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Well, these are the absolute toughest conditions that I have ever traded in. Without a doubt. The last 4 days have been horrifically tough in my opinion.
It was up, it was down, it was up, it was down.... Wow. I feel like I am trading the ES!!!
I decided to hold my stops (except the one that mattered on that short!!!!!) and let my PT's run today to give it some more time. I don't know why I keep flipping flopping back-n-forth on what I am doing, but that is just me I guess right now. It amazes me that the one stop I changed was the big one. haha... WOW...
Trendlines were pretty clear, but with a 5 tick stop it was tough. It would go just beyond to fake you out and then come right back.
I will be SIM until I get things worked out which includes yesterday, today and next week until market conditions sing a little better to me.
We can't always have perfect market conditions can we! This is what makes a great trader in my opinion is to adjust to this market. This is also why a lot of people trade the higher TF's!
Oh, and for some reason I kept thinking it was going higher (I WONDER WHY!) so I was always looking for that long! haha...
Bluemele, first of all thanks for sharing and just to let you know I did watch only one of your latest videos /Oct 12th/ therefore I do not know anything about the setups & triggers and trade management you are using. What got my attention however you seemed to be quite successfully entering the trades however aiming for big targets while in chop zone. -> therefore getting chopped out a lots of times. A couple of times you were up over 10 ticks yet did not take any profit and let your stop loss work with taking lot less profits.
If you can manage 50% of your entries in the chop zone to scalp 5 to 10 ticks, while let say 30% of trades would have 5 ticks loss and 20% break even than you are probably ahead of the game. /you still have to subtract other expenses.../ Also if you are up 3-6 points for a day playing 1 contract than call it done. If you can do this for a 4 weeks than just increase the number of contracts 2 etc... similar suggestion by some other members were given already.
Trying to get over 5 points runs, well you have to have a lot bigger SL than 5 ticks to start with, other wise you need "The Trading Gods" to interfere...
Thanks for watching. Well, as you can see from what I posted above, the last week was not one to enjoy watching. Yes, I was aiming for bigger targets due to my 'goal' to ever expand my point taking. However, it was a week of rangy markets and I have just changed my style of trading some hoping to get longer trends. If you look back in the journal you will see a lot of fighting with myself to hold my trades instead of taking small bites out of the elephant. I prefer the small bites, but doing my best to hold as an experiment.
It was not a good week to try that experiment, but probably better than a great week to do this as I would probably figure I was a genius!
Anyways, thanks for the comments and I agree, it is all that fine line between what is perfect and what is good enough. I just didn't do a good job period this week and will let go of that right..... NOW!
I just did a year review since I started my journal! Wooooohooooo! Well, the funny thing is, that I have changed the way I traded over and over again and before I did this exercise I felt i knew a lot less than I did, but am finding out that I was actually pretty 'knowledgeable'. So, if my technical ability is 'there' or roughly the same +-, then what is the issue?
I would say my technical ability a year ago was a 5.5, now it is a 6.5, with a lot of room for improvement. So I reviewed my equity chart and updated it as I had a small error in the previous post.
I also added all the way back to October and could probably go back another full year if it wasn't so much effort dissecting my vids. I may do it to have more data, but I know what is it going to show.
Anyways, I am up roughly 6K (1 contract) = 60K (10 contracts), and if I were to measure 2% of my account on my stop, than I would be in the range of needing a 30K account with 10 contracts. That is a 200% return for the year. The key also is about 110 days of trading is how long ago I turned things around. That is probably about 6 months +- a few days so sometime around April is where I started to turn the corner.
Are 200% returns terrible? (YES, SIM, but I treat it like I would trade it live except slippage could be an issue as well)
I don't think so? This solidifies to me that although I will be trading 1 contract for a while even while LIVE again, that is OK and it is not about the money but showing consistent profitability to shake it off and continue forward. The equity based moving average has helped me be OK with having the occasional bad day or even bad week/month! No fear, it is ok to have down times, it is ok to not see it, it is ok to have disagreement in myself and to grow from it.
I am thinking that long term, is 10 contracts in intraday moves going to fulfill me? My wife says, "Who cares, just do it as a first step" and I have never been one for a small first step. So, I started thinking what changes could I make to where slippage would not be an issue and the obvious choices are
a) Buy @ Market or Buy/ask, Sell/Bid with chase of 1 tick would most likely help.
b) Trade longer term TF where a market purchase would do little more to the bottom line than swatting a mosquito.
Then, it dawned on me, why not trade the longer terms. That is what Private Banker and several other traders do and that is something that if I am doing higher TF timeframe trades, than I may be more aware? Or, would it cause me to 'force' trade more or want to 'hedge' during intraday trading? Would it just confuse me more? What would it do?
Could I trade off the 1597 instead of the 144 as my entry screen, hold trades for a couple days, have a 5 point stop and enter market as many contracts as I want. My dream is to trade 1,000 contracts at a time and make 'real' money not just 500K a year as I could do that with a lot less focus/effort but with more drama (people!).
Another thing I noticed or spent time thinking about was that the 5 day MA system works well considering market changes or just I get into a 'funk' for little bits at a time. I look back on my vids just from last week and I want to smack myself upside the head. My wife traded 10x better than I did and this is the person who lost her butt the week before from shoddy trading.
Also, some good news on my non-trading business side that is starting to look up and I may have enough cashflow finally to just trade full time and never need another dollar from trading and should be setup in the next 18 months if I grow my business (rental properties) back up to where they were a few years ago. I am excited to do that as it is such a great time to invest and friends/family are coming out of the woodwork wanting some of the good deals as well which helps!
To another year of journaling on Big Mike's! Thanks to all those who have helped and hopefully this time next year, I will have a much better looking equity chart and I will finally be in a timezone that will work with my trading a bit better.
wow! i just joined a couple of days ago to this forum and the reason why i joined this forum is because your "hell of a journal" is so damn impressing. this is - and i have read lots of journals - the only one that i have read from the first to the last page because it got drama and hoesty... very very unique! good work!
also i was in the NFT programm (i started march) and had like a similar good timing with going live since markets changend and gained a lot of volatility so that readjustments were needed. i am still in the process of working things out and studying theorie and gaining some knowledge but you journal gives me a good dose of motivation as you can really see your efforts as you developed a good feeling for the market throughout concistency. very well done! respect to you! great work! let it roll!
Bluemele, atata's words are ringing true for me. TF lately has been choppy. To me that means take small gains, or stay out. (Why do we have to use a word like "scalping" for this? Makes you think of gory events in old western movies.)
H asks at the beginning of many of his videos, is this a trending day? Can't recall on how this changes his approach, however.
It seems choppy but if you look at 5min chart it bounced from EMA 20 quiet a few times and trend was really clear. And it makes a lot of sense looking at that chart.
yepp...
but the most fascinating thing is how clearly you see the efforts and the lows of mentality...
sometimes i had the impression that he is going to kill his computer and throw it all away... but then a couple days later he got back with strong trades... really nice...
Wow. I feel like I am trading the ES!!!
To me that means take small gains, or stay out. (Why do we have to use a word like "