Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Hey!
First time poster here - I am coming up on my 3-month mark since I started tick scalping on the MES. I had a mix of success and failures over the last couple of months but have mainly broken even over the 3-month period.
My bread-and-butter bankroll is selling covered options contracts against my longterm holdings, but that's for a different thread.
Month over month I have done retrospectives on my Tick Scalping to see what I had been doing well vs. what I hadn't been doing well. Some of the parameters for good and bad performance were the following:
I am realizing (albeit slowly) that I am overtrading and trading my PnL - classic beginner's mistake. I most certainly am a beginner. Considering I haven't been grossly in the profit throughout the course of these 3 months - I no longer think net PnL is a useful metric to include in the retrospective.
So my question is as follows: how do other traders do useful retrospectives on their trading performance (outside of PnL)? What parameters, when met, constitute a well-executed trade vs. an unsuccessful trade (excluding PnL)?
I'm trying to focus completely on the decision-making process in the trade execution rather than the monetary outcome.
Apologies for the rambles - thanks in advance for any feedback!
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
1. Verniman on Twitter, free and paid. Highly disciplined ES trading. There are zero execution errors in his trading, and I've watched him for years.
2. Buy and study the Al Brooks trading course. Al is disciplined about how he reads the candles. As an Ophthalmologist before he became a full time trader, Al Brooks talks about the discipline of looking for small clues in an eye. The candles represent a mathematical construct that can be analyzed visually and executed against. If you think about a high-end PC with Qty (2) 4K monitors, giving yourself more data and charts to look at, Al instead concentrates on the candles and perhaps a SMA.
3. Linda Raschke and her husband Damon Pavlatos are worth learning from. Linda verbally tells you her self-discipline actions as she calls them out while the trading day prep begins, and then during RTH. Once in awhile they will have a paid trial day and you can follow them on Twitter.
There are others I follow but I believe for anyone new it's best if you can latch on to better traders as early as possible.
Not overtrading is always a struggle.
Getting to positive expectancy is more from avoiding and minimizing losses + learning from how to let winners run. Verniman is the one to follow and if you like what he does just try him for a few days, hopefully when there is big volatility. I love watching Verniman's trades on high ATR days.
Let's check back in 3 months to see how we did during the next wave of huge volatility in the ES and other liquid products.
Appreciate this thoughtful and kind response! Thank you
I started with Al Brooks' first book Trading Price Action Trends and I got about halfway through it before I set it aside. Mye experience and experience I've heard from others who have tried to read through his books is that their structure makes them a difficult learning tool. HE writes them less as structured textbook and more as a stream of consciousness.
Let me clear this is not a dig at his mastery of price action down to the tick, it's just difficult text to work through. Do you have any tips/ tricks on how to work through his book? I think it also worth the time and money to purchase his trading program - albeit I am usually skeptical of courses being sold.
Overtrading is always a struggle. I am trying to limit myself with the following rules through the day:
Stop trading after 2 back-to-back losses
Scratch trades don't count as a loss
Take a 15-minute break after a loss
No more than 3 trades a day
That being said - typing out the list is exceptionally easier than enacting them in real time.
I appreciate any additional thoughtful feedback! Thank you!
I am prone to revenge trading - the 15 minute breaks have been helpful to just catch my breath after loss.
You think 3 trades a day as a hard limit is not enough? My logic around the three number is that during my daily reviews after the trading sessions i go through the day and make a count of all the available A+ setup that fall within my trading strategy and my risk parameters and the average is anywhere from 5-8 daily.
I'm trying to be thoughtful about taking small wins and not trying to swing for the fences every trading session. There's been several days where I'm up on the day and just continue to trade and end of giving away all those profits due to overtrading/ thinking i see an opportunity for a trade that may not actually be there.
I can't see 30 unique executions of the two-legged strategy I'm trying to trade over the course of a single trading day. Perhaps a smaller tick target may have 30 opportunities over the course of the day.
Another equally hard part is becoming regularly comfortable with putting risk on the table and accepting the probabilistic nature of the trading game. I'm sure i could be more aggressive with the trades I take, but I don't have my edge defined yet so i lack the confidence to throw more trades on.
Hey, first congrats on trying to become a trader, its not easy! One of the reasons that trading is not easy is because it triggers responses in our brain that are pre-wired and causes us to act in ways we do not control- i.e. revenge trading, FOMO. We have to learn to manage those processes first before you can complete the task above.
If you were gonna go skydiving, would you pack the chute on the plane? Or would you do it methodically and purposefully on the ground? So, imo, your plan needs to deal with the triggers WE ALL get when we trade, manage those then work to your strategy. Your process will work itself out once you can manage (not control) your emotional part of your self (ie the discipline). For me, managing the emotional side of trading is the factor that I work on daily in conjunction and as a part of my routine.
I discovered a Trader Psychologist on youtube name Randee Howell that has some very insightful videos you may like (or need to see). Here is the link
I hope that helps you out and gets you to a long trading career!
