My plan was no trades until after the news, but after the news the market was really choppy, so I decided to work in the sim account, honing my skills.
CL was a choppy mess after the open and after working way too hard to net $93, I switched to with ES, utilizing a strategy that Hog reminded me of in one of his recent posts. I wanted to adapt it to a particular ES trading style Iâve settled on and find out how well it worked, how well I could manage the trades for maximum profit and what the worst case scenario assuming several trades took out at max loss.
The tactic worked beautifully because of the choppy, ranging market. When price hit the upper channel line, I was short with a 5pt stop (thatâs my max loss per trade). If price continued up with a significant channel line overshoot, I doubled down, leaving the stop in place. Vice versa for long positions. My trades either pulled back to the EMA right away, or the double down strategy gave me significant price improvement and again a profitable trade.
As for the maximum profit part of it, I failed utterly, leaving more on the table than I took 2/3 of the time.
Hereâs what I kept doing:
On trades that moved my way quickly, Iâd take profits at the EMA where the inevitable pivot always happens (except in strong momentum moves), only watch the price pause and continue my way without me to test the opposite channel line.
On double downers, I would nervously take small profits when the overshoot moved back to the channel line (again price tried to uphold the trend there which made me nervous), only to see price move all the way back through the EMA and often to the opposite channel line!
I imagine since my win rate is above average I could have worse problems than this, but I just keep thinking how patient I've been as a trader holding losers and waiting for them to come back to at least break even. Why not that patient with winners??? I need to allow MAX WINS as often as possible.
I'd love to get better at managing this this. I guess scaling is the way, but I'm only trading one car right now except with the double down strategy.
