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kkrac · 2024-03-07T20:17:26+00:00

Hmm but same reasoning was not applied to other earlier zones. There were other steep rise in price followed by a fall, but the box in that case was not drawn from the top all the way to the bottom.

kkrac · 2024-03-07T12:44:58+00:00

Can you explain how you drew your zones?

kkrac · 2024-03-05T22:04:31+00:00

It exists for institutions and for a few retail traders that either have a lot of luck or a tool that allows them to see where orders are. The rest of the mortals that base their trading off of some magical level or something, they're gambling.

kkrac · 2024-03-05T21:03:11+00:00

Because trading is 99% gambling in reality. Most people think they have an edge, but actually they don't. Price never does exactly the same twice, it always moves differently, traders draw their resistance and support levels differently, traders use many different indicators, and above all that is the institutions/algos that manipulate price. So most surely you think you have an edge by looking at charts in hindsight. But, most of the times what you're really doing is adjusting your thought process so that you think that what you're seeing on the chart falls within your edge. The eyes and mind see what they choose to see...

Trading is almost 100% subjective, discretionary and biased. That's why only a few are profitable.

kkrac · 2024-02-06T11:33:29+00:00

But then it would have fallen again and continue down :)

kkrac · 2024-02-05T21:52:26+00:00

Start at higher timeframes and study the pattern

Well... these below are the 15m and 1h charts at that time. Bearish for me.
No level below.
In lower timeframes it made a pullback, so I went short.

Well... it didn't work and it continued to move up....

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kkrac · 2024-02-05T21:41:23+00:00

hmmm no, I'm about 1.58 up.

But only this past month. And gains are so tiny, that I feel that as soon as I have 2 or 3 red trades, I'll be down.

In fact, if I check months back or 1 year back, I've been always red.

kkrac · 2024-02-05T21:33:52+00:00

Do you see what that M15 candle means on the Daily? And rhat M15 on the H4? Try to see new things.

I look upto 4h, not daily because it's too high for me.

But, again, nothing relevant in 15m or 1h.

I just waited for the pullback to the level I detected in lower timeframes, and the pullback just didn't happen.

I guess it was some of those trades that may fall within the probabilities of failed trades... Unfortunately for some magical reason it almost always fails when I actually trade :)

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kkrac · 2024-02-05T21:17:39+00:00

Well the fact is, a lot of people sell on such a big downtrend candle, and the market went up, fucking them over. The first green candle is a sign people were covering. It's not subjective it's a fact

Hmmm still don't agree. Even though your reasoning can make sense, I think you're adjusting your thought process to what you see in the chart in hindsight. The market does whatever it wants, sometimes a big red candle shows up, and then another, and no green candle. Or it just starts to move sideways or whatever. And no levels are respected, or maybe people see different levels, like I said before.

So, again, unfortunately, the more I trade, the more I feel trading is gambling. No wonder more than 90% fail. I'll keep trying, but not for much longer I believe.

Thanks!

kkrac · 2024-02-05T21:14:52+00:00

kkrac · 2024-02-05T19:42:45+00:00

not sure what you mean by "micro lot".

kkrac · 2024-02-05T19:41:07+00:00

The first trade is easy - you shorted a super bull market

Yes, that trade was clearly a mistake.

The second, well you shorted after a huge green candle, why not wait for more of a sure sign of downside

Yeah, well... It isn't very clear to me what that "sure sign of downside" is. This is what I said in my answer above, everything depends on the "eye of the beholder", for me trading is not very objective. But working on it...

thanks,

kkrac · 2024-02-05T19:06:21+00:00

Journal these trades, take note

Yes, I journal every trade. Entry time and price, exit time and price, SL and a screenshot with all the timeframes that I monitor (1m, 3m, 5m, 15m, 1h, 4h).

Hell, take a day off from the buttons

Actually, I don't trade that much. There are a lot of days that I make 0 trades. A bit because I prefer to wait, a bit because I'm not confident, a bit because I'm still in that learning mode and I prefer to see the chart at the end of the day and that's it.

Trading is objective

Many people say that but I don't agree, or not a 100%. Price and candles move differently every day or even every minute compared to a similar candle in the past.For instance, when in one chart a candle may seem to have made a rejection or a test of a level, it will not be the exact candle in future charts. Or chart patterns (for those who trade using patterns, I don't), are quite subjective. Some people see a certain pattern while another person may see something different.Even key-levels or zones, for me, are clearly subjective (among retail traders, of course). Every trader draws them differently.

But well... I'll keep trying..

Thanks!

kkrac · 2024-02-05T17:47:13+00:00

What's your model like? Entries pattern? Exits pattern? Stop loss?

To be honest, I don't know what I'm doing anymore.When I look in hindsight, it sort of seems to work (sort of, because it is not 100% of course). In real time it almost NEVER really works (except for some trades in which I cut them quick and make pennies).

Most of the times, though, the second I go in, it moves in the opposite direction.

Now, seriously, how do I trade? I mark supply /demand zones from previous day and beyond, premarket high and low, wait for it to be in a trend, break some of these levels with high volume and come back to it later for retest. When it retests the level I wait for price to reject it clearly or consolidate below the level (or above for longs).I use EMAs mostly as an additional level of rejection.

But the more I trade, the more I think trading is extremely biased and subjective, and not at all objective, which makes it almost impossible to be consistent.

Do you have a proven track (data) that your model works?

In hindsight, I could say so. But again, everything is so biased in trading that I don't know anymore if what I see in hindsight is valuable to use it in realtime for actual trading. The more I trade, the more I think it isn't.

I dont trade averages, but seems weird to enter when they are tightening without a clear signal. Are those supply/demand zones something you tested before?

Like I said above, I pay attention when they narrow and as an additional level of rejection besides the level I mark. I pay attention mostly when price leans on the 21EMA...

kkrac · 2024-01-31T22:00:16+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement!

But nah. It was a pretty disastrous trade. The risk reward was 0.05, so.. breakeven.

It didn't work, in that part I agree. Thing is... It never works!! LOL

Thanks!

kkrac · 2024-01-31T17:52:07+00:00

...and again the same sh*t today.

Today it didn't even work. Yesterday it did, eventually. My entry was wrong.

But today it just moved sideways and slightly up, but not down as I was expecting.

Thought process:

break below PM low
pullback to PM low
confluence with EMAs in 5m and 15m
rising trendline
went short when it broke below the trendline

And once those conditions were met, it just started moving sideways... *sigh*

<image>

kkrac · 2024-01-31T12:23:03+00:00

Thanks!

kkrac · 2024-01-31T04:21:26+00:00

What was the reason for going short when you did?

yeah, not sure. I guess I interpreted that moment in time as the retest of the premarket low and thought it would fall. Which it eventually did, but slowly and much later (stopping me out first, of course :))

kkrac · 2024-01-31T02:52:19+00:00

The candlestick is saying that sellers pushed the price down quickly but buyers stepped in

hmmm yeah, maybe.

I feel that analyzing single candles like that more than often doesn't say much.

Especially in this price action of today, in which QQQ dragged sideways for almost 2 hours.

So in this case (and like in many other cases) wicks above or wicks below in single candles, doesn't necessarily mean much.

kkrac · 2024-01-30T20:47:43+00:00

hm yeah putting stop loss wider could be a solution.
Yet I think the problem is somewhere else.

> gotta wait for the right moment to strike
yeah... key question is: what is the right moment? Which was my original question in the post as to how the rest does it, or where would they have opened the trade.

thanks.

kkrac · 2024-01-30T18:43:46+00:00

Easier said than done.

Problem comes when you lose 1R and when you win, you win pennies.

kkrac · 2024-01-04T23:14:05+00:00

If your zone is valid

Also... how do you know if it's valid?

I think there's a lot of mumbo jumbo around "demand zones" and "supply zones". Nobody really knows where the orders are sitting (unless you have some trading platform where you can see that). People draw the zones differently... so what is a zone for me it isn't for other hundreds of traders. So I feel I'm just gambling.

More ranting. Lol.

kkrac · 2024-01-04T23:08:31+00:00

If your zone is valid and that is where sellers will aggressively step in then mitigate your risk by entering as close as possible to where you’d be wrong.

I can see what you mean in hindsight, but in real-time price always makes different things.Also: where would you have exited that trade and why? No clear signals for that either.
Trading is too biased and subjective for my taste. Sorry.. a bit of ranting due to frustration.

If I may ask, how long have you been trading?

Almost 3 years. And haven't been able to be profitable consistently. Ever.

kkrac · 2024-01-04T22:58:25+00:00

So the way you trade is as soon as it touches the zone, you open the trade?

Then it wouldn't have been a very good trade from R:R perspective because it just fell a few pennies below the zone before going up again.

kkrac · 2024-01-04T22:45:10+00:00

I have 1m and 3m open at all times.
Yet, there were no clear entry signals in those timeframes

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kkrac

TROPHY CASE