Sometime ago a doctor suggested that I wasn’t suffering from depression, that I was ‘just pissed off’ - I think is diagnosis may have been correct. 
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I can answer that one just by saying “no”.
I don’t think you have to be advanced in years at all to know who Robert Zimmerman is? I happened to know one of the other questions from historical gossip about currency and coinage from my Scottish grandfather. But apart from that, it’s a foreign language to me (which it is anyway, technically).
I hadn’t really realised there was quite such a wide age range in the forum. But there’s no reason for there not be a wide age range, is there?
Weekend greetings from the Baltic.
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Well that is a topic all of its own. Whilst I readily agree that today’s world is far from pleasant for many people and uncertainty is global, I can’t say that the post-WW2 years have been anything other than fantastic!
We often talk with my wife about how lucky people have been to have lived in the era since the 1950’s.
A period of economic growth, vast improvements in the welfare state and benefits, plentiful work opportunities and employment security, clear career progression and opportunities, good housing, a free and fascinating youth culture (who remembers long hair, The Beatles and Twiggy?), vast increase in affordable flights to almost anywhere, the advent of Windows and laptops, e-mails and the mobile phone, Maggie Thatcher ( 
) a change in millenium (how many people get to live through one of those?)…and so much more! - and no more wars, at least in Europe.
But every life is different and individual and if one is going to live one’s life then: “into every life a little rain must fall” - the question is how much is a little!
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The answer should be one or the other, not “no”. Senility is the “old-fashioned” term for various stages of dementia but the more modern term is (apparently!) “neurocognitive disorder” 
Not that I am aware of. But in an era where “old” describes anyone over 35 yrs, I am not sure if our input is of any recognisable value 
Beside, who nowadays wants to have to think any more? Just automated and AI-assisted models, please!
Greetings to you, too from the other side of the Baltic
I fully agree with that one! From my own notes collection (P-52) - beautiful:
…and one of many that I wish was in my collection!
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@johnny1974, as mentioned above, here are our comparative charts for the 5m Nasdaq. Although I neither trade Nasdaq nor 5m TF’s, the similarities are quite fascinating - at least in my opinion - considering how long we have both been TA traders.
Your chart (reproduced on cTrader) I couldn’t fill the Keltner channel so it is just black lines. I left off the 50 MA:
The same section on my (current) chart, which is a work-in-progress (it always is! ):
(Deleted as passed its “best before” date)
Putting them together, superimposed, looks a nice mess on the face of it, but it is surprising how they both highlight changing momentum and direction at the same points. At least in my eyes! 
(Deleted as passed its “best before” date)
I am certainly not suggesting that anyone should trade this concoction but it does illustrate that there are various approaches that can arrive at satisfactory solutions.
I only trade the 1H charts but use the Daily for context and overall directional/momentum analysis.
Like you, I don’t trade mechanically off these lines, they are just guidelines to highlight the underlying picture. My only interest in charts is to define what the majority of SP500 participants are doing - and then do the same.
But, as I have mentioned several times, @Tommor made the important core observation that trade entry is not where you make money . it is where you get out!
I think we often spend far too much effort trying to perfect our entry criteria and forget to work even harder on our exit criteria…
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Very interesting - thank you.
Yours almost has the rainbow style
I’m not sure that I agree with this - entry is where you are protecting your stake
Getting out is the easy part, assuming you are infront, you will perhaps never sqeeze the last point/pip. The same with betting on horses you have to take the right price, that is something you can control, if you keep betting the wrong bad price you will surely lose money in the long run. I have known good punters have betting accounts closed not because they are winning but because their bets are always beating the SP and bookmakers know good punters have losing runs but if they keep beating the SP they will win in the long run. Entry is the thing that you can control and capital preservation is ‘money management’. Exit - well take what the market gives you. Knowing when to exit - we have tools eg crossing back over 8EMA , loss of momentum, convergence… Amazingly, some people even use the witchcraft of TP (ok I’ll excuse witchcraft if you can’t be on screen) 
I do believe MAs are our greatest tools.
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Nice to see some old Latvian banknotes. 
I was 12 when we switched currencies from the lats to the euro, but of course I remember the lats well enough.
We had been in that “exchange rate mechanism” for a decade before that, though, since just after joining the EU (I don’t remember that, though I was born before it).
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PS I used to have a saying when I was betting horses for a living ‘I would rather have a good value loser than a bad value winner’
I bookmaker I knew could never understand that saying. HE went BUST!
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I don’t understand this at all!!!
Entry is precisely where you START yor risk, not where you protect it. You don’t HAVE any risk until you have entered a position. And even at the point when you have entered it, you have earned nothing at all.
It is only when the market starts to move that your position starts to either gain or lose money - and THAT is where the exit issue is precisely where the rubber hits the road.
It is easy to say “Getting out is the easy part” but it is not at all! Sometimes we might have a position in profit and then see the mkt start to reverse and jump out with a few bucks - only to see the price turn around and sail beautifully to your TP. Other times we might see price approaching our SL and we bail out in order to save the last few bucks - and again the mkt turns just before your SL and sails straight to your TP.
And where do we set our TP and SL anyway? I can draw a whole series of levels where the price might potentially reach both in front of and behind my entry - but which to pick?
The point here is that any individual trade is meaningless in itself, it is the long term consistency that counts. The R:R and win rate combo.
I could have a win rate of 99% and sound like a hero. But my TP is $1 and my SL is $100. So I am still a loser.
Entry is indeed important as it helps to maximise profits and minimise losses - but it does not make any money until the mkt moves - and then it is ALL about where you get out.
It is often said: “it is never wrong to take a profit” but that is probably the most misleading piece of advice ever given. If one always snatches tiny profits just because they are there but leave the SL to get hit then the overall P/L is going to be a mediocre gain at best and an abysmal loss at its worse.
At least in my opinion, deciding where is the optimum level to place SL and TP, and deciding when and if to intervene and change them, is the most challenging part of trading.
One example: after entry, I will often move my SL to B/E once the price is well on its way towards TP. But when is the good time to do this? I have sometimes moved it too soon, seen price reverse back and hit the SL and then continue to TP. No loss as such but a lost profit.
That is the point, optimising consistency and profitability. It is no good just planning when to get in and only then wondering when to get out without any criteria. Gut feel might win the trade “battle” but it most likely won’t win the consistency “war”. Unless your name is Trump, of course…
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Moving “SL” to trade entry level, or multiple TP levels, trailing stop, do not change the expected value of a trade. Do it or not, doesn’t matter for profitablity.
It’s often said, i.e. often by me, that identifying the exit of a profitable position is the hardest question in trading.
Which is another reason why I’m concentrating on indices from here on. They most frequently trend consistently so -
- winning positions can be pyramided
- it’s simple and rational to use a trailing stop based on ATR
Possibly an occasional equity trade when the indices are stagnant.
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I don’t understand this. If my trade ends with zero profit through hitting a revised SL instead of a full profit with the original SL, how is my profitability unaffected?
Besides, I think you are too young to be taken seriously on this Grandpa thread! (only joking, of course!)
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Great to hear that, @tommor, I wish you every possible success and look forward to hearing more how it goes. But, hey, don’t do too well or I might get really jealous!
I’ve already written too much here on your thread so I am looking forward to just listening now! 
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I don’t understand either - because you are basically saying the same thing. A bad entry START increases your risk and doesn’t protect your ‘money management’ You wouldn’t just chuck a dart at it and say ‘Okay I’ll enter here and hope for the best and sod protecting my bank roll when the risk starts’ Of course entry is where your risk STARTS. But good entry limits your risk and potential SL hit. What is your SL for - it’s most likely at the beginning not when you are in profit and the risk has deminished surely.
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Yes, I can see you are not understanding it - never mind!
I never said anything about bad starts. Of course, as I said, entries are important. But you have earned nothing at the point you enter. And you haven’t banked any profit while the trade is open. The only point that determines whether you make a profit and how much is where you close it.
But, whatever, forget I mentioned it.
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:
Oh bloody hell, am I losing my marbles?
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Actually I did take some Valium tonight, we are 6 hrs ahead and they are kicking in maybe that is the problem.
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A setup with an equidistant SL & TP has a 50% chance for full profit, 50% for full loss.
A setup has a 2/3 (66.6%) chance to go halfway to TP, and 1/3 (33.3%) chance to full loss.
That 2/3rds of the time it’s halfway to TP, the Stop is set to breakeven. The odds are 50/50 for it to continue to full profit, or breakeven now. Overall, thats 33.3% chance for full loss, half of 66% (33%) for breakeven, half of 66% (33%) for full profit.
Same expectancy for 50% win, 50% loss as 33% loss, 33% breakeven, 33% profit. No way to have an advantage by stop to breakeven. Same math for trailing stop, multiple TPs, partial profits, ect.
Hope that explanation isn’t too confusing. I’ve used multiple different scenarios in forex backtests with the same outcome.
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No such thing as a ‘good’ entry or ‘bad’ entry.
If there was, there wouldn’t be any liquidity (bad scenario) to trade the opposite side of your good entry and there would be an abundance of liquidity (good scenario) to trade the opposing side of your bad entry.
I’ve found this out when running backtests by selling at ‘Resistance’ vs buying at ‘Resistance’ with the same exact profitability.
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I doubt it. But can’t really say, I’ve never been blessed with any in the first place! That’s why I talk so much gobblegook. Better at listening, really. And that’s what I’m doing from here on
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