AJ, you guys shoveling snow your way? I'm curious of the latest and greatest plan. I read thru your thread today. Have you changed up a thing or two since the start. If you have will you detail them for me so I can keep up? I appreciate it.

Tmanbone 

AJ, you guys shoveling snow your way? I'm curious of the latest and greatest plan. I read thru your thread today. Have you changed up a thing or two since the start. If you have will you detail them for me so I can keep up? I appreciate it.

This dang snow will NOT go away!! I'm freezing my butt off! I'm from FL originally, so this is tough.

OK

My main goal is to have as much agreeing as possible.

between...

My main chart - 5 min candles with 20EMA to see the general setups developing. I base my trading off SR bounces / breakthroughs. I watch volume on this chart.

On my satellite screen ...

6range bars working with fib
20 EMA

T$S

Two small panels running 150 and 55 tick and 150TEMA on both.

When things line up on all,these, the trade is most likely going to work.

The only thing I wrestle with is emotions. When I sim. I win most every time. For some reason, I am much
more selective when I trade $$. This is my last hurdle. That is why I'm taking it slow coming back.

What dollar tick are you going to trade ?

$1 per pip. The YM is not 1 lot trader friendly IMO. I've decided to learn on the E/U spot fx. Good luck. Thanks,

Tmanbone 

$1 per pip. The YM is not 1 lot trader friendly IMO. I've decided to learn on the E/U spot fx. Good luck. Thanks,

What instrument abrev. is that?

I have spent so much time on the YM, I have memorized what time of day the moves come and how it behaves
around SR. It IS nervous though. I figure if I can master this. I can trade most anything...

Boy, I wish I would have been around the YM for the London Open this morning. I missed 100 ticks before I came to the table and then made a trade during the last 20!! lol

I do not trade the noise / chop at all in the YM . It has to be moving.

See ya soon...

E/U = EUR/USD. There is a decent chat room at ThinkorSwim, the David Elliot room, about 150 people a day in there. There is a small handful of sharp traders in there that have been trading the YM for years. They like the TEMA, fisher transformer, CCI and 1,2,3 wave counts. I feel the YM is a good beginners choice because you can keep your risk relatively small. Keep journaling.

My recording session ended a bit early, so I thought I would try to pick up a few trades before the close.

Trade 1 - I need to stop these type of trades... trying to anticipate a breakout. I bailed as I saw it turned hard against me ....small loss.

Trade 2 - A little better timed, but still a failed breakout. small win.

P/L - $46


I probably shouldn't try to trade at work. It's too hard to focus well.

This is the first day I traded from open to close in a while.


Trade 1 - Tried a breakout trade, but bailed when I saw it bounce off one of my pre-drawn support lines.
Small Win

I was proud of myself, in that I let this trade fight until it broke free. In the past I would have bailed.



Trade 2 - This is where I started to loose my cool. Went short on a failed bullish run. I had my stop just above
that peak... stopped out by one tick.

...My dogs were going beserk outside, so I went to go check on things. When I got back, I saw that
the trade I was stopped out on was developing just as I thought it would. The steam was building.


Trade 3- Jumped in on big momentum for a small scalp win, bailing before the same support area came up.

Trade 4- Tried to go short on the break of that support area.
Even though I lost on this trade, I felt good about it. I put my stop Way out of the way above Major
resistance.
I stayed in much longer than I would have in the past and bailed only went the trade went south.
At this point I lost it and was pretty pissed off with myself. I let the next sell opportunity pass simply
because I was too mad to trade it.

Trade 5 - Welcome to the thing they call the "Grim Reaper". I have heard of it, now I know it. This was the
breakout I was waiting for. (or so I thought) Made ten ticks quickly and lost them even more quickly.
I went in on the big volume I saw.

I feel good about one thing. My stop was out of the way of the action and I closed out myself
when all hell broke loose.

Trade 6 - Unbelievably, I tried it again at 2pm when I thought the Reaper had left the building. You guessed it.
Hammered.

P/L - $200


Things I did well.

1. I got those damn stops out of my way.
2. I waited for the trade to develop.

Things I did Poorly.

1. My emotional control sucks. You must stay cool at this. You simply can't think when you want to toss your
laptop into the fireplace.

2. Selling low and buying high is killing me.

From now on, I will just trade the mornings. There always seems to be at least a couple of good moves to trade before 11am cdt.
Even in my SIM trading, it was tough to be consistant in the afternoons.

Good combat training. The fear is almost completely replaced with rage ; )
I think I need to absorb some trading psych books.....

ok so you sent me a couple of pm's to look at your post so tell me what your rules are for today as i see you have changed a few times give me a chart and explain to me exactually what your doing,as far as your trades they are not perfect but they are not bad either you just need chart time,as for your method it's a very very generic method of trading but it will help you learn what you need and what you dont.i beleive in drawing your on s/r lines and you seem to be drawing them in the right spots,im down to just drawing one but i started drawing a few at a time,as for volume i know some guys swear by it and it depends how you are trading weather you need it or not for my methods i dont need it so im not a big proponet of it,your ma's i use the 15wma or 14 wma to exit the trade sometimes so they are ok if you use them,it seems like your having a hard time trusting them to stay in trades but that will change in time. keep posting and i will keep reading sorry it took me so long to reply...sharky

sharky 

ok so you sent me a couple of pm's to look at your post so tell me what your rules are for today as i see you have changed a few times give me a chart and explain to me exactually what your doing,as far as your trades they are not perfect but they are not bad either you just need chart time,as for your method it's a very very generic method of trading but it will help you learn what you need and what you dont.i beleive in drawing your on s/r lines and you seem to be drawing them in the right spots,im down to just drawing one but i started drawing a few at a time,as for volume i know some guys swear by it and it depends how you are trading weather you need it or not for my methods i dont need it so im not a big proponet of it,your ma's i use the 15wma or 14 wma to exit the trade sometimes so they are ok if you use them,it seems like your having a hard time trusting them to stay in trades but that will change in time. keep posting and i will keep reading sorry it took me so long to reply...sharky

Thanks for the input Sharkey. I've received much help from this community and I wanted some of your insight also.

I don't have any set rules per se and that is probably whats hurting me. I like to trade bounces off SR and
cross over of the moving averages. If I feel like its moving well. I go in.

My charts..

I trade the YM

I use charts on two monitors. My Mac laptop and an extension monitor.
On the Mac, I have my main chart which is a 5 minute with an EMA 20 ( I've tossed in an EMA 50 lately to guard against fake outs),
VolumeGraph, PriorDayOHLC and SR lines I draw in by hand looking at the previous four or five days of PA. I also have a DOM opened
to glance at.

On the extension monitor, I use a 6 Range bar chart with Dynamic Fib lines, a WMA 15 and the futures.io (formerly BMT)CollectiveMA.
I also have two small tick chart panels used as filters. One set to 55 tick and one set to 150 tick. Each have a TEMA 150.
I have a T&S panel that I check often opened as well.

Below are the four chart panels...

first you have to write down some rules you cant play it by ear or wing it as the mood strikes you yet,
then i would start with one indicator and watch it per your rules for a few days then take it off and put on another indicator and watch it per your rules for a few days do this untill you have gone thru all your indicators and you understand them somewhat,then put them all back on together and see if they still make sense to use all of them together,then i would put together your chart with what you really need making sure you dont have 2 indicators telling you the same thing of conflicting with each other to much,i see you have range time and tick charts as i see nothing wrong with that persay you might want to try all min or all range or all tick but that just my preference...sharky