Smacking the ER2

Quote from dandxg:

Hey Jessop I came across your thread, I can empathize I too am day trading the russell. First on paper, then on sim and I am having a tough time making money. I commend you for posting so honestly, it is helpful to see that I am not the only one that trades without consistency. I am glad to see you have improved. Best of trading to you.

For me, I have vacillated between simple S and R to a complicated EW software program. Both actually work, but as soon as one doesn't I switch back to the other and back and forth and then nothing works, LOL!

For what it worth, I am a big believer in NLP and after listening to some old tapes I was able to turn $500 losses in BE, and then up $100 with in a couple of days.

A question for you and others, if your trades don't go your way right away do you give them your stop loss and bail? I think I recall you saying you do. Follow up, if the trade goes your way and then comes back to your entry do you bail out at BE or give it the predetermined stop loss to see if it goes your way? I find myself most conflicted with the latter question. There seems to be so much volatility at times in the Russ.

Thanks again for your journal.
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I don't trade the ER, so take this advice for what it's worth. The single biggest improvement I have ever made in my trading is to exit at the stop I defined when I initiated the trade. In fact, for my style of trading I'm almost paranoid of losses. Now, if the trade doesn't almost immediately go my way, I exit. I'd rather (finally) be wrong and out of the trade than wrong and in it, even if it means missing some profits.

imho you must be religious in that respect, robotic, and aggressive with taking your losses. I try to scoop them up as if they were fleeting gains. This may sound stupid to someone who hasn't been there, but it's true for me.

As for your second question, that is a bit more complicated. If you find yourself in that position frequently, I'd suggest looking at your system to define your entries/exits better, or maybe even adjusting your position size. For example, if your trades typically get you a couple of ticks, maybe you want to increase the frequency of signals, or trade two contracts and exit earlier. It all really depends on the pattern of your trades.

Hopefully you don't mind me butting in here!

- The New Guy
 
TNG,

I appreciate your post, I will be thinking about it during tomorrow's session!

Best of Trading to you and everyone on this board. I am still green, so I want to believe I can be in harmony with this market, rather than at war with you and other traders, lol!:p
 
Quote from dandxg:

TNG,

I appreciate your post, I will be thinking about it during tomorrow's session!

Best of Trading to you and everyone on this board. I am still green, so I want to believe I can be in harmony with this market, rather than at war with you and other traders, lol!:p
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lol... it's not me you have to worry about, trust me. ;)

Some other poster on ET put it perfectly in my mind... The market is like an ocean, and we're just the small fish. If we waste our time in a tug of war with each other we're going to die young and hungry. What we need to do is pick up the scraps from the massive kills the big guys are doing.

(OK, I embellished that a whole lot, I'll try to find the original post and give the person who came up with it props...)

- The New Guy
 
Hi Dandxg,

Thanks for the post.....I'm keeping it real because I'm in the middle of the 'mother of all wars' with my psyche :D

On your two questions:
1) A question for you and others, if your trades don't go your way right away do you give them your stop loss and bail?

Every time without fail - never even thought about ducking a stop loss. When I first started I use to get totally demoralised, but now I'm a bit more laid paid if the entry setup was ok then its just probablity talking to you.

2) If the trade goes your way and then comes back to your entry do you bail out at BE or give it the predetermined stop loss to see if it goes your way?

As you can see from last week this happens to me a lot.
This is tricky because when I first started I had an even tighter 'reducing stop'. Now I'm just thinking give the edge enough room to breath but if it reverses then that is life.

I do tweak these settings quite regularly. At the moment for my 3min chart plays - the stop is at -0.8pts from entry, once 0.5pts in profit it moves to -0.3ts and when 1pt in profit it moves to b/e.

BTW - I'm sorry what I said in an earlier post about EWers, I didn't include you in that grouping :)

Cheers
 
Quote from jessop:

Ozzy,

Tell me about it :D

You are right I should be getting 5pts easily. Today was probably a 1-2pter given I was only around for the last few signals (and two of them failed).

Unfortunately I'm the weakest link at the moment and I just need to control my fears, focus better and probably be more aggressive. But I feel I am making progress....very small steps but at least they are forward.

I'm in for the long haul ......

If you come to Europe avoid France and Germany.

If you move to Amsterdam I don't think you'll come to London. The dutch women are real babes - perfect T&A action there ozz.

London is cool too ....but we have a real nanny state government thing going on here.... we're going to be the northern hemisphere's Singapore soon.

Ciao
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Hi jessop,

what speaks against Germany and France ?
 
Well this would have been a good day to pull a sickie !!

If I miss the morning session working I always hope that its been a whipsawing tight range.

Soooooo painful to turn on the charts today….for my trading plan this is pretty close to the perfect day. S5 and S8 with nice continuation signals (S6 and S9) in case I exited early. The higher TF charts were screaming oversold bounce on way too. Plus there is usually a strong probability once it starts to bounce from S5 (in the way it did) its going to attempt, at least, to make 627/628.

I’m going to be very unprofessional and stop now because I know I’m not in a positive frame of mind. There is no point fighting it because my performance correlates almost perfectly with confidence/general mood.

I’m on hols for the next two days so the next entry is Monday.

Happy trading all

Onwards and upwards……….next week
 

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Jessop,

Don't beat yourself up. I did the same thing. The software I use gave an aggressive buy signal at 621.39 all the way to the end at 639 and change! You know what I got....$160 today before commissions. I just reinforces my belief that trading is mostly about psychology along with a decent system. On the positive, I had gains.

Hopefully, for both of us, there will be a good retracement or a continued up move. Best of luck trading to you.

Dan
 
Quote from dandxg:

Hey New Guy,

I just noticed the post, thanks for the encouraging words, best of trading to you.

Dan
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Anytime Dan. Did anyone else get caught in that major reversal today? I was "trading the trend" until I realized I didn't know which way the trend was! lol. Oh well, hit all my stops today, great for the discipline!

- The New Guy
 
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