Hi don,
No chances to trade this week - and I want to set the rules out clearly first before I start anyway.
I am going to leave up the 50 & 200 SMA's on the daily, as these seem to be respected by the big institutional traders a good deal of the time.
The signals will be the easy part - 123 setups, WRB reversals and trendline breaks.
The hard part will be getting use to placing the stop and staying with it - as I have never traded this way before - but it seems like I will have to start accepting this if I am to make any progress.
I also have to start off with 3 contracts - so my entries will have to be very selective - no more shooting from the hip. Scaling out is required once some profits have been realised - more on that once I get started.
The first testing will require 20 trades - so my potential loss, if I get all wrong, which I will try and not let happen, may be as high as 20 x 3 x 10 (I am just taking 10 as the average stop level, but it will be dependant on the chart pattern, it may be less and it may be more) :
600 points x $5 = $3,000 + commissions.
Am I prepared to loose this amount - yes, no problem.
Of course I would rather not loose it all, maybe 1/2 or 1/4 even, but I have to be prepared to loose it all before I start.
The reason I am taking on this risk is, that by the time I complete the 20 trades I will have completed a very important step in relation to learning how to trade for consistent profits.
Upon completion of the 20 trades, I will have an Expectancy figure that will be the starting point for developing and comparing various trading strategies - and it should be obvious by now that I want to use the strategy that has the highest Expectancy figure.
I am looking forward to the challenge, and will start as soon as I get the time.
There is one major drawback, and that is time availability. As I may not be able to trade most days, I may find it hard to trade the intraday trends, so I may have to look at the longer timeframe and go out to trading the 30 min bars. Either way, as I will not be focused 100% I will need to be very careful, or else that $3000 may disappear very quickly.
The answer may be to wait for the best setups to develop on the daily chart, and then make time to get a trade or two done on the following day. If I can do this once per week, then we are looking at roughly 20 weeks to complete the sample lot. If I can make some time, I may place 2-4 trades per day, depending on the momentum, in this case I may complete the sample set a week or two.
Well, lets see what happens.
Either way, I am looking forward to it, and I now consider the $3000 gone, with my main goal to make it last as long as possible and complete some additional testing with the same $3K.
Regards,