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Thanks so much for the info again. SO the 8:30am EST - 8:40EST sets the OR /Opening Range for you...but referencing/using the OR starts only at 9:30am when US market opens?
Also - have you ever used the Bookmap tool? Was always intrigued as you their ICEBERG tools = their HEATMAP looks much more developed than Jigsaw which has a great DOM/Level II - but really sucky heatmap....I think their toolset really needs an UPGRADE
I am more of a SCALPER.....and really bad in setting TARGETS for my trades - I know I could have MILKED trades for much more if I just stayed longer in them - this is one of the reasons I am considering joining the FT71 room....hopefully they map the day with LEVELS / If-then type scenarios and CONTEXT.
Regarding Al Brooks - the original book was somewhat complicated in the advanced chapters - mostly due to errors on the numbering on the images which was later corrected - but it indeed helped my trading. Some people say Pat Mack - made his concepts simpler in trading channels. I spent about a week in Al rooms - was going crazy sometimes due waiting for a setup for too long - but ass the saying goes - a good trader must sit on their hands and like a sniper wait for a good setup to occur
Cheers - and good trading
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
OR my time is 6:30 - 6:40, at least for that particular chart. I'm in LA. For some reason that indicator has to be set to central time to correctly open at PST. It's odd, but there's no setting for that. I mean, the only one there is works like that. Besides the OR on that chart, I just track the OS, which I find more important, frankly. The OR on the ACD chart is just calibrated for that. It does provide a level that can get reactions too, but I'm not so focused on that. The OS tends to be more important, and I guess that's something I got from FT71.
I had Bookmap for about a year (it was what actually got me to check out FT71 & Convergent when I saw it on one of his Trader Bites -- he's a great promoter). Eventually, I let it go. I have a good grasp of the order flow footprint and order flow and don't really need Bookmap or MBO. I have MZPack indicators that give me iceberg info and I can see what a stop run looks like and where to expect them just by looking at what's happening on my charts, lol. I do have Jigsaw too, but I'm not using it at the moment. I might have kept Bookmap if it weren't so expensive. At some point it was just one of those things I let go of (like so many). I also preferred Jigsaw. Here's an interesting piece about MBO: https://blog.jigsawtrading.com/mbo-the-new-holy-grail-or-just-another-gimmick-for-retail-traders
I got Al's books. The charts are definitely hard to read. Back then I just bought his course, which is a good deal. It comes with very clear videos that explain everything in a much clearer way. He also has a library of charts, an "encyclopedia" I think he calls it. It has tons and tons of annotated charts for every imaginable scenario. So if interested, that's the way to go. I didn't know about Pat Mack until I saw a lot of followers here. I just recently watched a few of his videos. I'm more of a scalper too, but I've taken different things from different places over the last four years and I don't really do any one type of trading. It's really my own thing. Almost every group or person I learned from hates or disdains every other type and they all have something different to offer (order flow guys hate TA -- probably the most pronounced). I just kept what actually works best in my trading from each of them.
Cheers - and good trading to you too!
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
Ahh...so basically 3 hour difference so it is 9:30-9:40am EST OR.
What is FT71's OS (not sure/recall what OS means?)
Regarding Order Flow/Jigsaw thing....Market Delta/footprint....I remember the days of the Market Delta tools that disappeared as many of these expensive tools are part of trading platforms for free such as Ninja that I use. I have to admit...that after BURNING my eyes watching prices on the LADDER...and footprint (could never spot /take advantage of UNFINISHED business /commitment of traders COT, absorption, stacking etc etc)....and also watching JohnGrady and Peter Davis video ...may of these ladder opportunities offer maybe 2 ticks in ES to take advantage of...and frankly the probabilities of trades were the same as in longer term trading (seconds vs. minuets) - so i realized that unless I buy /lese an exchange seat for LOWER COMISISONS - im not sure that "game" is worth it.
Are you familiar with this trader using BOOKMAP: ???
Funny,,,I alos bought the Al brooks video now thinking about it,,,,and also Market Profile trading byJim Dalton.
Regarding Al Brooks Chart Encyclopedia...I remember the woman who heads his trading room always references/pulls put data from it....is it something AL BRooks provides as a DATABASE traders can use ...or is it proprietary and only get it in the ROOM for that specific day?
Do you guve any Wheight to price /market structure in regards to where we open in relation to MP/VP levels (above/below VAL/VAH/POC)?...I forget if this is something that FT71 big at - from a STATISTICAL point of view ?
Ohh...and how is MZpack? There was another tool I was looking at the time ...OFA I think (Order Flow Analytics) ? Who do you consider the GURU of order flow and a good mentor/video course in this field?
Today was another day where I was either a step in front or a step behind. I held in there 2 of the 3 trades and the last one hit my max position loss. It was my first loss, however, since it happened near the end of the day, I didn't get another chance (2hr pause after loss #1).
Before I get into the day, I'll wrap up the week. I'm posting the weekly P&L chart below.
This was the first week trying much tighter risk management than before, with 2 losses max per day and 1hr pause after the first one. Also a ($125) position loss. My DLL is ($250) vs ($600) last week (where I only had 1 loss per day). I'm still getting used to this regime, as prior to this I didn't really have a consistent max loss setting, a max position loss, or any time between losses enforced. So it's a totally different kind of application and I'm still getting used to the trade sizing I can do, as well as how and where I can scale in, if at all.
Overall it means if I am having a good day it keeps going and if it's a bad day it ends pretty quickly. The idea is to thus push the distribution curve of winners out vs losers. It's much less satisfying, but the standard deviation on losses is effectively much less than it was before. Same on the win side, but I think as I get more attuned to this new paradigm this will expand.
Looking at this week vs last week, it was a much smaller loss overall. About 25% of last week's loss, which was a single-day loss that took out both win days and one scratch day and still left me with ($1000+). This week I had 3 loss days (!) and ended up with roughly one day's profit of losses on Friday. (Monday in some ways doesn't count, in my mind, as it was a bit of a throwaway, just trading 1/2 day on the totally dead holiday PA, but this type of mental accounting is part of the deal, it's what takes us down so it's part of the picture any way I look at it). The point is, If can have 3 loss days and essentially end up one day's profit down, it's okay. My long-term average is 64% winning days, no matter what strategy I am using, the latest indicators, whether I'm in good shape or bad, with or without risk management, whatever phase of development I was in, it's 64%. I think now it's more like 70%, that's more like my recent average. With these new risk management constraints it may fall back for a bit. It's okay (I must say, hear myself say, repeat, lol). This is the only way I can make it work mathematically based on my trading results, at least hypothetically. I have to give it faith and time. The other way pencils out except when I have huge losses, which I can bank on periodically, such that I end up losing no matter what my win-day averages are. Right now it's tight but with very limited downside.
Today's trades:
At the top of the day I identified 4382 as the bottom of the channel since Tuesday, and we were near it but hadn't quite made it to the bottom. I didn't immediately go short, but not too long after the open I was aiming for that, then we got a reversal up instead. Twice I tried to short it and ended up essentially breaking even or making a very small profit. In the end I gave up and thought that it just wasn't going back down today and we'd get another n'th Friday up day when all was said and done, so when I exited at VWAP I tried a long, and sure enough, that's when the trade I had been rooting for all day happened and it went down to 4381, lol. Yeah, one of those days where I was exactly on the wrong side all day. I'm glad I have this risk management system in place tho. This is the type of day that could have totally wrecked me.
Goals for next week:
I will try to do less trading from the middle out and more from the outside in. For the last two days at least, I properly identified outside in turning points but got a bit too involved in the middle.
I will remember that losing days are part of the normal outcome. So long as I ensure my loss days are within 1-2 win days. 70% of days should be positive; 90% of weeks should be positive; 100% of months should be positive.
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
Weekly review of my new settings after last week's trading:
Last week (quoted below) I made a change from the prior week, allowing 2 losses per day with a two-hour break between losses. The reason for this was that with only one loss per day allowed, I found it created an incentive to hold trades I normally would cut short because otherwise, I would have no second opportunity to be profitable that day. On the plus side, there was also the incentive to be a lot picker about trades, but it's always a probability game and in an evolving situation whereas I might have cut a trade sooner if I saw probabilities diminishing, with only one loss I tended to err on the side of letting it go just a bit longer, which, as we know, can and often does lead to holding losers, or high opportunity cost scale-in trades that take a lot of time to get back to breakeven or profitability and also cause so much stress they're hard to hold if and when they come back to break-even with some probability of going further into profit.
This week I found that with 2 losses max per day and a two-hour break after 1 loss, it was a step in the right direction, but I still found myself doing the same thing (holding trades) to a lesser extent. Also, while the position loss is a good idea to cut down the possibility of reaching my DLL in a single trade, and twinned with the 1 loss / 2hr break and splitting the DLL into two max losses, I was still incentivized to look for runners, which runs counter to scalping multiple trades, or if I do, taking profits too quickly, due to the pressure of having fewer opportunities.
This week I am going to make further adjustments as follows:
1. Change my DLL from $255 to $210
2. Change my max position size from 10 MES to 2 MES
3. Change my max position loss from $125 to $37 (14 ticks / 2 lots)
4. Change the time-out setting from 2hrs after 1 loss with 2 max losses per day to 30 min after 1 loss and 1hr on the next consecutive loss (this resets if there is a win and consecutive loss after).
5. Other settings remain the same.
The idea here is to a) allow for a max of six losses per day in terms of the position size (DLL); b) only have 1 size to work with, which is the 2 lot size for a 1:1 ratio of 14 ticks. This gives me a bit more room than the 12 ticks I thought were tight the prior week (my good trades typically need about 11 ticks MAE); c) a positon loss equal to my 14 ticks so I am incentivized to simply take my ATM setups, not extend them; d) time out settings that are spaced out in such a way to encourage me to get in and out of trades, because the way it is now, if a trade goes about 15 min average (often quicker if good), and there are 390 minutes during the session, and it takes me say 15 min to zero in on a trade, all of that adds up to 180 minutes (6 trades x 15 min x 2), leaving 210 minutes in the day, which equates to 35 min x 6. In other words, bettter get out of a loser quickly, take the 30 min, and get on with the next one, sooner better for more opportunities during the day. Granted, I still have that jump from 30 min to 1hr on the second one which works like what I had before, but I am going from 2hrs and only 2 losses allowed to 30 min / 1hr with as many trades as I can get in a day given the other limitations (position loss / DLL). in the end, the time out will stop me from getting more than about 6 losses or my DLL amount in one session.
Sounds complicated, lol, but it is carefully thought out. It's also not arbitrary. I get to the sizing weighing different options and working with ChatGPT4 to calculate the expected value of each trade given my win rate and hone in on the sizing. For this week I weighted more trades allowed with half of the size I settled above. If anyone is interested, the probability calculations are as follows:
Expected Value (Option B) = (65% * $35) + (35% * -$35) Standard Deviation (Option B) = √(5.5 * 0.65 * 0.35 * 35)
Expected Daily Winnings = $14.875 * 6 = $89.25
Standard Deviation: 12.23
Doing this is also helpful insofar as I see that with 3 wins of the winning price unit of $35, I'd get to $105, which is on the high end of the expected value / standard deviation best-case scenario, and this lines up with the Apex Sniper program of working out a scheme that allows for 6 losses max in the day / stop at 3 wins of the price unit used (this is a whole other topic you can research), where the DLL should technically equate to 6% of the trailing drawdown (but is a bit higher in my case, esp right now I'm down by -$750). Just to say, I don't want to try and push much beyond $105 per day. It's a good target (per account). So this helps me see what I can realistically do, and also to keep in mind the range is about $76 - $105 per day.
Interestingly, my original idea of a single trade for $125 1:1 ratio, even with a 50/50 chance on the first trade and 64% win rate on half-sized trades subsequently, stop on the first loss or carry on and stop on the first subsequent loss -- this has the best expected outcome as far as it had a zero standard deviation with an expected value of $80 per day (per account). But the problem of a hypothetical calculation vs real-life trading and my psychology factored in is such that I simply did not execute that with the given parameters (I'd go for smaller-sized trades within the $125 loss parameter, then scale in on losers, etc).
Anyway, that just got very convoluted unless you were actually going through this yourself. Point being, I went from one extreme to the other 2 weeks ago and I'm dialing it back a bit based on tracking the results daily in detail (here) and adjusting accordingly. Let's see what this does next week!
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
I see more trades, but it's like a whole new lunchtime day. Gonna leave it at this today.
Today's P&L is just shy of my current trade parameters' exact average daily expected value ($9 short per acct). Makes sense. My calculations were based on my 2-lot ATM (MES on Apex accts, copied from sim trading in the ES). I've been doing a lot of 1 lot trades.
Back tomorrow!
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
Small loss day today (first day this week). Had 2 back-to-back full-size (2 MES) losses out the gate (1/2 hr stop on the first one, 1hr stop on the second). Made up a bit more than half of it except on 2 accounts with settings that somehow got stuck on last week's settings: 2 losses out vs this week's 1/2hr stop first loss, 1hr stop 2 consecutive or more. Lots of scratches today. Hard read as it was consolidating most of the day, pretty balanced.
Back tomorrow!
Goal for tomorrow: I will remember that losing days are part of the normal outcome. So long as I ensure my loss days are within 1-2 win days. 70% of days should be positive; 90% of weeks should be positive; 100% of months should be positive.
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
