shortorlong
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nicely called, currently I am short and 7 points out, I traded on what looked like a MACD cross. Still winging it.
nicely called, currently I am short and 7 points out, I traded on what looked like a MACD cross. Still winging it.
firewalker99
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nicely called, currently I am short and 7 points out, I traded on what looked like a MACD cross. Still winging it.
I don't know anything about your experience, strategy, style or whatsoever so it's difficult to comment on your trades let alone give you some advice. But I do think that opening a journal here would be beneficial if you ask for direct advice on direct situations... just a suggestion.
shortorlong
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Yeah, maybe I should start a journal, I have resisted so far, as it might force me to be accountable for my own disasters
I am learning slowly, through reading yours and others posts, (which I appreciate very much), and of course doing battle every day with the market.
Right now I favour watching for MACD crossovers to indicate when to trade, on the minute chart. Of course this is why I ended up short too early today. When that trade went wrong straight away, I just spent the rest of the day scalping. Other days the MACD crossover early in the day has been great (in retrospect) but not today. I am thinking now that I will wait for the stochs and the MACD crossover to emphatically indicate a trade. The only trouble with that is I have to wait! when I have a feeling the market might do something just looking at the price. Newbie stuff I know.
.
firewalker99
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Well not much for me to comment on here, except...
-> is scalping part of your plan?
-> would you have scalped for the rest of the day if your first trade was a profitable one instead of a losing one?
-> you "think" you will wait for stocs/macd crossover... is this something you backtested, gained confidence in?
-> have you examined your feelings and compared them during papertrading/real trading? trading shouldn't involve feelings about what the market is about to do... trading is about following basic rules. Rules written down. All you need to do is act when the signals occur. Trading is actually pretty easy if you look it at that way. The problem is discipline. And I definitely won't brag about it because I suffered a lot from it too.
cshieldsx
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shortorlong, you appear to be around the same experience as me, and I believe that to gain very good foundations on which to trade, you should have a very good understanding of price action/volume/support+resistance. With this good knowledge you should be able to trade on just that, with help of indicators. When I first started trading I based too much on my indicators and not enough on actual S+R levels, which I think is a bad idea as indicators give false signals way too much. Even lengthy combinations of indicators get it wrong. I tend to use indicators just to confirm what price action has already told me. What you reckon ?
Yeh some of the sb's do end of year bets but the spread is a bit silly ...more than usual and anyway ......it might be worth waiting to see how this pullback plays out before considering long term bet. As it happens you can get Dec bet (almost end of year) for "reasonable ?" spread with cantorindex...
All the best
firewalker99
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firewalker99
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IB raising margins (again)
The margin requirement for FTSE (Z) has gone from 1313 requirement to 3750 !! That's almost three times as much... but apart from a handful of wide range days we haven't seen anything out of the ordinary.
Are they expecting something unusual to happen?!
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/marginRequirements/margin_amer.php?ib_entity=uk
The margin requirement for FTSE (Z) has gone from 1313 requirement to 3750 !! That's almost three times as much... but apart from a handful of wide range days we haven't seen anything out of the ordinary.
Are they expecting something unusual to happen?!
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/marginRequirements/margin_amer.php?ib_entity=uk
shortorlong
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sorry csheildsx, I read your post but forgot to reply at the time. I totally agree about the indicators. On their own they invariably give bad signal. Support and resistance I find difficult to identify, except when I enter a trade and then following some to-ing and frow-ing realise that I have just bet that a key support or resistance will be breached
another problem - I don't have volume info from my spread bet company.At advfn where I watch the DOW chart, the DOW has volume info but the FTSE does not. I'm sure the volume info can be purchased somewhere.. but I have noticed that the FTSE and the futures instrument are not as closely correlated as the DOW, (when the DOW goes up the relevant instrument goes up etc) this does not seem to happen with the ftse (after extensive one day of study
) .. so when trading short term, support, resistance and volume might be less useful??shortorlong
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this news is probably responsible for the gap up?:
Bush to announce sub-prime plan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6971746.stm
I want to go long, but want FTSE to fall this morning first
Bush to announce sub-prime plan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6971746.stm
I want to go long, but want FTSE to fall this morning first
catracho
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seems like a good reason to go short on the rally as long as key levels not broken to upside..FTSE 6400 ish..Dow 13450 ish,- must mean the situation is WORSE than people thought - most times govts get involved in bailing out companies, peope it will fail
shortorlong
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I guess when the plan is revealed markets will plunge, but until then the markets should go up ... pfff . pure conjecture on my part. ...
One good thing ... I have resisted a trade this morning .. although maybe I should have gone short for the gap fill .. but too late now probably..
No ftse trade today dithered whethen it was only up a bit and now it's long gone....
But .... there is a dead cert short coming next week from here on ... more likely next early next week - unless dow buckles ......:cheesy:
Point is those 10pts will be easily recouped imho
shortorlong
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well I got sucked into a short this morning, which offered 18 points, I didn't take it and of course my break even stop got hit. grrr
then I waited for the rise to peter out and went short again, tightened my stop as much as possible when I was just in profit (I couldn't shake of my belief the ftse was going to go up)
so I got stopped out for -3 points grrr again
then I went long at 6241 .. but it started to look weak and I closed for +3 hmmph!
then I went long again a 6255 and closed for +11 I was determined not to end up even again after being again offered 18 points
then I went long again ,, I got sucked in to a strong move up in which I thought I could nick a few points .. that's all I wanted! .. I closed for +1
so + 12 so far ..but I am staying out until Bernanke start talking things up at 3PM .. then Bush .. I don't know maybe I'll stay out until then ...
shortorlong
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let's never talk about the 31st August again .. I gave back two weeks profit .. money management!! the DOW .. stop loss .. the ignoring of..
As for the FTSE today I feel quite bearish .. The Nikkei fell from the open ended 100 points down .. I read something from the FT about banks becoming more 'frenetic' :
http://www.advfn.com/news_Thomson-Financial-UK-at-a-glance-share-guide_22111469.html
"Cost of borrowing money for three months in the London interbank market rose
to 6.74 pct, its highest since December 1998, amid signs that some banks are
scrambling to raise funding in an increasingly frenetic manner - FT"
but I will be looking to my stochastic 39 1 16 to give me a clue when to trade .. unfortunately I want to go short .. the stochastic on the minute chart are limit down . meaning I might have to wait until they oscillate all the way up before I take a signal
As for the FTSE today I feel quite bearish .. The Nikkei fell from the open ended 100 points down .. I read something from the FT about banks becoming more 'frenetic' :
http://www.advfn.com/news_Thomson-Financial-UK-at-a-glance-share-guide_22111469.html
"Cost of borrowing money for three months in the London interbank market rose
to 6.74 pct, its highest since December 1998, amid signs that some banks are
scrambling to raise funding in an increasingly frenetic manner - FT"
but I will be looking to my stochastic 39 1 16 to give me a clue when to trade .. unfortunately I want to go short .. the stochastic on the minute chart are limit down . meaning I might have to wait until they oscillate all the way up before I take a signal
firewalker99
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trading like in your previous post of the 31st August is a recipe for disaster...
also, you have not determined in advance when to trade and you are just trading off gut feeling is my impression. Another recipe for disaster.
On top of that you already have made an opinion on what you want to do, rather than let the market tell you what's it's going to do and you are looking for reasons to confirm your bias outside of the chart. All of this has little or nothing to do with market reality...
shortorlong
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agreed .. but I have not the foggiest idea how to go about determining when to trade other than to look at the chart and say .. "it looks like it is doing this" .. I have had some good scalps by trading on stochastics and MACDs ..
how do you do it Firewalker?
firewalker99
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I've studied charts for over thousands of hours, each day over and over again until my eyes hurt
If you want to trade off something more consistent than just "looks like it's going to do this" you'll need to put in lots and lots and lots (and more) time & effort.
Eventually you'll start to find something. If you don't find something, you can always look around the internet or this board which has some systems outlined. You can choose do develop a system from scratch or adopt somebody else's. Once you've got something that you think yields the possibility of profit you start to test it thorougly. Backtesting, papertrading, replaying,... It takes time, patience and most people don't have that honestly.
I didn't say stochastics or MACD couldn't work. If that's your thing, well than perhaps you could try to build something out of that. But trading off a hunch or gut feeling or bias towards a certain direction is screwing yourself.
And trust me, if you are relying on scalps August 31 will repeat itself sooner than you think.
