Give Up ?

[fibonelli]

Hi Advfn,

Here's trading plan template that was kindly created by "timsk".
T2W Day Trading & Forex Community

In terms of a trading method, I would recommend that you focus on Support (Demand) and Resistance (Supply), Price Action and Trendlines.

Oh and finally, please stay away from sub 1hr timeframes.

 

[JTrader]

Advfn,

You should also spend some time on your system devoted in determining when NOT to trade as well as when to trade.
I only became profitable when I learned to sit on my hands in choppy markets and also by not trying to catch all of a move. Very often I would make a profitable trade and close it - to find the market continuing - so I'd jump back in again and subsequently give up a chunk of those profits.

Very true.

Wait fore setups that have the potential to offer a good reward. i.e. with a long way to S/R.
When price is congested in tight ranges - My advice - stay clear, and wait for some expansion.

There is nothing worse than giving back the mornings profits in the afternoon......

Knowing when not to trade is part of becoming a profitable trader. The no.1 rule of trading is CAPITAL PRESERVATION. Every trader learns this the hard way.
Sure, you might miss some profit opportunities along the way, but if you wait for idealish setups, and they still lose, which does happen from time to time, you will at least know that you were following a disciplined plan and did all you could by maximising your chances of success.

 

[accendotraders]

Psychology of Trading

Very true.

Wait fore setups that have the potential to offer a good reward. i.e. with a long way to S/R.
When price is congested in tight ranges - My advice - stay clear, and wait for some expansion.

There is nothing worse than giving back the mornings profits in the afternoon......

Knowing when not to trade is part of becoming a profitable trader. The no.1 rule of trading is CAPITAL PRESERVATION. Every trader learns this the hard way.
Sure, you might miss some profit opportunities along the way, but if you wait for idealish setups, and they still lose, which does happen from time to time, you will at least know that you were following a disciplined plan and did all you could by maximising your chances of success.

I soooo believe in the importance of designing your own trade plan. A good trade is one entered and exited based upon rules - regardless of the outcome. However, it's also importance to master your emotions. Yes, a trade plan can help that but you have to dig deeper than that. It does seem that trading might have become and addiction for or perhaps a competition. You vs. the market. Problem is, is those type of competitions, the market always wins.

You've received a ton of great advice here - take time read, review, reflect before you invest another dime. Or you could just mail me a check - at least one of us will be happy :cheesy::cheesy:

 

[JTrader]

90% fail. The odds are firmly against any of us succeeding at trading.

Trading is far from simple. Poor implementation of a near perfect trading plan can result in heavy losses.

Many new and old T2W & other trading forum members talk as if they are highly successful high flying traders to whom success came easy.
Sadly, regarding profitability, i think many members are lying, or kidding themselves, or both.

Trading is not simple. It is a mine field.

In fact, i reckon that for every 3 T2W members who claims to be consistently profitable at trading, only 1 will be. The markets are a tough place to try and earn a crust.

 

[oiltanker]

so heres the thing. if its all about following a system 100% why do automated EA's not work ? perhaps some kind of automated system would suit me better

yes i use automated. its not holy grail but what it does do is remove the human trading errors which for me was a lot of it. I use it on semi automatic ie you can set automated on confirm which means all the thinking is done you just have to confirm the order. with a sound alarm you don't have to watch the screen.

24hr automated can quickly burn an account. In my book there is no 24 hour automated that can deal with three different markets london usa and asian as they have different characteristics.

day trading for me is about trading the day not part of it like 5mins. that is 5m trading. Day trading is where one looks at the daily candle and thinks i would be happy with the body of pips between the open and close. so on day trading a max of say three trades should cover the day trend. it could be as simple as drawing a line on the open and with a filter buying when above and selling underneath. there will be times when it chops about others when it sails through. I have also tried it with reasonable success on 1 hour candles. ie just trading the trend of the 1 hr candle. if its above the open buy below sell. with a filter its do-able if a bit freaky because in effect one is not using TA but playing binary betting [with a smaller stop loss ].

my aim is one trade a day. zigzags are helpful to spot a direction.

 

[wouste]

In fact, i reckon that for every 3 T2W members who claims to be consistently profitable at trading, only 1 will be. The markets are a tough place to try and earn a crust.

That's true there ain't allot of traders out there that are consistently profitable..

 

[advfntrader]

oiltanker - I assume this strategy requires larger stops - how wide do you make them ?

 

[oiltanker]

oiltanker - I assume this strategy requires larger stops - how wide do you make them ?

stops are related to the filter and the time frame of the trigger chart. i use 5 mins charts as trigger charts. so stops are about 20pts. bigger time frame bigger stops

each person has their own style. if its day trading then i just draw a line from day open and using a filter to trigger the trade enter if above or below and then leave it with a tp and hope the first retrace doesn't take me out. if it does it just enter again on the next trigger. what i do find if you're right it goes your way pretty quick. if it doesn't it might mean there is news pending or something like that to make it range. but even then you can normally get out with a small loss. The big thing is to then forget it. Greed wants us to try to catch every pip from every minor move up and down. 20 trades a day and all that. we've all been there. all i want is most of the daily bar between open and close or the 'meat of the daily trend or until my tp is taken out. i would trade the weekly bar but i don't want to hold overnight.

if you want a few sensible trading videos try hector trading 3 sma trading system. he has a blog but also a channel on ytube. i don't actually trade with 3 sma but its much saner than a lot of systems i've seen. going through his vids is worth a go. he does a course but i've never done it because you can work out what he does from the vids. although the first part of the course is free. it was a system with 'no indicators' a trader taught him.

search for Yaguex

or with pivot points try matt on his ytube channel. ignore the last vid posted as that is not him but try going through a few pages of his vids. like hector he has stopped posting but matt make sense on the pivots which is a no brain simple system [i like those binary type yes no styles].

search for stinkystox

 

[HaloTrader]

Stochastics are good if you use them to identify oversold situations in a strong uptrend. For example EMA slope up on hourly and stochastics oversold on 15-minute... buy

 

[blancspa]

I would suggest to trade on a longer TF

 

[Chorlton]

I've been on holiday for 10 days so that was an enforced break. I'm using ODL at only 50p per point to limit the risk.

my problem has always been I have no set rules. I've tried a lot of systems but all of them have some discretionary element, eg. do X&Y but its up to you about Z. also I am letting losses run and not using a set % stop.

looing back if I'd used a set % stop and let profits run I would have still been in the game !

Whether you trade mechanically or discretionary you MUST have rules which to follow. Without them you are in essence gambling. You acknowledge this point in your post yet you have continued to trade. Consequently, in the short-term STOP NOW !!!


Ref These Systems that you have tried. How do YOU know that they offer a positive expectancy (will make money in the long-run) ? I'm guessing you don't, so don't follow them.

You don't need to use a discretionary element when trading if you don't want to. All you need to do is develop some rules and follow them in a strict manner. The problem is that to develop these ideas you need IMO either (i) many hours of screen time watching price movements so as to understand how a stock moves or (ii) the ability to backtest ideas. Although the preferred method is normally (i), it is definately possible to achieve a similar result using (ii).

However, in the first instance I would go back to basics. Understand Price movements and how to apply appropriate Money Management rules and then move forward from there....

Chorlton