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Well today was my first day getting my feet wet again and man it feels good! A few rookie mistakes to start off the day, but I was quickly able to recognize and document all trading errors, and finish off the day with a decent winning trade..... with more errors lol.
So far so good. I plan on trading in sim mode through Friday just to get back into a groove and hopefully fine tune some areas as I am definitely a little rusty. Super excited to be back in the drivers seat though!
My main mistakes today were:
1)Not buying the correct breakouts from the 5 minute chart
2)Not watching volume profile for better trade location
3)Not re-initiating my full position once the 1 minute trend re-established itself
4)Focusing too much on 1 minute price action, and not keeping a piece of the position on through the full 5 minute trend
There were 3 scenarios for me to take profitable trades from. I took all three and made money on one of them. I traded the last one very well minus holding the last contract through the full trend. I also took two trades counter trend, I will let you guess how those went.
I have a new chart that I will overlay onto the 1 minute chart for when I am holding a trade so I do not get sucked into short term price action. It is an RTH 5 minute chart so I can see previous day S/R along with the initial balance extensions. This chart helps me see how well we are truly trending/not trending for that day's session.
You can't see anything worthwhile on the chart today except you can maybe make out my last trade, but I am posting it anyway.
Already done for the day. What an awesome morning! I traded today exactly how I pictured myself trading, and I know for sure now that I was holding myself back by trying to stay with futures. It's like I have broken free of my chains! lol
I do have a couple of notes from earlier:
I should constantly be geared towards market continuation until price action proves me wrong. My main goal is to trade smart to maintain profitability during most days, but be prepared to swing for the fences on days of range expansion. So I must balance being conservative, yet being prepared to take full advantage of whatever the day offers.
Market entries. The edges of current value on the volume profile seem to offer great areas for entry after a rejection or reversal. At these points it is quick to identify whether a trade is working or not, and I know the majority of the public is not using this so I would think I am on the right path of thinking outside the box. At first glance it looks as if these areas along with cumulative delta make a great pair for targeted entry.
All trades were profitable but one today, which was what inspired my idea for the trade location note above. I was correct to enter, but was outside of my acceptable risk even though I entered small. I scaled in and out throughout the morning and managed to pull out 188 points! Now that's more like it.
First chart is from this morning. The GDP release did push the market in my favor but the market setup for breakout and so I took it. You can also see the second trade where if I had entered closer to the bottom edge of the current value area, I would have taken much less heat, and the market clearly showed little interest in going lower.
The second chart is of the beginning of the third trade
The third chart shows full scaling in and out as the trade progressed, along with cumulative delta for the day.
Caught that one did you? Well I also did say that I would be trading sim until next week too. For some reason the EUR/USD FOREX option stopped at 8:30 a.m. on Sierra Chart so yes I am using the 6E in the mean time. But you do realize that the two contracts move in lock step right? So in reality the only thing different is the name in the way it trades.
I will actually have even more flexibility with FXCM in the EUR/USD because I will be trading micro lots and can extend my scale out even further which I plan to do. I will be scaling out 5 or 6 times on a full trade vs. 3 with futures. Which reminds me I need to get that money transferred over, thanks for the reminder!
Mostly asking because I noticed the volume profile on the chart and thought you moved over to forex which did not make sense. Your reasons for going over to fxcm seem right on. the only reason I would not is because I like volume profile too much. But I suppose you could trade on fxcm and also keep up a futures account to see where the volume is hitting.
Please keep us updated. And I realize the futures market and forex move lock step but I wonder about the nuances in the price action if any at all. I hear that the futures contracts "reacts" slower than the forex market as computers come in to arbitrage and keep the markets in line.
final question/comment. You said you like to scale 5-6 times. Isn't that a bit much? I wonder about your thoughts.
Well I will be monitoring them very closely side by side as it looks like I will use the 6E on Sierra chart for charting, and then execute on the FXCM platform. I know that Sierra supports FXCM, but I have not looked into switching from the OEC datafeed to FXCM. I really like having access to all the futures data, but I can use my brokerage platform for that as well. So still kind of figuring things out. More than likely it will depend on whether using both platforms is a pain in the ass, or if it gets old after a while. Trial and error gives the best personal experience IMO
From what I have seen though, the bars looked exactly the same on each chart, so all time frame charts, S/R, etc. SHOULD line up the same. I'm sure this will become obvious very quickly if it does not.
Ok so thoughts on scaling and profit taking. I have a chart that monitors the ATR of the U.S. session of the EURO(8am to 4pm as I see it) and also the days range. So then I can get a good idea of volatility expansion or contraction, plus an overall avg movement during my trade hours to base targets from. I plan on digging into this a little deeper so I will be prepared for Monday. The micro lots that I will be trading(approximately 30) give me the option to break down my scaling in a virtually unlimited number of ways, and if I remember correctly the commission is based off the spread, which I think comes off each lot separately regardless of when exited/entered. Not 100% sure about that though.
So lets say I am expecting the days range to be around 100 pips, and lets also say the EURO was trending into the session, and it looks like I got entry close to the lows of the U.S. session. Now we all know there is no guarantee of trade continuation, so scaling is part of my risk management through averaging. So does it make sense to scale at say 30, 60, and keep the last third on as a runner, when I can scale out at 20, 40, 60, 80, and still have the option to take profit two more times as the trend presumably comes to an end. For me trading is all about feel and flexibility, so for me option two offers many more advantages suited to my trading style than option one. Now again this will more than likely change as I grow and gain more experience, but for now this makes me happy.
Thanks for asking some great questions and allowing me to clarify my thought process! I hope this reply answers your questions.
Well I did not know that the option existed, so that could be an option when I venture back into futures. But my response above helped me clarify why that wouldn't work at this point in time, and a good part of that is reduced scaling options.
Yep, if you're going to forex because of the scaling flexibility that seems like a good fit. Not sure about the micro lots...very low volume ( I checked it out the other day). But again in theory they should move lockstep.
as an FYI: I believe you can run two version of SC on one machine..might want to look into that.
Curious about how the spreads works when you scale in forex. Please report back when you confirm. Perhaps that is what promoted my original question. Scaling 5-6 times in futures would kill the P&L because of the commissions.
