Trading the NQ: Take 2

[wrbtrader]

See, most people on here say that chart is too fast, which is fine, but I don't agree. Hence, I can't find anyone on here to help me analyze my entries and exits based on what I'm looking it. Asking to see people's entries was simply a matter of trying to keep away all the hindsight traders who would ask why I'm buying or selling here or there when its obvious it won't work, etc... so I just wanted to see that if things are so obvious to someone, lets see their trades.

I haven't met anyone here at ET that trades like that. Therefore, as suggested before, ET isn't the only place on this planet. You need to go elsewhere for your search...outside of ET and you may be able to find someone or group that doesn't trade the same trading instrument but does trade the way you want to trade.

Can anyone help me do things my way? No. Then everyone please move on.

In light of the above, its not us that needs to move on considering you're aware that nobody here you do things the way you want it to be done. Thus, it's you that needs to move on elsewhere to find the help you want and need. Thus, I don't want anything from you except for you to understand...you're not finding what you need here and no one is willing to work with you except for a few tidbits here and there.

I don't give a fuck how other people are trading.

Then stop mentioning them and talking about them...move on.

You guys in here are like the parent of a kid who is doing a project for work, and instead of helping them do it their way, you take it all over to do it your way so that its good. Now its no longer the kid's project.

Please don't include me in that group. I haven't told you to use any particular trade method nor have I told you about changes to your trade method as others have. In contrast, I see that you're not getting your project done. Therefore, I've recommend you step away...leave it alone...come back another day because things are too messy (confusing) for you right now.

Simply, you're just not ready to be trading right now. If you don't believe, continue doing it your way but I think most people can see how this ends.

Having someone tell me that I shouldn't be trading with real money until I'm profitable is next to useless. Don't you think since I'm the one who posts how much money I've lost every day that I'm fully aware that I'm losing real money?

Anyway... I'm not mad at your wrbtrader, I'm just mad that what I'm saying isn't getting across. And if you're very sure that I'm delusional and not understanding you, then please leave me in my delusional state.

I didn't tell you to stop trading with real money until you're profitable. That doesn't make sense. To be clear, I said to stop trading until you have a trading plan. Without a trading plan, you will not know what to fix when your trading goes bad and you will not know where your edge is at when you're profitable.

***Just remember the key thing I'm telling you...ET isn't the only place in town. If you can't find what you want here...you need to move on (not us) and go elsewhere. That's my point in my conversation with you. I'll leave you alone now that you understand my primary suggestion.

 

[k p]

I haven't met anyone here at ET that trades like that

Yes.. this seems to be the case actually.

In light of the above, its not us that needs to move on. Its you that needs to move on elsewhere to find the help you want and need.

You're absolutely right here. I'm actually not going to be looking for help anymore and just focus on my own thing and let the market teach me.

Please don't include me in that group.

This is true. At this point in my reply, I'm starting to clump everyone into one category because I'm getting mad. I do realize that you hadn't made any specific comments with regards to my trading.

***Just remember the key thing I'm telling you...ET isn't the only place in town. If you can't find what you want here...you need to move on (not us) and go elsewhere. That's my point in my conversation with you. I'll leave you alone now that you understand my primary suggestion.

Yes... I fully understand this. I do wish someone was posting who was trading as I intend to, but oh well. I really have no desire to search out another forum actually. I like ET, I like the way its set up, I like that I know the main players and such, and I like that I have a posting history here. But I do think that I will just keep my "project" to myself now until I work out the kinks and see if I can start posting again about it once I finally get it going as opposed to being stuck in the mud.

PS. I'm delighted that we could have a civilized conversation even though I clearly was getting hot under the collar.

 

[NoDoji]

The trouble I have is that I haven't nearly backtested enough the things I'm looking for, and how often they work. Doing stats is where I'm not exactly working too hard. I'm kind of falling back onto the idea that as long as I take trades that I see "often" work well, and as long as I keep my stop at 2 points and target at 10, then getting just 1 out of 4 to work should control my losses, maybe squeek out a gain, or at least a small loss.

I still remember how geez would have four $200 losers in a row and be down $800 for the day. But sometimes he also had four winners in a day that made of for it.

Doing stats is the RIGHT PATH. Geez was a consistently profitable trader because he had extensive stats that demonstrated the importance of each facet of his plan. If price came within .01 of his target he didn't cheat and take profit early, nor did he cheat and cinch up his stop loss. It drove me nuts, absolutely nuts that he'd do that. His response to my criticism of his trade management was to remind me that his extensive stats over his 8 years of experience had demonstrated the optimal trade management plan for his method and cheating a few ticks here or there skewed the stats and diluted the overall profitability of the plan.

At that time I really had no meaningful grasp of what he was telling me (and demonstrating for me every trading day throughout the year) because I was on the WRONG PATH. I had a Holy Grail right in front of me, but I never took a sip from it because I had no idea what a statistical analysis of MAE/MFE was, and I was smarter than Geez, anyhow. I had an understanding of patterns that I saw work well really, really often. In fact I never saw these patterns fail during my extensive observational analyses. I needn't take losses when I had such a superb method, fully tested by perusing charts and thinking, "See every time X happens Y eventually follows, there's no way to lose trading this way".

 

[k p]

As a tribute to NoDoji (no.. I don't think she's dead so perhaps I'm using the wrong word... LOL), when going over the charts, I wanted to point out a classic BOPB trade that NoDoji has been sharing for quite some time which happened in the NQ on Friday afternoon.

Here would be a trendline you'd get from the 5 min chart, and then you go to the 1 min to search for your entry when you see price getting close. Price breaks out, retraces down, and the entry would be somewhere in that RET, be in 1 tick above the high of the lowest bar, or whatever else your testing shows is best. But this is the idea behind the BOPB trade.

Ok... I'm back to taking a break from my journal.

 

[Autodidact]

As a tribute to NoDoji (no.. I don't think she's dead so perhaps I'm using the wrong word... LOL), when going over the charts, I wanted to point out a classic BOPB trade that NoDoji has been sharing for quite some time which happened in the NQ on Friday afternoon.

Here would be a trendline you'd get from the 5 min chart, and then you go to the 1 min to search for your entry when you see price getting close. Price breaks out, retraces down, and the entry would be somewhere in that RET, be in 1 tick above the high of the lowest bar, or whatever else your testing shows is best. But this is the idea behind the BOPB trade.

Ok... I'm back to taking a break from my journal.

View attachment 152291

Clearly it's a downtrend line drawn in hindsight, look how your line does not hit pivots, look how you even skip pivots.

You even need rules for drawing them, much to do, much to learn before you embark your way.

 

[k p]

Clearly it's a downtrend line drawn in hindsight, look how your line does not hit pivots, look how you even skip pivots.

You even need rules for drawing them, much to do, much to learn before you embark your way.

I do see what you mean, but my line was drawn on the 5 min chart, so it didn't look like I was doing it in hindsight. When it gets automatically transferred on the 1 min from the 5 min by the platform, the swing points don't line up as well.

To me, diagonal lines are tricky because there is a bit of an art to them. I much more prefer horizontal levels as these are a bit less arbitrary (except of course that a horizontal level is more of a zone as opposed to a level at an exact price).

At any rate, price was clearly showing strength, and it was breaking out, regardless of how you drew it.

 

[k p]

Just wanted to upload a little video to show what I do, what I think, and what I do about it. I was inspired by another member who started a video journal. Its not my intention to continue to do this since I'm not consistently profitable yet, but each time I started a journal and everyone tried to help, I found it didn't help me because they didn't know what I was trying to do. So this video at least shows what I'm trying to do.

Its a replay of today, June 16, and since it's replay, I already know what happened, but with it being fresh in my head, I was able to show some of the unfortunate trades I did take and the rationale behind them, along with what I should have been thinking.

I changed my voice to keep anonymous, but hopefully it doesn't detract too much from being able to view the video.

I welcome any comments, good or bad, as I'd like to lead by example and not censor too much. If your comments I don't find helpful, I might tell you the first time, and then just ignore you if you continue. Since this video doesn't show amazing trades and instant profits I fully expect this to die a very quick death which is fine as I'm enjoying not having any posting pressure, but I just thought why the heck not do one. Its so easy to look at a hindsight chart and see in seconds what I should have done, but its another to see it shaping up in real time and taking the best trade before you really know its good.

The good thing is that I am finally set up very well to do replay and SIM trading, so I can focus on practice and being able to catch this stuff in real time, not getting into trades too late as is usually the case.

Sorry it 27 mins long. I fully intended it to be only about 10 mins, to cover the first 10 or 15 mins after the open, but I guess I talk too much.

 

[Autodidact]

Just wanted to upload a little video to show what I do, what I think, and what I do about it. I was inspired by another member who started a video journal. Its not my intention to continue to do this since I'm not consistently profitable yet, but each time I started a journal and everyone tried to help, I found it didn't help me because they didn't know what I was trying to do. So this video at least shows what I'm trying to do.

Its a replay of today, June 16, and since it's replay, I already know what happened, but with it being fresh in my head, I was able to show some of the unfortunate trades I did take and the rationale behind them, along with what I should have been thinking.

I changed my voice to keep anonymous, but hopefully it doesn't detract too much from being able to view the video.

I welcome any comments, good or bad, as I'd like to lead by example and not censor too much. If your comments I don't find helpful, I might tell you the first time, and then just ignore you if you continue. Since this video doesn't show amazing trades and instant profits I fully expect this to die a very quick death which is fine as I'm enjoying not having any posting pressure, but I just thought why the heck not do one. Its so easy to look at a hindsight chart and see in seconds what I should have done, but its another to see it shaping up in real time and taking the best trade before you really know its good.

The good thing is that I am finally set up very well to do replay and SIM trading, so I can focus on practice and being able to catch this stuff in real time, not getting into trades too late as is usually the case.

Sorry it 27 mins long. I fully intended it to be only about 10 mins, to cover the first 10 or 15 mins after the open, but I guess I talk too much.

Do you know the level of technical expertise required to make sense out of a 5 second chart?

Since you are not consistent, you have very little to offer except an inner look at your personal infinite loop of consistent failures.

It's like the blind leading the blind, dangerous stuff, which is precisely the main problem with trading forums, too many amateurs talking about what they have no business talking.

Best wishes and apologies for coming out strong but had to speak my mind.

 

[k p]

Do you know the level of technical expertise required to make sense out of a 5 second chart?

Since you are not consistent, you have very little to offer except an inner look at your personal infinite loop of consistent failures.

It's like the blind leading the blind, dangerous stuff, which is precisely the main problem with trading forums, too many amateurs talking about what they have no business talking.

Best wishes and apologies for coming out strong but had to speak my mind.

No need to apologize because I think you've got a valid point that you explain nicely.

The idea, which I realize I didn't get across too well in my video, is to only be looking for trades at places that would make sense if trading a 1 min chart, or even a 5 min chart. Its just that if someone is to say have a rule above buying above a 1 min bar that rejects a level, well if this bar is 5 points high, you're getting in 5 points above the REJ, so looking for a way to get in sooner I think leads to a smaller stop. Of course you can get in anywhere within the bar if you want, but I just want to see reasons for why.

This is all about watching price move. Most of the guys on here trading price action agree that they have to see price move. (RN, Db, 40D, etc). If I only have a 1 min chart up, I'm not really capturing that movement. Once the move happens, its gone, and those thrusts aren't really recorded anywhere. If I blink, I might miss it. So my 5 sec chart I like to explain by saying its like subtitles on a foreign film or used for an actor with a strong accent. If you miss what was said, or you don't understand every word, reading it helps fill in those blanks.

I know an experienced trader could even just look at a 5 min chart and trade just fine by watching the right tick move up and down, but I need to see the behavior print in some sort of fashion to make sense of it.

 

[k p]

I just did a final wrap-up video for today. Its amazing how much opportunity there actually was, and although most of my trading has me in and out in seconds or minutes, its never lost on me how to make the most money from all that is available, a holding time of hours is necessary. Yes its all hindsight analysis, but if I just focused on taking trades where I'm looking to take them, then attaining profitability shouldn't be impossible.

I am now going back into lurking mode until I figure this out a little better.