naskorb wrote:LeMercenaire wrote:Leoheart wrote:
This "counter trading" is the big black hole in my mind since I started following Billytt's thread of FF.
Taking your example above, when you enter the first long you are fixing the bad trade in limbo. In fact it is a loss but still not paid to the broker as I'm understanding it. Isn't it the same as to have a SL at this point and after that to take the next trigger OR at the next trigger you are taking one new long and closing the short from the limbo. So at the second trigger now you are running two longs and have one loss from the short in your account. Then you are waiting for extra profit to compensate for the loss and more.
....and about the GSs, they can understand you when they see a lot of the money in their bag
Sorry, buddy - took me a while to find my way back here.
Without being flippant, yes it is the same...and no, it isn't. I do know a couple of friends in the US who use fixed stops as they can't run counters. Interestingly, they have made adjustments to the methods (albeit small ones) to make it work easier to run that way.
As for managing counters, it is really a heck of a lot easier to actually do then to explain on paper. First off, yes, there is an element of psychology at play. It somehow doesn't feel like a loss.
The second element comes into play when you begin to unwind the hedge. This will vary depending on which method you are running it on. As you know Billy and I run an AU 04:00 bar break and this is based around the rock-solid stats that come with that particular method, knowing that if the first move fails, then the second will likely do the job (I won't go into details of the method here).
On the other methods Billy and I run this on, it varies. I also won't go into Billy's stuff here - I have worked my own variant of those now anyway, using them in combination with Wick-Zone tech as I've mentioned before elsewhere. From here on, everything is the way I do it, not necessarily how Billy does it.
What I like to have, is the knowledge that those two trades are still open. One goes up, the other goes down. This gives the unique opportunity to reduce the floating loss.
Now, I am not going to pretend that this is an easy thing to do, it's just that it suits my style of trading. I love scalping. As such, I can load up heavy on a move and grab back a major chunk via a momo-move for instance. I'll run that out of an S+D Zone as you know and treat it like any other scalp trade.
So one of those goes in the bag and the floating loss is reduced. Rinse, trade, repeat.
Now the great thing is, I will look to do this at any time until the next major trigger comes. That next trigger is going to be the element that kills the floating loss off, so all of these small bites are jam on top. They stop me having to double my size on the next trigger to recoup the loss.
If I have enough time (and inclination), it is perfectly possible to actually completely negate that floating loss, simply by getting the timing right on these additional trades...and there's the rub. The major key to it all. It's all about the timing.
Dropping down to the m1 and m5 and jumping very early onto momo-moves very precisely means that I can, in effect, add profit to the open trades that are running. As I said, doing this can clear the floating loss completely and so long as I keep it balanced, I can walk away from it at any time and that floater will stay that size in limbo till I decide to get to work on it again.
OK...does any of that make any sense whatsoever, lol? I hope so.
One last thing to say is that I should point out that I couldn't get my own head around it until I actually started running it myself and it is one of the few occasions where I will tell traders to run it to death on a demo account first, as it is crucial to get the mechanics of the thing down pat without any psychological stresses attached to running a live account. Running it on a live account before one is 100% comfortable with the process is suicidal.
Cheers