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Can anybody help me with this thought.I have a feeling that all markets move in an adverse direction purely by the negative emotional thinking of worrying traders.As thoughts are energy and the whole market is just made up universally of traders thought energy.Is this possible?,just as splitting atoms has a contagion effect on a massive scale on other atoms.I think this is possible as the whole world,including markets is just made up of electrically charged atoms of energy.I feel that a nervous person has this ability to stall markets for the above reason.Can anybody help me with this analogy.The reason I am starting to think that this is so is because of my stops being triggered, trading all time frames 80% of the time. I have tried placing them at the most unlikely spot,say 10 points or more past recent highs or lows,most times a long way of the current entry price,and also just mental stops,All to no avai.l I get stopped and immediately the market reverses and moves in the original direction of the trade Harveys "Help"
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
If you get stopped all the time i would suggest its not your stop but your entry , You give no clue to style of trading or time frame used . More info required . I am australian and i trade the xjo / asx200 / spi
Hi,Thanks for your input.To answer you question.I use a basic swing trading method.It is a trend following method,basically buying the 50%retracement level once an intraday trend is established.The problem is having done hundreds of trades I get stopped out most times.The trend just changes as soon as I enter.Not just the SPI,but all markets that I have traded over several years.Why?
If you posted a chart or 2 with trade entries and stops im sure i could help you a bit . Intraday SPI puts in a hod/lod in first 90 minutes a high % of the time . trying to fade 50% of this level is sort of nowhere . If you can get the early fade this is where the best bang for buck lives . above/below this swing is where stop should be , get on right direction and you can ride trend most of day .. Lately afterhours been moving more than cash session so not a lot of range to chase , pretty sure this wont last long though . Some tools to select fade direction and identify the reversal are where the edge comes to life . Entry defines the amount of heat needed to be taken on . Is it possible to formulate your entry into code and backtest differenet stop loss levels to see if there is a sweet spot , potentially volatility based stop might be where you need to go .. my motto is " if you can measure it you can improve it " Even though I have limited information i still side with entry being the issue
There are a couple of things that I wanted to touch on quickly, especially because I'm sure that many traders run into this mental aspect at various points throughout their career.
1) Are your stats correct? 80% is a very high occurrence of a stop out. I know I've had losing streaks before and it sure as hell seems like I can't even get one winning trade in ten. It might be that the streak of losses seems larger than it truly is.
I don't know if you're familiar with FT71, but he has a well known experiment in which he has new traders flip a coin, and then enter (on SIM) long/short based on the coin toss. As it turns out, the win rate on a random trade is 25-30%. I've had this happen in my own trading in the past; it feels like nothing you do is going right, so you start taking different trades to "feel out" the market and see if you can get something to stick.
The one thing that has gotten unstuck, in this example, is the trader's methodology. Instead of being diligent in planning and executing and then accepting that losing streaks can happen, the trader starts scrambling around to throw trades on the board to get a winner. The sheer randomness in his/her execution and strategy and even stop placement ends up creating a low win rate around 30%.
If you can, look over your stats and see if your stop out percent is actually 80%. 80% makes me think that there's something fundamentally wrong with the strategy, while 70% makes me think it is more of a psychological issue. Collect some market statistics too. Keep a file of the number of instances that the market creates a setup that you would act on. Keep track of the amount of winners and losers that result. Knowing your market and your statistics can be a huge psychological boost to refer to during a drawdown.
2) The lines "The trend changes just as soon as I enter" and "Why?", seem to ask "Why me?". I can tell you with certainty that the market doesn't care. The market doesn't care if you're mean reverting or trading the opening or high frequency scalping or flipping a coin or any thousands of different strategies. There are no butterfly effects caused by one trader (unless you're trading that slippery bastard CL ).
If you put on a trade in the near future and it gets stopped out, ask yourself "Why was the market more willing to trade at my stop price than at my target price?" After all, a market simply exists for participants to discover price and value, and exchange contracts once value is determined. Keep a journal of your answers to this question, too. This might help you hammer out this losing streak.
And above all, stop changing things. If you have a set entry method, don't change it. If you always use a 5 point stop, don't try a 3 point or 10 point stop. Part of the randomness which plagued me for a long time was that I was constantly looking for a perfect setup and perfect stop and perfect way to trade. None of these exist. The only thing that you can control in this business is your attitude and your willingness to prepare yourself for the next trading day.
Im not sure " NOT " changing set entry is the answer tbh . Clearly the OP needs to pretty well start again . If you are perpetually getting stopped out it can only be 2 things and the answer is found by quantitative analysis . Either Entry criteria is rubbish or stops are too tight . Given the record small ranges on SPI/XJO i don't believe it will be stops so that points at entry . Anyway statistical analysis will reveal the answer . Psychology wont fix broken methodology . Positive mindset is best produced from positive expectancy . If you are clueless to your expectancy you are not much better than gambling . I hope the OP replies to my PM , im sure i can help him .... cheers to all
a) intraday trend following: Most equity markets worldwide are struggling with the lowest volatility since
the start of the VIX or - by other gauges - since the all-time lows of 1964. So with the exception of 1964 (so far)
the preconditions for your basic method have never been worse intraday than during the last few years.
b) confirmation: Filters (like e.g. retracements) further reduce the quality of the trades. You piggyback on older,
more mature intraday moves in an extremely mean-reverting environment.
a) is fairly typical for traders who either don't meet the capital requirements of trend following and/or don't realize
that trend following normally plays out in the long term, not in intraday noise dabbling.
b) regularly follows a lack of risk acceptance / capacity. Because of undercapitalization and/or loss aversion some
traders wait "until everything falls into place" - with devastating effects for their P&L since they are the ones who
buy when earlier/better (capitalized) traders sell and vice versa.
So the best advice imho is that you a) match your risk acceptance with your capital and b) start treating the
markets for what they currently are - not for what you want them to be.
).