Feeling stuck... Need some advices

[Mohamed Omar 0]

6 minutes ago, Skye said:

You NEED to have the charts in your journal! On your keyboard should be a key to take a screen shot. It should say "PrtScn" or something like that. You should be able to save to the clipboard & then paste into Excel. Or you can save it and then insert image. I do mine in Writer (LibreOffice version of Word) and after I paste I can right-click and crop to the chart because the screenshot shows all three monitors.

OK thank you so much 🙂 

[Willy 25]

On 12/8/2018 at 1:16 PM, Skye said:

Mohamed, I was using numbers similar to those and also found that it didn't work so well. As you have said, the daily max loss kills your account. But bringing that down and keeping the trade risk the same means you don't have much of a chance if you start with a bad trade or two. 

My approach was to change to this approach:

Risk per trade : = 30$
Reward per trade : N/A (focus on good risk/reward and using proper levels) 
Daily goal : 50$ (really good days will sometimes be 100$+)
Max daily loss : 50$ (will sometimes hit around 75$)

A couple of things I have found to be really important:

This is the big one: I should rarely hit my stop loss. A typical example would be a by with the candle bouncing off of a moving average after pulling back. The idea I have going into that trade is that the stock is going to move up (let's say it's a long). If it goes under the line instead, then I was wrong. So of course the question then is will it just go to the next moving average which is close by? Is that moving average farther away? Is there anything that's going to keep it from going the wrong way? The point is at this stage I realize that I was wrong and I'm questioning the trade. If I don't have a pretty solid feeling of Plan B like there's another moving average close by that I can wait for, I'll sell it. I really learned this from Andrew. Where Andrew would buy a stock and then start questioning "Well is it really going to do something? I don't know, I'm not feeling so good about it" and then he would sell it. I would be sitting on that stock waiting for it to go all the way back to my Max loss. It's similar to when a stock is moving but then it just starts bouncing up down up down on the 1-minute chart and it's not really doing anything. You start questioning yourself, is this really going anywhere is it going to do something? I'm more likely to sell that stock than I used to be. Before it drops like a rock and I hit my stop loss and feel like I kind of knew that was coming. I can afford to make a small amount of money. I can afford to lose a small amount of money. I really can't afford to hit that Max stop loss in a situation like that.

I only scale-out once at 50%. Or I'll just sell the whole thing if I'm at a strong resistance line or am not too sure if it's going to keep going. The point is, the fees are really taking a toll with these small buys. If I do scale out of 50% and I'm hanging on to the rest, I'm really trying to be patient and wait for the close of the 5-minute candle without being able to make a new high. This is what I mostly working on right now. I keep selling too early and then the stock moves on without me. Again, with the fees being such a big part of the picture you need to let these things run when they're going your way to take advantage of what you're already in.

Another big one: I only trade 3 to 5 buys a day. Again, with the fees being so important with the small buys you can't really make money doing 15 or 20 tickets. This is also the only way I have found to successfully make myself really be patient and wait for the good setups. That's the thing about Sim, you're not really being impacted by the losses so it's easy to just keep trying keep trying. If I know that I'm going to quit after two more trades I'm going to be really careful about which two I'm going to use for that.

I do a screen capture of the five minute and one minute charts of my trades and put them in a document. I also put the profit loss info in a spreadsheet with a graph. But I don't really go over everything until the weekend. I have found that looking everyday doesn't really sink in as much as looking back at the last week and looking at the repeated mistakes that I've made. You know like patterns of things that I'm doing wrong.

 

I totally agree. I just want to add that it is good to master 2-3 setups and only do trades if one of them is presented and also if you are on the wrong side in 3 trades in the same day, do not make more trades even if you have not reached your goal.

 

[bluemarv 0]

On 12/13/2018 at 8:03 AM, Mohamed Omar said:

OK I would like that, the only thing is that my journal don't have a picture of my trade , I only track, the stock, long or short,  entries , stops, target, exits and R multiple.
I think to have you look over my trades, I need to take a screen shot of my chart and put it in excel with my journal.
Do you know how to do that?

Thank you 🙂 

I use Microsoft OneNote for my journal and Snipping Tool to screenshot my trades. Really helpful tools. 

[Mohamed Omar 0]

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 1:33 PM, Bibonow said:

To start off, I did not see the word ''Journal'' in your initial post and I think this is where the problem is. Here is a list of things you can watch IF you have been journaling your trades : 

1) Your stop loss : where are they situated ? in air ? on feeling ? on a technical indicator ? a price level? new 5 minutes high or low ? It needs to be somewhere for a reason

2) Your entry: Do you anticipate or enter when lvl breaks? On moving average ? Important lvl of Support and resistance ? 

3) Your Sizing according to stop : Do you stop out BEFORE your actual real stop ? 

4) Your trade management wich include the way you scale out. Wich can make or break your overall profit and Risk : reward

5) The stocks you decide to trade,   Whats the float, did it gap up or down more than x% ?

6) What patterns are you trading ? Are you going with your mood, experiencing, or do you have ONE OR TWO pattern that you are trying to master

7) are you revenge trading ? Are you chasing ? are you averaging down ? 

8 )  Whats your Win Rate % ? 

9) What is your average winners $ ?

10) What is your average losers $ ?

11) Do you cut your losses ?

If you Risk 1% per trade, aiming for 2:1 Risk:Reward, and your Daily Profit target is 1% , it doesn't make sens, your target should then be 2%  daily AT LEAST

Here is what I came up with : I calculate everything in ''R''  wich is What I risk per trade in $  (mine is 30$ for now with a 3.5K account) lets say 1% then

RISK PER TRADE : 1R
MAX DAILY LOSS: 2.5R  ( Why not a round number ? Because sometime trade is just no going anywhere and I get out without it going to my stop)
DAILY GOAL : 4R ( To me it is not to high because of my style of trading wich is more riding the trend for big bucks) A scalper/momentum could go for 2.5R or 3R
WEEKLY GOAL : 10R
PS: Daily Loss and Goal are calculated INCLUDING Commissions

When I will  be  +10R for 2 weeks in a row, I will then up my ''R'' to 50$ instead of 30$ and so on my boy so stop thinking 1% a day is not high enough becasue it is only 50$, when this 1% be equal to 250$ instead of 50$. Thats some serious money.
 

NOW

My question to you is what is YOUR bread and butter pattern, where is YOUR edge in the market !?

A) Do you prefer to ride the trend or take reversals ?

B) Are you more of a
***Scalper ( in and out in seconds )
***Momentum trader ( couple minutes )
***Longer Term  ?

C) What pattern do you like the most, fits your personnality the most ? 

Stick to it, master it and inscrease ''R'' when you have concistency.

Feel free to email me @ [email protected] and Congratulations on your english, it is pretty good 

 

Since I started to work harder, I started to be luckier! 🙂

See you in chat Monady

Hi  Bibo,

I hope you are doing well, do you mind if I send you my trading journal to have a look at it ?

I was doing good for the month of December when I changed my goals.
But January was a choppy month and I didn't perform well, and I had big losses.
I know that it's normal to have some choppy days, weeks or even months. I'm just not sure if when this happens, should I change anything? should I cover faster ? should I take smaller size ?should I change my goals ?  

So if you can help me I would really appreciate it.

Thank you 🙂 

[Mohamed Omar 0]

On ‎12‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 8:20 AM, nmarnson said:

I don't know how to do that, but you can save your screenshots in a folder, and send me some. Email me at [email protected] once you have 10 or 20 trades. 

 

You can also make a new post on the forum and put up some screenshots, so everyone can give their advice. 

Hi  nmarnson,

I hope you are doing well, do you mind if I send you my trading journal to have a look at it ?

I was doing good for the month of December when I changed my goals.
But January was a choppy month and I didn't perform well, and I had big losses.
I know that it's normal to have some choppy days, weeks or even months. I'm just not sure if when this happens, should I change anything? entries? exits? stops? should I cover faster ? should I take smaller size ?should I change my goals ?  

So if you can help me I would really appreciate it.

Thank you 🙂 

[nmarnson 8]

3 hours ago, Mohamed Omar said:

Hi  nmarnson,

I hope you are doing well, do you mind if I send you my trading journal to have a look at it ?

I was doing good for the month of December when I changed my goals.
But January was a choppy month and I didn't perform well, and I had big losses.
I know that it's normal to have some choppy days, weeks or even months. I'm just not sure if when this happens, should I change anything? entries? exits? stops? should I cover faster ? should I take smaller size ?should I change my goals ?  

So if you can help me I would really appreciate it.

Thank you 🙂 

Sure go ahead. 

[Mark D. 435]

On 12/30/2018 at 9:32 AM, Willy said:

his is the big one: I should rarely hit my stop loss. A typical example would be a by with the candle bouncing off of a moving average after pulling back. The idea I have going into that trade is that the stock is going to move up (let's say it's a long). If it goes under the line instead, then I was wrong. So of course the question then is will it just go to the next moving average which is close by? Is that moving average farther away? Is there anything that's going to keep it from going the wrong way? The point is at this stage I realize that I was wrong and I'm questioning the trade. If I don't have a pretty solid feeling of Plan B like there's another moving average close by that I can wait for, I'll sell it. I really learned this from Andrew. Where Andrew would buy a stock and then start questioning "Well is it really going to do something? I don't know, I'm not feeling so good about it" and then he would sell it. I would be sitting on that stock waiting for it to go all the way back to my Max loss. It's similar to when a stock is moving but then it just starts bouncing up down up down on the 1-minute chart and it's not really doing anything. You start questioning yourself, is this really going anywhere is it going to do something? I'm more likely to sell that stock than I used to be. Before it drops like a rock and I hit my stop loss and feel like I kind of knew that was coming. I can afford to make a small amount of money. I can afford to lose a small amount of money. I really can't afford to hit that Max stop loss in a situation like that.

that is good advice Willy i am going to work on this as well. i'm getting killed on hitting my max stops almost every trade.