I got into trading nearly 2 years ago: met a dude at a church function who said he was making $500 a day trading oil. In exchange for me helping him out with setting up a website for him + running his email he would teach me the ways of making $. After a couple months of watching him in action and actually tracking his trades I came to the realization that he was looking to make money off of charging other people money to teach them rather then trading himself. So I got myself out of that situation asap.
In the last two years I have had varying degrees of success day trading CL/NQ/ES. The highlight being last July I actually managed to pass a combine with TTT. Of course before doing LTP I headed home to Canada for a few weeks and when I came back I wasn't in sync with the markets.
Trading for me is a part time job while I work out a system to make $$. If I actually have a proven track record of trading I do have access to funding.
What hasn't worked for me: 1 word - SCALPING!
There I admit it! I am not a good scalper. The dude that got me into it was a scalper that was extremely over leveraged (he recommended trading 3 contracts at a time on CL with a 5k account............) Although I have passed a combine with the majority of the trades being scalps what I realize is that I spend a week or 2 building account equity (and yes I have done this with real $) and then boom lose most of my gains in a couple drawdown days.
The whole 10 tick stoploss just doesn't work.
The whole counter trending trading thing just doesn't work
What I want to do:
Hold trades for long periods of time. After an exhaustive statistical study (allright fine mostly just using an excel table and writing down the hours it took for a move to happen) of the last couple months on the NQ for example I realized that the trades I would like to be in I need to have a in market hold time of about 5 hours.
Also yesterday I went and looked at the most depressing and inspiring chart.
When I look at this chart and did what can only be described as hardcore analysis three things jump out to me.
1. The market has gone up
2. We are in the biggest bull market in the history of mankind
3. As @BigMike said, and I forget if it was in the es spoonalysis thread, or in his thread but we should be making money hand over foot in a bull market. I repeat HAND OVER FOOT!
I'm not making money!
So. I have to do something different then what I have been doing.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And essentially, when I look at the last year and a half of attempts at trading that is what I have been doing - oh sure one time I might be using bollinger bands. One time I might be using adxvma, one time i might be doing divergences on MACD etc. BUT essentially im doing the same bloody thing over and over again! 10-15, MAYBE 25 tick stoploss. and going for targets anywhere from 3-4-10-30-40 ticks away.
I have had enough. I dont like getting into a trade and getting stopped out 17 seconds later only to see the market reverse and go through with your idea ONE TICK after you got stopped out!
So what am I gonna do?
1. I am going to start a trading journal on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT). (this is what you are currently reading)
2. I am going to be more involved in the community here at nexusfi.com (formerly BMT). For the most part I have lurked, occasionally hit the liked button but through fault of my own ego, perhaps I dont want to show my own inadequacies and how ignorant I am I don't ask smart or dumb questions and looking back I think this has significantly stunted my learning process
Trading plan!
I am going to mainly trade the NQ. But I am going to watch the ES/CL as well.
See? it also is going UP!
I am only going to trade one direction per day - I simply do not think I am a good enough trader to be flipping directions during the day. I have tried that and it doesn't …