I`ve swithed to short times as well but without much success . In fact if i`m honest-being cut to ribbons in the last fortnight. Obviously doesn`t suit so back to the drawing board. I was trading off 1 hr charts with 5 min as checker.
Markets being choppy and pretty hard right now is by no means merely a subjective impression, its fully quantifiable.
Some of you may not have seen this here:
Choppiest Trading Environment in 50 years
That said, the thing that always, always, always saves me is not being particularly clever, it's one thing, and one thing only:
Letting my winners ride, and keeping my losses small.
The EUR/USD has a daily range right now of a couple of hundred pips.
Now, go on down to a 1 minute time frame, choose entries where you lose ca 10 pips when you lose, and make ca 30 when you're right.
With an ATR of over 200 pips at the moment it IS possible to do that !
You will have lots of scratches, and you will sit through lots of wiggles, but for that you can always switch to a higher time frame.
“Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end.
It was the change in my own attitude toward the game that was of supreme importance to me. It taught me, little by little, the essential difference between betting on fluctuations and anticipating inevitable advances and declines, between gambling and speculating.
I think it was a long step forward in my trading education when I realized at last that when old Mr. Partridge kept on telling the other customers, "Well, you know this is a bull market!" he really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.
And right here let me say one thing: After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this:
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
It is no trick at all to be right on the market.
You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets.
I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit.
And their experience invariably matched mine:
They made no real money out of it.
Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn.
But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.
It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance."
Jesse Livermore
How absolutely true !
Well, for us right now, sitting tight means holding on through wiggles and scratches and losses until you can bank a winner that is at least three times as big as your losers.
And again, 10 pip stop loss, 30 pip target, IS doable in a market with over 200 pip movements at this time.
And then you WILL be OK !
Good luck !!!
