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1. Tried a new trade set up today without adequately testing it live first. You know that went.
2. Took a trade on a large entry bar....my wife's idea....she'd see them work over and over again....and upset with me for passing on the large risk....you know how that went as well....
Suffice to say, hit my daily stop for the first time in a while I think....
Better discipline tomorrow.
No charts...don't want to show the stupidity I exercised today......
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
About those big bar,,,,half the time it's a break-out bar and the other it's a climax bar.
I know of a guy from Brooks trading room that trades these big bars for TF with fantastic success rate with 11 tick hard stop on 5 min chart.
Don't get me wrong because I keep bringing up Al Brooks (I only do this because your thread made me go back to his method and I'm doing OK so far) but he told me to go back to the book and it's all in there.
He takes the big bar trades,,,most of them except when he deems it as climax/exhaustion. I know of one that I shouldn't take. A 3rd big bar in a direction. But there's more to it.
I'm not sure about CL but the index futures there are too many these sudden surge of movement that runs away from me I think it's a must to learn to tell if it's breakout or climax.
I dont want to pick on something thats sensitive, but what do you classify as a large entry bar on the CL? Is it a tick size, or just really big in relation to the other bars?
Trade 1. Just after the number came out with two very large bars in relation to the established range, I figured prices were going down.....but with the large bars, I needed to find a place to get short with as small a risk as possible.
After the third bar, I found it, went short, it went down for a bit and stalled out. At that point, I moved to BE+1 and sure enough, I got hit, and price just collapsed from there. Full target of 50 ticks happened without me. How many times has this happened to me. More than I care to admit. It seems the times I hold it, I end up with a loser and the times I go break even, I end up with a scratch trade on a winner.....This bit is frustrating me. The old song, know when to hold em and know when to fold em, is something I am still learning. I suppose just hold em all and let the chips fall where they may would in the long run, end up positive if the winners are bigger than the losers.....
Trade 2. I was late to the rally party and early to the impulse move. I wanted to be long on the opening range breakout but the bar was big and it was still counter trend from my perspective. My actual long signal had not yet fully formed but I wanted to get in on what I thought would be an impulse move to the long side. I was correct about that but wrong timing.
Trade 3. Stop and reverse from trade 2. It went down about 13 ticks and reversed at the buy zone I had marked on my charts. I thought about covering the trade, was irritated at myself for not holding the first trade and decided to hold it. Sure enough, that one was the loser. But this one was different than trade 1. This one I was 99% certain it would reverse as I had a very good buy zone it was selling into AND I still wanted to be long above the opening range. The ONLY reason I held it was I was pissed because I bailed on the first short......everything else said to cover for a scalp......
Trade 4. I recognized the signal in plenty of time to get my order in and stretch my normal 30 tick target out to 50 ticks. I had a sell zone marked in the 50 to 70 tick area from my entry point. I covered at the 50 tick location and sat the rest of the morning out.
Weekly recap.
This week, all my performance metrics improved. The metrics I look at are:
Average time in winning trades > Average time in losing trades
Biggest winner > than biggest loser
Winning percentage above =>50%
I review these weekly. If they are better than the week prior, it was a good week.
Failures this week.
Biggest failure this week was letting my wife influence me to take a trade I should not have. That was just dumb...
Secondly, I bailed out of a few trades early.
Third, I tried a set up without really testing it.
Best successes:
Had my largest single trade in forever. 50 Ticks. This trade was textbook and the target was text book. I had rational reasons to target the area I did. To be sure, price went another 50 ticks further than my target but my target took 10 minutes to go 50 ticks, and the next 50 ticks took 55 minutes. I am not sure I could have held it that long. For now, thats enough for me.
Secondly, as previously mentioned, all metrics improved this week.
Here's to a great week next week.
Cheers.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Its relative, as you know, a bar thats 20 ticks could be pretty large if the range for the day is only 85-100 ticks. But if the day is wider than that, a 20 tick bar could be on the small size.
For me though, I would prefer to see my entry bars be less than 20 or even 10-12. On the five min chart, that seems to be pretty rare and I am coming to terms with that. Generally speaking, a good entry bar is a good entry bar, regardless of the size. As it turns out, the bar I made the mistake on, didn't really count as an entry bar in any way I would "normally" view an entry bar. It was driven primarily from fear I would miss out on a perceived impulse move that by then was mostly over. There was one a few bars later on but I couldn't take it as I was stopped out.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Hey, you know I would prefer it if my girlfriend said anything positive about trading. The only stuff I hear is just negative blah about how risky it is and she wishes I wouldn't - but then I guess I haven't got a profit to show for it yet.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
I've got to hand it to my wife, without her support, I'd have bailed a long time ago. She's a rock...a nervous one to be sure but she's holding this "trade" a lot longer than I've held most of my trades. I tell her she's a brave women, she just looks at me like I just said the stupidest thing in the world..... but she is a brave women....She once told me her ideal husband would be a CPA or a garbage truck driver....two things that are never going away....income stability above all else....well she married me, a serial risk taker.....there have been some serious highs and some really bad lows as a result.....
Looking for some highs now though....I can see them from here.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
