bakedbeans' learning journal

[BambinoFlex]

Gosh it's been nearly a year and a half...


Onwards!

Hi BB,

It's good to see your name again. Looking forward to your posts.

[bb01100100]

Thanks BambinoFlex!

Kreslik is such an awesome source of knowledge, I'm glad it's still going. I find extended periods of time where I get a "gateway timeout" error when trying to access the site, but eventually (days, usually a week or two later) it's back up and I find some gem of information - maybe a week old or maybe a decade old. Brilliant.

[bb01100100]

Today's trading started off quite messy. It's story of three parts:

1. shorting... a stop out, one scratch and then two stop outs. I note that these were 6-9 pts stopouts, all 1R losses; no bad behaviour on my part (didn't move stops, etc). Net PnL -$228. I'm starting to feel stressed - that's a lot of ground to recover from.
2. going long.. an aggressive entry based on a momentum candle + retrace into that candle + continuation.. and then an add with the same logic, then a 2nd add with same logic (and very tight stop), exit all at original 1R. Loss recovered and PnL now at $57.24 for the day. I'm now relieved and stop to consider how things went.
3. I notice that a price has extended up to circa 4414 and is now coming down - I see ahead of time the idea of the momentum candle (4406-4412.50) being "zeroed" so I watch for that retrace and rejection.. I enter with a stop below the prior momentum candle (furthermost red line 4405.25) and 1R target. Price moves around my entry for a couple of minutes, pushes a little lower then pushes up, pulls back, up and pushes through my 1R target.

2023-06-15-MES.jpg (102.28 KiB) Viewed 2309 times

I have mixed feelings about today's trading:

• I had an opinion about the first three trades - price had pushed down sharply, retraced and I thought it would retest the lows at least.. MA was down and waited for what I saw as a momentum candle. My stop was too small - reviewing the chart if I had proper stop placement (above prior "swing" high) I would have been fine, and it looks as though I would have /just/ scraped in for 1R. I added to the trade because of my opinion, looking to get a 2R runner. I should have been paying better attention to the trade I had on...
• Lesson: get those stops in the right place.
• I realised we had momentum, long and I was going the wrong way by shorting.. The MA was turning, I had a momentum candle retrace and continuation, so I got long and then held for 1R. This was stressful because I was already down - would I have a -$400 day now? It was very uncomfortable, but I trusted the price action.
• Lesson: do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done (follow the system)
• My final trade is the one I'm pleased about: I was up for the day, I /really/ wanted to protect that profit.. I didn't want to give it away and have all my stress and worry be for nothing. But I took the trade because I needed to take the trade and address my "profit attachment" issues. I desperately wanted to close that trade when it stalled 75% of the way to target. I didn't close it and the trade worked out nicely.
• Lesson: Accept that current p/l has no bearing on the next trade opportunity. It's interesting that I believe that more when I'm down and less when I'm up.

So it was a "big" day. I will reflect on whether I should have been shorting at the start, or whether I should have sat on my hands, possibly finding no trades today. FOMO was at play if i'm honest.

Finished the day $100.16 up, 2.66%.

[kiwiarian]

Thanks BambinoFlex!

Kreslik is such an awesome source of knowledge, I'm glad it's still going. I find extended periods of time where I get a "gateway timeout" error when trying to access the site, but eventually (days, usually a week or two later) it's back up and I find some gem of information - maybe a week old or maybe a decade old. Brilliant.

There's talks with the owner the site about this, sometimes he is away when it happens, or no one notifies him it's been down etc.

[bb01100100]

Today was an exercise in patience, which paid off.

My bias was long because the SMA(20) is going up.

• I wanted to short the pointy place back down to the MA, but didn't because that's not what this series of trades is about.
  
• Price retraced from circa 4465 down through the first momentum candle, then got most of the way down through the second momentum candle at 4458-4461 and then stalled and started to make a pinbar - that's where I entered 2x lots long.
  
• The pinbar was formed, and next bar continue up; I added 1x lot long at the top of the pinbar.
  
• Price then washed back and forth, giving me time to draw a rectangle-of-protection which stopped price from breaching the original momentum candle I was basing my trade off (just joking about the protection bit).
  
• Price was very slow and I wanted to close the trade early, close at BE - it was uncomfortable to hold the trade. However I remembered that I need proper stop placement (possibly a bit far away 4453.75 but I wanted room) and patience. I had both and price eventually, haltingly moved up.

2023-06-16-b-MES.jpg (71.57 KiB) Viewed 2298 times

I've spent the last year or so watching the DOM for price action, so watching a last-trade line on a chart bob about is both soothing (less information) and frustrating (what's going on with the order flow).

Seeing momentum bars and forming an IF/ELSE logic around them has been very illuminating - something I would never have learned elsewhere.

I exited the 2x lot long at 1R and the 1x lot long at 2R. There was more on the table but I am simply happy that today I executed well and practiced the skills I need: taking the trade, proper stop placement, patience.

In today's price action, I just know that previously I would have been trying to short the top at 4464, 4468, 4471, 4475 and then eventually give up, only to realise that yes, today was a grinding up day. Now I have a squiggly that tells me "duh, up...".

Update: at 3pm NY time there was a nice sell off that brought price down below the MA; I set 1x lot long near the low of a prior momentum candle (yellow line) and a stop below the candle prior to that (red line).. I lost my nerve with that trade as it stalled, so I exited prior to my 1R target - netting 1.5 points instead of the 3.25 points I was targeting.

2023-06-16-d-MES.jpg (39.24 KiB) Viewed 2298 times

Price moved 1R and then 2R shortly after I closed the trade. The trade was uncomfortable and I was nervous of losing the money I'd banked already. Looking back at the chart I realise that if this had been my first trade of the day I would have held to target...

I need to continue to practice non-attachment.

Result is $80.73, 2%

[IgazI]

Pssst, come here! *puts on Joe Biden voice and whispers softly* "the 20 SMA is just a larger chart

just_an_L.png (61.88 KiB) Viewed 2291 times

[bb01100100]

Pssst, come here! *puts on Joe Biden voice and whispers softly* "the 20 SMA is just a larger chart

That’s quite thought provoking… if I was below the MA and now I’m above the MA maybe I’ve got scope for a move larger than my trading chart is currently showing… that and the value of giving the trade time to work out.

Oh and that might also assist with thinking about stall points… eg my long trade might be nothing more than a 1/3 or 1/2 bar retrace on the higher chart… which could set up a small timeframe short with the objective of capturing a fairly normal continuation bar on a larger timeframe. Or it could set up another IF/ELSE decision for taking another long as that larger chart reverses… this is starting to sound like market structure, neat.

I guess it’s a logical way of capturing range expansion… and then if I’m capturing an expanding range I ought to be stacking at sensible points.

Since I trade from 2 PM NY time I might need to run some numbers on end of session stall vs continuation/reversal in Asian session.

Or I could think bigger than a single session and use that structural awareness to execute a small chart entry at a pointy place and capture something more like a weekly expansion.

I was wondering what to do next when I hit 10% return… this might be just the thing. I continue with 1-2R scalps and complement with a structural trade when that is appropriate.

Thanks for sharing, Igazi!

[bb01100100]

Today was difficult - I made a lot of mistakes and I had "opinions" (oh-oh).

I got short at 4472 (cross-hairs in the image below) but price stalled and this is where I lost my conviction.. I looked at a higher chart and thought perhaps the range had been exhausted and we would get a 5+ point retrace. So now I am projecting what I want instead of trading what I see.

2023-06-17-a-MES.jpg (83.97 KiB) Viewed 2220 times

How smooth and trending is that SMA? Sigh.

I scratched the trade, after which it sold off another 5 points. Having seen that sell off I got it in my head what now was the time to start "buying the low" because "retrace!".

Long story short, I ignored the system I was meant to be trading and reverted to being a buy-low-and-stopout trader. I was -$233 down before I managed to catch a retrace after 3 failed attempts. What a waste of opportunity. I didn't believe the MA on the my chart and so I fought and fought a downward grinding price.

After my aggressive retrace trade (I managed about 4pts on that) I was -$40. I traded inline with the bias (short) and netted another 2 and 3 pts short getting flat for the day.

My final trade was a proper dead horse trade: momentum bar up, MA turning up, retrace back into the momentum bar and then continuation up. 1xR trade and best of the day.

2023-06-17-MES.jpg (77.24 KiB) Viewed 2220 times

It's now 15:45 in NY on a Friday, so I'm calling it a day and a week.

Lessons learned:
- The objective of these series of trades was to trade the deadhorse method, not the "bb01100100's visions of the future" method.
- Be patient! Again. Be patient. If I had actually been patient on my first trade, I would have netted 1R and my brain would have been wired for objectively seeing the next opportunity.
- Did I mention being patient?

Result is $20.74, 0.52%.

End of week results from when I started trading Dead Horse (note for me: these are US timezone days):

• Tue - 66.98
• Wed - 100.16
• Thu - 80.73
• Fri - 20.74
• Week #1 - $268.61, 7.29%
• Max DD -$263.12, Pct Profitable 67.44%

Mission for next week:

- Be patient
- Be patient
- Be patient
- Observe, trade the system and avoid visions of the future.

[bb01100100]

Monday was a CME holiday, so no trading MES.

Tuesday was fairly quiet and range bound (from 2pm NY after that large pinbar...); played several zline retraces for 1R on 1x lot or 2x lots.. Got up to 0.85% for the day and then got chopped, dropping down to circa 0.40%, then caught a move away from an area of support and got to 1.2% for the day.
I fought the urge to use larger size to "catch-up" and hit my imaginary 1% target for the day. I'm glad I didn't do that because it simply puts me at risk. On of the first thoughts in my head this morning as I woke up at 4am was "preserve your capital".

I was patient and found it enjoyable during one of my trades where I waited to be wicked in at a 50% retrace of a momentum candle.
I'm trying to view being stopped out as obtaining additional market information, e.g. MA was down, momentum candle, so I was short, but I got stopped out.. OK that saved me money if the market reversed, what's price doing now.. OK it stalling, pulling back, lower high; short again at much the same price, knowing that if I get stopped out again I'm "offside".

One thing I need to work on is continuing to trade around 4pm - there /can/ be some momentum that comes in around that time, I assume as larger players square up for the day, the cash market goes into the close, etc.

I often see orders "spray" into the market, best seen in the DOM (which I'm not using at the point in time).. Might get several hundred ES contracts hit market and push price down 3-6 points.. sometimes market soaks it up (like today at 4438 - 4436) and pushes onwards; sometimes it seem more like a "stay away" signal that is respected. Interesting. Sometimes those orders coincide with the Market Profile PoC shifting from one volume peak price to another (double distribution type day)... I always wonder whether that move was designed to get other algos to recentre price around the new PoC. Anyway, what I see in front of me is my focus.

Right now I'm a dead horse trader on a single timeframe with a single instrument.

Result: $47.66, 1.2%
Max DD: 1.2%, Pct profitable: 62.50%

[bb01100100]

Is there a way to see which of my posts is awaiting moderator approval? I did a text-only update for today but it's not showing up.. I didn't recall seeing a message about the post pending approval, but I might not have been paying attention due to a strong urge to drink more coffee