Yup. The most discouraging thing about this of course is that all I know is countertrend trading, I really have no 'safe' technique for entering a trend, especially if it doesn't pull back much to provide relatively safe entry points. I've come to expect days like this, after several good days. Without a strategy to recognize a day like this early on before too much damage is done so I can just shut it down and say tomorrow is another day, I'm afraid this will be a recurring problem until I have to throw in the towel.
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Problems countertrend trading the index futures
- Thread starter insomniactrader
- Start date
Yup. The most discouraging thing about this of course is that all I know is countertrend trading, I really have no 'safe' technique for entering a trend, especially if it doesn't pull back much to provide relatively safe entry points. I've come to expect days like this, after several good days. Without a strategy to recognize a day like this early on before too much damage is done so I can just shut it down and say tomorrow is another day, I'm afraid this will be a recurring problem until I have to throw in the towel.
Yup. The most discouraging thing about this of course is that all I know is countertrend trading, I really have no 'safe' technique for entering a trend, especially if it doesn't pull back much to provide relatively safe entry points. I've come to expect days like this, after several good days. Without a strategy to recognize a day like this early on before too much damage is done so I can just shut it down and say tomorrow is another day, I'm afraid this will be a recurring problem until I have to throw in the towel.
Grab a few years worth of charts on NQ. 5 min charts or 1 min charts. Whatever you prefer. Markets are fractal so doesn't matter. Put a basic 20 MA on your chart so you know how far away price is from median only. Study charts very good. I'd say 1000 hours of study. Learn how each candle behaves in different conditions. Eventually, things come together. There is no short cut unfortunately. NO tweaking of a strategy will substitute screen time. You just need screen time.
Yeah bitch-slapped would be accurate. Smarting.
Actually it was Gold that bitch slapped me today, NQ would of been better to trade, ie trendy which is bad for you, trade Gold on Mondays = CHOP!! sorted!!
Grab a few years worth of charts on NQ. 5 min charts or 1 min charts. Whatever you prefer. Markets are fractal so doesn't matter. Put a basic 20 MA on your chart so you know how far away price is from median only. Study charts very good. I'd say 1000 hours of study. Learn how each candle behaves in different conditions. Eventually, things come together. There is no short cut unfortunately. NO tweaking of a strategy will substitute screen time. You just need screen time.
Appreciate the advice weisman02. The market patterns do always repeat don't they.
Actually it was Gold that bitch slapped me today, NQ would of been better to trade, ie trendy which is bad for you, trade Gold on Mondays = CHOP!! sorted!!
I had been having similar problems with the YM when I decided to try another emini for a change. At first I was very surprised and happy with how the NQ behaved, was so much unlike the YM. The NQ's volatility, especially at market open, made for some very fast profits the first 15 minutes. That's still a good time to take advantage of the volatility. But lately it's been behaving more like the YM, with the longer trend times.
The biggest problem you have is that you never backtested your system, and try to determine if it has positive expectancy before trading it. When markets transition from trending to cycling modes is highly randomly distributed in time. No statistical edge in your method means no positive expectancy.
If you don't know how to backtest or don't want to learn, then you probably will never gain a big enough sample size N from live trading to get an idea whether you have a winning or losing method. Your PnL statement will show you first which one is the case, but then you have already experienced this.
If you don't know how to backtest or don't want to learn, then you probably will never gain a big enough sample size N from live trading to get an idea whether you have a winning or losing method. Your PnL statement will show you first which one is the case, but then you have already experienced this.
You're right it trended down after about 9:45am. Don't know why I thought otherwise, bad memory. Think I had been profitable until around 10am so maybe that was why I thought I remembered it trending up after the open.NQ trending up (?) till noon - today? Trending yes, up no. Today as in Aug 24th.
I had been having similar problems with the YM when I decided to try another emini for a change. At first I was very surprised and happy with how the NQ behaved, was so much unlike the YM. The NQ's volatility, especially at market open, made for some very fast profits the first 15 minutes. That's still a good time to take advantage of the volatility. But lately it's been behaving more like the YM, with the longer trend times.
Which ever market or system you trade, it could do well over the next N trades or it could perform crap. You just never know. The hope is it will be do well more often than not over the next N trades you take. N is is typically a large number like 100 trades or more.
The biggest problem you have is that you never backtested your system, and try to determine if it has positive expectancy before trading it. When markets transition from trending to cycling modes is highly randomly distributed in time. No statistical edge in your method means no positive expectancy.
If you don't know how to backtest or don't want to learn, then you probably will never gain a big enough sample size N from live trading to get an idea whether you have a winning or losing method. Your PnL statement will show you first which one is the case, but then you have already experienced this.
Don't think I ever backtested anything, mostly because of all the negative information I'd gotten about that exercise in the distant past. But memory fails me about the specifics. But then I also always thought paper trading was useless since you're not trading with real funds. I've found to my surprise that trading an eval account is every bit as stressful as trading real money, same data feed and platform (in my case R Trader Pro).
I do have plenty of PnL stmts I can go back and examine, I agree at this point I probably should hang it up for a while and study those. Thx panzerman.