Very good materials about Trading and Risk

 

Improvement idea

    This time, I opened the trade after the bar confirmed after the market close at 10:00 pm of 20241009, rather than 5 to 10 mins before trade hour close. Literally, I opened the trade after 11:00 pm of 20241009. I chose to open the trade when the daily bar complete entirely on the chart.

    However, I found that it may be better to open the trade until next day trading hour. As the market tends to run into opposite direction to the trade bias. It also provides 10 to 20 points margin to enter the trade. You can see the RED daily bar after the tradable signal bar in the chart below.

Fig 1: Trade open at 20241009.

After the last loser trade, the trend line for triggering new trade becomes an little upwards trend rather than downwards. I tend to trade with flat or little tilted trendline, instead of steep one.

          Fig 2: HA chart shows ligitimate breakout and OHLC depicts a wonderful upwards pattern.

Grinding with low volatility! Mental stability is king!

 The emotion up and down is so unbearable. I have to get used to this emotional fluctuation and it's so grinding once the trade is in such low volitility situation before US President election day in the early of November.

Sadly, the trade is a loser but it was just down with several points. That is very acceptable. Unfortunately, this trade have been waited to open since early August. After that time, the volitily still kept high but no trading signal is in place. However, the volitility decreased a lot just the trade open. It's so grinding to hold a trade with up or down within 15-point range per day.

Luckily, market will tell you the direction! You can see losers as a taxation for the coming winners. You are just a strategy manager, remember! See the next trade, the market will reveal the direction itself.

Anyway, the execution of this trade is faultless!

Fig 1. Trade Open at 20240919 at 21:45p.

Fig 2. Trade Close at 20241002 at 21:44p.

Fig 3. Trade Open account status.

Fig 4. Trade Close account status.

Losing Trade!! But it's exited too early!! Don't quit without signal complete!!!!

 I exited this trade too early without waiting til the daily bar completed!!! Big mistake!!

                                Fig 1. bar @ 2:00 pm, guessing it will be an up flat-bottom bar but....

Fig 2. close up

Fig 3. Around 5:30 pm!!!

This mistake is avoidable and at least we have to wait the real exit signal to proceed. We need to hold back even we feel greedy or fear within the trade.

Fig 4. In

Fig 5. Out

Once the trade ends, it can't re-entrace, need to wait for another signal.

Fig 6. Final outcome after Friday! The price almost reaches the TP target!!! What!?

Finally correction appears!

 Let's see how the uptrend slope being penetrated within the coming week!

Sub-trade after main trade

 

After close of the main trade, there is an opportunity for the sub-trade. But this after trade is quite risky, the buildup for the top is not so strong. The bars at the top are not deterministic. Up/down bars or doji appeared around the top.

Obviously, the accumulation phase before the sub-trade can be seen as part of the sub-trade to measure the stop-loss level before the entry.

重新出發

 I'm completely starting over with a new swing trade strategy, which makes use of the ES/MES futures of SPY to target RR=1:1 trading opportunities.

This strategy is so simple but the most hardship on executing this strategy nicely should be put on the psychological side. Let's dive into the illustration below.

The trade only lasts for 21 trading days. However, 8 days of them are range bounded (i.e. see the red bracket in the HA chart). That means no obvious dominating directions in these 8 days. It's unusual on my backtesting records and this is a psychological torture. If you are not disciplinary enough or faint-hearted, you might be shaken off from the original plan.

Of course, I've increased my frequecy on checking stock chart during this grinding period, I was so nervous obviously! But I still followed to what I've planned and this trade got a extremely good outcome in the end.

One thing should be mentioned is that the future contract should be rolled over manually and adjusted the profit taking and stop loss price on your own as well.

Lastly, any profit should be protected intentioanlly. In this case, I've moved my stop loss from breakeven to the lowest point of 11th June, once it stayed at an attractive profit level since the trade opened.