Climbing Everest

[Climbing Everest]

This journal will show some of my progress towards trading success, and help me on the way whenver I need some help. I'd be very grateful if you can keep the flaming or spam off this thread, and be friendly. Cheers.

 

[Climbing Everest]

stops

For my first question, I'd like to ask opinions on where I should place stops.

I traded the ER last week, and on a sample day had 45 trades:
-entry was 2 contracts per trade
-38 were profits
-take home profit was 250$

My difficulty lay in the size of losses:
**twice stopped out at 14 ticks = -560$
**thrice averaged 'down' with 2 further contracts....losses were 400/560/670$ = 1630$

Therefore, I have decided to keep a strict 9 tick stop loss next week, and never average down. If I had done that, the above day would have been take home profit of 1990$.

I do think that averaging down can work-I have simmed on large account sizes-typically starting 50kUS$, and that allows back up volume for good traders to get more heavily in on a spike, then cut all for break even. However, it seems that it is a bad strategy and should be avoided. Comments?

Furthermore, I still need to work on increasing the quality of my trades, larger profits, fewer losses.

 

[Climbing Everest]

I am disappointed at the lack of responses on this board, and I will try a few more posts before making a decision whether to cut my losses here.

Yesterday I made 810$ on the ER, mainly through fewer losses, less averaging down, and better entries/understanding.

On Tuesday I noticed that I seem to have profits (P) and losses (L) in groups:
PPPPPPPPPP LLLL PPPPPPPP LL PLPPPP

so therefore, another thing I am mindful of is to step back if I have a loss, it's probably a sign of tiredness/lack of concentration.

If I can reduce the losses to half, then I can aim for a consistent 3-5 points per day per contract. Then, trading 10+ contracts would give me a nice return.

 

[Climbing Everest]

To finish off the week I made 850$, about 3 points on ER. One mistake in the middle of averaging down, otherwise ok trades. Yawn.

 

[Splitlink]

With 45 trades you are working very hard and successfully, if I may say so. I can't do anywhere near that and am inclined to read you, rather than make any comments , or try to help. Most of us are, probably, in the same boat. Remember that this a journal. People don't like to interupt them, perhaps that is why no one is commenting.

I hope that you keep going.

Regards, Split