chartmojo2 

Chin up. There is nothing easy about trading. In the markets take a long time to learn. They say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Think of a pro golfer. How many swings does a golfer put in before turning pro. How many practice swings do they put in ever after a pro. How many trades did you do before going live? In the markets you are up against pro's. Your paying to compete against them. Would you pay to compete against a pro golfer or poker player of Chess grand master. One really has to put in the time to learn and then practice practice practice on a great real time sim program w live data that keeps track of all your stats. Practice till you are consistently profitable and you have tweaked it until you cant get a better % profitable and win rate. Get your order execution to the instant intuitive point. Then ease into real time live $ trading. You are up against a.i.'s, algo's, elite pro gamer types, Chess Grand Master types that have 20,000 games in memory etc they are 14 moves ahead of you..(trades). People jump into trading live way to early and do not really understand what they are up against. Chess grand masters will admit they see the board, the pieces differently over time and differently that everyone else. Same with great traders. Your story is really the story of most traders unfortunately. It does take time and commitment ability etc. fascination and obsession. Think of it as getting a PHd, or becoming a golf pro. It does not come easy by any means. The best you can have is an edge and the win losses are randomly distributed with in the probabilities of the "edge". You could get all the losses up front even with the best strategy. One has to come to grips and really get that down to your core. Machines have no problem with it. That should lead one to if x occurs do x1, if y occurs do y1. As Bruce Kovner master trader put it.."imagine different scenarios, take the one that confirms."..if one gets that on a deep level you can begin to get around the 100 or so cognitive bias's we have that conspire to keep us from trading effectively. Sorry for rambling ..maybe there is something in there for you. Good luck.

With all due respect, I think you are over stating how difficult it is to trade. You don't need to put in 10,000 hours to be profitable. Maybe to become a master of the craft.

This 10,000 hours to learn a craft is often quoted bit the truth is everyone is different. Some learn quickly, some never learn sadly. You can be profitable trading in far fewer hours than that. Just my 2p.

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maxmeier 

Hello xevanchan, let me give you some hints. Sorry for my bad english. Trading must be simple like driving a car. Intuitive and "easy". I'm trading 2 ES contracts on my $30k AMP Futures account since 4 years now. 1. Choose only one simple setup for example support/resist. This is the only setup that will always work. Remove every indicator from the chart. Switch to bar chart. Check the day chart and draw a line for each support and resistence which you see. Switch to 60 Minute and identify again support and resistance. Switch to 15 Minute and identify again support and resistance. Use 5 or 3 Minute chart and 5000 Volume chart to find optimal entry. You will see the entrys for sure. In a trend buy each support, in a sidway market buy low sell high (at support/resist). Trade only one setup for at least 66 days. Focus on only one setup. No back and forth no quick changes. Trade only one setup. Go back one hundert days and check the win rate of your setup by manually identifying your signal by reading the chart for at least 500 trades. Only then you will trust your setup. Trade one setup and take each identified signal (which matches your predefined rules). 2. At day end check each trade and find out what was wrong and adapt for the future but stick to your only one setup. After a few weeks you will see. SL must be greated then the (5) ATR on 5/3 minutes chart. I'm mostly using 4 point stop and 8 points target (trailing). I always trade only 2 ES contracts. Means my maximum loss per trade is always the same. Your winners must be greater than your losers. I would recomend VWAP Indicator and 300 EMA if you want. I have the best Mentor (30 years of trading). After you become a master trader in your one setup then and only then add a second setup or double the contract size. Simplicity and focus is the key.

Thanks, this is a fantastic post full of good advice. Focussing on one set up and keeping your risk small is great advice for anyone starting including myself.

Hope you don't mind me asking but what sort of ROI do you get on a monthly basis trading 2 contracts? Thanks.

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xevanchan 

Well, i'm back. You may remember me "catastrophic loss days". I really hate to come on this forum just to beg for help, but I am truly at a loss and am contemplating giving up trading the /ES, something that has consumed my life for nearly a year now. I'm not usually so pessimistic or dramatic, but I am truly lost and have no faith. I'm doubting everything I know, and this may very well be my last post so i'm pouring it all out. I just cant get it. I have weeks, like last week (1/7/18), where I am immensely profitable, followed by this week, where I have lost almost every trade for 3 consecutive days and been margin called. This cycle has repeated itself many, many times. I sim trade until I am profitable for weeks, and then I switch and can't replicate the results. I took advice on my last post ( Catastrophic Loss Days I apologize in advance for all the questions and the long post. I'm sure posts like this are quite common, but despite trading being my #1 priority, I can't seem to become profitable. I have a clear edge... some days. I've been trading … I now trade on a 7500 volume heiken-ashi chart instead of 30s, and aim for 3-X point targets with a minimum 2-1 risk reward ratio. I've studied al brooks price action and his H1/H2 method, and have read Anekdoten's ET thread in which he details price action. Despite the pictures, I no longer really use indicators and trade solely off price action. I don't I suffer as much from overtrading anymore; I believe that almost every entry I take has good signals. These methods have helped me become a better trader... on some days. It seems every week I go negative, I identify problems and solve them, yet each recurring week new problems spring up; my portfolio is akin to a boat that is being continuously shot and sinking as I try to patch holes. My strategy in a bull trend is as follows; I identify trend, using price action. Next, I wait for a retrace of at least a few points depending on market conditions. Once I see the first bar with HH/HL I will set a stop by 1-2 ticks above the high of that bar. Assuming the market moves in my direction, I let my profits run as far as possible while moving my stop to BE or higher. I exit when I begin to see trend exhaustion. I'll also use basic patterns, like triangles, as well as trend lines and S/R lines. This strategy is fantastic on some days, but I've become convinced some days are just untradeable. I try to completely avoid trading in chop. One of my biggest (current) problems is not being able to find viable entries. I really still don't whether to use limit or stop buys; I've tried both and they have their pros and cons. I use a HH/HL method, similar to a 123 reversal pattern; this means on a 7500 vol chart often I am too slow to catch moves, and whole retracements can begin and end before I get an entry signal. I refuse to chase for obvious reasons; as a result, in strong trends I often miss out the the entire movement because there are no retraces for me to enter on. I end up just trading in chop, every time. My stop buy is often triggered by a fake out that immediately backs off and triggers my stop, though this may just be due to a small stop. I never seem to know when trends end, and never seem to know when the market will stop ranging. I attribute my down days to to lower trading ranges and markets more susceptible to chop and unpredictability, which is inevitable. I don't know what to do. I'm attaching images of my last three days. Many of the trades are clearly bad trades, as a result of my impatience, something i need to work on. Maybe I do still over trade. The 3 point gain today was a sim trade; I seem to do much better in sim, on a consistent basis. Last week I averaged 3 points a day sim trading. In summary; I'm lost at sea in a boat with more holes than I can patch, and have lost hope that the boat will ever sail again. I genuinely appreciate everything this forum has given me and apologize for the long rambling and whining. All advice is greatly appreciated, as I may just give the /ES one last shot. I will take any help I can get, so feel free to PM me.

. . . life's failures are people [like you and me] who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. I believe Al B means well for all traders. The gent that told you to throw Al in the g-can probably should have said, "Al B is not my trading methodology." Staying out of chop is critical. One way I've found is to have trading chart, let's say the YM on ticks correlated with a 5 min chart. I multiply those ticks x 5 and us that chart as my "trending" chart - stay with the overall trend of the slower chart. E.g. YM 5 min = say 1500 tick chart. 1500 x 5 = 7500. Don't go against the 7500 chart. Also, TOS/TheoTrade has a fascinating indicator called the RSI Laguerre. Primarily I used this indicator to show me when the market is gaining strength and about to move - after that, Al B price action. I hear your cries for help. Best wishes.

xevanchan 

Yeah you're right. Must be the psych. I have just under 400 live trades with varying contract size. 61% win rate overall with a ton of different strategies.

Wow, 60% wins, 400 trades, proven, backed by facts.

Concerned about expected profits from stats in another thread (catastrophic-loss-days).

Win) 2 to 6 ticks
Loss) 8 to 12 ticks, so

Best_ Case) 6:8 = 3:4 win/loss, but
Worst Case) 2:12 = 1:6 win/loss

Expected _Best) 60%*3 - 40%*4 == 3*3 - 2*4 = 9 - 8 = +1 tick, expected best case
Expected Worst) 60%*1 - 40%*6 == 3*1 - 2*6 = 3 - 12 = -9 ticks, expected worst case

If this stuff is even close to being correct, then you are nearer to consistent profitability than you think.

The enemy: size of expected profits vs. expected losses (+1 vs. -9)

Hoping that eventually you kick that enemy in to the curb!

xevanchan 

One of my biggest (current) problems is not being able to find viable entries. I really still don't whether to use limit or stop buys; I've tried both and they have their pros and cons. I use a HH/HL method, similar to a 123 reversal pattern; this means on a 7500 vol chart often I am too slow to catch moves, and whole retracements can begin and end before I get an entry signal. I refuse to chase for obvious reasons; as a result, in strong trends I often miss out the the entire movement because there are no retraces for me to enter on. I end up just trading in chop, every time. My stop buy is often triggered by a fake out that immediately backs off and triggers my stop, though this may just be due to a small stop.

I have also tried to trade H2's and L2's (Al B), and seeing trades not set up properly, to get into obvious bad trades. I think there are two solutions to this, while sticking to rules:

1. Look at different time domains (5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 60 min) for intraday signals. Quite a few H2's should set up
2. Stick to one TF, e.g. 5 min, and watch 3-4 instruments (uncorrelated hopefully, e.g. oil, gold, emini)

** another way to avoid chop is to look for two legged PB to EMA, as Al Brooks says in one of his best videos

he says this is the best setup for people starting out, and if you don't get enough trades, u can move to multi-instrument monitoring

You might consider analyzing your trades from a different perspective. I've attached a few jpgs which describes how I see one of your trades.

This is what I see:
1. You're getting backticked to death! Your stop is on the same bar as your entry price on the 7500 Volume bar chart.
2. Your momentum indicators are short, not long.
3. A simple volume up/down indicator (which I show on the chart) would tell you that volume is starting to go negative.
4. Nothing on your chart is telling you what the market is really doing - you're expecting the market to move up because the previous bar candle was up (I'm making an assumption here based on your other trades). That might work in a strong trend, but trading to the upside previous to your trade was choppy and weak - not much of a trend there.

You need to incorporate some type of order flow information to your decision making. I know Jigsaw is hard to read on the ES because it moves so fast. But there are other alternatives like the VolumeDelta indicator from ninZa.co. At the very least, you guesstimate who's in control or if the market is just floundering around - which is really what it was doing when you entered that long. Just based on the order flow, you wouldn't have entered that long.

7500 Volume bars are huge for the ES. Given the volatility and backticking even on slow days, you need to look inside the bar you're trading - one of the jpgs is a 1 minute chart showing the same elements of your trade. Even a simple Volume Up/Down indicator would have given you more information.

Trading is about information. Forget your indicators and setup rules for a while and try to concentrate on what the market is doing. Go over 100 random trades on market replay and analyze them in depth using some form of volume/order flow information. Look at your trades on different chart sizes - down to the second even. I would wager that you could have avoided at least half of those stopped-out trades just observing the order flow.

The reality is (at least my opinion of it is) that no one can trade these markets today without order flow information. How you get it and how you use it is up to you. It's a steep learning curve but it can only add solid information to your existing trading plan.

kazz 

Thanks, this is a fantastic post full of good advice. Focussing on one set up and keeping your risk small is great advice for anyone starting including myself. Hope you don't mind me asking but what sort of ROI do you get on a monthly basis trading 2 contracts? Thanks. Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

Well I'm not checking this numbers as long I'm in profit.
But calculation is very simple.
I'm making 4,5 points on average (because of losses) per contract and I'm only trading 3 days a week, about 12 days in a month
so 4,5 points x $50 x 2 contracts x 12 days =
sometimes less but sometimes much more :-)

But the important thing is to stop focusing on money!
It sounds strange because we are doing this for money but it's all about points only. Is about perfection and simplicity.
Money is not a target but a "door opener" it is only needed to cover the margin and allows us to trade.
But at month end I'm also happy then about the outcome (money) :-)

Steven, using tick or volume, I try to use two charts : my trading chart for YM is set at 1500. My parent parent is set at 7500 with EMA's 20 and 8. Don't disobey your parents - they know better.

Re: limit or market, as you watch the candles form on your faster chart, I use a 75% rule. If the candle closes at least 75% or better of the total length of the candle, I use it as an entry if all else is in good order - the parent approves of the direction.

Best of luck to ya.

maxmeier 

... But the important thing is to stop focusing on money! ...

this is the right thing to do but it's the hard thing to do.

cory 

this is the right thing to do but it's the hard thing to do.

Now we are getting to the real stuff.

I recall Van Tharp identifying the belief that "money is NOT important" as the #1 trait of successful traders. (...implying the opposite belief is a major barrier to success...)

To focus on making money is to put tremendous pressure on yourself, it messes you up real good.

So how do you actually get away from that?

Off the top of my head, the Sedona Method (Hale Dwoskin) comes to mind. It has 5 ways of releasing... they all work from different angles.

Personally, the most powerful belief in my toolbox is that the Universe always provides for me. This is a potent antidote to greed, insecurity, and anxiety about money. It sets me free while trading... which makes a huge difference. My security is NOT on the line with every trade or even a series of trades.

So the real questions are:

• how do I trade free?
• How do I trade happy?
• How do I enjoy trading regardless of immediate results?

The answer is simple: one's gotta do it out of a good place within.

A place of abundance, not a place of lack.

Trading out of lack creates more lack.
Trading out of abundance creates more abundance.

And this is not some mystical new age mumbo-jumbo. This is just solid psychology. Winning the game before you even begin. Operating out of a place of strength and clarity, instead of weakness and lack.

How many traders out there trade out of the fullness, abundance, and joy within? Less than 5%? 2%? Ah... beginning to understand the success / failure stats.