Pete's Place

Peter,

Congrats on a great entry there. Your idea of implementing volume in your analysis the way you do is quite interesting.

I saw your trading today, and even though it is easy to come after the fact and say that "I should've kept my position", during the day you are tempted to take it off the table. This is only normal, you want to secure your profits.

I believe that even though you should let your profits run, it is also advisable to secure some in some way. Once you get to 3:1 Reward to Risk for example, put your Exit Stop there and secure the profit. Then if you want, you can let the market run, using a trailing stop (see below). But by securing a Reward to Risk of 3:1, you are statistically bound to be more profitable, if your entry % are also good (win/loss %)

Now, Jesse Livermore said that it was "his sitting" that made the profits. What you could do is trail your stop below the last peak or trough, in a relative timeframe (I use 10m LL or HH to enter and trail at 3m or 5m, depending how close I want to be from the market) If you catch a good trend, the market should not retrace below the last pivot, unless it's exhausted and wants to turn around or get into sideways motion - in which case take your profits and run.

Keep up the good work,

T
 
Quote from Trader1234:

Peter,

What you could do is trail your stop below the last peak or trough
T
More...

Good idea.

At the end of this month i'm going to examine how much I gave up on my swing trades (by holding at b/e vs. closing with the day trade). If the swing profits haven't come close to making up for this I will reconsider my exit strategy for them. I'll post the stats once I have them.

Today: still trend up, looking for longs. On the lookout for a bounce of the 1386 area, an important resistance area from the last few days which now may become support.

I can't think of any scenarios for shorts today. Maybe falling thru yesterday's high (or low), then lots of resistance on the retrace. Still with such a strong trend up in place I will only go 1/2 size if I short today, not really interested in holding a short overnight.
 
"Position yourself so that you can't be knocked out of a market by a few setbacks. Continuous involvement prepares you to take advantage of any good opportunity that arises. It also contributes to your self-confidence. It creates a safe environment in which you can experiment and learn, knowing that no experience will be a career-ending one."

-Steidlmayer on Markets, by J. Peter Steidlmayer, p.161
 
Six trades today, most of them bad, meaning looking back I don't understand the rationale behind the entry, or I can't believe I went against the odds... due to ambush entries, I didn't lose very much, but SIX TRADES is ridiculous for me. I must have been high from that little winning streak over the past few days.

  • For the first four I was tradin' like a crack monkey:
  • long @ 8:45 CST. I have this marked as a s/r trade but we'd just broken thru yesterday's high... there was no long trade here...
  • long @ 9:37. Yes, buying support, and oh by the way JUST IGNORE THE DESCENDING TRIANGLES.... I saw them and had them marked off... I was thinking this was going to fail and there would be a huge short covering rally.
  • long @ 9:49. Never mind we just broke thru support and that throwbacks are common. Duh.
  • long @ 9:53. I WANTED TO BE RIGHT. An 875 tick ambush, but long underneath a decending triangle breakout? The Traders Paradox. When you want to be right, you are wrong.

I'm glad the insanity ended there. The only thing I did right was use the ambush method, so I was only down 6.5 pts x 2 ctcs.

:confused:
 

Attachments

"Position yourself so that you can't be knocked out of a market by a few setbacks. Continuous involvement prepares you to take advantage of any good opportunity that arises. It also contributes to your self-confidence. It creates a safe environment in which you can experiment and learn, knowing that no experience will be a career-ending one."

-Steidlmayer on Markets, by J. Peter Steidlmayer, p.161
More...

Reflecting on this again. Something to keep in mind for when I grow that huge pot of cash. I've read a lot of stories about traders making it big and then blowing up.

In poker I just discovered I have the same problem. When things are going great are the most dangerous times. Last night I bet up a high flush to the max in 7 card stud... guy beat me with four-of-a-kind aces. I made the pot huge and lost a bundle. Same thing happened a couple of weeks ago. Had a nice boat, beat by a straight flush. Both hands they didn't show it, pulled it on the river card. Bad luck for me? Yes. Shoulda won? Yes.

Possible to lose? Always.
 
Pete,
Nice journal, it helps a lot of us to learn and it looks like it's helping you to learn at the same time. I especially liked your link to NQoos "Floor Trader System". I'm going to try to learn to trade some variation of that myself. I'll figure out a system and then practice trade it either using Ensign playback or just scrolling through an intraday chart one bar at a time. I prefer just scrolling through a chart, the Ensign playback is nice but even at 10X speed it gets extremely boring to try and test trade a system.

I think you're doing well with your trading but I wonder if you might not benefit yourself from picking just one of your systems and then manually test trading it. I've attached an excel spreadsheet that I use to test trade the ES eminis with. I don't have instructions for it but it's relatively simple to figure out. I just call up an old 5 minute intraday chart from the Eminis and then scroll through it one bar at a time. I just enter the longs or shorts I would have taken with a system in the excel spreadsheet. If after 30 trades, I'm still negative, I'll give it up. If after 30 trades I'm positive, I might have something.
 

Attachments

Sam
Thanks for the spreadsheet. 30-samples are the minimum aren't they?

Do you test potential setups/systems much? I spend an inordinate amount of time doing so and enjoy the heck of it. Most having to decide which way a breakout is going to go. I know when it will, I just want to be on the right side (don't we all?)

Best wishes,
JD Schaefer
 
Quote from JDRower:

Do you test potential setups/systems much?

Best wishes,
JD Schaefer [/B]
More...

JD,
I have done some testing but I'd like to get serious and do a lot more. I've subscribed to Qcharts because it has a lot of intraday history. I'm working on getting the Qcharts data into Tradestation and then I'll be able to do a lot of testing of what will work when trading ES eminis. It would be part testing and part practicing the setups. It's easy to look at an entire chart and say what you would have done but it'll be better if I scroll through the chart and only see the setup for a trade.
 
Yesterday: 4 crack monkey trades, 2 good trades.

Today: 1 crack monkey trade, 2 good trades.

After yesterday's fiasco, I start the day off with a trade not in the system. I woke up only 1/2 hr before the market opened, still very tired.

After banging my head against the desk I pulled it together and got long at the resistance, 1402.5 then again at 1403. Rode it up to 1420 then bailed passing the 50% retrace. No shorts today, still trend up, but now I am showing neutral-- meaning i'll be on the lookout for both good shorts and longs.

Not much to offer tonight but with the long weekend and market holiday I'll be posting a lot of material including some statistical studies. Not trading the 1/2 day tommorow.
 
Quote from peterfigliozzi:



Not much to offer tonight but with the long weekend and market holiday I'll be posting a lot of material including some statistical studies. Not trading the 1/2 day tommorow.
More...

Just thought I would let you know the mkt is open on Monday. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top