Plan the Trade

Bad stretch of bad pa

Why wont it let me revert back to June NQ?

Everytime i apply it, it chooses the September contract and like, nothing is really happening!

The ol 123s have gone awol this week.

Uncheck auto rollover

Flattened for a small loss when X taken out

I found this very stressful yesterday;

I went long yesterday, in my Spreadbet account, using the 400Trades chart, at Tuesdays Gap close (red) line (7147) and placed my stoploss 10 points (equiv 40ticks) lower, under the blue LOD extreme, (which was also under the whole general Demand zone (large red rectangle);



This level was the obvious reversal zone, for returning to the uptrend and thus targeting fresh highs. In EW terms too, the count wouldn't expect the last sig HL to be broken, unless potential trend change. What an awesome R:R, i thought...

The trade went almost instantly into a healthy gain, about 14 odd points and made a fresh HH in the process. I decided to move my stoploss up to just under the low, a risk now, of merely 3 points (inc the 1point spread). My entry was exactly where a likely retest level was, so stoploss to BE would have seen the risk of being nicked exactly at the turn.

This proved to be my mistake. When trading with points and thus much larger set-ups, this should have resulted in the usual like for like BE+1, or i should have left my risk on the table as the existing Demand zone was still valid.

No sooner was i stopped out, PA turned and went North pronto. The green arrow is what i was expecting and now look at the sodding thing!

That was the market doing what it does best, but here's the thing, with Futures those kind of things happen every few minutes and you simply curse that you missed a winner and look for the next one, but with SB's that was the one trade of the day and thus, i found it quite stressful. So much so, that watching it reach +40 (points) without me, i simply had to switch it all off including my demo!

My cap was well and truly doffed!

The psychology being in a trade is so different to one of merely watching. The original idea was exactly the same - still valid and yet because it had shown a nice profit, your thought process alters to one of wanting to remove risk!

It's obvious that having real money involved is a far cry from demo, but i swear that the fact that trades come thick and fast and Futures is all about grabbing and accumulating... a very different approach to trying larger scales and SB's.

The two different approaches clash wildly and thus i think i will concentrate fully on Futures again now...

Thanks H, done ..... and just in time to witness a 120 tick candle

Wtf?!)

+1 and +1 ARGH, 2nd was +12 at one point.

I'm happy with the good trades that I did take. The two bad trades that I took were either not respecting the wave nature of the market or trying to pick the bottom with a 15 stop loss. If I moved back to break even when the market made a new low, then I wouldn't have lost on the trade. Or if my stop was 20 or also if my stop was less then I would have lost less. I'm writing this so I am aware of this in the future. In other words -- both trades were good -- the money management was either not loose enough or too tight or not fast enough.

What are your stops, guys -- 12, 15, or 20 or swin L/H?

Wow! That is some serious dumping of stock;



Ygr - i'm on 10 tick stop.

I'm not getting a lot of entry opportunities today ... lots of nooks and crannies ... few decent pullbacks ...

Yip!, buggered if I could get anything meaningful using 123s, just not enough pullback.

Got one.

WOW these bars are printing FAST, something is going on!

I also noticed it sped up

I practiced on NAS100 again today and got burned again ... althought it was a difficult day ... I decided to call the end at -10 ... I must say it is valuable to post the charts ... even though it sometimes looks like a warzone ... but when i look at my charts, especially the next day, I see things more clearly and learn from them much more objectively than otherwise ...

Food for thought.... when in a decent trend and 123s not playing ball, how about looking for a retrace near a 20ema then entering (red lines) when price starts to move with the trend. Would need to be stop orders rather than limit orders though. Stop loss ideally above the last swing high/low.

That is how I trade the 5 min charts on Forex pairs ... I wait for Daily chart direction, then a Hour chart pullback and when it starts to turn in the direction of the Daily, I drop to the 5 minute chart and use the 21sma as a guideline.

I give the SL more room though because I expect a Hour chart impact wave and take profit at 1:2 risk/reward ratio.

Works well during the London session especially.

That's interesting unis it's quite like a strat which I used on forex when there was more volatility, I struggle now with it on currencies to be honest.
How many trades a day or week do you get on average? which currencies do you look at?, I was just looking at EU AU UJ as spreads decent on spreadbets.

I chose 1 or 2 pairs with strong daily trend (EU and UJ usually) and only watch them, no more .... to avoid analysis paralysis ... I usually get at least 1 trade opportunity in one of the pairs during an average London session ... sometimes both ... and I use the 3 rules of Phantom of the Pits .... makes a huge difference to my risk/reward ratio and my "how much I win when I win"/"how much I lose when I lose" ratio.

It used to work quite well but since I have been practicing price action the way Mr D does it, it is going MUCH better .. there is for sure a trend in every time frame (not sure who said that) so the better one can utilize and time that trend the better it works.