hindsight, marketing and difficult decisions

[durgesh147]

On the 5min charts, there were 3 sell setups.
first one fell to 100% initial risk and then stopped out at breakeven.
Rest two of them had been profitable.

Although the chart looks messy, you can see it.

[durgesh147]

Lets look at these 3 setups in detail one by one.
Here, is the first one.
it doesn't look like a good setup.it went past the minimum wpt and fell short of typical and kept messing around.

[durgesh147]

This second setup looks like an ideal one and it went bang on target with a R:R of 3.3 .Good one.

[durgesh147]

Here is the third one, goodlooking and its still running.
So, in a nutshell, if i traded the 5min setups in the direction of 5ema on daily chart , i ended with 2 good setups and both profitable.

This is just a backtesting of wht i thought.You all can come up with ur own ideas and try to get the best out of it.

Just my two cents.

[durgesh147]

Hindsight always pays.If you can feel the pulse of the market, you know wht to look for.When to look for buy setups and when to look for sell setups.and if proved wrong, these setups call for a small stop.

Tool is the same but it depends on how we use it.

[durgesh147]

This is what my hindsight tells me on DOW.And i am sure, i don't need to explain on wedges.

[pbb]

Hi there,

Here's just a little follow up from my side. I have posted only a few times in the past but am using MTP a lot!
Many things I read on this forum are leading just to a few keypoints.
scepticism; greed; patience; trust
Trading is about making money and it's not a sort of occupational therapy that leads to succes just by doing it as many times you can. Searching for set-ups on many different timeframes does (in my opinion) not lead to succes it just leads to a lack of overall oversight in what you're doing. Make up your mind and than stick to it, don't go chasing other timeframes or products as soon as you're having a few losing trades.

For instance, the starting of januar didn't bring me any good but I did stick to my approach. After 3 weeks I was down 15% on the account, now at the end of the 1th quarter my account is up 75% from the end of 2005 on. The same thing happend before and I am sure that it will happen again.

One other thing that I also mentioned before is the use of different timeframes and the influence on your fees. About a year ago I did trade the es ab and ym over a 3 month period and found that (using 3 and 5 min timeframes) my fees were very high, about 25% of the net performance.
I than did some research and found that by using a 15min timeframe over the same period, the performance was similar (larger waves etc) but with lower fees, 5% of the net performance.

I now only trade on larger timeframes. Also by doing that, it is easier to follow different markets without losing the oversight.

Boredom is something that comes with the job, using larger timeframes it might even be worse than trading 3 and 5min. However I don't sit at my desk all day, my approach only uses the close of a bar, so I know when to look at my screen and I will. When you start looking for other trades/timeframes or whatever as soon as you're bored, I guess you either still have to learn a lot or you're not suited for what you're doing.
I have worked as a Market Maker and professional futures trader and can truly say that boredom hasn't got anything to do with mtp, markets can, from time to time, be boring. Oh, and yes, using hindsight I can tell you now what you should have done last friday but I can not tell you what you must do tomorrow.

A few weeks ago I went skiing, after a week it seemed that I picked the right week to go, I didn't miss a single trade. That would have been a boring week, and with hindsight one can say that there were plenty of swings to trade.Friends (also traders) keep saying things like: the market went up, did you get a signal? They somehow asume that mtp is some sort of holy grail that works as a car navigator, well, wake up!
I use the automatic generated signals only, and I use some of the moneymanagement that Steve is teaching, I slightly adjusted the riskmanagement rules and I use my own exit strategy.
Without the signals I don't do anything, I did exactly 90 trades this quarter and the w/l ratio is exactly 50.

The MTP software I bought almost 2 years ago is not some sort of black box. It generates signals and insight in the market/chart and moneymanagement. Work with that and you can easliy achieve good results. If you want a blackbox, what is the point of doing it yourself, just bring your money to a hedgefund or cta and you can play golf all day.

Also, one stated that Steve might start making reports for just one product or timeframe, ask Tony, he did a great job on that before.
It doesn't make sence to have a monday report on es and a tuesday on ym etc, you can not measure the performance on a days trading. By measuring my performance on a daily basis, one would have thought of me being a loser in januar and probaly will think differently now.

[mrkam]

What markets do you trade at 15min? Do you trade 30min & 60min as well? and you mention your own exit strategy.... can you elaborate?

and you are right about Jan.... "streaks" happen!!

thanks!

[gremtp]

WOW!
Quite a response on two (or three?) threads.
Let’s start with this one.

Thank you Durgesh for your positive and helping attitude. In my opinion EMA on higher time frames is not new (I believe it is actually in the manual somewhere) and it s still very much a lagging indicator, but it has merits; and thank you for all your other contributions.

Pbb. You are not going to like this.
I tend not to participate in Forums either. I have made an exception for this one, as I have made an exception by buying the software. One of the things that put me off Forums is that usually many people read a quarter of what is written and understand what they want (usually one tenth), or misinterpret anyway; and many love giving patronising answers. I apologise in advance if I am guilty of any of the above, but I think I want to answer your message the way I perceived it. By the way, this has very little to do with hindsight and marketing misunderstanding, which is the reason why I started this thread, but never mind.

First of all, what you describe in your opening paragraphs is exactly what I am trying to do. I trade several systems, as I said here and on other threads. I need discipline and rules. I study, research, test, decide, code as much as I can and once I am happy with something I use it and stick to it. This is valid for MTP set-ups too. I am not “chasing every trade”, I am studying and researching to find what I am comfortable with and then, and only then, I can stick to it. I thought it was clear enough, but I will repeat it. If I started this and other threads is exactly because I am trying to “make up my mind”, so that I could stick to it, as I do with my other systems, and not to recommend and praise the use of every possible market/time frame combination and even less to pick and change when I see fit according to my gut feeling or some guru advice.
And if you do what you say, sticking to what is right for you, you do not need hindsight to tell me what you will do tomorrow either: you will follow your rules.

Second, thank you for your input on larger time frames. As I said, I use other systems and none of them is day trading and all use larger time frames. So I know what you are talking about.

Third, what I use for my own trading is a fraction of my assets. I have some money in hedge funds and CTAs and other instruments too, and I do not like to play golf, but you could not know it, so thank you for the advice.

Fourth, I have never said that boredom has anything to do with mtp. I said that boredom is in my opinion part of trading and I find it quite disruptive and difficult to cope with. Do you have any positive suggestion other than telling me that perhaps I am not suited for what I am doing?
Nor did I say that MTP should be treated as a black box. Actually, I said the opposite.

Finally, and to go back to the initial aim of this thread, in suggesting a special day trading report once or twice a week I was just trying to be constructive and give ideas to address an issue that may have a negative effect on MTP in terms of marketing.
Ok, so now we know you do not like this one. Perhaps you may want to propose something else?

Have a nice day everybody

[pbb]

Hi there,

Sorry if you misunderstood me, my post was not personal. However I don't mind if you feel so, just wanted to clear things so you can start building your own mtp-strategy avoiding some huge pitfalls. Maybe you don't like the way I communicate or the things I say, but I don't think that I am the only one making assumptions.

3 important things:

If you need discipline and rules. If you want to study, research, decide and code, just to feel good and are able to stick to it (like you posted). Don't you think a weeks practice is a bit on the short side.

Do you want others to decide what timeframes to use, what kind of oscilators to add? Or, do you want to find out yourself and by doing that gain convidence in the software and moneymanagement and all other aspects that comes with this kind of trading. So that after a while you feel save to use it.

Do you really think that anyone, me included, started using mtp without any kind of scepticism.