In what tick range do you cut losers short?

also which BarCounter indy do you use?

Tia

I hope your mother fairs well

Thank you for your concern about my mother.

Thats a very good question about my stop. It depends. I start at 15 ticks, but my experience has been if pulls back from my entry, 8 to 12 ticks, I am thinking it isnt with me and wont go. Thats off the hop. If the trade is with me, I might tighten it on the + side, with 15 ticks manual trailing stop. I try to keep it wide enough so that slippage is kept to a mnimum.

If its a range day, then I'll tighten to BE +1 to +5. Thats where I try to cut them. If I get a hard stop at -10, I really try to get more conservative and focused with my next trade, and I try to wait a minimum 15 minutes, unless the setup is punching me in the face through my screen.

Today was an example of the tightening thing. First trade was positive from my entry, so I gave it some room, and it came back to hit me at -11. That just didnt work out.

I was thinking that we would get hard resistance at 110 today. As it turns out, it happened almost like that. Best move was trade 3 and 4, then it was pretty difficult to get a read. Trade 4 was a loss, but I was ahead almost 10 ticks on that before it backed up. Despite the ranginess and the overlapping candle, I thought it had potential, so i didnt tighten it too much, stopped at -9.

Same with trade 5...small gain, but it was a see saw excursion. It was ahead 12 ticks, but i could only get 4 out of it, stopped on the PB.

I shut it down after that. I felt fortunate to get the 2 moves that I did.

I hope I have answered your question.

Flew bcak home form Ottawa yeasterday afternoon. Right into 12 inches of snow and a dead SUV battery.

Mothers doing real well. She was out of bed and walking around a bit. physio therapists have a routine they want her to complete before they release her, and she is well on her way. they seem t thik she is doing very well at this point. My Mom will stay for few more days, and then fly back to Thunder Bay. All in all it is looking pretty fine.

Read a couple of books last week, on how our intuitions deceive us as well as on the phsychology of trading. It was interesting stuff, and has given me a renewed perspective on how to trade.

My cousin in ottawa is a businessman first, and the Associate Dean at the Faculty of Health Science at the University of Ottawa. second He is a world renowned researcher in the area of concussions in sport and has published over 50 papers and holds a number of patents for hockey equipment.He consults for the NHL and the NFL and his lab at the university does research in that area. This is a reconstrution of the Sydney Crosy hit to the head at the University of Ottawa neuro trauma lab. I was there on Friday. Very cool stuff. They were working on punch while I was there, but the same general idea.

Hit to the head: a similar one to Sidney Crosby’s (reconstruction) - Video - Macleans.ca

We talked a lot about sports science, because that is his area of expertise. But it occuurred to me that he is a businessman, just like any other. I am in the business of trading. My brother was with us. He is in the business of looking for oil in Alberta. Fairly successfull as well. We talked a lot about our businesses.

Good day today. I made an entry mistake that took me out of a trade, but I reversed the position and got back in. I was very much at ease today, very calm in my trading, and not anxious at all. I can describe it as patient, even when i made the exit error.

+45 on 6 trades, including the mistaken exit.

Good day today. I made an entry mistake that took me out of a trade, but I reversed the position and got back in. I was very much at ease today, very calm in my trading, and not anxious at all. I can describe it as patient, even when i made the exit error.

+45 on 6 trades, including the mistaken exit.

Just thought I would provide a different perspective to look at for today's session. I hope you don't mind, I marked up your chart to display my examples. Feel free to answer my questions if you like but don't feel on the spot or anything, just some brain storming ideas for you. I respect your learning process, etc.

You appear to have taken a few trades that were pretty good. Your first long entry was good but a bit late into the move which is fine. What did you see that prompted the long entry? Because the market was in a down trend, I would think looking for a short opportunity would make the most sense. Either way, the trade looks like it worked out for a small move.

The two short entries you had after that were dangerous in that you were selling into support. Which was displayed several times in the past. Of course, the market could've broken down from there but as a general rule of thumb, make sure to sell resistance areas and buy support areas should you choose to establish a position in a particular area.

The third trade which was a long was your best entry of the day. Perfect entry area of buying support. I'm not sure what the other arrows were, re-entries or additions? Anyway, your third trade was a great example of buying support.

Notice today's RTH session was more of an inside day (vs. the previous trading session) which is an ideal day for playing the ranges/standard deviation levels. At some point, the market will fall out of balance which it did after the pit close.

You obviously did a great job from a profitability stand point and remained calm which is excellent. My intent for showing you the marked up chart is to provide examples on how you can turn a 45 tick day into a 1.45 tick or 2.45 tick day by trading areas of significance and scaling out while utilizing a trailing stop to try and capture at least 70% - 80% of the move. The amount you give up on your trailer (20% - 30%) is covered by your scale out areas which enhances your overall return while taking risk off along the way. Also, make sure to develop a plan before the trading day starts. For example, based on the market's price action, if it does this, I'll look to do that. Today was a day I had anticipated a pullback based on the last few days of strong moves higher. The market opened (RTH) at or slightly above Friday's value area which made it ripe for selling. As soon as RTH opened, you can see that sellers stepped in to move it back into the prior trading session's value area. So, the bias was down. That's just my thoughts of course but I think it's extremely important to develop a plan before going into the market every day. Just taking a trade based on a small wiggle in the market will most likely not result in getting into a big runner or even worse have you take a loss.

Also, I noticed that you're using the initial balance levels. I would recommend setting the session to the RTH session as that's where a majority of the volume comes into the market and makes the RTH initial balance more significant than the over night's. I believe Fat Tails provided an overview of how to set that up. Make sure you have the most recent updated version as this will allow you to display the RTH session on a ETH charted session. I've attached an example of what I'm referring to. Notice how price was contained within the day's balance for a majority of the RTH session. Not sure what happened after RTH but the market tanked! Any way, hope this is helpful.

Cheers,
PB