I love this line. Your journal, with explicit detail and charts is better than any single "how to" guide that has ever been posted to ET. Its kind of like that Muhammed Ali line which goes something like "Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face".
I would love to know their stats, simply just how often they enter, whether they scale in or not, how many trades are wins, scratches, and losses. I firmly believe that the guys who hold for multiple days have a lower win rate than you, but clearly higher profits, but they also have many days where they either don't make money, or are already in a trade so have nothing to do, while you churn out steady cash day by day.
I honestly believe you can do both, but you would need to be able to flip your mindset like a switch. For the swing trading, Level 2 is so much less of a factor, in my opinion, once you're in. I mean price can literally go all the way back down to support, or your entry, or even below your entry, and still not have it affect some sort of up trend if that is what you got in for. The tape and Level 2 can be screaming sell, but a multi day up trend would in no way be affected if price hasn't breached some sort of support level that you identify as key. Since you watch Level 2 like a hawk, and are in tune with the buying and selling, this is something you would have to turn off in your brain for swing trading, in my opinion of course. I mean how often in this huge rally since Trump has the ES screamed panic selling from the open, which last a whole 20 minutes, and then it finished up for the day? Zooming out to look at the hourly chart would show clear levels that weren't breached, or only poked and bought up, but the immediate buys and sells would make any day trader bearish.
Along with you saying they know when to hold, do you have direct evidence that they know? What do you even consider it means that they know? Its as if you're telling me that they know some big firms are coming in and will be buying up hundreds of thousands of shares over the next few days. Who has access to that info? The chart may look as if this is what is happening, but I doubt any of them actually know. What they probably know is that their target is up there, their stop is down there, and whatever happens in between, happens. Once again, if you can share their stats, things might become a little more clear. But I hardly doubt they know anything into the future, they just know what they have to do, while you're busy entering and exiting multiple times. (which clearly works for you)
Well here is how I think about this. What are all the factors for making more money? We could either buy more shares/contracts. Or we could hold for a bigger profit. Or we could increase our win rate. Other than these 3 things, I see no other way to make more money.
So, option 1, buy more shares, easy to do, perhaps its a bit liquidity dependent, but if you're looking to swing trade and holding for a $2-3 move, a few cents wouldn't really matter all that much. I mean this is how all the funds do it, right, buying up in chunks throughout the day? This of course takes balls of steel to increase size, and it also takes a big enough account so that percentage wise, you're not risking huge amounts of your account, but it really involves no change in strategy, unless of course you are trying to nail buying at a particular level and don't get a fill. You've gotten up to 10k shares if I recall, but you start unloading very quickly. The big boys probably keep their big size, and have big wins, along with big losses as well.
Option 2, holding for the bigger profit, which you tried, and it didn't work out too well. I bet it didn't work out too well though because you probably killed some trades that did end up being winners. Honestly, if you went through your stats, are there any that you could have left alone that eventually hit a nice target? Sure some might have hit your stop, or perhaps went all the way back to your entry so might have stopped out at BE, but if you honestly look at those trades from the past month, are there some that would have been home runs if you just left them alone? I suspect that those guys making 7 figures just put trades on and leave them alone to either hit stop or target, or trail the stop once past a certain point. They make more money than you because they leave the trade alone.
Option 3, increasing win rate, perhaps very tough indeed to accomplish. Win rate is of course important depending on how much you're targeting and risking, but you clearly know what you're doing here, and any time you try and increase win rate, all that usually happens is you skip trades cause you're scared to mess up the win rate, or you take smaller profits cause you're eager to keep up a high win rate. And once you start skipping trades, and lowering your profit target but keeping your stop the same, your profits actually decline.
I read somewhere that the Japanese trader, CIS, that is a legend, unverified of course, says he gets it wrong 4 out of 10 times. So in my opinion, getting it wrong isn't the problem, its what you do after you get it wrong that really matters. Crying about a loss, which I know all too well, it pointless, especially if you just sit there and stare. Getting back in, in the opposite direction, can be just as deadly. And re-entering in the same direction, but with bad timing, can also screw you up. But mastering what to do after a stop-out is in my opinion what separates the boys from the men. Stopping and watching is of course never bad either if you have no idea what is going on, which may mean the market doesn't know either, but using the information of getting stopped out can lead now to getting better aligned with the market.
What do you think the guys making 7 figures are doing that you aren't doing? If you say they know which trades will work, then I would ask for their stats cause even a 70% win rate doesn't mean they know, and if they are making 10k per day, I'm also sure many days they lose 5k or more.
