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Gozilla's Rough road to consistency.


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Gozilla's Rough road to consistency.

  #191 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
Philadelphia
 
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  #192 (permalink)
 
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 tturner86 
Portland, Oregon
 
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Itchymoku View Post

What happen next? And how did you trade it?

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  #193 (permalink)
 
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 jackbravo 
SF, CA/USA
 
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Itchymoku View Post

I've heard of this indicator. It's the ItchyDinocator....supersecret, only available to a few select chatrooms. Price is oversold at the hand and overbought at the foot, except when it's at the tail, then it's trending. Thanks for sharing!

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  #194 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
Philadelphia
 
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tturner86 View Post
What happen next? And how did you trade it?

Well It popped over night and I caught it at break-even when I woke up. It would have worked well If I was awake or had some sort of target in mind. I decided to exit before NFP that was occurring that morning. I believe the NFP moved it significantly higher too, but that wasn't in my risk profile.


Here's a smaller time-frame chart of the same trade.


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  #195 (permalink)
 DbPhoenix 
Phoenix AZ
 
Posts: 470 since Dec 2012

Well, two things. One, you're looking at far too much. Two, which is a result of One, is that you're thinking too much. Instead of developing a tactical set for yourself, you're interpreting the nuances of every movement. It isn't necessary to interpret much, if anything, if you have determined your tactics. This involves some work, but not nearly as much as you've done.

I posted the following yesterday. It was a trend day, so a good exercise for determining how to trade one.



Think about where your buystop/sellstop will be. Decide whether you want to make it a stoplimit buy/sell or a market order.

Determine how much MAE to allow and from what point you will begin to measure it as well as how much you're willing to tolerate a break of the DL/SL in case price does so before resuming the move, and how much leeway you're going to allow price to break the line in an ongoing move before you decide to exit the trade. You should also think about how many contracts you're going to trade and what the target for the first will be.

Then just let the SLA do its job.

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  #196 (permalink)
 DbPhoenix 
Phoenix AZ
 
Posts: 470 since Dec 2012

One other thing: turn off anything having to do with money, whether gains and losses, wins and losses, percentages of anything, the bid and ask, points earned, etc. All you want to see is the trade. If you're using a chart-trader, opt out of all markings. Just focus on the trade in front of you (which means ignoring all previous trades, including one taken perhaps only a minute or so earlier).

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  #197 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
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DbPhoenix View Post
Well, two things. One, you're looking at far too much. Two, which is a result of One, is that you're thinking too much. Instead of developing a tactical set for yourself, you're interpreting the nuances of every movement. It isn't necessary to interpret much, if anything, if you have determined your tactics. This involves some work, but not nearly as much as you've done.

I posted the following yesterday. It was a trend day, so a good exercise for determining how to trade one.



Think about where your buystop/sellstop will be. Decide whether you want to make it a stoplimit buy/sell or a market order.

Determine how much MAE to allow and from what point you will begin to measure it as well as how much you're willing to tolerate a break of the DL/SL in case price does so before resuming the move, and how much leeway you're going to allow price to break the line in an ongoing move before you decide to exit the trade. You should also think about how many contracts you're going to trade and what the target for the first will be.

Then just let the SLA do its job.

I have felt at times like I am trying to watch too much during the day and end up getting lost, I halted trading until I could figure it a more cohesive plan to tackle ranges. During this time I still prepared in the lead up to open just to see how things would pan out (perhaps this was a distraction) as the day unfolded I would glance occasionally at the live chart and it seemed..... I lack a better way to express my thoughts, easy.

I have been occupied whilst I have been away with how to get back to that mindset when I am live.

As for the chart, I will try to mark it up as best I can, but, I am at sea until Monday and I am not sure my tablet will work that well.

Thanks for the input.
Gozilla.

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  #198 (permalink)
 DbPhoenix 
Phoenix AZ
 
Posts: 470 since Dec 2012

I also posted these charts for this morning:

These are the sorts of "notes" I make to myself when getting ready to trade. A range is always nice as trading it is so simple. But traders don't always provide a pre-market range. Instead one must apply the SLA.



and, later


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  #199 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
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DbPhoenix View Post

I posted the following yesterday. It was a trend day, so a good exercise for determining how to trade one.



Think about where your buystop/sellstop will be. Decide whether you want to make it a stoplimit buy/sell or a market order.

Determine how much MAE to allow and from what point you will begin to measure it as well as how much you're willing to tolerate a break of the DL/SL in case price does so before resuming the move, and how much leeway you're going to allow price to break the line in an ongoing move before you decide to exit the trade. You should also think about how many contracts you're going to trade and what the target for the first will be.

Then just let the SLA do its job.

Marked up the chart as best I can, as for MAE, I have never thought about this terminology so what I think it is and what it actually is may in fact be well off the mark which would only show my ignorance on the subject, but, I will try to muddle through it as best I can. There are a few scratch trades in there and I omitted a couple of trades involving the breakdown and retest of the PM range.



When I take a trade on there are a couple of things I consider in terms of stop placement, I don't use hard stops, I have a catastrophic stop that takes me out for the day, but, for the best part I prefer to take responsibility for the decision as to whether or not I want to be in the trade. Though I often have a mental stop of 4-5 points I rarely hold this far as PA will often dictate an exit.

I seem to alternate in how I control drawdown during a trade, for example, A DL gets broken and price drops off a little before putting in a retrace, I trail a short order behind to catch the drop if it does drop, (I use buy/sell stop market orders, 1 lot trader for the time being and slippage is not a major concern at this point.) Once the trade has been triggered I will use the swing point from the ret as a stop if its not too far away (5 points is about my threshold), but, I expect a retrace at some point and will keep a track of the half way mark of the drop, whilst I expect a retrace, a deep retrace might be of concern, the whole premise of the trade in my mind is to take a trade when there is an imbalance, the greater the imbalance the stronger the move, if price makes little progress then rets deep into the move I would have to assume the imbalance is not as great as anticipated and exit the trade for scratch.

This notion is reinforced in the stats with my average winning trade having a 5 tick drawdown (small sample 23 trades), the trade is swept into the unfolding PA, it doesn't hang around and barely glances back.

I used to exit on DL/SL breaks on trending days only to get tied up in knots trying to re-enter or spend the rest of the day trying to pick the top or the bottom, now when I look at trending days I often see the stride get broken but the trend remain intact, I now consider DL/SL break + trend swing point break as an exit, unless there are other factors to consider like price running into HTF context or climactic behaviour.

Targets, this may seem a little odd, I don't enter a trade with a specific price in mind for an exit, I have an idea that price might reach a certain level where it might change direction, but, I don't know what will happen next and I don't want to exit a trade solely on price reaching a pre-determined level, ranges are straight forward, one extreme to the other, but, I would like to be able to let the behaviour dictate the exit. If price falls short of the mark I might be biased and thus slow to react to the change, if price blows through the target I might get chewed up getting back in.

Its been a long day and I am starting to speak gibberish and not entirely sure I have answered the questions sufficiently.


DbPhoenix View Post
One other thing: turn off anything having to do with money, whether gains and losses, wins and losses, percentages of anything, the bid and ask, points earned, etc. All you want to see is the trade. If you're using a chart-trader, opt out of all markings. Just focus on the trade in front of you (which means ignoring all previous trades, including one taken perhaps only a minute or so earlier).

I have found myself becoming fixated with the PNL and recently removed the display that tells me how much in ticks the trade is up or down, the only thing that shows up is the realised profit in the top left and a line showing number of lots and entry price, but, this line is also distracting, all other displays are removed during trading and applied for chart reviews.

Gozilla.

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  #200 (permalink)
 DbPhoenix 
Phoenix AZ
 
Posts: 470 since Dec 2012


MAE stands for Maximum Adverse Excursion, though technically it ought to be Maximum Adverse Incursion since it refers to price's coming back toward your entry. What it means in terms of your trade management is how far can price come back to you and still result in a continuation? How far must price come back to shift the probability toward a reversal rather than a continuation?

For example, if price is trending up and breaks your DL at 83, how far can price come back and still ultimately continue the upward move? 2pts? 3? 4? Is 5 too much? 6? Trying to determine this off a hindsight, static chart may seem like a waste of time as it is obvious just from looking at the chart whether or not the break results in a continuation or not. But that's not the point. The point is to determine how much price can move adversely and still continue the original move. This will of course vary according to the instrument, but once you know the MAE, you then know when and where to exit your trade instead of sweating out every little tick twist and tick stutter and tick hesitation and thinking maybe you ought to exit because price isn't moving as quickly as you think it should. Knowing the MAE enables you to LITHA (leave it the hell alone).

There are of course other variables. If price doesn't exceed the MAE after breaking a line but you're at an extreme, such as the upper limit of the weekly channel, or if there is a double top at or near an extreme of some sort, there's nothing wrong with making a preemptive exit, particularly if you have to get ready to trade the other side. But when it comes to an ordinary trending move with all the swing points formed along the way, some of which break the line in the process, knowing the MAE can keep you in the trade and help you avoid the continuing exit/re-entry cycle.

There is also the matter of risk tolerance, which is independent of price movement. If you just can't tolerate a move of more than X against you, then you either have to figure out a way of improving your entries, which can be and usually is a way of fighting the market, or you can collect this data, hone your ability to determine when you may be in trouble and whether the trouble is genuine or just in your head, and just get used to it. If your data tells you that you must get used to an MAE of five points, then you're going to have to get used to an MAE of five points. Either that or use tight stops and spend your session getting stopped out and having to re-enter and getting stopped out again and having to re-enter again and so on. Not only is this exhausting but it's dispiriting because you cannot help but feel under these circumstances that you have no idea what's going on.

So work on the MAE and firm up your rules for how much leeway to give price when it's having trouble getting its motor started and where exactly you ought to exit a trade after it's broken a line. I'm sure you've noticed by now that many breaks result to ranging, and there's no reason whatsoever to exit as many if not most of these ranging moves result in a continuation. Determining all of this in advance will have a noticeable calming effect.

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Last Updated on July 9, 2015


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