Everybody hurts...sometimes...

B

Black Swan

Can you remember the stage were you finally begin to get an edge/strat together, you follow it to the absolute letter (planning trades/trading the plan). For a couple of days you bag pips, then the next day you lose a couple of percent from your account.."but how, I followed the plan to the letter..?" Then the next day you have a losing day, not as bad as the previous, only 1%, but now the gains you made on the previous two are wiped out and you fear another losing day as that would completely blow apart the faith you had in the edge you thought you had, an *edge* that you've taken a month to get to grips with..You also realise it's going to take at least a week of trading to get back to where you were..you're going to need perhaps 4 days of straight wins to break even...5hit..

Ever done this; you trade off 10/15 min TFs, you have a great day, you take 6 trades, 4 winners 2 losses = 80 pips for the day. "That's it *grail* found! This time next year Rodney".. Then the next day you have 4 losses 2 winners, you give back your gains by losing 80 pips. You then look at what would have happened on day 2 if you'd traded using the same entry exit criteria and MM on a 1 hr TF. You'd have taken 2 trades, one loss of 50 pips one winner of 30 pips, only a twenty pip loss.."OK decision made, I'll move up a few TFs that'll sort it..!"

So you now trade off the 1 hr TFs, and guess what you have a 2 day losing streak, but you've taken 4 trades, 3 loss, 1 winner a loss over the 2 days of 60 pips but there's something different, you felt in control, despite the alerts flashing and all your indicators lining up screaming "trade" you didn't feel rushed, not that you were happy to give pips back to the market, but it somehow felt different to how you had traded off the 10/15 mins. Then it hits you, "what would it have been like trading off the original 10/15 mins?" You look and you see that you'd have taken ten trades off the 10/15, 7 losses 2 winners 1 breakeven,,"Fook, what a mess! Am I glad I moved away from that type of trading.." Then it hits you, a real Eureka moment in relation to trading, when the market is gyrating or stuck in a tight range, (which it does for the 70/80% of the time), you're best sitting on your hands because chasing it, engaging with it is a total waste of time, so if you do engage you're taking a much better probability shot than on the smaller TFs..

We're told to look after the money, but what about looking after your psyche, how emotionally (and at times physically) exhausted do you become if you take 4 losing 15 min TF trades (4 x 25 pip losses) in the morning session, realising you now may need 5 winners to have a decent winning day? Compare that to the *hurt* of taking one losing trade in the morning session for 40-50 pips and still feeling/believing that you can finish up for the day when NY opens.

If you trade FX off small TFs you need lightening reactions, you need the best/fastest hardware, you need close to zero spreads from the 'Autobahns' of this world, you need (genuine) NDD/ECN, you need to have a mindset that is crucially different from the normal retail trader, a mindest that has been honed to 'trader perfection', over years of proven success and mentorship from colleagues sitting next to you that regularly pull down mega salaries because they've proven their worth over the years. If that description doesn't fit you don't fight it, you can pick enough fights with the market where you may fight and live to fight another day, you'll never win trading as a normal retail trader if you trade off small TFs.
 
Oh I dunno about that. To each his own I say. Jankone seems to be doing alright over on FF.

Personally, I find it a lot more hurtful to be down over a couple of days on a couple of trades, and knowing I might not get another entry for a day or two, then being down in the morning on 4 trades, it's different for everyone.
 
Problem is, for every profitable 1 minute trader there are more than enough failed traders to push that quoted 90% to near enough 100%. Most will be grabbing one or two pips with a two pip spread and a 10-20 pip stop loss and wonder why they've have 10 wins, 2 losses and are majorly down on the day. I'm not a big R/R fan but R/R of £1 win to £20 loss is idiotic.
 
What is all this stuff about minutes & hours?

If you daytrade - why are timeframes even relevant?

Are people still trying to get some meaning from individual time splices of market action?

I think people should break out of the timeframe mentality. It leads towards not seeing the wood for the trees in my opinion. If timeframe is important, this surely means that individual bars are important as opposed to where sellers jumped in and where buyers jumped in.

If you daytrade & you use charts & you can see the significant moves on the day - why would it matter which timeframe you are viewing?

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Vertical lines are session break - globex-day-globex. Single best use for a chart - shows you what happened when you went to the toilet. Single worst use for a chart - using it to analyze ever bar of price action without considering the bigger picture.

Now - in terms of following a plan and getting skittish when it doesn't work. Consider that you need to follow a day trading plan for 20-30 days to even form an opinion on it, otherwise the sample size is too small. So - if someone is at this stage & when it goes bad, just think of it as something you need to do in order to refine your methods. Of course, if your 20-30 days of testing is with size that you can't really throw around - you are in deep doo-doo.
 

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I trade off a 5m TF, but rather than just dismiss BlackSwan's advice outright by saying its down to what each person is comfortable with blah blah blah, Im actually going to give it a go and trade using a 1hr chart.

But I just have one question, do you wait for the close of the 1hr bar/candle before you enter a trade?
 
Er, with the exception of the reference to Only Fools and Horses, your comment is very "Joe Ross", in the nicest possible way! :)
 
What is all this stuff about minutes & hours?

If you daytrade & you use charts & you can see the significant moves on the day - why would it matter which timeframe you are viewing?

Because of the stoploss distance involved?

For instance, using a signal bar of 1 hour but changing to a 3M bar for entry. The 3M bar entry can fail and I can close more times with less risk than I could on 60M. Yet the 60M tells me when I am in the important area for entry and whether I should go long or short.
 
DT, you're right re not needing TFs but for a newbie, they are likely to end up trading a lot more frequently as they see far too much going on in lower TFs.
 
. . . you'll never win trading as a normal retail trader if you trade off small TFs.
Hi BS,
I'm afraid I'm not sold on this argument either.
By implication, if a longer term timeframe is better in as much as there's a greater probability of success - then all of us ought to knock this trading lark on the head and become long term buy and hold investors. We all want to maximise profits in the quickest and easiest way possible. None of us are deliberately going to chose a harder route to consistent profitability - if there's an easier and more direct route that we can take. After all, none of us are masochists, right?

To the best of my knowledge, there's only anecdotal 'evidence' to suggest that the fast short term players aren't as successful (or lose more than) the slower longer term ones. Clearly, the nano second scalpers doing hundreds - if not thousands - of round turns each day are in a class of their own and need state of the art kit and the best feeds etc., etc. Leaving those peeps aside, I see no real reason why the typical (whatever that is) retail day trader doesn't stand the same chance of success as the typical retail swing or position trader. Each style has inherent characteristics, but I'm not aware of one having inherent advantages or disadvantages favouring the slower style in preference to the faster one. As always IMO, it's horses for courses, based on the style, character and objectives of the individual trader. Personally, I can't abide swing trading and, unsurprisingly, I'm lousy at it, and I take my hat off to those of you who are any good at it!
;)
Tim.
 
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SL - One of the aspects of journaling (as I was taught) was to keep a record of every trade. One of the key data points for every trade is max adverse excursion AKA how much the ****ing thing went against you.

In my opinion, this is a better way to refine your stops than setting it below a swing lowor the previous low of certain timeframes bars.

Intra-day - I can't see any difference between a 1,2,3,4,5,6,7... minute bars as they are all fairly granular and will show where buyers/sellers came in. Same for 300,400,500 tick bars - not really any difference on the ES as long as they are compressed enough.

Splitting a day into 1 hour bars would be no fun at all for someone like me who has a clean slate at the start of every day. Sure - I have an idea what levels I want to trade - lows and highs of prior days for instance but the biggest factor I use is the overnight action and the action so far in the day. I'd not trade at all if all I could see was the day split into 8.
 
I don't get why people even need to trade off small time frames. There is more than enough profit available for grabs on higher time frames, also the stress is much lighter
 
I don't get why people even need to trade off small time frames. There is more than enough profit available for grabs on higher time frames, also the stress is much lighter

It's how Tim said, we are all different. By using small TF's I keep my losses smaller. 60M
bars are great, and I use them when I can, but I only trade mornings and there are not, always, enough bars to give me the signal I need.
 
bars are great, and I use them when I can, but I only trade mornings and there are not, always, enough bars to give me the signal I need.
In your case Split' - would I be right in thinking you're referring to tapas bars.
:LOL:
 
I do understand why there is such a pre-disposition to dismiss the smaller time frames. Generally, most that have tried them and not found a way of making money from them find it easier to say that it simply can't be done rather than they cannot do it on those smaller time frames.

The story painted by the OP is indeed familiar and no one really tells you this when you start but, like I have posted elsewhere, the normal distribution of results within your trading edge should come as no suprprise, - if it does and this causes you ro lose confidence in it/yourself then you do not know your trading edge. Only if the actual results fall out of the normal typical/maximum extremes of this distribution should you worry about your trading edge. Of course I do understand that this is easier in theory as a consecutive losing run can lead to tinkering with the trading edge thus interfering with it's normal distribution and probability, like the moving t/f's described by the OP. (This is one of the reasons why I always advocate a high probability outcvome trading edge over say lower probability trading edges witha greater R;R required, particularly for newbies)

I would say that 75-80% of my trading is from a 1min trigger and I do not feel pressurised or indeed have lightning fast reflexes/reactions as the OP asserts is neccessary. I know in advance the areas at which I will seek a set-up (and do so on the smallest time frame that set-ups up) / the type of set-up I will trade and even on a 1min trigger, it is simply a case of awaiting these type of set-ups (that comrprise my trading edge) with patience and discipline.

4-5hrs on a 1min trigger is probably equal to 2days + on a 1hr trigger and the ability to limit the amount of time at the screens is in itself a plus, after all, I do this to have a better life than the opportunity cost of doing so would have given me, this includes time spent working !

Like with any t/f you have to filter out the noise and act only at the highest probability set-ups/circumstances - This is or should be your trading edge. What is probably true is that price action alone can be less reliable on the smaller t/f's than the higher time frames, and personally I have countered this by building my trading edge around the confluence of other tech phenomena/ time frames as well as price action itself. This waiting for the highest confluence based set-ups which is the very essence of my trading edge, still allows for profitable exploitation on a smaller t/f trigger with my trading edge.

To dismiss any t/f per say, is to miss the point:

You have to have a trading edge, you need to understand what a trading edge is, and crucially you have to know your trading edge - it's limitations and what it might typically and at it's extremes, expose you to. Then you have to have the patience and discipline to execute it with impunity, and this may take some time to develop...but you cannot know/will not know ehther what your trading edge did in backtesting and/or demo can be replicated by you in a live account.

G/L
 
Good debate guys, let's not get too hung up re. the timeframes I mentioned, I could have have used a 5 min TFs versus 3/4 HR TFs as a reference point. Also the overall point was not nec. re TFs in isolation but Mind and MM being potentially undermined by small TF selection, particularly for new/inexeprienced traders.

DT mentions a bigger picture being the issue and not a specific TF, surely you can only see the bigger picture the bigger the TF. Interesting point, when I traded the small TFs successfully it was *off*, (for example) 900-1800 tick charts, not time based (I know Tim and I have discussed the merits of this alternate to standard timeframes before). This would/could have the benefit of keeping me in relative small TF trades overnight within my rule based strat as the volume dropped off..

Anyhow, thanks all for chipping in so far..
 
I assume we're on Forex again. Forex market operates as a whole.

All anyone needs to figure out is the flow ...where is the money flowing from and to.

In all honesty...the 15m TF is the bollox...not too big not too small.

Pick the correct currencies and match them to time of day. Theres no point trying to trade eur and gbp in Asia session.

No I won't be showing anyone how to do this . Figure it out, it's not hard.

To anyone who says ....get to know One cross intimately....I say bollox...full of ****
 
"you'll never win trading as a normal retail trader if you trade off small TFs"

Moving up to bigger TF do not automatically guarantee consistent success, one needs much more than that.
 
I don't get why people even need to trade off small time frames. There is more than enough profit available for grabs on higher time frames, also the stress is much lighter

This is misleading advice, albeit probably well intentioned. Profit (or conversely loss) depends on the risk:reward you are employing regardless of t/f chosen as the trigger for entry/operation...and there are high probability trading opportunities on any t/f. As for the stress being lighter, this is subjective, the aim with a trading edge is to get to a position in it's execution where there is no stress....as Mark Douglas says, '...the distribution between winning and losing trades as a result of the trading edge setting-up is not known to use in advance...' so there is no point stressing over it, the stress comes when a flawed trading edge is employed and/or insufficient is known about the trading edge being employed, (as discussed in my previous post on this thread,) and/or the inconsistent application of the trading egde which may or may not be as a result of the first point causing a loss of confidence in it/one's self.

G/L
 
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