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Trading fast markets


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Trading fast markets

 
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

Thinking about my trading plan for next weeks, I can see that sometimes I miss huge winners by going with small profit target. So I will try following next week:
1. Use two lots with 6 ticks stops
2. Use 12 ticks tp for 1 position and 100 ticks tp for another position - a runner
3. Don't trail first position, trail only second position using high/low on 2m chart, start after a first decent candle closed favorably on 2m.
4. Only opt to close manually if price did a false breakout and returned to range, look to minimize damage.

Trade to live. Not live to trade.
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podski's Avatar
 podski 
Belgium
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Ninjatrader
Broker: Ninjatrader Brokerage, CQG
Trading: FDAX, FDXM ...maybe
Posts: 388 since Sep 2012
Thanks Given: 499
Thanks Received: 470

Hi Xelaar,

You are right about missing the huge winners with a small profit target. Before you implement this strategy across the board there are a few things you can do to make sure the odds are better for you.

1. Looking at the reason for the breakout. If it is a trend continuation or if the stops that cause it are caused at the end of the trend ( the screencast video that you shared recently about stop hunting was focused mostly on stops put by people going in the direction of a trend that get stopped out when a a reversal happens)

2. Something that I have huge issues with is just holding on to winners - especially as I do focus on the whole day range as a possible target. You should be sure that you keep your stop and profit taking in some sort of balance and make sure that you know what your target looks like. That might not be a solid number of ticks but it could be something like exhaustion signs.

If you have 5 tick stops but never take 10 tick profits then you can be stopped out 5, 6 , 7 times (meaning now you need 3 big trades to get out of the hole) and the weight of this will cause you issues. This can of course work because your instrument can have 100 ticks runs easily. It will only work if you don't get gun shy on the 7th or 8th trade !!!!!

Changing your strategy in terms of targets and stops is something you should look at .. but my suggestion would be to incorporate some sort of trend filter and only let them run in the direction of the trend.

p

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xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568



podski View Post
Hi Xelaar,

You are right about missing the huge winners with a small profit target. Before you implement this strategy across the board there are a few things you can do to make sure the odds are better for you.

1. Looking at the reason for the breakout. If it is a trend continuation or if the stops that cause it are caused at the end of the trend ( the screencast video that you shared recently about stop hunting was focused mostly on stops put by people going in the direction of a trend that get stopped out when a a reversal happens)

2. Something that I have huge issues with is just holding on to winners - especially as I do focus on the whole day range as a possible target. You should be sure that you keep your stop and profit taking in some sort of balance and make sure that you know what your target looks like. That might not be a solid number of ticks but it could be something like exhaustion signs.

If you have 5 tick stops but never take 10 tick profits then you can be stopped out 5, 6 , 7 times (meaning now you need 3 big trades to get out of the hole) and the weight of this will cause you issues. This can of course work because your instrument can have 100 ticks runs easily. It will only work if you don't get gun shy on the 7th or 8th trade !!!!!

Changing your strategy in terms of targets and stops is something you should look at .. but my suggestion would be to incorporate some sort of trend filter and only let them run in the direction of the trend.

p

Hey Podski, thanks for your post. I did not post my setup details here, only the entry technique for this practice account trading, but basically I did not use it for any stop hunting trading, this setup is clear and hardly need any improvement in terms of trading on demo, it's more about execution improvement and reading order flow.

The setup I trial now is generally a breakout of tight consolidation inside the wider range or in a trend direction for a clearly trending day. In any case it is in a direction of sentiment and prevailing order flow. Basically it is a finer version of my large candle trading setup, I just replaced large candle with strong sentiment/flow and use small range as a way to narrow my entry and use tight stop loss. I will keep looking on how to jump on those runaway moves, by entering on small pullbacks that break. Risk here is small but the plus side can be huge. Also slippage should not be an issue.

For stop liquidation setups, the best option is actually having a larger target but fast trailing stop to be out before it pulls back. Fixed targets have little value as it's very hard to know how far it can go. Important is to protect entry and tail some right away as many times it will go 10 ticks or less on those weak participation days, so important is not to lose there. So these setups I plan with 3 ticks stop even live, because if it goes back it means the premise is wrong and there is no liquidation.

There is an issue with T4 having very slow trail stop, it updates once per 10 seconds, I will have to practice to be a very fast mouse clicker instead

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asimsaim
Lahore Pakistan
 
Posts: 40 since Aug 2012
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xelaar View Post

The setup I trial now is generally a breakout of tight consolidation inside the wider range or in a trend direction for a clearly trending day. In any case it is in a direction of sentiment and prevailing order flow.



simply on a large scale, its a narrow range doji . ?

 
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568


asimsaim View Post
simply on a large scale, its a narrow range doji . ?

In very extreme cases and then it doesnt work so well as usually few fake outs are due.

Trade to live. Not live to trade.
Follow me on Twitter Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread
 
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

Trade mini-breakout setups and stop hunt setups with following parameters:
1. Use 6 ticks stop for both mini-range breakout and stop-hunt
2. If breakout fails or order flow weakens before hitting the liquidation level - opt to flatten manually before the stop is hit, same applies if after fake-out price is stuck in negative territory
3. Use two contracts, both 6 ticks stop, and default 12 ticks target (default setting in T4 contract), however, once position is open or at least OCO submitted look to move target on one contract into a range achievable without experiencing a pullback, i.e. within one standard deviation on 1 minute chart and within Keltner channel deviation, usually it will be 6-8 ticks, and remove a target on second one and leave it to trailing on 2 minutes chart using highs or lows of candles.

This way I should avoid multiple stop outs or break evens when volatility and participation is simply too weak for my fixed targets like it was in case of 15 ticks (I had multiple 8-9 ticks winners that rapidly came back), and allow for good rides on strong movements with no artificially imposed target. This is not ideal setup, I am not a proponent of scaling out as it only reduces profitability, but having a max number of losses as 3 in a row per day and relatively tight weekly loss limit, one needs to compromise ultimate profit for the smoother equity curve. Also it is much better for the psyche to get profits more regularly.

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nakachalet's Avatar
 nakachalet 
siam, west coast andaman sea
 
Experience: Master
Platform: ninja
Trading: gc, cl, tf, 6e
Posts: 512 since Aug 2011

congrats again, xelaar

appreciate your narration and wish the best for your climbing higher.

pls do keep us posted, if you have time and desire to, each day you trade whatever, K?

also are you at liberty to tell us in some concrete details, regard the funding.

i have been curious to find out, particularly the limitations as to what limits have been set for you as to: 1--instruments you are allowed trade? 2--how much have you spent on this program before you are where you are now? 3--at which point would you be declared, undesirable or not meeting their requirements? specifically, how much money in terms of dollars and cents in comparison to what you already paid in, to kick start your funded program with them?

hope you'll be frank and straight forward in your response to us members of bmt.

i was not able to get straight forward answers for a long time regarding the funding et al.

hope you can enlighten us to some degree.

thx much

[email protected]


xelaar View Post
Here we go. I applied for a Combine yesterday and today is my first trading day. I have introduced myself in my first thread now moved from Elite to regular forum, so if you are interested - feel free to check it out. It also includes my pre-combine practice with both methodology and CTS T4 platform.

I am a momentum trader. I like to go with the flow and be done fast. I don't like to nurse winning trades and I despise keeping losing trades on a life support. So I trade with a small stop and large target, not being afraid to be wronged by the market even if it continues to move my way after stopping me out. It's not about direction only, much more important is anticipating volatility and timing the trade.

I am not married to a trading system or an instrument. I use what suits me best and what works best at the moment. I have found success previously trading news releases on Forex market, being consistently profitable. I could still do it, but I have chosen to move up to the professional arena and not be a subject of brokers' manipulations and tricks they play constantly in retails FX, having heated conversation with brokers confiscating profits and promising to have an FSA Ombudsman to go after them. Enough is enough. I traded different styles from 3 pip scalps to trades off daily charts with 500 pips stops. I am most comfortable however with intra-day trading and with fast trades that prove you wrong or right without unnecessary delay. Thus momentum trading in fast moving markets.

The reason I am taking a Combine is first and foremost I want to test myself as a trader, I want to force myself to improve my discipline and patience, and I want to place myself into a more professional atmosphere than trading from home lonely staring at charts and having zero accountability. I love very strict risk management of Combine and I believe it will improve my trading. I also wouldn't mind getting funded with a larger account, since I prefer not to put together a sizeable trading capital myself at this point, having other financial commitments. Perhaps when I am funded and if I like the way it goes I will look at option to trade both PTP and my own funds.

I believe there are two type of people in markets: analysts and traders. First group is much more populous. Most people with technical degree and analytical skills and mindset naturally assign themselves into a first group. These people concentrate on what market did before and trying to find out what it will do next. They find all the reasons to support their argument. They also find all the reasons why they are wrong and they wrong often enough. Another group is traders. These people trade what they see, not what they think. Paralysis by analysis never applies to them. I had started in the first group like most people, having a masters degree in IT and natural aspiration for analysis. It took me a long time to cross the border and get into a second group. I am by no means is master trader and I do have lots of faults like impatience, periodical lack of discipline. However I understand them and control them as much as I can.

Trading plan.
It is very simple. I trade with momentum. I start my day by doing a basic top-down analysis from daily to trading time frame. I mark major support and resistance zones and channels. I don't use any predictive indicators or oscillators. I use EMA 21 for general guidance and I use zig-zag for anchoring and knowing sizes of rotations and legs. I trade normally from just one chart but currently I use a secondary chart with range bars and Keltner channel to look inside bars of my main chart.
I have decided to trade Gold for the Combine, because this is the most appealing market right now with shocking volatility and huge swings. I have chosen 2 minute GC chart as my trading chart and 2 ticks range chart as my peeking-inside-candles chart. I use EMA21, 50 ticks zig-zag and volume on my 2 minute chart and 20/20/4 Keltner channel on my 2 tick range chart.

I have just one setup. I establish the direction of market sentiment by comparing recent rotations on 2 minute chart, which must be at least 50 ticks in size (zig-zag does it for me). I want to see a current rotation to be in the same direction as a previous one, so to play a reversal of sentiment I need to see one rotation completed before I will enter on next one. My trigger bar is a large 2 minute bar with little or no wick in a direction of sentiment. For current volatility is should be 20-30 ticks tall at least. During quieter times I would settle for at least 15 ticks. I enter with a stop market order 2 ticks above high or below low (for up and down markets respectfully). My stop is 10 to 20 ticks wide depending on volatility.

Normally I use 10 ticks even if market making large swings. I only opt to 20 ticks if price discovery is malperforming and spread is jumping, like it was last two days. I still try to decrease my exposure as soon as possible by reducing stop and putting to break even as I am 10 ticks in profit. If I use 20 ticks stop I use 2 times smaller position size. That simple.

I strive to trade less. This method allows me to take just few trades per day. I look to trade 3 to 5 trade per day tops and maximum 3 full stop losers. Then I just stop. Even if I had winning trades that day I stop after 3 losers, as it means either I can't read the market or market is too erratic.

I target 50 to 100 ticks depending on recent rotation sizes (I look for no more than 70% of rotation). I look to add to a winning trade once it is at BE and I have a new signal - another strong closing bar. Therefore I never risk more that just 1 position.

For 150k Combine I have chosen 5 cars position as my base position. Relatively large DLL can be deceptive and the Max DD is only 1.5 time of it, so it's foolish to risk a full DLL per day unless a sizeable cushion of profit is already established. Certainly not at the beginning of Combine. I will start first day with 1 contract positions striving to make some cushion to move to 2 contracts per trade. If I have a losing day and I stopped myself, next day I go down one car on my base position until my cushion is re-established that day or later. I will only trade maximum of 7 cars as a base position by the second half of the Combine when a large profit is already there, allowing for 1 scale-in. Normally I will use 5 cars as a base and allow 2 scale-in 5 cars each. (In reality last one will be just 4 cars as T4 has funny ways of calculating exposure but I don't care). This tactic will allow me survive much longer than I would with an inflexible position sizing.

20 day Combine required average of 800 usd net per day profit. In reality it can be as low as 400 as you can trade 40 trading days, not 20. But let's leave as a backup plan. My ambitious target is to look for 3100 usd per day target at which I stop trading. This figure assumes I trade with 5 cars base position size, I have 50% winning day rate and my losing day is 1500 and I need to make 800 per day, therefore 3100 will cover 1500 of losses and still make 1600 per two days. This is of course very simplistic approach and I do plan to have much less losing days than 50% and have few or non 1500 losing days, but I need to put some sort of boundaries in place.

Here I am, hope you weren't bored to death by reading it and let's enjoy this ride together!


 
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

@nakachalet
Hi, thanks. I believe if you would have been following TST related topics all your questions would be answered. I believe some of your questions shows you did not study their website that is quite clear with information you are seeking.

But here it is in a nutshell:
1. There is a list of permitted products on their website. You select those you want to trade in Combine. This is what you will trade in LivePrep and also live once you passed and while in Junior Trader phase. For me it is gold.
2. I paid 400 usd to enter the Combine and got it all back once finished the LiveTrader Prep. So for me monetary cost is 0. Only my time and efforts but since they improved my trading a lot, this is an asset, not a liability.
3. I don't understand this question. There are very precise rules, when they are broken by trader he goes back to Combine. You can see them on their website, in a sample trading plan for junior traders. And they do make sense to me.

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nakachalet's Avatar
 nakachalet 
siam, west coast andaman sea
 
Experience: Master
Platform: ninja
Trading: gc, cl, tf, 6e
Posts: 512 since Aug 2011

for your info, i did read their enticing ads many months ago and eagerly sought clarification and assurance. there were also many live calls placed to me seeking my participation but it was not 400 usd for sure. it was more like three times that amount just to buy their materials.... lol

your candid response would help several other traders around here and perhaps several more who visited bmt infrequently.

you did say that it only costs you 400 usd to participate from the beginning to the point where you are now, receiving funding and all?

you did not pay any more than the 400 usd all inclusively, correct?

if what you said is factual in terms of dollars and cents, then newbies should flock to them. 400 usd to learn how to trade profitably and consistently, is really a small sums to pay.

you wanna ascertain that again so everyone on board here would get the fact straight, especially myself and my perhaps faulty memory?

and all the best to you.

will follow your progress as you report it here, with intense interest and thx again for posting.

AND since their lead traders were not willing to show even once during my conversation with them as to where (not how--which might be a closely guarded secret) their entry and exit were on their live trading chart. would you be willing to show us a pix or two of your own trading screen, perhaps so as to quiet many critics abound. thx again.


xelaar View Post
@ nakachalet
Hi, thanks. I believe if you would have been following TST related topics all your questions would be answered. I believe some of your questions shows you did not study their website that is quite clear with information you are seeking.

But here it is in a nutshell:
1. There is a list of permitted products on their website. You select those you want to trade in Combine. This is what you will trade in LivePrep and also live once you passed and while in Junior Trader phase. For me it is gold.
2. I paid 400 usd to enter the Combine and got it all back once finished the LiveTrader Prep. So for me monetary cost is 0. Only my time and efforts but since they improved my trading a lot, this is an asset, not a liability.
3. I don't understand this question. There are very precise rules, when they are broken by trader he goes back to Combine. You can see them on their website, in a sample trading plan for junior traders. And they do make sense to me.


 
 kevinkdog   is a Vendor
 
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nakachalet View Post
for your info, i did read their enticing ads many months ago and eagerly sought clarification and assurance. there were also many live calls placed to me seeking my participation but it was not 400 usd for sure. it was more like three times that amount just to buy their materials.... lol

your candid response would help several other traders around here and perhaps several more who visited bmt infrequently.

you did say that it only costs you 400 usd to participate from the beginning to the point where you are now, receiving funding and all?

you did not pay any more than the 400 usd all inclusively, correct?

if what you said is factual in terms of dollars and cents, then newbies should flock to them. 400 usd to learn how to trade profitably and consistently, is really a small sums to pay.

you wanna ascertain that again so everyone on board here would get the fact straight, especially myself and my perhaps faulty memory?

and all the best to you.

will follow your progress as you report it here, with intense interest and thx again for posting.

AND since their lead traders were not willing to show even once during my conversation with them as to where (not how--which might be a closely guarded secret) their entry and exit were on their live trading chart. would you be willing to show us a pix or two of your own trading screen, perhaps so as to quiet many critics abound. thx again.

The $400 (approx) is just to enter a Combine, not to learn how to trade.

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