Re: Scalping the DAX (SIM)
This is on market replay, I cheated......
CanOz
that's great, Can ..........a lot to weed from that ......
i've found getting a chart and going to each time frame and asking what was i thinking right here for the drawdowns is a vital one.....get a black/white candle chart for the time frame you like dealing in and notate on the printed chart with no extraneous stuff use a pencil and annotate from your memory........on rare occasions i'll video prime hours especially for any new ideas i want to run as there's often too much to recall after the event but motion recalls very easily....a chart and a transaction list that's all....i realise that the time-spent and mm's are vital but theyre also the part that comes after the strategy and part of the strategy needs to come from the onus you have which is diff to get from a sim....there's the 3 ways to sharpen your strategy, to get onus, you see, onus is the key ingredient for improvment because your psyche can take on the information with correct focus, i mean, sure, youre focused in a sim and you can do the auto strats and build your game, i get that, so, what i'm saying is, if you focus on price alone and (maybe volume) then you are in the auction youre not enslaving yourself to extraneous stuff, so, that costs you in some way through time or money
to get onus, ; video way, money way or the peer pressure way
to save capital, you can use the video way or peer pressure viideo way is to film the major period or make a small period to focus on and run a video, then a day later with the transaction list review the video and make notes on the printed chart as you go......this is important because youre engaged in tactile way, youre re-entering the arena and the subconsciousness doesnt know the difference yet the onus to have correct focus is effective relative to a sim and the same goes for peer pressure where you sit next to a person who's a pro trader with your transaction list and the chart with annotations and you explain to them your thinking and you can answer their questions which again brings you back into the auction.....
look, just reading how long you held onto losers and stuff like that is great office work really when youre in a real transaction, that stuff's pedestrian, like mark webber in a sim versus fending off schumy, there's no dynamic onus like a live auction so you need to get as close in downtime to the real thing as you can, reproduce, so that all the ephemeral stuff is being experienced......it's budget experience, i know
http://s766.photobucket.com/home/joulesmm1/set/59919
this set of jpegs is a whole xjo session plus some post-cash 10min auction from last week and i've cherry picked the day (because i can!) you'll see 169 trades from the xjo, 3 drawdowns, + silver trades for the day and some turning and repo trades on gold for a weekly game i'm running....it's a live account and anyone who's used that platform can tell you it's real
.....note the tiny sizes, note that i have several games at one time and ill use diff size for diff strats depending what's unfurling at the time within a larger context and with size tiny as it is i can allow them to run and take other trades within smaller plays.....no volume, no indicia, no dom.....
i have to inspect the trades and recall why i decided to scale out of some and immediately enter with different size and that makes a big diff to me....i open the day flat and and closed out flat except for the spot plays
maybe i'll buy 20 xjo longs, maybe i'm in a trend day up, looking for recent activity that might clue me on reversions, set-ups for news, mid-tier money faking trendlines...so i get to the zone, go bid, soon as first fractions comes i take 2 off that's a 10% reduction of a .25% part of a 1.75% cap allocation.....trend moves on, a burst, maybe this is a distribution candle, 3/4 of a whole point rotates, i'm out 2+2+2 contracts doesnt matter if the fractions i get are higher or lower in length, 12 left on the table.....new spike and it's the right continuation signal, i add 20 contracts, 32 long now.....i immediately take every fraction i can at 2's until the 12 are gone and again, doesnt matter the length of the fractions as long as they are in the direction of momentum, then i'm looking for danger on my last (added) 20 take half points at 5's for four trades if i can or take 3 5's off quick and watch the other 5 contracts run while i'm looking for other signals, if no signals avail i'm done, closed out and i might have taken 6 fractions, some repeated, 3 whole points with the 5's, that's good for me and i know i can tighten them up, but i'm live, not here to argue with the opportunity presented and mos def not here to risk crap for the sake of it and keeping within the scope of my knowledge which is wide on some days in some phases and very small on other days or in other phases.....most of the hard work is recognising that i simply dont know what's going on and can't conduct business......
using a $1 contract for a fractional trade might sound like a waste of time but compare the data i'm receiving to a sim.....real auction feedback......
ok.....just my ideas, not anything hard n fast.....just an approach...sometimes i get beaten up on several trades before i close out, sometimes i open the screen and simply apply the IDK rule (man, I don't know!) .....mostly i work very hard at simplicity......
if i find myself reaching for an external view (m/a, a fib, a boll, whatever) that means i've lost the thread or i've reached my allocation for the trade and i'm avoiding actions that need to be taken, it's subtle and i'm getting "better" at each event with effecting what needs to be done.....if my pos size is say 1.75% of avail cap i'll be starting around .25% and look to take larger scalps within that trade set-up so i can keep going until ive reached the pos size cap, that way i can add upto the allocation that goes with the auction at the time.....
the downside: if i'm not reading the auction correctly the fault is completely with me as i am reliant on my own reading ......this is a vital point, imho .......reliance on anything external is instantly saying that the auction is not being understood and being filtered i am, or, you are, avoiding.......at this point exiting the trade is the correct strat not because i'm about to be stopped out, simply because i must admit that i am not reading the play, that's it, that's all, therein is the onus and responsibility.....after youve learned to read the auction process through different hours on various instruments with all their nuances and levels of activity you then head for the paper work stuff......
ideas only