Friday, February 20, 2009

No swings = No trades

Today was an odd occurrence in price action that does happen from time to time. This morning there were no Pivot Highs/Lows being marked on my charts in the ES (and NQ for that matter). This told me something VERY important. It says that price action is messy enough that a simple algorithm to point out highs and lows of swings can't be calculated. So its at that point I sit on my hands because my edge disappears. I'm not able to gauge relevant swings, and thus not able to gauge trend direction, price patterns, everything. Now the NQ did kick into some normalcy by around the time i'm writing this but the ES has yet to show one swing high or low. So basically, there were no trades today because there weren't any swings I could measure and apply my methodology to. (The NQ offered no valid setups on the swings it did print up).


So this week ends with a net loss overall. We simply recognized our failures and weaknesses too late to save face with our overall profit. But i'll be burning the backtesting oil yet again to get final outcomes of trades using our revised stop management to lock in profits and our discretionary filter.

All things considered the fact that we only ended up down about 45.00 net after all the mistakes we made is a testament to the new systems potential. Lets put it in very real terms. On Tuesday I took -262.50 worth of losses I DIDN'T NEED TO. Discretion filters those trades now. Wednesday we corrected our mistakes and while we didn't knock it out of the park, we didn't lose money. Thursday we took a great trade but didn't take any profit on it so we missed out on an easy +150.00 worth of profits there. All said and done, we were missing a 412.50 swing in profits and we still ended the THREE DAY week only down 45 bucks? On this fantastically crappy and choppy expiration week? Um yea.

So we'll be finalizing everything over the weekend. Setting it in stone and getting ready to finally start our equity growth again next week!

Trade Results:

No Trades Taken.


6 comments:

E-Mini Player said...

What did I tell you about mixing "WE" and "I" :D Pick one and stick to it bro!

Aside from that, I'd say it was a productive week and a lot of progress was made!

Michael said...

Smart move staying out today, had I traded I would have been hit with a $100 loss.

Looks like you beat me by 5 bucks this week. We'll make it back next week!

E-Mini Player said...

Check out that V reversal today! Maybe Fridays should be full days as well? I was hitting it long in the 754-755 area, and then shorting it in the 775-777 area. That's one of the benefits of using 1:2 or 1:3 R/R; you can hit it multiple times with a tight stop and then ride it out for a big gain. I'll sign on to Yahoo over the weekend if I'm studying charts; maybe catch you on there.

Anonymous said...

Nice job sticking to your plan; that's all it takes but it's not easy. I have high expectations for your P/L next week so don't screw it up! :)

Stan

Peter Coussement said...

Hello Matt,

I have created a facebook group called "CME E-mini S&P 500 Futures Day Trading". I have included a link to your blog.

Hereby I would like to invite you to become a member of this E-mini trading facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52314891237

Greetings from Belgium

Peter

Matt said...

Thanks for all the comments gents. I've been doing tons of work over this weekend and I think we'll be ready for this next week for sure!

Peter - i'll def. check out the group! Thanks!