Couldn’t agree more 
I only tend to trade NAS but sometimes other indices.
Every so often, lately, I see the ‘perfect’ set up - only for the damn thing to immediately reverse.
So frustrating!!!
Anyway - mustn’t complain - cut your losers quick - there have been some whacking great runners to make up for losses - just try not to miss them whilst you are tearing your hair out
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I’ve noticed that this type of entry often reverses, so just a note for me:
Stop Loss should take note of the SMA as the price often interacts with that, pulling back to the level before bouncing off again.
Another incredibly frustrating day with 2 wins from 5 trades but could easily have been 4 wins as 2 of the trade missed TP by less than a pip.
My SL were too big today.
More later.
I’ve gone back to look at my really early trades as my best times were the first 3 weeks or so of trading when I got to around 6% in profit.
Now I really was a noob then and blindly following the breakouts, maybe I am overcomplicating things now.
My losing trades back then were all pretty much due to having a SL that was too small and any pullbacks were hitting the SL - or going against the trend. I was taking any trades regardless of the timing and using a minimum SL.
My backtesting seems to show that the timing of the trade entry is only important for certain pairs, in fact while entry for AUDUSD is better later on, the opposite is true for USDJPY and EURUSD, so I am going to go back to taking trades whenever they break out as long as it is with the trend.
I am going to set my SL to the middle of the 5 minute range, unless the range is small when I will set it to the far side.
This is a simpler strategy and we will see how it works out next week.
This SL situation can be a real challenge, especially at these volatile times.
I like to watchTom Hougaard and he has been setting some massive SLs for a day trader - I mean 100 -150pts on indices but he does quickly move to BE when in profit.
Personally I like a tight SL based on the idea that a small loss is easier to make back.
My strategy is MA based and if the 8EMA is crossed I tend to accept I’m wrong. So if entry is near 8EMA - fantastic I’ve got a tight SL. Of course, it would depend on time frame but I’m 5min/1min trader. I watch Tom Hougaard and he is more 10min/5min but even so I see some of his trades taken out massive. He does get away with though and comes back winning - mainly through aggressive adding to winners.
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Yeah I am thinking SL is key for this strategy now, I am getting the right direction most of the time it’s just the move isn’t big enough, but a smaller SL stops that being a problem.
I’ve looked at all 5 of today’s trades and a 1 pip smaller SL means 4 wins from 5 so it’s the usual so near so far!
Will be doing more back testing this weekend.
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I think that with that sentence you highlight a really huge issue for struggling retail traders: the ability to accept with equanimity and as “part of the process” that you can be wrong.
Trading really, really isn’t an activity for people strongly attached to “being right”.
As others have often enough commented, here, it seems for some reason to be a particular issue in this forum. And that’s a real shame, because its inevitable outcome is all too often the reality that the people most in need of help and advice are those hardest to help and those least willing to listen to it when it’s offered, sometimes even after it’s directly been requested. 
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46% win rate with a $5k account—interesting. Let’s see how it holds up over time.
An excellent observation - so true.
Here is a quote from the famous trader Ed Seykota in conversation with another great trader. Ed’s friend said that he was going to coach a losing trader into a winning trader -
Ed said that the friend would fail to teach the student anything -
'A losing trader is not going to wish to transform himself. That is the sort of thing only that winning traders do’
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What a great quotation. Thank you, Johnny. This one definitely goes into my armoury!! 
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Win rate is now around 54% but it’s kind of irrelevant as I am trying different RRR.
So, back tested another 100+ trades this weekend. I am reasonably happy with my entry signals, I have decided that later entries are not significantly better than early ones so I am going to just go into the trades whatever the time is.
My main concern now is what SL to use, there’s the test results:
Near means SL set to the near side of the 5 minute range, Mid is the middle of the range and Far is the far side.
I think my mistake has been using a set SL in pips when I should be using one based on how big the range is, in most cases, putting the SL in the middle of the 5 minute range works out best.
However, for USDCAD the best option is to set the SL to the closest part of the range.
The only other exception is EURGBP where I can also use the nearside of the 5 minute range.
I am going to use 1/1,5 RRR as the win rates are only just over 50% but I can tweak this as I get more data.
Here’s what my test data looks like:
That’s the problem with back testing, what data do you record exactly? I think this gives me a solid basis though as I have the size of the various SL and the size of the move in Pips so I can use that to come up with the optimal RRR - the only issue is I don’t know how big the spread is now but more practise will answer that.
To clarify my entry rules:
- Only take trades that go with the trend, the only exception is if the trend is reversing, ie if the price is breaking through the SMA as below;
- I usually enter on the first breakout candle closing if it’s large, if not then the second breakout candle;
-
Stop loss will either be the nearside of the 5 minute range, or the middle of it depending on the pair, always add another pip to make up for the spread (may need 2 pips)
-
I will use 1/1.5 for now as the risk to reward ratio and review this.
It’s probably worth recording the average move in pips vs the average size of the 5 minute range as a bigger ratio means more profit can be made. On my to-do list.
Small profit today, a win and a loss, using 1/1.5 risk to reward shows around a 0.2% profit on the day.
Will report in more detail later.
So, losing trade first;
AUDUSD, this one reversed back to the far side of the range plus a wick, so SL wasn’t quite big enough, but it might not have hit TP with a bigger SL, very marginal. My testing shows that the SL needs to be in the middle of the range more often than the far side so I did set it at the right place.
In hindsight the SL was only 5 pips and I needed 8, maybe an argument to make a bigger SL if it’s only a couple of pips or so needed.
For GBPUSD I had to wait as it was a downtrend but the price broke up - once it had broken the SMAs I could take the trade as the trend had reversed and it was quite a nice easy win, I expected it to retest the SMAs again so the SL was far enough for that to happen with some room to spare.
Everything else was going against the trend and the SMAs were too far from the opening range so I wasn’t prepared to risk it.
Overall happy as almost certainly would have been a losing day with my old system.
As expected a losing day, I made a profit yesterday so I have to have a loss today.
To be fair some of these losses were inevitable as there was simply too much volatility. 2 wins from 6 trades is poor though and arguably 2 of the losses were due to mistakes.
EURGBP was a nice easy win at 1/1.5 that one behaved itself as expected.
Same for USDCAD, I will focus on the losing trades;
AUDUSD above, I don’t know how many times a price can reverse in two hours but this must be some kind of record, it didn’t even look volatile before I took the trade, the range is usual size and I don’t think I made an errors here.
There’s a clear break and retest of the upper range before I entered and I used a bigger SL than my testing suggested as the range was small.
EURUSD and I maybe made a mistake by not setting my SL quite big enough. The price had been breaking through the SMA earlier so maybe I should have covered the SMA with the SL but the move to the upside wasn’t really very big so hitting TP might have been a struggle.
GBPUSD and I don’t think I made a mistake here, it’s a perfect break and retest before I entered, just too volatile I don’t think there’s any way you can make a profit from this using my strategy. Maybe it looked volatile with the price action vs the SMA so I should have left it.
Now I did make an error on USDJPY and entered too soon, my rules state I enter on a large breakout candle closing or two confirming candles, this wasn’t a clear enough break out. Although in my defence you can see market structure confirms a reversal as we now have higher highs and higher lows being formed.
Even if I didn’t enter here I would have lost as I would have entered to the downside a few minutes later and than also reversed again.
Just one of those days I suppose.
Overall not a big loss only about 0.5% but I am now only 1% in profit.
April has been a very poor month, maybe it’s the markets?
After three months trading, I was doing better as a noob.
I’ll, put up some figures at the end of this week.
Maybe avoid trading if the price is reacting around the SMA.
I don’t like the logic. And I hope you don’t either, really! 
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No, but this is what always seems to happen, just cannot get any consistency, I am working on it!
I think today I realised the key to this whole thing is knowing when not to trade. A lot of my losses are when the price is reacting around the SMA and it tends to be more important than the opening range, I need to not trade on days when that is happening I think.
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