Trading is hard, yes. However, when you start on a journey, you must prepare yourself mentally and emotionally. I know that it has been said here in the past, but let me also say that there is no holy grail. Sorry, it doesn't exist. So you ask, "What can I do to be profitable?" Here are a few tips that I follow:
1. Start with 1 contract and work your way up. Only add another contract when you have earned it (5-6 thousand in account per contract).
2. Don't over trade. If you get stopped out on the first trade, wait until the next trend.
3. Remove all the clutter from your charts.
4. Focus on one market. Don't jump from market to market.
Pretty simple. Don't over think it or complicate it.
My strategy:
I use a 500 volume for the NQ, but I'm sure this would work on almost any chart type.
8 ema
34 ema
Longs:
Price bounces off 34 ema (yellow line - see attached picture) and closes above the 8 ema (blue line)
Shorts:
Price bounces off 34 ema (yellow line - see attached picture) and closes below the 8 ema (blue line)
Starting out, I would recommend a fixed target. Once you have "earned" the right to trade with another contract, trail price until a bar closes below the 8 ema. In today's example, your trailers would have done very well.
My goal is $50 a day per contract. I normally only trail with 1 or 2 contracts.
This is as simple as it gets (my opinion, of course).
Happy Trading!
The following 15 users say Thank You to Chevyman for this post:
What time frames do you do this on? I plan on going live next month with Amp and plan on focusing on ES. I noticed on demo that some days it is very choppy, but other days it trends very well even on the lower 3 minute TF.
He isn't using time. His data series is using volume.
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- Trade what you see. Invest in what you believe -
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Very good post. I agree that it helps to focus on 1 maybe 2 markets and keep your charts as simple as possible. I find that tick charts work very well. I basically use the same methodology that Chevyman uses but I also add a short term ADX in a subgraph and use that as a filter to make sure there is a decent trend.
The following 2 users say Thank You to futrstrdr for this post:
