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Was only trading until noon GMT today. Game plan was to play off yesterday's HLC. I do not yet have much idea which way this range may break, so aimed to play the wider range or the smaller one using yesterday's close.
Only trade today was a scratch. There was good demand in the London open but this met resistance at yesterday's close, which was also the 50% of the previous downswing and a test of the breakdown from the previous highs. My position sheet said reversal so I was looking for shorts. Initially it looked as though the buyers were losing steam - the 3 diminishing buying waves and the increasing selling waves were the cue. Entry was sound and I was (of course) anticipating a sharp drop away. I was in this trade for an hour during which time there was absorption occurring around the 1.3290 level with price working into an apex. This turned my position sheet to neutral and I scratched the trade.
Happy with how I performed with this one.
I'm trying to avoid spending time looking/analysing performance and instead just focus on my work routines and trade execution. But as we are half way through the month I took a look. 4 scratches, 3 losers and 2 winners. I'm about 4R up for the month. Pretty happy with that but keen to take more trades - bring on Monday morning!
Platform: "I trade, therefore, I AM!"; Theme Song: "Atomic Dog!"
Trading: EMD, 6J, ZB
Posts: 796 since Oct 2009
@mokodo
if you care to share, and in the spirit of the nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) threads, could you:
1) take a snapshot and post a pic of the indicators panel on that chart?
2) help or advise how to configure the settings (at least on the more complex indicators)
I ask that instead of asking for a template, so that one could catch up to your chart configuration, since the names of the indicators were removed, and that was a very slick looking chart setup...
we do share setups from time to time, or pm me, if that's better
Take a look at post 167 in this thread. I think it will give you what you need. The only indicators that are not freely available are the TE30 and TE60. These are indicators I have coded which colour the 1st and 2nd indi panels according to the current market environment, based on the 30 and 60 minute dataseries. They are just a collection of common indis to track chop, trend, low volatility, exhaustion, and price being worked sharply. I don't take signals off these, they just help me understand 'where am I now'.
I can help you configure all the other indis if you wish, PM or post here would be fine.
Frustrating one today. Had a good read of the PA, but again no set-ups valid for getting into trades. I feel this is happening more and more and I want to resolve it, as the inner conflict will do me no good if I do not attend to it.
Excuse this ramble as I am attempting to clarify clouded thoughts...
My method is about tracking signs of strength and weakness and making a commitment once:
i) I feel I have an understanding of whether buyers or sellers are in control, and
ii) going with the dominant side as soon as the market shows its hand (providing R:R is good, no news due, etc.)
I am getting the first part right increasingly often, but then watch the opportunity fade away as it becomes clear I do not have a 'mechanical' set-up to get in with.
The two boxes illustrate the point from today's session. The first was absorption at the axis line after a significant down wave effort failed to break the LOD, there was also a minor spring. My gut said 'there is a fair chance price will retest the earlier high'. Second box is price at the HOD, it broke through the earlier highs but failed miserably to expand into the new price area, my position sheet went to reversal and I was waiting for a low volume pull back to get short on. It did not materialise and price dutifully ground away lower.
I am only interested in trading where I believe I have a good read on the market and a good opportunity to profit. It is at these moments I desire to get into trades. I want to take 100% responsibility for all my trade outcomes and I feel I can only do so if I am taking those decisions and have full belief in them - and not place the responsibility on mechanical set-ups.
So I am tempted to ditch my current entry methods and simply replicate my approach on a LTF to get into trades. There would be no change to how I work up to the time of making a commitment. I would still be saying 'I want to get short/long here' and then switch down to a LTF at that price level. If the signs of strength/weakness here support the trade idea then I'll enter, if not then I'll pass.
Impossible to know right now if this is my subconscious talking me out of the need to be disciplined with mechanical set-ups - or a step towards a methodology that's right for me.
If I do this I will have to rethink how I track my performance as there will simply be too many discretionary elements to work out what is and is not working - -well not until there are many hundreds of trades. All this feels like I am 'letting go' and I do not know if it is a potential liberation or if I'm jumping from the plane without a parachute.
A 32 pip range for my trading session tells the tale today. I was looking for a short off the upthrust in the US open open, but there were no tangible signs of supply coming in so I wrapped things up early today.
My session's range was a little over 20 pips. I watched for while and got the feeling I was wasting my precious time so again, closed down early. The days' work went into re-reading my journals for the last two years. I have skimmed through previously and found some patterns of behaviour which I now look out for. But today's look was more in depth ( and ongoing) and really useful information again came to the surface.
I am piecing together my 'journey' into a timeline with key events and overlaying my equity curve on top. Once finished I plan to post it here. It is extremely revealing.
Game plan today was to expect a range day as price recovered from yesterday, the up move looked exhausted to me.
I tried to do two separate things today
i) trade my existing rule set, and
ii) identify entries I want to test out using a LTF
The trade I took was a full stop loss. I was looking for a reversal off the daily high and looks like it was (again) a leg too early. Being nearly right doesn't alter the fact that it was a loser. I'm still encouraged I am calling the market structure fairly well.
The blue ovals are potential entries from the LTF. I was running a 100 tick chart to spot these and was entering on a 03/10 MACD histrogram drop. I think I will be exploring this further, it definitely fits with my current train of thought, which is, I see if I have a 'good hand' dealt to me by tracking the various Wyckoff elements and identify when I want to get long or short - and then drop down to the LTF to make that entry with as little risk as possible. This is much closer to approach detailed in the second Wyckoff course for day trading.
From today's exercise I could have had four break-evens and a couple of winners. That is all hypothetical, but gives me encouragement to trial it.
I did not trade Friday or today today as I wanted to finish some psych stuff. One of which was to finish my written journal review (covering April 2011 to now). What became clear were certain trends that have traveled from one state to another and I've summarised these below.
Externalising responsibility TO accepting all trading outcomes
Many markets TO a single market
Ignoring ‘mind, body, soul’ health and balance TO now focusing primarily on these things
Trying to ‘filter out’ losing trades TO expecting them
No journaling TO attentive journaling
Focus on indicators TO focus on market structure and price action
Ignoring ‘gut feel’ TO incorporating gut feel
Focusing on win rate TO Risk vs reward and probability considerations now dominating
Trusting mechanical rules and backtesting TO distrusting statistics derived from discretionary trading
Fearful TO confident
Many, frequent (often wholesale) changes TO occasional, peripheral (but often catalytic) changes
Focusing on performance statistics TO paying far less attention to them
This is a great list and shows a steady line in clear thinking and sound principles. I have placed in bold the ones that have helped me most but all are wise and helpful.
My thinking is that if anything on the chart is not helping me to become a better trader it is then hindering me - so -remove it. It will only add a distraction. I love your way of thinking methodically. I could learn for your example and am trying, so thank you!
