Day 15. -12.7 Mucho happenings mang and I'm a bad boy. :(

Action packed day today. I put up a good fight but in the end the market put a dog collar around my neck and made me it's bitch.

Lots to talk about. This is gonna be a long one. Longer than the other long ones. 12 inches down your throat long.

I started off with a loss. I had planned to exit if price reached above a consolidation point (not seen here, was on my 3 range chart). As price hesitated I thought "hmm, maybe I'll move my stop higher." Then I realized that hell no, I can't do that. I must never do that. I did that so often in the past but no more. I chose the mental stop area for a logical reason and I'm sticking to it. As soon as I told myself that price started going down. Ohyay! It was like a reward from the chart gods for remaining faithful to my rules. However, it was not to be. Price soon moved up and I exited with a loss as the chart masters said "Hey, fuck you. Get back in your cage!"

  Even though I took a loss I was proud of myself. Price twice bounced off the same spot to move upward. To me that meant price was not going down and rather it was about to bounce upward. Therefore I should exit early, as in right now. Which I did for a loss of a couple pips. Which was much better than a -5 or -6 I would have got had stayed in till I originally planned. And as anticipated, price did indeed go higher. Much higher. In the past I would have moved my stop to "give it room" hah. That would have been a huge loss. So kudos to me for A) sticking to my plan and not moving my stop B) Reading price action correctly and C) Exiting with a small loss saving me from a large one.

I stayed calm after the loss and knew I could handle it. I then had a winner and another small loss and remained calm and confident,

"Can I get out of my cage now?"

"No. You remain!"

:(

I have an econ indicator to tell me when news is about to hit. But apparently the audio alert doesn't sound when I'm using my headphones, as I was this morning. In the trade and BAM, spread suddenly went to 10 pips. What the fuck? Then I looked at the time. Ahhhhh fuck me. I didn't want to mess around so I exited right away. That's not included in the loss as I'm including only the trades. As I didn't include the small gain a while back when it was an accidental trade. However, from now on I will add those to the stats as they will help to make me more aware of what I'm doing.

I continued working on holding my trades longer. Fail. I was thinking about this all this morning. The more I think about it, the more it seems I should not be doing that with the way I currently trade. As mentioned in a previous post I'm trading momentum moves on small timeframes. If momentum is there, it's there, and I grab quick pips or get occasional runners. Or I exit with small losses. If momentum is not there and price is chillin like hey what's up how you doin, then I should exit. Otherwise I'm just hoping that price will continue when the lack of momentum is telling me the opposite. I suppose I could scale out as I know some people on BMT do, but I prefer all in/all out. Balls deep. Most of my losers today would have been small winners or a couple of very small losses. My winners would have been smaller but in the end I would have came out ahead. Plus, it feels more comfortable to me. So I'm going to focus on trading the momentum as I have been, rather than trying to hold longer. Get in and get the fuck out. Oh yeah. Though by getting in on the trend earlier I feel it will set me up for more runners so I won't really need to hold and hope.

Which brings me to the next thing...

The use of the ADX to filter trades. I normally don't take trades unless ADX is 30+ since that tells me a strong trend is in place. The problem with that is that when consolidation happens the ADX number goes down, of course. So when the breakout finally comes I'm unable to take the trade. Often times even during the retracement and continuation the ADX hasn't caught up, so to speak, so I again don't take an obvious move. After a few of those have happened ADX is around 30, hah. So I'm thinking about taking those breakouts even though ADX says not to. ADX is only telling me what I already see on the screen via price movement. I don't need it to tell me when a market is trending and when a market is choppy. Again, I see that on screen via price. It appears that ADX is really just a crutch, something to keep me out of bad trades but at this point I feel that I can easily identify when a market is trending and when it's not. So perhaps it's time to have one less thing on my screen.

Now on to those consolidation breakouts.

I've been using dynamic stops as of late but as I ponder, it appears that very small stops are the way to go here. Small as in .5 to 1 pip. At most 2. That may sound crazy but a legit breakout, from what I've seen, usually busts through pretty quickly with little to no initial hesitation. The times that it does hesitate it often goes back down to the middle of the consolidation or lower. A small stop is .5 to 2pip, a dynamic one would be anywhere from 4-10. I can possibly take several of those small ones and still be ahead of a loss from one dynamic stop. That's not even taking into account that I may not take a loss at all, I may catch the breakout first time. If I take one or two losses with the dynamic I need a medium to large move to make a profit. If I take one or two losses with the static I need a small to medium move to make a profit. This also keeps congruent with trading based on momentum, not hope. If the momentum is there, it will move. If not, get out. In addition, this also keeps in line with getting in the trend earlier which give me a higher probability of catching a runner.


I noticed that I overtraded a bit. Or tried to anyway, hah. There were pendings I put in which I cancelled but I shouldn't have put them in. It wasn't against a rule but I put it in to take a trade into an area which I felt would likely show resistance. Normally I avoid that but today I did it anyway. Which tells me the session results were getting to me. Though I performed much much better than I had in the past under similar circumstances, I still have to continue working on myself. Happy about the progress but more effort is needed.

I broke the rules today for the first time so $10 bye bye. :( :( :(. Back to my cage I go for now to regroup. Come tomorrow it's ass kicking time. Chart masters, I'm coming for you.