Need Advice

[IVx]

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

On the contrary the info is most interesting helpful and appreciated, thanks. I am aware from another website where you used to commentate, that RHs are a significant portion of your setups. I have not really had much success with these on shorter timeframes myself (5 and 15 mins), but I am still working at it, along with other trend entry setups.

Transitioning from spot to futures seems a bit of a logical progression given that Euro and Pound futures are traded. But it may be the case that only certain trading styles are readily portable, and after all Joe Ross was a futures trader so it makes sense that your transition was easy. Maybe the hard work was done applying his thinking to the spot market!

 

[Xela]

I am aware from another website where you used to commentate, that RHs are a significant portion of your setups.

Yes; this is true. RH's and "things like RH's", anyway. The RH is just one specific example of "post-retracement trend-continuation entries" (as I call them), and that covers quite a lot of my trading, albeit with small trends on fast charts.

But it may be the case that only certain trading styles are readily portable

It may be.

I'd guess that most are, myself, to be honest, given my feeling that "most charts are inherently fractal, most of the time", and given that I don't really believe in "noise" per se, and given the non-linear relationship between volatility and time-frames.

But I might be wrong, and of course my experience is limited - and perhaps more than most people's in the senses that (a) I started my process of "analyzing in detail and doing more of what works and less of what doesn't work" at a very early stage, and (b) there are vast areas of trading (individual stocks, options, bonds, spreads) about which I know very, very little and with which I have no experience at all.

Maybe the hard work was done applying his thinking to the spot market!

Possibly - not sure about this.

I've also applied what I learned from the examples from which Volman teaches (spot forex on tick charts) to index futures on volume charts, and in the past those from which Brooks teaches (ES on timed charts) to spot forex, without encountering any significant apparent difficulties, though.

It certainly seems to me that they're probably all fairly interchangeable, and that "charts are charts".

I was slighty surprised by your comment above about RH's on M5/M15 charts, and am happy to discuss them, if it helps (and you're welcome to send a p.m., if you don't want to do that publicly: I do reply to them - not always quickly, depending on how busy I am, but I do reply).

 

[trader99]

Just an update. I've been busy with non-trading stuff.

But also I'm "stuck" in a position. I took a signal from a daily timeframe when lately I've been trading intraday. I "regretted" that very much.

Then I zoomed out and see each daily bar/candle as just 5 minute bars. It's fractals afterall. The same patterns should hold across timeframe. It gave me the fortitude to hold.

This is NOT an excuse to hold onto losses. My point was that if my ENTRY was based on daily timeframe, then it makes sense that EXIT should also be based on the daily timeframe.

But it has not been easy. If I'm wrong based on the daily timeframe, then I'll get out!

With hindsight, I'll stick with intraday signals. My account is not big enough for daily range. Too stressful. I realize even if one were to trade daily, there are ALWAYS better entry point if you use intraday signals.

It's a nice realization. Because that means in the future I could be more precise about my entry if I were to trade daily. It's a possibility since I'm busy nowadays with non-trading activities.

I'm sure the swing and long term traders can sit through these long daily bars/candles with ease. But for me it's been scary. haha

P.S. Also today I wrote up some code to analyze my trades and generate the trade statistics I've been posting. Before I manually calculated in Excel. Today I cross-check with my code and I found a few mistakes. Now I don't trust my Excel spreadsheet anymore. Subtracting one cell from another and other manipulations are error prone. When you program it and double check it, then it's always correct. Also it's a lot faster than doing the calculations by hand.

Maybe I should devote my energy to build systems to trade than this manual trading which I was horrible at though improving... hmm..

 

[trader99]

OK, guys. Here's the update.

A client of mine for my non-trading biz wants me to be on-site 1-2 days a week. That leaves 3-4 days to trade. This is fine.

I think it's forcing me to be a pseudo swing trader. I could see some benefits. You trade less and your gains are bigger relative to your transaction cost. The patterns are the same. So I held through some crazy moves from a points wise perspective but from a chart pattern perspective it's within reason. If you don't look at the scale just look at the price action, then it's all the same.

The downside is the range is bigger so the losses and what you have to sit through is wide! I feel like there can be a happy middle ground. Hold a swing position and daytrade around it?

Has anyone done that successfully here?

thanks in advance

 

[Visaria]

Bigger time frames (at least 1 hour and preferably 4 hour +) is where the money is. It's safer in that you don't have to use much leverage, you let the market do the work and you don't have to constantly watch the market. As u already mentioned, transaction costs dwindle away.

 

[murray t turtle]

OK, guys. Here's the update.

A client of mine for my non-trading biz wants me to be on-site 1-2 days a week. That leaves 3-4 days to trade. This is fine.

I think it's forcing me to be a pseudo swing trader. I could see some benefits. You trade less and your gains are bigger relative to your transaction cost. The patterns are the same. So I held through some crazy moves from a points wise perspective but from a chart pattern perspective it's within reason. If you don't look at the scale just look at the price action, then it's all the same.

The downside is the range is bigger so the losses and what you have to sit through is wide! I feel like there can be a happy middle ground. Hold a swing position and daytrade around it?

Has anyone done that successfully here?

thanks in advance

%%
Yes ; but the daytrade part is so seldom done by me, i dont do it much.As far as points, i might use that if i was hyping the DOW, but i dont record DOW/DIA much.Profits + losers are bigger, so commissions have to be less. I like the 4 hour,......... but that last one gets cut 30 minutes short,LOL

 

[syswizard]

Maybe try stop doing the long term shit....

100-500 day, so avg what... 300? That's 75k yearly...

Exactly...and if he sets-up and trades thru an LLC, there's no taxes (if you're smart).
So at $75k LLC that's equivalent to $125k W2 and all of those tax deductions.....

 

[trader99]

Exactly...and if he sets-up and trades thru an LLC, there's no taxes (if you're smart).
So at $75k LLC that's equivalent to $125k W2 and all of those tax deductions.....

I've thought about forming an LLC for my trading side. I would need to do significantly better than those #s above to be back to where I was in my old corporate job.

So, here's what I'm thinking:

Fixed Income Stream
1) My non-trading biz gives some income stability and I only need to be onsite(thus can't trade) for only 2 days a week

Variable Income Stream
3) For the remaining 3 days a week, I can daytrade/swing trade in the mornings and work on my non-trading biz in the afternoons. If I can manage $500-$1000/day on those remaining 3 days then I'll be good. Right now, I'm not there yet. More negatives than positives. haha

It would be great if I can pull this off...

 

[trader99]

%%
Yes ; but the daytrade part is so seldom done by me, i dont do it much.As far as points, i might use that if i was hyping the DOW, but i dont record DOW/DIA much.Profits + losers are bigger, so commissions have to be less. I like the 4 hour,......... but that last one gets cut 30 minutes short,LOL

I have realized in swing trading there are points to exit that are locally optimal. I suppose that's the same pattern intraday too.

On Wednesday night which according to futures would be start of 2/22/18 session, I should have covered my shorts. Then reversed and went long. I thought about it too. But then my longer term view took over. oh boy. I should have done that. That was like a 500 pts move overnight. Then re-short. The 1-2-3 days swings are huge number of points. No need for weekly or longer views.

Now I think a lot can be made pointwise to hold intraday and if the trend is good then extend to 1-2 days swing. No more than than. Sure, it might still eventually go my original view. But the swings and noise are too much to hold through.

Can't wait to get out of this. I think the short is still safe. It goes back up and totally break the down trend then I'll cover and eat the losses.

My point is there are these local minimas and local maximas that one could take advantage in a multiple day swings. Don't need to hold for weeks or months. My account is not big enough for that anyways. Especially if I want to generate positive cash flow regularly..

what do you think?

 

[trader99]

I'm giving up! Swing trading is too scary relative to my small accounts.

I'll just do daytrading with limited predefined losses.