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A journal is a great way to hold yourself accountable even though it feels like the worst thing in the world when a strategy fails.
Although this is a SIM journal I intend to trade as if it were real to help validate my own strategy. This should be a period
of no longer than two weeks before putting some cash on the line.
I really hope it works...
In the past I have found a propensity for traders to move towards more and more exotic financial vehicles to find 'the one'
The same can be true of indicators, more and more mathematically complex visualisation of the same underlying data.
I've studied many indicators, created my own, studied patterns and probabilities.
I've Created charts that are a forest of trends, Fibonacci and Elliot waves.
Not dismissing this of course as each to their own and if it works use it, for me personally it's not the way I want to approach it. I want to strip it all back.
General Overview
I intend to keep it simple, really simple.
Basically follow that classic piece of advice, follow the trend
Don't try and be too smart, don't try to second guess the market.
Sometimes I feel this is the worst thing to do is over stimulate your brain with information.
Trade ES
1 Trade Per Day
2 Point Target
Trade using 5m chart - (Showing 2-3 Days)
Trade at around 08:35-08:40
Trade window 25-30 mins max
Stop not sure (really needs one)
Once a trade is completed, go do something else immediately. No idle hands and over confidence situation.
The point target is currently arbitrary, I just based it upon something that I thought should be achievable and yield a reasonable result that can scale.
Not much to show on this chart, was a bit of an after thought but thought I better take one.
So thought dump:
Recent low few points below, looks like obvious support (or too obvious?) Just go for short as seems common logic.
Marketwatch heatmap sentiment is negative (although I don't know if this is delayed or not, suspecting it is delayed)
No big gap in opening.
[ORDER] SELL: 08:35 - 2,090.50
Accidentally sold gain when placed Buy (not used to software) amusingly was at 2,090.50, doubling position.
[TARGET] BUY for 2088.25, 2 Points + Fees
[ORDER] BUY: 08:43 - 2,088.25
Done for the day: +2.25, Leave
Hate looking at the chart later and see a +10 point opportunity hah
Be happy with your strategy, greed is always a downfall.
Word of advice, ThinkOrSwim is garbage. Trading TOS sim vs live trading is night and day. It's hands down the worst sim environment I've ever seen.
Get NinjaTrader. You can download it for free, and sign up for a free data (trial). It's real time data, accounts for bid and ask, order queue, entry delays, partial fills, slippage, etc. The best sim I've ever seen.
And how is it going? I'm trading /ES as well. Only 1 contract. My goal is to someday trade 100 lots.
08:18 Huge Pre Drop Gap, extending S/R lines, chart looks too many lines but interesting the intersection from previous days lines.
08:33 Sure will get some more downside
08:36 SOLD @ 2093.25, TARGET BUY @ 2091
08:37 TARGET HIT P/L (+2.25)
08:38 Done for the day.
Bad day, but now a good time to look at STOP-LOSS seriously!
Funny I was just thinking that I need a bad trade to focus on this, erm thanks...
08:16 Removed previous S/R, Added new S/R, looked at 4h/180D as well.
08:18 Big gap down in after hours
08:22 Pushing down to near 15 points, will come back once market opens.
08:30 Wow should have sold pre market, already down to my lowest S/R, but that would be out of strategy.
08:35 Already hit low 2,067, more down or bounce?
08:36 SOLD @2,064.50 TARGET @2,062.25
08:57 Bit of a tease with 2,062.75 low. So what should stop loss be 2072?
09:24
Feels like it's slipping away, holding this longer than my strategy timeframe, should adhere to stop-loss?
Give it till 10:00?
10:00 Well that sucks, should have gone with the stop-loss. Head in the sand moment, what SIM is for lol
Let it play out for analysis.
AH: BUY @ 2069.25 -- P/L: -4.75
So ended up with a bit of arrogance or just simple wishful thinking that we would go lower. With real money this would have been stressful.
08:13 Looking at charts, should you look at after hours? Helps me fill out S/R. Chart done.
08:20 So AH pushing towards S/R 2,072.50
08:35 Moving up over 2,075.
08:36 Disabled AH data, 2,078 Next 2,083 Next+
08:41 BUY PLACED @ 2,080
09:00 What a slow day...
14:42 SOLD @ 2,083 P/L: +3.00
