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Well, could not get the mojo working this week. Today I fought the trend the entire day. Funny thing was, I recognized I was doing it but couldn't turn it off. Several of my trades were profitable and went BE, and the long trades with trend I had trouble getting on board. The one short I took near the HOD was a great short and went to my original target but I closed it to soon as I had been burned on several already.
I am focusing on two things currently; 1) Getting better entries on my trades by waiting for a pullback against the break out, and 2) Looking for somewhat bigger targets.
Next week, these two things will be my overall focus and after this week, I will try to concentrate more on trading with trend or at least taking conservative profits if I trade counter trend and being ready to jump on the dominate trend faster.
To have struggled as much as I did this week and end up break even is a good thing.
Next week my daughter starts spring break for two weeks so my trading will be shorter and hopefully more focused. I am planning a whale watching trip in San Diego for her if all the schedules work out. That should be fun if we can pull it off.
I'm also thinking of starting a combine again. @indextrader7 is starting one soon if he can get his custom one approved. I've had a custom one approved for several months and haven't started it yet for various reasons but I'm feeling like I would like to soon. Its been many many months since I've been in a combine and my trading has gotten much better I think. My account has shown the fruits of that improvement and I think I'd like to trade their money now. If I decide to do a combine, I'll post about it before I start. Still undecided about this.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
I did some homework this weekend, and as it turns out, my original premise of my first or second trade each day this week with the exception of yesterday turned out to be the right idea. In other words, I should have just held my first trade and I would have made at least 50 ticks. One day the first trade would have been a stop out but the re-entry opposite direction would have been at least 50 thereby making up for it. Total for the week had I followed this idea, 150 ticks assuming a stop on friday and no further trades.
So whats the lesson here? Perhaps there isn't one except to say that often times we research our trade and it says that "X" could happen or perhaps we have an edge that says that "under this set of circumstances, you can normally expect to see a certain number of ticks before a turn". And I'm not 100% convinced you can actually rely on a statements like these but seeing it in action every day does lead one to believe that perhaps the better course of action is to find one's set up, take the trade and if the method calls for 50 ticks, let that trade play out to 50 ticks or a stop, which ever comes first. If it calls for 50 ticks and you want to exit more conservatively than this, take the sweet spot out at perhaps somewhere between 20-40 ticks and call it good. The real lesson is this....stop messing with the trades. Put the stop in the right place and let it ride. If the stop is to far away, wait for a better entry or don't take the trade.....
For whatever its worth, this was an interesting week and an interesting review. Looking forward to next week.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Coming off from horrible trading habits and management, I've started to be target oriented like you and I appear to be more consistent than past. But lately I was itching to employ something new and I'd appreciate your take and wonder if you are already doing it. Since not all trades have same set stops tick-wise, do you have set $stop and do you employ position sizing; i.e. if your max loss per trade is $500 and your stop is 10 ticks, do you take on 5 contracts or if the sl is 25 ticks, do you take 2contracts instead?
I have a max stop in ticks per trade and a fixed dollar stop per day. So I can take a max risk per trade with whatever size I want as long as that stop doesn't max me out on my daily stop.
On the other hand, if the risk is large but you like the trade, no reason not to scale down in size and take the trade anyway and perhaps add to the trade if the premise is still valid but you get a better price....or if the trade is in profit and you get another entry point.
This being said, unless you can trade varying size then this question is moot. If you are one lot, then this issue should not even be in your trading plan. Instead, just get good at getting your ticks with one lot....the money will come.
Hope that helps.
Cheers
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
So on an historic day when governments are breaking the sacred trust they have with their taxpayer serfs, I broke even.
Early on, I got long before all three of my "rules" were met. That trade was stopped out and I then followed it with a short that met all three of my rules. This trade failed. A third trade was taken long that was basically an attempt to not miss out...in other words a fear based trade. I knew this and got it break even.
At this point, I recognized I was trading scared today. Scared because of all the crap from last week. Still, I knew I needed to make it happen and since the long trend was underway without me, I decided to just wait it out and try to recover my losses with a counter trend trade.
I waited for awhile to get this set up and did in fact get in a tad early but the stop was placed correctly and kept me in the game long enough for it to play out. I had a target picked out already....the 50% pull back area, but it seemed pretty far away and there was a double resistance area right in front of it. And in fact, it did pause there for a bit but eventually did make it to my original target plus quite a bit more.
Crude behaved like the crude of a year ago and I was unprepared for the long trade but knew once it did decide to pull back, that I would likely get a decent trade off.
So ended as a scratch today, not great but better than nothing.
I broke a rule on my first trade, no swings broken and therefore I let rule two take over and that cost me...as it does every time. Once the lower low was made, I adjusted my trend line to make room for the new swing and when that one was broken, it was off to the races for the longs.
I had decided to trade a bit longer today if I had time, perhaps every day this week. So instead of 2 hours at the computer, I did almost 5 watching the charts. I do not like this at all. Tomorrow, its back to something reasonable. I know where my boundaries are and today I completely overstepped them. I was totally exhausted after that many hours at the screen.....no more.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
I know I don't need to tell you this, but after a day of admitting to breaking your own rules repeatedly, ending with a scratch day is certainly a positive.
