Compare it with trading, where there are numerous simple strategies, yet only a small percentage of traders are consistently profitable.

Of course, dammit, a profitable strategy is the starting point.

. Sorry didn't proofread Do you day trade.. My tablet autofilled

Sorry
Toucan!

Yes I day trade futures. I day trade ES, MES, and MCL. Most of my experience is with the ES.

you said: I've been trading futures off and on since 2010 and I am not profitable. I still do it because I enjoy it and gives me happiness. I let my emotions get the best of me and do not respect my stops. When it's time to get out of a loss I let the trade run in hopes of just breaking even on that trade. 60% of the time it works and the rest of the time it results in huge losses.

you have been doing this a long time so are your initial stoploss and profit targets good enough to be profitable if you don't move the stoploss.

when you enter a trade, do you immediately place an initial stoploss order and place a profit target order or some kind of trailing stop market order for profits.

ive been trading for a long time so here are some of the things that I know about my trading:

my initial stoploss and profit targets are good enough to be profitable
when i enter a trade, i know that if the initial stoploss is hit, then most likely the trade will never be profitable.
more that 50% of my trades are profitable and that my average profit/loss is greater than 1.5 profit to 1.0 loss


cheers
toucan

Yes thank you for your input. To answer your first question, my initial stop losses and take profit orders are likely not good enough to be profitable which is probably why I change my orders after entering a trade. My risk to reward is often 2:1 which is a losing formula and I understand that. I paper trade outside of my live trading with various strategies. Right now I am paper trading with three separate strategies.

-Strategy 1: Stop of 4 ticks, profit of 40 ticks or until I want to reverse the trade.
-Strategy 2: Stop of 4 ticks, profit of 2 ticks (this is the strategy I test 50% of the time and is where I get the risk to reward of 2.0 above).
-Strategy 3: I enter at my discretion and exit when I "feel" the market has taken its course. For this strategy I do not use a stop loss and exit losses when they have grown large and too painful to continue holding. I write down my trades and my records indicate this strategy has a risk:reward of about 2.0 as well.


I exit using market orders for my stops. Once the price hits a 4 tick loss I use a market order to get out. But most of the time I get disappointed with the outcome and I do not get out at 4 tick stop. Sometimes I hold my losses for 10 handles which is $500 in the ES as you already know. Take profits I use a limit order when price gets close to my target. I think a lot of my problems have to do with the excitement of trading as well. This is my entertainment and I do not treat trading as a business or a serious endeavor which is probably the root cause of my losing ways.

After all my experience, I will share this also which works for me, might not work for you.

Trade less and better setups.
Trade bigger.

I agree, here's one of my favorite quotes:

"If we were to cut the types of trades that we take by two-thirds and focus solely on the one or two that reflect our greatest edge in the markets and our greatest trading strength - and if we were to meaningfully increase the size/risk taken for each of those trades - our overall profitability and risk-adjusted returns would rise significantly." -Author Unkown

Yes thank you for your input. To answer your first question, my initial stop losses and take profit orders are likely not good enough to be profitable which is probably why I change my orders after entering a trade. My risk to reward is often 2:1 which is a losing formula and I understand that. I paper trade outside of my live trading with various strategies. Right now I am paper trading with three separate strategies.

-Strategy 1: Stop of 4 ticks, profit of 40 ticks or until I want to reverse the trade.
-Strategy 2: Stop of 4 ticks, profit of 2 ticks (this is the strategy I test 50% of the time and is where I get the risk to reward of 2.0 above).
-Strategy 3: I enter at my discretion and exit when I "feel" the market has taken its course. For this strategy I do not use a stop loss and exit losses when they have grown large and too painful to continue holding. I write down my trades and my records indicate this strategy has a risk:reward of about 2.0 as well.


I exit using market orders for my stops. Once the price hits a 4 tick loss I use a market order to get out. But most of the time I get disappointed with the outcome and I do not get out at 4 tick stop. Sometimes I hold my losses for 10 handles which is $500 in the ES as you already know. Take profits I use a limit order when price gets close to my target. I think a lot of my problems have to do with the excitement of trading as well. This is my entertainment and I do not treat trading as a business or a serious endeavor which is probably the root cause of my losing ways.

Hi blackgrey… I haven’t traded Es in a while, but I was thinking about your answers and have the following comments.

a risk to reward of 2:1 means that you are risking $2 loss to gain a $1 profit. In general, you need to have a very high win rate to be profitable. I haven’t talked to anyone that is profitable using this process.

Strategy 1… risking 4 ticks versus profit of 40 ticks means that you have to stay in the trade much longer and profitability will depend on how good your entries are, how good you are at managing your trades as well as how much you stick to the initial stoploss. the question that i would ask is how many trends run 40 or more ticks.

Strategy 2… see my first comment

Strategy 3… not using an initial stoploss is a real bummer for your bottom line. Most traders that I have talked to busted their accounts when not using stoploss.

You have only outlined your risk/reward and its unclear how you manage a trade when it’s in a profit. And, you haven’t described what causes you to enter a trade.

Have you looked at the best time of day for you to trade. I trade metals, natty and crude and the best time for me to trade is 8am est to 11am est. I know a trader that trades ES the first hour and the last hour of the day. The rest of the day is too risky for him.

Watch out for economic reports. you need to be aware when each of them come out, so you don't get screwed by the price action from the report. I don’t trade the actual economic news, but I trade a few minutes after the news is out when i see there is good price action.

Have you looked at where you should enter (ie a setup forming). I look for pullbacks in a trend, breaks of a narrow range or a clear fast moving trend.

After you see a setup forming, what would tell you to enter a trade. For example when I see a setup form, I enter after price moves 2 ticks in the direction that I want.

Last comment is you do this for entertainment and not business. Most traders that I have talked to that take a similar approach to you have ended up busting their account. i trade like it is my business and look for consistent profits, not big wins.

Hope some of this helps

toucan