Firewalker's Journey: A path of discovery in search for enlightenment

First of all, let me state that the main purpose of opening my own journal is to learn stuff. Learn by reading and understanding what others think or would have done in the situations I will present. I have been studying quite a lot and trying hard and although I have been at times successful, I'm not at all able to produce consistently profitable results.

My trading has improved because I'm sticking to the plan and left out the impulsive trades... but perhaps the plan just isn't good enough. I'm not expecting to have a 70% ratio of good trades, but something has gone wrong and I'm in need of someone who will guide me back to the right path.

I hope the members of this forum can help me back on track.
I don't expect anyone to write fully detailed analysis of every chart I post, but if they're willing to, please do.

Please let me know if I need to improve my "journalistic qualities" or if you have any feedback whatsoever.

I won't be doing this each day, but let me begin be describing what I do first.
Apart from checking out the news releases, I try to get a picture of what happened last month, last week, last day... Then I visualize what could happen today and try to establish where I'd like to be and what could be the "right" side of the market.

i'm trading futures on the DAX (papertrading for the moment).

Attached two charts:

The first one without notations, the second with my comments.

Although this one is a profitable trade, I'm not happy as I'm not really understanding the principles that make the price go up from 5700 on modest volume...

this one for example has me totally screwed up...

it breaks the down move, goes up - although on modest volume (12:30-13:15) - than volume drops off until about 14:00. In my eyes, a small retracement could happen but no lower than perhaps around 5710... Instead just minutes before 1500 it breaks down fast and (remains to be seen) a selling climax? I'm not sure where the sudden move came from, no news was released...

Re the first column on your chart, were these the extent of the tests of 5722.50? Or were there additional tests prior to the left edge?

no, at 8 o' clock the DAX opened... at 9 volume pumps up because other European exchanges open...but I like the DAX becaused you can get "a glimpse" of what's about to happen (sometimes)

Do you find 50-60% low? I'm not aiming at specific target, but personally I'd be happy with a 60% win rate, because for the moment it's nowhere near that.

I do think that the % matters less if you take in account the risk:reward ratio. Somebody who uses a risk:reward of 1:5 can be happy with 30% good trades in my opinion, if and if losses are cut short. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm only hear to learn. And learning is still what I have to do a lot.

I try to enter a trade with three contracts. Of course it depends on the volatility of the moment and the probability of my entry. Then I place one fixed target at 2 times the ATR, another at 3 times and the last one I only exit when I see signs indicating the end of the move. From the moment my first one reaches it's target, I change the remainder stop at breakeven.

Does this seem too conservative?

I've experienced I've often lost a trade because my stop was too tight. How do you guys place a stop? A mental stop? A fixed stop? I use the average true range and depending on how high it is, I buy less contracts. If ATR is low, I buy more. Lately I've not been buying a lot because I've experienced quite a bit of losses so it's back to papertrading for me