All right. Thanks for the advice $133. I am a South Minneapolis boy myself. Lake Harriet area.
Well another day of raised NT margins. I will press up my account so I can at least trade one lot of MES, but my style has started to involve scaling in and out of positions with 1-10 contracts.
It was sim trading today and I had a tough morning. I get run over quite a bit fading the extreme of the range. I am working on paying more attention to my indicators and only trading when I get a good signal, not when it just looks like the top of the range.
I am improving on trading micro ranges. I use the split profile on the Jigsaw DOM. I reset the split profile about once an hour and it's easy to see where the backstops will be in the middle of trading ranges (levels of recent interest). Gives me some good scalps. My last trade was only 3 seconds but I got 3 ticks.
The one skill that's eluding me is entering momentum trades.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on futures io?
I see you talking about NT but your profile to the left says you use Sierra Chart. If that's what you're using -- set your main instrument on the DOM/chart to ES, then set the "Trade and Current Quote" symbol to MES. Check the "Use as trade only symbol" box. Now you have quotes and trade data from ES, but when you place an order, it will use MES.
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Many a trader have lost many a dollar by making their primary strategy fading. Without being facetious, I genuinely suggest that as a primary strategy, look to be a buyer when it has trouble going lower, and vice versa. How you do that is up to you of course. There's a certain ego stroke that comes with catching a turn. That's why it's so dangerous to do.
If you're trading ES in the evenings, I'd think you'd want to have the nikkei and hang seng up. Assuming you don't have those contracts, you can use CFDs "JPN225" and "HKG33" on a site like tradingview dot com.
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I edited my profile to show that I am indeed a Jigsaw Daytradr (connected to) Ninjatrader user. I can have more than one Jigsw DOM up and I'm convinced it makes sense to do so. There are some weird high volume nodes on the MES. I have to have the MES DOM up because i use that ladder to enter trades.
I might be using the term "fade" incorrectly. I am certainly looking for reversals, but in a very short term context. When I see absorption, or lack of participation I enter. If the trade market goes against me I will scale in more contracts. As you can imagine it is expensive when I am "wrong wrong" instead of just a little early. I think this is something I can fix. it's still very early days and I am trying out things to see what works.
Yeah I should be able to trade the Nikkei on NT. The symbol is there. Just no data. I probably have to order that. I have really enjoyed trading the ES at night, though. I don't find it too thin and it was plenty volatile even before this craziness.
Thanks for your advice. You're right, if ego enters into the equation it could get expensive.
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A poor showing today. Got run over in my first short. I waited too long to flatten out, but managed to re-enter at a higher price. That went OK but missed my target to cover by 1 tick, then went back to almost even before I covered.
I got on good microrange scalp. Then my last trade I just got run over. The I rewatched my last trade on the screen recorder and I think it's a high probability trade that I would take again.
Total loss for the day $40.00. I need to start only trading one contract until I am trading better.
Sim trading also went poorly this evening. My worst trading day overall in the last 2 weeks. I'm happy to have the video so I can try and figure out what's going wrong.
I was just thinking about it. I don't think I'm paying close enough attention to the market. I'm just kind of sitting down and firing away. Will improve on this.
One last edit: Hopped back on to trade ETH just after midnight. I made a bunch of decent continuation trades and scalps in the direction of the move. Limit order scalps sometime feel like cheating the're so easy. Made $2,400 on the sim account in 30 minutes trading 5 lots.
I "live traded" on the MES this morning. I think I did a decent job trying to see the market, but I am very uneasy when trading. I am so focused on not losing money that it turns to fear when I'm live trading. It is not working for me.
I made 12 trades and finished down $20. I am using manual stops and cut a lot of the trades after being down 3-4 ticks. In a market like this it is not a recipe for success.
I might ditch the ES for the rest of the week and look for something a little more steady. I am starting to worry the sim trading isn't doing me any good. I can step in on the sim and fire away with no worries, but live trading is a different animal. No excuses for me but it is a little frustrating that I can't trade the ETH session because the margin requirements have been raised.
Two more sim sessions tonight. One was very bad, I lost all four trades for heavy losses. The second one was insightful. I got run over again trading against the move. I flattened out and found an entry *with* the move and came out ahead for the 2 trades. Maybe there is hope yet.
A poor sim trading RTH session today. I couldn't read the market at all and just took guesses at a few trades.
Came back on at 1900 PST and was 8/8 with an average of 4 ticks. It's good to have a little success after this morning. As a beginning (unprofitable) trader, a bad morning leaves me feeling unsettled. Actually wondering if I will be able to become profitable.
I am definitely trying to learn from my mistakes. All 8 trades tonight were *with* the momentum. And I am not playing any more games on the sim. No more letting a trade get 30 ticks offside, hoping for it to came back. And a maximum of 2 contracts per trade, no more trying to bail out a losing trade by adding 20. 30. 75 contracts. Why spend the time sim trading if I'm not taking it seriously?
Ended the day down $380 on the sim account.
Goal for tomorrow is to live trade profitably. There is no target $$. Just profitable. As soon as I'm profitable I will turn the screen off.
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I achieved my goal. I traded profitably on my live account today. I was 1/2 but the winning trade was 2 ticks bigger than the loser. Both trades were momentum trades. It is actually only $1.70 after commission but I am able to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that I am making progress and that I made money today.
It's also satisfying that my profitability came from a momentum trade. I've only traded for a few weeks but it's better I learn something like this early.
I have never set goals. Ever. This is probably the only time I have ever set a goal in my life. It took some discipline to do this because I genuinely like trading, and would have liked to do it a little more today. But the nature of this goal meant I had to walk away once I was in the green.
Goal for this weekend is to read the first 5 chapters of the trading book on my Kindle.
The book I am reading is called "The Disciplined Trader: Developing Winning Attitudes." It is exactly what I need right now. I only read 3-4 pages but there's a lot to digest. I've been learning about futures day trading for about 9 weeks. I am more of a scalper right now and my style is very discretionary. For these reasons, paying attention to the psychology of trading is super important.
Did about 30 minutes on the sim account. I still enjoy trading the night time session. Trades went OK but I cut the last one short for no good reason really.
I did about 10 more sim trades on the night ES session and it was brutal. I lost 8 of them and went in the hole $2000. I forgot to record these trades but I know I started firing as soon as the screen loaded up. Again, if I'm going to sim trade I need to take it seriously or I'm not going to learn anything. And I am also going to stop focusing on these ultra short term trades. Sure they are there sometimes, but I think I could make more money getting in on the bigger moves.
I am having trouble waking up at 0530 PST to do a pre market prep and trade the open. By the time I got up I decided to sim trade only. Made $200 simdollars on 11 trades. I think i'm getting better at cutting the losing trades.
Sometimes it feels like I'm hot and cold. Maybe it would be better if I took less trades.
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