Hi papa15,

I usually have a better renko chart up on "flat MA" days to "show" me the nice bell curve look if you will as a visual confirmation on when price is moving seems to do a better job than tick or time based bars. I recently started reading eman's thread on Momentum bars looks interesting. Just thought it might help from a visual point of view I'm not suggesting you change anything (although you can now that you are in week 3 lol! )

Calling it a day. No inside bar trade as of 11:15 so only 3 ergodic setup trades today.

I noticed the tick charts start to get faster than normal about 10 minutes before the pit open and quickly realized the price movement back and forth was more than I can handle, so I stood aside and watched with some wonder at the sell off taking place. Seeing multiple moves of more than a hundred ticks in a 15 min candle gets your attention. It was amazing to see and I can hardly wait until I am able to handle those types of moves. Some day, just not now.

At 9:49, I saw a short setup and entered. It went to my profit target fairly quickly. Price action seemed to show some support (the short term ergodic was alternating colors and price was going back and forth). I waited a while, saw another short and entered at 10:06. Again my target was hit reasonably quickly. A few minutes later I saw another short setup, and entered at 10:10 but this time price reversed up on me and I had a 8 tick stop.

Looking at the third trade, all the ergodic and moving average slopes were headed down. However, there was a factor against entering the trade. We had been stalling at this area for a bit, as it was the daily low and this allowed the ergodic on the bigger chart to start moving up. When price turned down again, there was a clear ergodic divergence on the larger chart. This is a factor I am should have considered before entering the trade, but I over looked it. It is a priority for me to do this, especially these next 2 weeks, so my not sticking to the game plan here cost me.

I also think I should wait for the short term ergodic to be below the long term one before entering. I am watching this closely and may add it to my guidelines.

Overall, 2 for 3. Gross 4 ticks, net 2.5 ticks. (hey, it is a green day)

Go figure...as I was writing up my daily summary an inside bar appeared at 11:30....oh well....

For the third day in a row no inside bar trades today. Just did not get a setup.

For the second day in a row I entered a trade against the divergence pattern and the trade went for a stop loss. I failed to recognize it for what it was; no excuse, I just missed it. What really hurts is I was using a slightly larger stop loss to get the stop across the moving averages, so in addition to being a loss, it was a larger loss than I prefer....

No new lesson to be learned, I have seen this issue before and it is something I am working on in my self discipline issues. I must consider all the factors on both charts before entering a trade. If I don't have time to do so, then the market is moving too fast for my tastes anyway.

The first trade was the loser. I entered based on ergodics at 9:13. Entry price was 107.19 and stop was 107.00. The second trade set up at 9:35 at 106.70. Profit target at 106.63 was hit.

I then waited for the news release at 10:30. Recently the market sort of yawned at the inventory report, but not today. About 5 minutes after the release, I took a short at 106.49. Still lots of volatility from the news release so I took 6 ticks profit, and then waited for the inside bar setup that did not come.

Overall today 2 for 3 but the loss dominated and ended up -6 ticks.

Been disappointed with the inside bars this week (none have appeared while I was trading). I am considering replacing the inside bar trade with a pullback entry on the 5 minute chart per Mike Winfrey's 5 Minute Odyssey. I have done a similar trade setup (the 9-20 pullback) so I am familiar with it. I am sim-trading it now (today was 5 for 5 on it). Right now it is just a thought.

papa15 

Been disappointed with the inside bars this week (none have appeared while I was trading). I am considering replacing the inside bar trade with a pullback entry on the 5 minute chart per Mike Winfrey's 5 Minute Odyssey. I have done a similar trade setup (the 9-20 pullback) so I am familiar with it. I am sim-trading it now (today was 5 for 5 on it). Right now it is just a thought.

I consider trading like football. You need many "plays" to work up a game plan. I use inside bar, the Winfrey, breakout
and Pullback setups. Depending on what is setting up best at the time.
I have had entries that have used a bit of all these.

The market is constantly changing. I try to also.

I would think at least two, well thought out "plays" would give you more opportunities ....

I hope I didn't irritate you with my suggestion. Just my .2....

tderrick 

I consider trading like football. You need many "plays" to work up a game plan. I use inside bar, the Winfrey, breakout and Pullback setups. Depending on what is setting up best at the time. I have had entries that have used a bit of all these. The market is constantly changing. I try to also. I would think at least two, well thought out "plays" would give you more opportunities .... I hope I didn't irritate you with my suggestion. Just my .2....

Far from irritating, it is an encouragement. I fully agree that you need more than 1 setup, but I want to master each setup before completely committing to it. The ergodic looks simple enough but there are several little nuances that make it more difficult than a first glance would suggest. It can keep you out of chop but at the same time it can keep me out of a long run. Still exploring it.

Please keep the feed back coming.

I am not even sure where to begin.

I am concentrating on looking at all the indicator and price action factors before entering a trade. It has been an issue in the past, and I want to fix it. This week I entered 2 trades when there was divergence on the ergodic. Such a divergence indicates price action may soon reverse, and sure enough both trades went on to be losses. Today, I was bound and determined not to let that happen again.

Overnight price was in a down trend from about 3am but after news at 8:30 price started going up. At 9:06, I saw a valid entry with all ergodics pointing in the same direction on both the 233 and 610 tick charts, divergences met. I entered at 106.36. Price started to give a bit of a hesitation and I bailed on the trade. A factor was that the long term ergodic on the 610 tick chart was still below 0 (although pointed up), but still there was no valid reason to cut the trade other than fear of losing. Price continued on up for about 180 ticks.....I did not see any other entries that met all the criteria for entry. Of course, I wanted a piece of the action but I did not see a place to get in. A little after 9:50, price quit going up and started chopping around a bit. I started seeing down divergence on the ergodics but all ergodics remained above the 0 line. Finally a bit after 10, price started going down a bit and the short term ergodics on both charts clearly broke down with the short term ergodic on the 233 tick chart going below the 0 line. A retracement is starting, so I thought, and I entered short at 107.73 only to be stopped out less than a minute later. There is an old saying "You don't pull on Superman's cape and you don't spit into the wind". That describes what I just did. I entered counter trend. No matter how you define a trend, I entered against it. I was so anxious to be in the market and so focused on meeting the divergence criteria, I overlooked one of the most basic criteria of all (for me at least, since I am not a counter trend player).

There is another factor at play that I have not mentioned yet. The above trades are cash and are being done on my desktop computer. At the same time, on my laptop I am running another copy of SC on my laptop(this is another advantage of SC over NT, you can have 2 instances of SC running simultaneously on one account). On the laptop, I am running in sim Mike Winfrey's 5 min pullback method. Yesterday it was 5 for 5 and today it was 2 for 2. I use a 12 tick target and a 15 tick stop, so it is up a lot to me. So now I am seeing a very simple and straight forward method that requires very little discretion pull money out of the market while I am having difficulty getting my ergodic system to do so because I keep stubbing my toe on some criteria or other. Oh, and no inside bar trades are setting up.
At 10:20 I see another pull back trade setting up so I put in an entry on the simulated account. I was a bit frustrated at this point and put the cash account in simulated mode. The pullback trade did not go anywhere for a few minutes and I noticed an inside bar was about to form at 10:30. I thought I would trade that for cash since I had not been able to trade the inside bar all week so I put the desktop back into cash mode, but then I thought that was not a good idea since I was not in a good frame of mind...just better to sim trade for a while. So just before 10:30, I clicked the desktop back to sim mode, but SC froze....I am doing all I can to get it to respond but to no avail (clicking on the various buttons, control-alt-delete, etc) so I hit the desktop reset button. It came back up and I started SC. The first thing I noticed was a position that was up 31 ticks. I looked at the laptop and there was no position since the pull back trade was closed....I exited the open position thinking it was a fluke but I checked the account balance and sure enough it was a valid trade.

I am elated it worked out, but very concerned at how it happened. I was not in control of the position. It could just as easily been a disaster. The only thing I can figure is the buy stop for the inside bar triggered just as I was trying to go back to sim mode on the desktop. Normally I have an 8 tick profit target but that was not effective, so there was no stop that was effective either....that is why I am concerned.

Any way, the ergodic trades today were 1 for 2 for -7 ticks. I don't know what to call the 31 tick winner. It was not a typical inside bar trade and it was not an ergodic trade. I guess for data collection/analysis purposes I should count it as an 8 tick winner. In truth, the cash account was +22 ticks gross and 20.5 ticks net.

I was 3 for 4 on the pullback trades for 21 ticks.

I am gonna go sim for a while. I feel like I have regressed a bit this week. The previous 2 weeks I made progress on fixing self discipline issues, but this week I have not made the progress I was expecting/aiming for. I will need to work on the indicator/price action issue for at least an additional week.

My charts are not as clear as I would like but after a day like today, to even have a chart is a blessing.

papa15 

I am not even sure where to begin. I am concentrating on looking at all the indicator and price action factors before entering a trade. It has been an issue in the past, and I want to fix it. This week I entered 2 trades when there was divergence on the ergodic. Such a divergence indicates price action may soon reverse, and sure enough both trades went on to be losses. Today, I was bound and determined not to let that happen again. Overnight price was in a down trend from about 3am but after news at 8:30 price started going up. At 9:06, I saw a valid entry with all ergodics pointing in the same direction on both the 233 and 610 tick charts, divergences met. I entered at 106.36. Price started to give a bit of a hesitation and I bailed on the trade. A factor was that the long term ergodic on the 610 tick chart was still below 0 (although pointed up), but still there was no valid reason to cut the trade other than fear of losing. Price continued on up for about 180 ticks.....I did not see any other entries that met all the criteria for entry. Of course, I wanted a piece of the action but I did not see a place to get in. A little after 9:50, price quit going up and started chopping around a bit. I started seeing down divergence on the ergodics but all ergodics remained above the 0 line. Finally a bit after 10, price started going down a bit and the short term ergodics on both charts clearly broke down with the short term ergodic on the 233 tick chart going below the 0 line. A retracement is starting, so I thought, and I entered short at 107.73 only to be stopped out less than a minute later. There is an old saying "You don't pull on Superman's cape and you don't spit into the wind". That describes what I just did. I entered counter trend. No matter how you define a trend, I entered against it. I was so anxious to be in the market and so focused on meeting the divergence criteria, I overlooked one of the most basic criteria of all (for me at least, since I am not a counter trend player). There is another factor at play that I have not mentioned yet. The above trades are cash and are being done on my desktop computer. At the same time, on my laptop I am running another copy of SC on my laptop(this is another advantage of SC over NT, you can have 2 instances of SC running simultaneously on one account). On the laptop, I am running in sim Mike Winfrey's 5 min pullback method. Yesterday it was 5 for 5 and today it was 2 for 2. I use a 12 tick target and a 15 tick stop, so it is up a lot to me. So now I am seeing a very simple and straight forward method that requires very little discretion pull money out of the market while I am having difficulty getting my ergodic system to do so because I keep stubbing my toe on some criteria or other. Oh, and no inside bar trades are setting up. At 10:20 I see another pull back trade setting up so I put in an entry on the simulated account. I was a bit frustrated at this point and put the cash account in simulated mode. The pullback trade did not go anywhere for a few minutes and I noticed an inside bar was about to form at 10:30. I thought I would trade that for cash since I had not been able to trade the inside bar all week so I put the desktop back into cash mode, but then I thought that was not a good idea since I was not in a good frame of mind...just better to sim trade for a while. So just before 10:30, I clicked the desktop back to sim mode, but SC froze....I am doing all I can to get it to respond but to no avail (clicking on the various buttons, control-alt-delete, etc) so I hit the desktop reset button. It came back up and I started SC. The first thing I noticed was a position that was up 31 ticks. I looked at the laptop and there was no position since the pull back trade was closed....I exited the open position thinking it was a fluke but I checked the account balance and sure enough it was a valid trade. I am elated it worked out, but very concerned at how it happened. I was not in control of the position. It could just as easily been a disaster. The only thing I can figure is the buy stop for the inside bar triggered just as I was trying to go back to sim mode on the desktop. Normally I have an 8 tick profit target but that was not effective, so there was no stop that was effective either....that is why I am concerned. Any way, the ergodic trades today were 1 for 2 for -7 ticks. I don't know what to call the 31 tick winner. It was not a typical inside bar trade and it was not an ergodic trade. I guess for data collection/analysis purposes I should count it as an 8 tick winner. In truth, the cash account was +22 ticks gross and 20.5 ticks net. I was 3 for 4 on the pullback trades for 21 ticks. I am gonna go sim for a while. I feel like I have regressed a bit this week. The previous 2 weeks I made progress on fixing self discipline issues, but this week I have not made the progress I was expecting/aiming for. I will need to work on the indicator/price action issue for at least an additional week. My charts are not as clear as I would like but after a day like today, to even have a chart is a blessing.

That five min chart is really nice....I think if you will widen your targets to 19 or 20 ticks, leave your stop at 15, you will notice a nice little increasing equity curve. Mike uses a -21 tick stop and a 19 tick target. The target is set based on a study he did concerning MFE and the stop is based on a MAE study. I use a 20/20 tick and target and so far have had no ill effects do to the slight difference. If the 20 tick stop gets hit, 99% of the time so will a 21 tick stop....

Done properly, most of these trades have little heat and I think a 15 stop will suffice.

Mike requires the wick of the candle to have pierced the SMA....I do not require that rule to be fulfilled and consequently, I get a few more set ups than he does each day.....his is more conservative I realize but I think the win rate is high enough without that qualification for me to use. Just my twist on his method. I sim traded it for almost a month using my twist and only had a handful of losers.....of course with real money, it will change but allowing for the execution issues, I still think it will be profitable long term.

Marrying the 5 min chart with a range chart has also helped quite a bit for me. If the 5min chart pulls back to the MA and the range chart is in full trend mode, I will take the trade earlier than the 5 min chart says to....this happened twice today....both profitable for me.....at least today anyway....who knows about the future....

Anyway, as to going to sim, I'm not sure thats the best idea. If the only issue is your mental issues, then I'm not sure simming is the right thing to do. Perhaps instead some mind clearing activities like gardening, playing with the kids or other such activity might be better suited to resetting the mind frame for proper trading. Just an idea....take it for what its worth and in the spirit its intended....

You've made a ton of progress the last few weeks......good job. I'm impressed.

Anyway, as to going to sim, I'm not sure thats the best idea. If the only issue is your mental issues, then I'm not sure simming is the right thing to do. Perhaps instead some mind clearing activities like gardening, playing with the kids or other such activity might be better suited to resetting the mind frame for proper trading. Just an idea....take it for what its worth and in the spirit its intended....

Thanks AZ
I did walk away from trading today and doing some chores....it does indeed help clear the mind.

To be honest, I like the 5 min setup. For sure, I am seriously considering using the 8 sma on the 5 min as the trend and if I do any entries with the ergodic, just be sure they are with that trend. One thing after today, I must eliminate some distractions. My split attention is what caused the confusion around 10:30.

I just keep looking at that 5 min setup and seeing lots of successful entries. I re-read Mike's journal the other night and I am at the stage he was at the beginning....it seems too good to be true. But I know how powerful the pull back entry can be....I did the 9-30 pull back from TradingNaked.com for a while (but on a different instrument).....

back to work....