Plan the Trade

Providing tons of opportunities

Well said ... ... excellent advice ... especially the recording, I have never been able to keep a trading journal very well ... am going to try the recording thing for sure ... and I must say that analyzing my old trade has become a habit that adds a LOT of value ... I got this advice via 60minuteman's posts (his experiment in consistency is legend).

https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...5#post11157045

MY GREATEST “AHA!” MOMENT THAT TURNED ME INTO A PROFITABLE TRADER

Despite having come up with a complete trading strategy, I kept on losing money consistently for several years. At some point, I faced reality and decided to take a break and re-read some of my favorite trading books.
In the book Momentum Masters, two particular quotes really caught my attention:
“It is post-analysis that turned my trading around early in my career” – Mark Minervini

“I believe that if struggling traders spent as much time studying their trades as they did their charts, then they would be way better off” – Mark Ritchie II

Reviewing my past trades was something I had always neglected up until that point. So since nothing else was working and I was stuck, I decided to take the plunge, and take the time required to face the music and go through something like my past 500+ trades.
I took me almost 2 months… but this was my biggest personal breakthrough, the tipping point between losing and making money consistently:
I discovered that by blindly following my rules, I would have made an astonishing 40% and 75% return in the last 2 years.
So instead of losing money for 2 years in a row, just by following religiously my set of rules, I would have made a mind-boggling 145% return.
The implications of that discovery were absolutely life-changing to me. The key was not anymore to try to make money. The key was simply to strictly follow my rules, regardless of the outcome of any single trade. The focus was not on the money anymore. The focus was on having the utmost discipline to follow my rules.
The very meaning of “good” and “bad” trade had completely shifted. A good trade was not a trade where I made money anymore, but a trade were I followed my plan perfectly. A bad trade was now a trade where I violated my rules.
The short-term outcome of whether my last trade was profitable or not – had no more importance anymore. I had complete confidence in my strategy. I knew that by the end of the year, given the fact that the odds were in my favor, I would have made money.

4 grabs of 11ticks and a 2tick loss . . . .

Well, finally broke to the down side . . .

Ended at -22 ... made some mistakes early on so I turned the session into a consistency excercise to see if I can recover ... made more mistakes but just kept on and on to practice consistency and to make my emotional recovery time quicker ... must be no emotions, just wait for a setup and take it and if make a mistake or loss, rinse and repeat ... ended well with a bonus trade of +54 that took me to -11 ... then one more mistake with a trade that turned around quickly and I missed it, a railway bar ... gave myself 2 more good setups then done ... turned out to be two +1's ... so now I am done.

Apart from Nik and Harold, has anyone traded futures longer than 2+years here at the Factory?

EDIT: I guess I should add the obvious word "Live"

I believe Dutchy Daxy has and also Mr. Pip

Edit: Also Rocky has but I don't think he is active on FF anymore

you'd have more luck asking this at elitetrader or futures io.

but i think dutchy is one of those guys.. he's in his own little world posting like a madman lol. i don't know know how he does it day in day out

dont' worry man, in another 2 years, we'd be saying yes (hopefully without going broke, divorced, and homeless)

Yeah.. we shall get there for sure (with a little bit of group therapy) I am just looking for some success stories to transition from spot to futures.

Futures.io is quite lightweight in substance and elitetrader is just another swamp with members frequently shitting on each other. Just looking for something more at the professional level and not hobby traders like us wannabes lol

My research is focussed on the effects of actual traded volume on price movement. I could not find any with # of trades (but too soon to make any firm conclusion). Imo, #of trades is just another number like price itself...erratic similar to "tick volume" in spot. There has to be some way to make meaningfull sense of big volumes and how they are sliced and diced by algos. I am trying to avoid market profile and all those types of fanciful techniques. Bottom line: NQ is very hard to trade manually with tight stops so either a very large capital with a 100 tick stop or play the RR math like Harold and run with whatever we can get from her. I am confident I can get 4 or 5 10 tick consecutive wins with ease but math will spit on me eventually into negative expectancy!
My style in spot will simply not work in futures as I am a "trade small trade often" via scale in and scale out. With hedging in different account also being illegal, this will force me to scratch and develop something completely new. Anyways, just rambling here :-(

You might check Mr Pip Ratios and Harmonics looking for rotation bars around the 61.8 fib retracement and reversals at ratio completions . . . He has lots of live videos recorded.
Frankly, H's win rate is worth considering. And then reconsidering. Lol
Otherwise, i suppose most successful futures traders dont have time to invest in others.

Lots of guys out there in futures selling their super duper special never lose indicators. : )



Edit: seems like one of Mr Pips recent charts from Oct 4th he is up some 270ish pips with about 50contracts in the trade lol. Not at all a scalping style

Hey vee I laid out the game plan it's about making 500 to 1000 a day for 4 hours total per week give it a real shot then decide

That's right "D" get paid like a New York lawyer

Less headaches better benefits

I cannot doubt your game plan. It is sensible and logical...just trying to find any success stories here trying it out :-

Trying to find futures trading success on a forex forum is a rare thing. A few guys trade dow,dax with forex brokers so they don't count other than here or dutchy dax thread that's it

this is like "where's your TE?" kind of question lol

we're all millionaires here bro..

In Harold's defense, he has the balls to do live stream.. so no doubts there about his performance. I just doubt how successful others can be with his simplistic view of trading pullbacks. Like anything else, it is a SKILL with discipline to execute :-

EDIT: And dont you dare give tips on how FF should hook up TE with futures brokers lol. I will quickly loose faith in all of them :-( With that said, some stats would be nice ;

here are some stats

most traders are net losers

there. now with that said, we all still get up in the morning, turn that monitor and trade. nothing's changed. except the weather

what's success in trading mean for you? 1 year 5 years? a decade ? how bout last 9 years net negative with 1 year to pull everything into positive?. stats are crap

1200 ticks...fucking hell

Everything is all mixed up.

1. Afternoons better than mornings.
2. Yesterday down 200 points then all the way back to net positive.
3. Down over 300 points today.

It's craziness at its best. Like the old GBP/JPY from 2008. I love it.