Trade Management

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I think that the majority of time I spent studying in the markets has been on the wrong subject. Instead of spending so much time staring at old tops and bottoms I should have been cautious when placing a trade. If I slip on one tick on one trade a day in the ES thats a whooping $3,275.00 loss a year, now multipy that by 10 and thats a new car. I know this is the name of the game and placing a limit never guarantee's a fill. So there must be something better so I am setting out to find some method of trading via trade mang. that it alone would increase ones profitability regardless of what system generates calls.

I opened a sim account on the ES I have been playing around with entry and exit strategies for about 20 hours this week, I will dedicate the majority of my trading days this month to discover all that I can in place of my regular scalping time. here is what I have come up with thus far....

#1 enter small, then add if it goes against you 2 ES points, then add some more another 2 points. All the "pros" say this is a bad idea. And I agree if you are a newbie. I have been using this in conjunction with my MACD, & Stochastics on the TICK chart which I have discussed in other places, $TICK. This has added about 11k to the bottom line for today and yesterday, although this is sim but I believe the results can be manipulated in real life trading .

#2 For some strange reason around 90% of the time on the ES orders I send are hit as a profit when sending a bracket order for a 8 tick profit and an 8 tick stop loss. This is rather strange because its only around 70% when I wing it. The draw down is that the bottom line is a lot less, but it boost %profitable

Any one have any ideas or links that would improve trade managemet? I will post anything I find in this thread.

quote:
Originally posted by CharterJoe

#2 For some strange reason around 90% of the time on the ES orders I send are hit as a profit when sending a bracket order for a 8 tick profit and an 8 tick stop loss. This is rather strange because its only around 70% when I wing it. The draw down is that the bottom line is a lot less, but it boost %profitable

Although this is not a draw down. To make up for the bottom line we only need to trade 30% larger.

quote:
Originally posted by CharterJoe

#1 enter small, then add if it goes against you 2 ES points, then add some more another 2 points. All the "pros" say this is a bad idea. And I agree if you are a newbie. I have been using this in conjunction with my MACD, & Stochastics on the TICK chart which I have discussed in other places, $TICK. This has added about 11k to the bottom line for today and yesterday, although this is sim but I believe the results can be manipulated in real life trading .

#2 For some strange reason around 90% of the time on the ES orders I send are hit as a profit when sending a bracket order for a 8 tick profit and an 8 tick stop loss. This is rather strange because its only around 70% when I wing it. The draw down is that the bottom line is a lot less, but it boost %profitable

I just can't see me ever getting to a mental state that would allow me to trade number like #1. I do the reverse now. If it goes against me I will get out quickly, if it goes with me then I will add. Although I don't do this often enough it works well me.

I basically use a 7 tick stop and a 8 tick initial profit target. Once I get to 4 ticks I will adjust my stop up a couple ticks and add another contract. If I still like the trade I will add another contract at 8 ticks, if not then I exit and start looking for another entry. At 12 ticks I move the stop up to +4 ticks and start trailing it by the lesser of either by 8 ticks or the low of 2 bars back. I adjust based on what kinda of day it is.

One of the things I struggle with is that I am more profitable from 9:30 - 11:00, but prefer to trade 1:00-4:00. If I could just walk away everyday at 11 I would certainly be much better off. Not sure why I can't do it, I keep insisting that I am going to improve the afternoon trades... I have considered switching to sim in the afternoon for a couple months just to see if that can help get me out of trading it.

quote:
Originally posted by wirechild

I just can't see me ever getting to a mental state that would allow me to trade number like #1. I do the reverse now. If it goes against me I will get out quickly, if it goes with me then I will add. Although I don't do this often enough it works well me.

To each his own, I am a trader that jumps the gun to often I am very impatient. That is I will short a run up before weakness enters. So a strategy like this allows more room for me to enter lets say my avg is 8 cons a lot of 1 then 2 then 4 still puts me trading less but improves price. Or option #2 could be 2>2>2 For some reason this keeps me from a lot of losers.

I do this on my 1-3 day position trades and started doing this on scalps a while ago. Although I think timing is much more important in the shorter frame. Because we are dealing with smaller returns.

I used to do something similar to what you described with the late afternoon problems. It seemed like a totally different market. Market Profile helped me 100% in that area. I would look into that if you have not already.

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