Top Pick Trading Forum

Thanks for all the help Eric.

The overall emphasis should be to note market strength, weaknesses, areas of support and resistance, and momentum.

Horizontal S&R is where buy and stop orders have tended to accumulate through how prices have moved. These areas help establish good risk reward opportunities. Channels allow for the understanding of strength of bias - tight vs broad. If tight, there is only 1 direction to trade.

Having the signal bar be the low of a move helps to establish the observance of the beginning of a move. With tick charts there is an improvement in probability because of this. However, if one read context well, then there is more flexibility right?

Yesterday, the bar wasn't the lowest, however, the entry was approaching a resistance area above. It was enough for a 1.75 move and the stalling at the high should have lead to caution.

If you review yesterday, and some of the notes enclosed, please note the significant difference in strength. The series of bull bars. The gaps, and difficulty of the bears to have consecutive bars, as well as the size of the bull bars vs the bear bars. Note the count of series of bull bars (numbers). Compare against the bear bars.

Note, yesterday's trade provided some profit. The stop area may have needed more room because there was less strength of the bulls in that area.

The signal bar can improve things, and in the observance of many of the other aspects, the entry from today was significantly better.

Hopefully helpful and good trades to you.

Ok thanks eric. Yesterdays loser effected me and I passed up the 2el from today because its similar visually. I noted that the immediate context from today is much better and more obvious than yesterday, but thats pretty much my struggle. Similar looking trades but different immediate local context means everything, but its hard to not let it get in my head.

Quick question though, if the signal bar I entered on from yesterday (the loser) would have ticked lower and turned up, would that have changed the dynamic enough to earn an arrow below it do you think? I am considering just throwing all my setups in the trash that dont have signal bars that tick higher/lower for the trap effect.

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2024-01-09 213241.png[/attachment]

Mack mentions the first trade in the video.

The issue is that the breakout area needs to be tested. The entry bar was an inside bar so not as much of an opportunity to trap shorts and establish a lower area potentially. That is the issue. The breakout area needs to be tested and the stop was right in the middle of it.

The second failure to move lower better established the area.

Ok after sitting down fresh, im still really irritated that I got stopped out by a tick, only to have the market rally for 70 points without even checking up from precisely the point I got stopped out at. Obviously I had no idea it was going to do that, but my initial suspicion of a good few points available there was correct, which makes it even more irritating.

Yeah its congested and nobody is really in control at the time I entered. Move bearish than bullish but nothing definitive. I think I just wanted a setup right there and jumped in without being objective. I was hoping mack would have marked it so I could tell myself that it wasnt that bad of a mistake LOL nope.

But #2 in your reply I cant really decipher. Should I have been concerned that my stoploss was essentially unprotected by the previous swing lows to the left?

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2024-01-08 214554.png[/attachment]

Something to reflect on perhaps.

1. The contextual description could be much stronger. What is happening here? Who is in control, and how do you know?
2. A stop loss and its placement is a reflection of your decision being incorrect or wrong (bad bias). Where is that? How do you know when you are "wrong"? This becomes a more important question, especially since you are working towards 1:1. Grab some charts and work through :).

Hopefully helpful and good trades to you!

Blue arrow second entry, stopped out by 2 ticks followed by as of now a 30 point rally. On the attachment is the context I saw at the time of the entry. I thought we were going to the overnight high at an absolute minimum, and a possible second leg up equal to the one we had at the time of entry. At the time it felt like a repeat of friday's spike and channel so I was pretty bullish.

I have many second entries noted like the one I took, first entry is congested and it breaks out and forms the second entry.

So on the whole, it is a trade that follows my plan, and I think I got the context right.

Clearly I was early because I got stopped out. I REALLY wanted to enter again on the engulfing bar after being stopped out but I just walked away for a while because I had a severe case of red-ass.

Signal bar was huge, didnt tick lower than the previous bear bar, and the whole setup did finish a bit high in the move.

Yeah its obvious AFTER the fact that I should have waited for 2 clear legs but many times this is a great setup. I was really suprised at the huge bear bar following the signal bar.

I dont want to let this effect my trading too much, I still like the trade, however the red-ass is still present after watching it rally for a while. The loss itself effected me negatively but I didnt see much after that to take.

Is there something I can take away from this or should I just chalk it up to "thats why we go for 4 ticks" like mack says. I was going for 1:1 as usual and I dont mind the loss if its a decent trade that just didnt make 1:1, I have accepted the added extra losses that will happen with the 1:1 strategy. Is there something I can learn from this other than I need to learn to not let a loss bother me?

Also the signal bar is huge, but im trying not to even think about the ATR anymore. It doesnt appear to matter as long as the bar is not huge compared to the average bars at the time. Everything ive seen as of now is that actually bigger bars mean more profit and filtering them down due to "size" is not something that needs to be done. Over time, over hundreds of trades it all averages out and increases profit. Obviously an unusually massive bar would be passed on, I just mean within reason.

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2024-01-08 122304.png[/attachment]