My work load is reducing and I will have more time for trading, so should be getting back to this in the coming weeks. I’ve been trying out something new with varying degrees of success. When it goes right, I make a lot of money very quickly, but I’m not mastering the exit time of a trade very well.
Trading the DAX. No indicators, no TA, no fundamentals. It’s a day trading strategy and usually only in a trade for a few hours, but could extend.
I watch the price at what I deem to be key times of the day. These are times that I’m determining that turning points usually happen (with the exception of news). I then go the same way that the price is moving with quite a large lot size. Typically using up 50%+ of my margin (30:1) in one trade.
The idea is trying to catch a big move quickly so I can set a stop loss in profit. It gets stopped out way too often, so I’ve started leaving it a little while to get a bit of breathing space. Then set the stop loss at a few pips profit and set an 80 pip trailing stop. As the price continues in the direction, I open up more positions to try and lock in more money. If price continues to move, I win more, if it reverses I win overall.
A big problem I’m having is that the price will turn against the move and either get stopped out, or I close it because I think price will change, but I’ve seen how big the win was and it’s dropped quite a lot. I then get carried away and try to get back in to catch the retracement/reversal/continuation, but the market isn’t at one of my times to enter. I need to handle this much better, and the rewards will be much better. I also need to get better at setting TP. Often the price goes pretty much where I predict before reversing, but I didn’t set a TP in the hope that it would continue and I’d make more money. That has cost me quite a lot of potential profits.
The downside is that I forgot to set a stop loss when the market was trending up. It swung down very fast and I lost a huge amount in one day when I was busy with work. I shouldn’t try this whilst at work, especially when I don’t have a stop loss in a good place.
Graph below shows yesterday’s results (% gain) when I had a proper day to try this. The circles show where I was entering trades at the wrong time, either because I’d been stopped out with profit or trying to get in on the move that hadn’t started yet (too early although I did get the direction correct in the end).
I think there’s potential here, I’ve had several days with good performance. I just need to time entries better and recover my ridiculous loss. 30% in a day is probably in my top 10 days. The day before was good too and could have been much higher if I got out at the right time.