Swing trades

[piker]

Everyone hunts stops. God.
Trading is about identifying potential order flow.

so if you identify order flow you don't get shaken out of your trade, you stay the course? Before I used to enter with momentum and stops were rarely triggered, nowadays it changed, it's as if bots were reprogrammed to hunt vigorously, I am surprised you haven't noticed that.

 

[GladiatorX]

so if you identify order flow you don't get shaken out of your trade, you stay the course? Before I used to enter with momentum and stops were rarely triggered, nowadays it changed, it's as if bots were programmer to hunt vigorously, I am surprised you haven't noticed that.

What do you think momentum is! Christ!

What do you mean 'Now a days' what time-frame are we talking?

When did this change occur? Maybe i haven't been around long enough to notice these changes... To me the way current things are is COMMON, NORMAL...

 

[virtuos0]

so if you identify order flow you don't get shaken out of your trade, you stay the course? Before I used to enter with momentum and stops were rarely triggered, nowadays it changed, it's as if bots were reprogrammed to hunt vigorously, I am surprised you haven't noticed that.

I don't know what period you are comparing with, but I imagine your problem is simply that volatility has increased. Again, this is something you need to be aware of as a trader.

Try taking a look at statistical volatility for the instrument you are trading, and the VIX.

 

[GladiatorX]

I don't know what period you are comparing with, but I imagine your problem is simply that volatility has increased. Again, this is something you need to be aware of as a trader.

Try taking a look at statistical volatility for the instrument you are trading, and the VIX.

More like previously he was trading in a trending market and now trading in a range-bound market

Look at your S&P 500 trade; Your buying in the middle of a range.... with your stop loss WITHIN THE RANGE & target outside the range.

Your stop loss is @ the bottom of the range. Which is a stop loss zone; Whereby if price approaches it will spike out.... And your target is @ new year highs.

You are hoping that a ranging market becomes a trending market... Which is fine. Just be aware.

I'm not commenting on whether it was a good trade or not; But to comment on stop losses getting 'hunted' and then placing yours within the bottom of a range just seems silly.

 

[piker]

Gladiator, I fail to see what's funny.

 

[piker]

Stock indexes are manipulated as never before, At least before there were fundamental reasonings, now when a lot of companies stopped paying dividends, economies being destroyed by extreme borrowing, etc. Stock indexes nothing more than trading instruments, hunt for liquidity increased exponentially. Good night.

 

[GladiatorX]

Stock indexes are manipulated as never before, At least before there were fundamental reasonings, now when a lot of companies stopped paying dividends, economies being destroyed by extreme borrowing, etc. Stock indexes nothing more than trading instruments, hunt for liquidity increased exponentially. Good night.

When? What time-frame are you talking?
5 weeks, 2 years, 20 years ? 2 hours ?

Its not manipulation. Before a large variable to traders were fundamentals. Now, other variables have reduced the effectiveness of the variable: fundamentals.
Its not manipulation; its buying and selling with the intent to produce profits. However participants seek that is up to them; (profits that is), the markets just show the combination of bid and offers.... If others think there is more profit to be had in other ways of trading, other than fundamentals, that will 'change' the markets; Not 'Manipulate in the bad sense'...

The stock market is a hunt for liquidity, thats where the profit is.... Thats not manipulation, thats human's action with the goal of achieving profits. The reason the market is rising out of line with fundamentals is IMO;
Quantitative easing
Low interest rates
Money managers NEEDING to perform after poor 2008

A stock indices job is to reflect a particular group of instruments, with some having the goal of providing a broad-view of a specific country and others to represent the price of the small-cap equities. Its never been more or less than that.

If you think that ANY trading outside of the indices FAIR VALUE is manipulation (in the bad sense) then you shouldn't be a trader because you are saying, in that case; markets should preferably be 100% efficient; And therefore there would be no profit potential.

 

[jonty123]

Bots hunt stops, it's a fact. Yours, mine, your neighbours

Mate you need to stop being so paranoid, create a good solid trade plan (the hard part) and stick to it.

Take every trade that complies with your rules and in the long run (over hundreds and thousands of trades) if you do indeed have an edge it will play out and you will make money.

Ive had spread bets on with numerous spread betting companies (ig, etx and tradefair) and numerous times price has come to within a pip of my stop and they have not taken me out when they so easily could have and I couldnt have really complained.

 

[virtuos0]

Stock indexes are manipulated as never before, At least before there were fundamental reasonings, now when a lot of companies stopped paying dividends, economies being destroyed by extreme borrowing, etc. Stock indexes nothing more than trading instruments, hunt for liquidity increased exponentially. Good night.

Lets put it another way.. If you believe that you are being manipulated to your disadvantage, why are you trading at all? It's illogical to partake in a competition that you do not believe you can win.

 

[Black Swan]

Mate you need to stop being so paranoid, create a good solid trade plan (the hard part) and stick to it.

Take every trade that complies with your rules and in the long run (over hundreds and thousands of trades) if you do indeed have an edge it will play out and you will make money.

Ive had spread bets on with numerous spread betting companies (ig, etx and tradefair) and numerous times price has come to within a pip of my stop and they have not taken me out when they so easily could have and I couldnt have really complained.

You've just reminded me of some of my 'early learning trades' when I used to peek at the screen through my fingers as price headed towards my stop... Then I moved on (in the best Kubler Ross grief cycle methodology) to the anger stage; "go on then, I dare you muther fooker, take me out..." Now pfftt...wtf..

 

[piker]

You all keep saying stick to your plan, fair enough I believe I do stick to my plan, but nothing is objective in trading, it changes from one situation to another. Virtuoso, you say don't have stops where others have them. What does that mean, have stop at 0? What if you are wrong in your analysis? No stop placement is perfect, it can only be close to perfect when placed outside the noise, I will admit that I am struggling identifying what's noise & what ain't recently. Some say markets are random so if that is proven to be so, then all is noise? There is a lot of contradiction and blanket statements flying around the trading world.

Taking my trades, forgetting the fact that you don't agree with them, where should I have put a stop? That is constructive & objective.

Thanks.

P.S. Again I am not saying that my stops are being hunted, I am saying that bots seem to have increased their capability to hunt stops. Before support and resistance seemed to have more value, you could place a stop not too far from a key zone, now you can be shaken a lot further. That is my opinion & others do concur to that current sentiment. That can only be established when trading real capital.

 

[piker]

As far as fundamentals go I have no understanding of them, so I stay clear of that. What is important to me is to get better at seeing what is what. Meaning am I still with a predominant trend or not. Price behaviour always dictates in trading, it's not investing. Even if you have sufficient reasons to believe that ABC is undervalued it can keep being sold for a while before your analysis is confirmed by price action. I recall a time when I saw so many analysts predicting a drop in a certain commodity, but I saw a bullish stance in a chart & went against what overwhelming majority were saying & won, they lost. I admit I have some problems here, who of you honestly doesn't? The ones that don't I envy & strive to get to same level one day. My ambition is not into earning a "crust' by doing daily scalps on high leverage, but to enable myself to preserve & grow capital whilst remaining as underleveraged as possible.

 

[D70]

Morning piker,
Can we have an update on the trades please?
Feelings / plan / target / stop / size / account management.
And would everyone else mind being short, precise and constructive.
Mr Piker is doing this to get help, getting the flame thrower out just burns our bits of paper on the table.
Thanks..... & regards,.

 

[piker]

Morning, so far stops and targets remain same, not trailing stops yet. Prices started to move in favour , losses are limited to 1.2% of capital, not total liquid net worth. General feeling is that bounce may be a brief one as more downside is not to be excluded, not feeling too confident, but that could be down to recent losses of 5.5% capital, error was in position sizing. Sorry to keep brief at work on iPhone.

 

[D70]

Hi Piker,
I hope you are up and watching the market as you have a eurusd position. The 6-8am (uk period) is key to your trade.

So, just some observations thus far (as i belive this journal was set up so people could give you advice).

Firstly - your entries appeared somewhat hap-hazard.... there isnt that much detail in the analysis, you were just bullish at that moment in time. Is this correct? Also, you havent posted any potential problems to your trades, places to watch out for, etc etc..... is your mentality at a place where you feel like you are just spinning the wheel?? It comes across that way........

Also, regarding the various back and forth about stops. So.... my 2quid is thus..... you need to think about the participants.... there are many guys that trade only during the open hours and go home flat, these guys will look at the chart and be saying to themselves, "well, if we break x....... we might get to y, if we dont break x, let's send it back to z...." this in turn creates those spikes to where your stops lie - they are trying to bring in the buyers / sellers..... you really need to research into pit trading - i think a lot of traders fall over because they dont realise what the market really is - the fx market and futures market is so fluid that you cant identify buyers and sellers on an individual basis - your should trade (or watch) something illiquid, then you will really learn what moves a market. People involved in the market are trying to create moves - coz that's how they will make a profit......

 

[piker]

I go with chart patterns which to me appeared bullish. Because trades are based on 4 hr chart I am not looking at morning sessions action as to me they don't make much sense, as you said they are trying to intice liquidity. I have always excluded volume analysis, maybe I need to look into it to help identify key interest levels? As far as 50:50 goes it sure feels this way because I have no edge, just patterns, I am trying to get higher returns to take care of losses, b/e trading is not a problem, I can do this, struggling with making consistent gains. Need to increase edge with your help, u mentioned stocks, would that work swing trading, what about gapping?

 

[timsk]

Mornin' piker,
Your journal seems to have got off to a lively start!
My opinion - for what it's worth - is that you're putting the cart before the horse by concerning yourself with details like stop placement, before having established a basic trading plan. As others have commented, your 'trade plan' is way too vague and imprecise. This will always be problematic for any trader, because there's nothing specific linking all your trades. Without that, you can't take - say 100 trades - to see what the winners have in common and ditto with the losers. Imagine you have a techie friend who's brilliant at programming code. You'd have to supply a very specific set of instructions for him / her to produce a mechanical trading system. Even though you're a discretionary trader, adopting this same precise and focused approach will pay dividends.

With this in mind, can you answer these basic questions:
1. Which markets will you focus on and why?
2. Which instruments will you trade and why?
3. Which timeframes will you use and why? (e.g. daily TF to determine primary trend, key S&R areas etc., and hourly TF for entry and stops etc.)
4. Which is your basic objective, i.e. are you wanting to trade breakouts, retracements or reversals?
5. What is your trade set up - as opposed to the trade entry trigger? E.g. price breaks out above / below yesterday's high / low, then pulls back to it and finds support / resistance.

Answer these questions first and get the foundations in place and then, once that's done, start to look at the detail of entry triggers, stop placement, exits, risk and money management etc.
Tim.

 

[Black Swan]

fwiw I'm also long on EUR/USD, since 8am on the 9th...

 

[virtuos0]

You all keep saying stick to your plan, fair enough I believe I do stick to my plan, but nothing is objective in trading, it changes from one situation to another. Virtuoso, you say don't have stops where others have them. What does that mean, have stop at 0? What if you are wrong in your analysis? No stop placement is perfect, it can only be close to perfect when placed outside the noise, I will admit that I am struggling identifying what's noise & what ain't recently. Some say markets are random so if that is proven to be so, then all is noise? There is a lot of contradiction and blanket statements flying around the trading world.

Taking my trades, forgetting the fact that you don't agree with them, where should I have put a stop? That is constructive & objective.

Thanks.

P.S. Again I am not saying that my stops are being hunted, I am saying that bots seem to have increased their capability to hunt stops. Before support and resistance seemed to have more value, you could place a stop not too far from a key zone, now you can be shaken a lot further. That is my opinion & others do concur to that current sentiment. That can only be established when trading real capital.

If you choose to use stops, then don't put them in obvious places. This could mean just above/below previous swing highs/lows, around significant round numbers, within a tight range, or indeed just within intraday noise. How you determine where those places are is entirely dependent on your risk appetite, your leverage, your goals, your mentality and of course it depends on the instrument you are trading and what is driving it.

Personally I don't use stops. I scale in and scale out to continuously adjust my risk depending on market conditions. If the market moves 100pips against me I might reduce my position by half, or I might double my position, it all depends on whether I can identify why the market is moving.

 

[Black Swan]

I never trade without stops, only adds 2-3 pips to my swing but part of the plan. I use limits and or trailing stops when I'm away from the PC or getting some zzzzzzzds...