Quote from SteveH:
Hi Becky,
First off, thanks for sharing your trading pics and . I have no idea why your journal is drawing so much negative criticism. You're not asking for money and you're not drawing anything more than a very nice 'salary' from the market relative to the time you spend in it. So, good for you.
I see that you took a loss on March 13th, but that's strange because the trade had to have gone at least 4.50 pts in your favor, even if you sold the low of that 3rd 5 min price bar. So, I guess this was a trading error on your part because you let a trade that was way past your profit target take you out for a huge loss, right?
From your pics, it looks like your stop-loss is determined by a takeout of either the high or low of your entry bar on a closing 5 min basis. Is this correct?
From my experience, in target-based trading, traders with high winning percentages who aren't high frequency scalpers typically have larger-than-normal losers, taking back up to 3 of their previous winning gains. This isn't a bad thing, just the way things tend to play out with this method of trading.
Traders (successful ones) with very high winning pcts tend to see their payoff ratio (avg win / avg loss) go towards 0.50 while those with low winning pcts (30-40%) tend to have 3.0 - 5.0 for their payoff ratios. I think the most rare thing you will ever find among daytraders is someone who has a 70%+ winning pct with a 2.0+ payoff ratio.
Anyway, I wish you much success in the markets and thanks for posting your trades. You have a lot of guts/confidence in yourself to be willing to take up to 4-6 pts of heat on an ES trade wtih 8 contracts ($1600 to $2400) in order to take 2 pts ($800) of profit per avg trade. Your system will continue to work beautifully so long as you stay above a 70% winning pct. and occassionally let your winners run (as some of your posted charts have shown).
