Overhauled my intra-day trade plan last weekend. The main changes are in the number of pairs and TFs monitored. Along the way this is something I've vacillated on quite a bit - do I trade 1 x pair on multiple TFs, or 2 x pairs on a set number of TFs, or 4 x pairs? etc etc etc. There's never been an easy answer to these questions because the self-learning process in trading is quite fluid. It's also difficult to accept one particular way of trading when so many variants (even in SD) present themselves as price moves between supply and demand. Balance is also an important consideration - how to balance the number of entries, trade management etc with the very real consideration of how much time do I want to spend at the screens. And in many respects the most important question of all needs factoring in, How do I shape the entire process for maximum efficiency?
A lot, in fact most, of my losses have come from trading somewhere in between the supply and demand curve. It's mainly chop - and almost exclusively inside price ranges. This was something I realised a long time ago but was still learning a lot of new stuff and basically overlooked the fact. When I eventually gave the problem a bit more consideration I needed to couch the solution in the requirement that I wanted to take at least one trade per day. This was actually the most important thing, and so at that time I elected to work on just 1 x pair but with very low TFs - sometimes M1. What I ended up learning about M1, however, is that it can still take an entire day before the market expands enough to present an ideal setup. And with each passing second making me increasingly vulnerable to taking a boredom trade I realised I had to find a better solution.
I'm now only trading M5 charts intra-day, but lots of them, and only one particular set up type. The challenge going forward is to build an efficient and automated process that will capture these ideal setups and alert me. I will still trade them manually but would rather the machine do the watching (although I don't advocate newbies not doing the bum-on-seat time). The SD indicator is still an invaluable tool, and although I paid a programmer a few months ago to make some changes, it may now be time to pay for some more. Of course any process change needs to feed into the daily routine, which this week has seen significant improvement. There's been much less time at the screen, and a more efficient use instead of just an hour or two during the day to assess levels and move alerts instead of the eighteen-hours eye-peeling that has been so much of a feature these past last six years.
A lot, in fact most, of my losses have come from trading somewhere in between the supply and demand curve. It's mainly chop - and almost exclusively inside price ranges. This was something I realised a long time ago but was still learning a lot of new stuff and basically overlooked the fact. When I eventually gave the problem a bit more consideration I needed to couch the solution in the requirement that I wanted to take at least one trade per day. This was actually the most important thing, and so at that time I elected to work on just 1 x pair but with very low TFs - sometimes M1. What I ended up learning about M1, however, is that it can still take an entire day before the market expands enough to present an ideal setup. And with each passing second making me increasingly vulnerable to taking a boredom trade I realised I had to find a better solution.
I'm now only trading M5 charts intra-day, but lots of them, and only one particular set up type. The challenge going forward is to build an efficient and automated process that will capture these ideal setups and alert me. I will still trade them manually but would rather the machine do the watching (although I don't advocate newbies not doing the bum-on-seat time). The SD indicator is still an invaluable tool, and although I paid a programmer a few months ago to make some changes, it may now be time to pay for some more. Of course any process change needs to feed into the daily routine, which this week has seen significant improvement. There's been much less time at the screen, and a more efficient use instead of just an hour or two during the day to assess levels and move alerts instead of the eighteen-hours eye-peeling that has been so much of a feature these past last six years.
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What is the setup you are now focusing on?
