Gabe,
I have two things that might be worth saying to you.
First, put any and all trolls on ignore. There is not one human being alive who is a successful market operator who is going to sign in to an internet message board on a Saturday night to flame a struggling trader. Not a one. I've not been at this game very long, but I have read enough old and new threads here at ET and at TL to know that most of those posting are not making any money at this, and those who troll are losing money hand over fist, that is, if they are trading at all. AAAbeltway posts mostly in chit chat and politics and religion. He wants your rules and set ups because he doesn't have any of his own that work. Put him on ignore. And I know from my own personal experience with HurricaneUS that he is a serial stalker who knows about as much about price action and how the markets work as most do here at ET, which is very very little. Use that ignore button and don't feed them, i.e. do not respond to them.
Second, I have not read your whole thread. I did read the first several pages, which for me is about 120 posts, and then I skipped around through the middle and picked it up here at the end. A few observations: 1) You have nodoji's ear, and from what I have read of her posts here at ET, it is a very good ear to have - If I were you, I'd appreciatively take advantage of any help she is willing to send your way. 2) You said you were part of a chat room and that you got your current system from one of the guys in the chat room. I think (a) you need to get out of the chat room while you get to work on the business at hand. I've been invited by some very nice people to participate in their chat room, and I have thus far resisted my own desire to have some company during the day because I know that I might be tempted to second guess myself if someone else second guesses me first. And (b) It is great that you found something that seems to be clicking with you at some level. For me what clicked was a chance reading of Wyckoff's Studies in Tape Reading/The Day Trader's Bible and finding a DbPhoenix thread on a google search one night. Most everything I do has come from DbPhoenix, even my understanding of Wyckoff. I trade the NQ, same instrument as he does. I trade it using support and resistance and judging what price is doing at those levels. But, while I trade based on his method or system, my particular use of his approach is still different from his particular use of it. Most of the time, I would bet he and I are in the market or out of the market more or less at the same times, and when in the market, we are without a doubt facing the same direction. But as to when each of use get in, and when we get out, and how we manage an open trade is no doubt slightly off, because each of us has found our own way of reading the price action and each of us has his own way of trading the markets that fits whatever differences in personality, risk tolerance, etc and so on exist between us. So you also would probably benefit from stepping back from your chat room buddy and taking sometime to work this method out for yourself without constant feedback right before and during and at the possible end of each and every trade.
That gives me a third observation that might be worth saying to you. You might find it helpful to put your demo trading away for a few days or even a few weeks and just watch price for a set time period each day. During that time, record your observations in a notebook. Don't be thinking about where'd you'd buy or sell or stop loss or any of that. Just mark your observations. What was yesterday's high? It's low? What does price do when it approaches one of these levels? What does it do when it breaks one? Is each break the same? What happens when it breaks a low by a tick and reverses? How does price behave when it is trending for dozens and dozens of ticks? Does it pause? If so, for how long? What sort of range does it pause in? How does it act right before it ends its pause and resumes its trend? Or right before it ends its pause and reverses? I know that both DbPhoenix and NoDoji recommend this observational phase. I did it, and I can't tell you how much it really gave me the foundation to do make money trading.
So, to sum it up, ignore the trolls, and find your own way to trade in the context of a method that you know from observing others trade actually works.
Good luck to you!
