then I'll be above my corporate salary though there's no guarantee to I'll be able to do that everyday.

Or should I just try to lock in another corporate job again and forget this fantasy of full-time trading? For a brief moment, I thought maybe if I was more aggressive in my daytrading then perhaps I can do this fulltime and escape the corporate job all together. Is that just a fantasy? For guys who have been in this shoe, please respond. Or should I just continue to trade on the side again and slowly compound that pot?

Since I have time now(unemployed) to weigh these options, I like to know your take on this. Actually my daytrading is now more than my unemployment benefits. haha. And my good swing trading account is occasionally more than my old corporate job's monthly salary.

My ideal setup would be to be for my daytrading to be $500-$1k+ a day.
For my longer-term swing trading account to capture good moves(10pts+) a month. I have enough capital on that account where a 10p+ move would be a significant profit.

I'm not sure I can do that everyday for my daytrading account. I'm not sure if I can do that every month on my swing trading account. I know there are no guarantees...

thank you in advance!

trader99

You would like to average 750 a day daytrading but in your heart you know you are not ready.

1. Only a very few who post on ET do what you want to do but there are some wise posters. Your job to dicern who those are.

2. Do you personally know someone who has averaged 750 a day for a long time-- and what they do makes sense?

If you do... you know what to do.

If you do not; well, maybe you now have a new goal.

 

[jinxu]

You would like to average 750 a day daytrading but in your heart you know you are not ready.

1. Only a very few who post on ET do what you want to do but there are some wise posters. Your job to dicern who those are.

2. Do you personally know someone who has averaged 750 a day for a long time-- and what they do makes sense?

If you do... you know what to do.

If you do not; well, maybe you now have a new goal.

1. You can't really tell who has good info. And those that do, likely don't give out details. As a rule of thumb I follow the principle that those who are most active are often those who know the least. The wisest don't waste silly time on this forum. And even fools can have moment of creativity. Best advice is to take what you can.

2. Trading is counter-intuitive. What works don't make sense. I'm more surprised then sure that some of trades I make actually end up working.

 

[IVx]

Yes - but from differently constructed charts (the periodicity of the bars on my charts now is defined by the transaction of a pre-selected volume-quantity, rather than by a pre-selected time-interval).

Thanks, that is interesting. Does that mean that the transition to trading commods after forex was relatively smooth for you? Do you think your setups were already suited to the transition or do you think that any successful price action forex trader can take their forex toolbox and apply it in other markets? Sorry if too many questions

 

[Xela]

Sorry if too many questions

No; not at all - but sorry that the answers may be of limited (if any) help (especially this time ...).

Does that mean that the transition to trading commods after forex was relatively smooth for you?

It was; and much smoother than I expected.

There were two transitions, really.

The first was from trading EUR/USD and Cable to trading Euro futures and Pound futures. I'd been increasingly strongly advised to do this by (successful, professional) traders I knew, who knew how I traded. I eventually tried it, and ended up wishing I'd done so at an earlier stage (but I'm very difficult to teach/advise and have to work almost everything out for myself). I did this so I could use volume. I effectively ran both methods (spot forex with fast timed charts and forex futures with fast volume charts) side-by-side for 6 months, taking "the same" price-action-based entries for each, with the same trade management (different trades, of course, though not very different numbers of trades, overall), and compared the results, which were consistently and significantly favourable for futures/volume: briefly, I was able to average about 25% more profit, overall, without increasing the risk, each month for 6 consecutive months. This is, of course, a very superficial, abbreviated summary - the statistical analysis was much more complicated and intricate than I'm making it sound; but the mechanics of actually doing it weren't at all.

The second "transition" was the addition of NQ to my repertoire (I didn't look at CL until much later). Indices appealed to me, probably partly because I'd originally, first started off by trading the FTSE-100, FTSE-250 and Dax indices, initially on demo for a long time, when I was very young. I looked at ES before NQ but rapidly (perhaps too rapidly, and I'm just starting to look at it again) dismissed it in favour of NQ. NQ appeared to me, on a purely subjective and mostly non-quantified basis, to "move more like Euro and Pound futures". This was also essentially non-traumatic and straightforward.

Do you think your setups were already suited to the transition or do you think that any successful price action forex trader can take their forex toolbox and apply it in other markets?

I just don't really know the answer to this; sorry. I'd only be guessing. I suspect - but can't prove - that the fact that I'm a "semi-scalper", typically taking a relatively large number of entries per day (typically 7-10) with relatively short trade-durations (typically a few minutes), may have made it a little easier than it would otherwise have been.