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Hi guys, I have a couple questions that I have been wondering about for a while now and am hoping you guys could share some of your personal experience.
- What do you guys do while waiting for a setup or when in a trade? I try to distract myself to avoid over analysing the PA but I set a timer where it rings 40 seconds before the bar closes so I would look and decide. I am not sure if this is a good way because I may miss out the development of the bars etc but I tend to get very jittery especially when I am in trades.
- Do you guys take entries on 5m but set targets on HTF like 15/30m targets? I try to take trades based off only 5m price action but because I start my day with looking at 1H, 30m and 15m so I have a better understanding of the market, and sometimes there are duelling lines on HTF that would make me feel that the market could reach it. Because of that, I sometimes "extend" my targets when I notice that there is strength in the direction of my trade (strong bars closing with no tails, consecutive bars etc) but I am not sure if doing this is a good/bad practice because sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't.
The reason I am asking is because I am fairly new to trading and I am hoping not to develop any bad habits at this stage. Thank you
1.
You shouldn't have any distractions during trading. There is no such thing as over-analysing PA. I’d rather miss a trade because I’ve “over-analysed” and now have doubts, rather than take a bad trade because I was distracted and failed to see a warning sign.
Also, the way bars form often gives you an idea of the general conditions of the market. For example, in a thin market, especially in a TTR with big swings within (ie, where you have big bars covering almost the entire height of the TTR, but failing at the boundaries of the TTR, which means stop order trades would constantly fail), it’s common to see the market moving quickly 3-4 ticks in a second (as it would in a breakout situation), but then stalling. This gives you an early indication that this is potentially a difficult TTR market and you should probably stay out.
2.
I use targets based on the 15-min chart all the time. If there is a strong signal bar or breakout bar on the 15-min chart and the context supports it, you should expect at least 1R off it.
Thank you for sharing, at least now I have some confidence that what I am doing is not out of the ordinary 😀
I feel otherwise. Over analysis for me leads to bad entry or lost opportunity. I draw the trend lines and wait for the right setup to come along. I only trade wedge top and bottoms and have become really good at detecting and trading them. I don't do buy the close or stop orders above the signal bar but limit order at 50% of PB of previous bar that has a reasonable support below.
For me I tend to stay on 5 min and find measured move targets but keep moving my stop to 1 tick below last bar.
Hope this helps.
1.Same as Kiran. If I cant see it right away, there is usually ( I would say always) no trade to take. So over-analysing is nothing I do. It never worked for me. I sometimes zoom out while infront of the screen and ither times im absolutely focusing on the bars movement. Cause there is a rythm and lot of information in the moves inside the bars.
2. I tend not to set targets. I have found out the way to keep my mind open-minded while trading, is not to set fixed targets or even rules. Im 100% intuitively trading to be clear. I trade 5 min charts and have the daily above the screen.
If you want to trade correct in the beginning you should only focus on this points:
-Trade really small, ridicuously small size.
-Focus on the process, which means, not focusing on the money you are making but instead on what you do good and bad and LEARN from both.
-Be kind to yourself, this is gonna be hard.
-Stick to few patterns in the beginning.
-Keep things simple.
-Believe and trust in yourself that if I just keep going and learning, I will one day reach that point where I am profitable. Let it take time.
Good Luck.
//Alexander
