Is spread betting for fools?

[nit2wynit]

You clearly skip read Foxy.  I literally called myself the Fool.

3 weeks of live trading is hardly making the same mistakes over and over.  I made one mistake today.  The whole session was the mistake.  The mindset I started with was a mistake.  I haven't blamed anyone or anything.  

you do realise this isn't my thread right?

 

[nit2wynit]

Why have you gone from being helpful and informative, to critical, sarcastic and rude Foxy?  

[dmedin]

Yesterday was big loss day.  I feel as if looking at short time lines is a bit like examining a single tree with a microscope while the rest of the wood is burning around you.  I am jealous of people who can work with short time frames, I just can't.  And it makes me feel like ****.

[dmedin]

11 hours ago, Foxy said:

 If you can't see 3 x 20 points you could easily have scalped you may be well advised to put your money back in the bank.

 

The problem is that, with TA in general, everything fits into place on a chart 'after the fact'.  In the heat of the moment, with the best of intentions looking at one's MAs, oscillators and candlestick patterns, the price can easily and abruptly change course and stop you out without warning.

It's hell on earth.  I need to get a job.

[nit2wynit]

@dmedin I literally started looking for a job yesterday lol.

I know most of what I'm doing wrong.  Even now, got up late, missed the  climb on the FTSE, but i was in no rush after yesterday.  But also, I'm hanging around in the FTSE and there's no Volume.  It's barely moving.  I've decided I should be following the US market.  There's plenty of info to be gathered.  Other's posting Pre market Gappers and such using scanners.  

I thought I was having a breakdown yesterday.  But all day I waited for it to drop.  It didn't.  Now today has news too saying it's doing well.  Started with a huge spike.  Is it coming down, or going up??  Who knows.

[WallStFoxy]

13 minutes ago, dmedin said:

 

The problem is that, with TA in general, everything fits into place on a chart 'after the fact'.  In the heat of the moment, with the best of intentions looking at one's MAs, oscillators and candlestick patterns, the price can easily and abruptly change course and stop you out without warning.

It's hell on earth.  I need to get a job.

@dmedin

Take a look at the H1 chart above with the text bubbles on it. Note the red line above all else, that tells me to play shorts. OK now I just need a high to sell, wait for the high. On the enter short @ 7336 notice the black line crosses the other red line going down, that tells me we are likely turning down so I now enter short. wait until the black line turns back up and close for good or bad, How easy is that. No macd, rsi, elliot waves or fundamentals just sma. Just get on a demo and find and few good sma's you like to use and build a strategy from there.

[Caseynotes]

33 minutes ago, dmedin said:

Yesterday was big loss day.  I feel as if looking at short time lines is a bit like examining a single tree with a microscope while the rest of the wood is burning around you.  I am jealous of people who can work with short time frames, I just can't.  And it makes me feel like ****.

There should be no big loss days unless you are repeatedly betting against the run of play, don't do that. It's usually caused by trying to trade breakouts and reversals, don't do that.

There should only be 3 possible outcomes to any single trade; a small loss, a small win/break even, or a large win.

Anything else suggests your risk/reward is badly skewered.

There will be a battle at support and resistance, keep out, wait for price to move on to the next level and look for a pullback to get aboard. The stop is placed just behind the pullback because if the pullback turns into a reversal the trade idea is invalidated.

The chart below is M1 but the same structure appears on any time frame. Keep out of the rectangles and look for entries on a sloping MA between them.

[nit2wynit]

Take a look at this.  Typical of me.  Followed the trend but bought the drop instead of the pullback.  Now a waiting game to keep hold of £10.

[nit2wynit]

you can see from the image above my Buy In literally became the turning point again.  Stopped out and full reversal.  It's now going up.  Those big moves are 7-8-9 pts.  I managed to grab £5.5 but got stopped out for £11.  So down again.

Retire? 

[Caseynotes]

12 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

Take a look at this.  Typical of me.  Followed the trend but bought the drop instead of the pullback.  Now a waiting game to keep hold of £10.

If looking to sell on pullbacks you are waiting too long. Pullback x 1 = forward x 2 is a typical move but you waited til x 2 the pullback before entering and run straight into the next pullback.

 

[nit2wynit]

Right, where' this going? 

[Caseynotes]

1 minute ago, nit2wynit said:

Right, where' this going? 

It's retesting the prior high, wait to see who wins then look for an opportunity to catch a ride to the next level be it up or down.

[nit2wynit]

@Caseynotes hahahaha I'm becoming my own Joke; my own Cautionary Tale.  Bought in, immediately reversed and stopped me out lolololol.

[Caseynotes]

Not sure what you were trying to do, there were always going to be sellers waiting there, what happened to 'wait and see' 🤨

[nit2wynit]

I'd already gone in Casey before I  your post arrived

I've bought in at 7246 @ 0.5pp with a 20pt stop sitting at around 7228 resistance.  I'll leave it to win or fail for -£9 then call it a week.   I clearly need to go back to the drawing board and start again.  Thought I'd got rid of my bad habits on the demo.  Clearly I haven't.

Thanks to all for advice.  I may not be suited to this at all.  Down on the day again already. -£10

[Roadrat]

any ideas where the DOW will go next please as it had a good day yesterday?

[Caseynotes]

 

2 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

I'd already gone in Casey before I  your post arrived

Fair enough, I stopped playing breakouts a long time ago, you end up trapped too many times, that's why I say wait for the first pullback.

[nit2wynit]

@Caseynotes what time frame would you recommend for the breakout?

[dmedin]

Thanks guys some good advice there.  Yes ... 15 mins with a 100 SMA seems to be good ... the 20 and 50 seem useful too.  Will experiment.

[dmedin]

I still plan to keep doing some 'traditional' stuff (daily, weekly, stochs, triangles) 'on the side' though. 

[Caseynotes]

12 minutes ago, nit2wynit said:

@Caseynotes what time frame would you recommend for the breakout?

I personally favour the M5 for the Ftse because ftse is not so erratic as the dow or dax and so that gives you a bit more time to assess but I would still wait for some kind of pullback test .

[dmedin]

5 minutes is going in at the deep end don't you think?  No wonder so many people lose so much money so quickly.  This really isn't a viable/reliable way to make money is it?

[Caseynotes]

21 minutes ago, dmedin said:

5 minutes is going in at the deep end don't you think?  No wonder so many people lose so much money so quickly.  This really isn't a viable/reliable way to make money is it?

 🙂 I thought that chart didn't look too bad actually, there was a nice push up to a new higher high (A) then a 50% retracement (B) and bounce off the MA and continuation onward with an entry around the red line and a stop loss less than 10 tick, price turned back at the new high and retested the entry level before continuing but that often happens.

 

 

[Guest davidbrister]

@nit2wynit

Is that red line your purchase price on the top graph?

from looking at the Macd below it, how i worked it would be to try and trade a BUY position after those 2 lowest red bars once the volume started to drop off indicating a move in price up, then try and close that position once the Green volume bars started to slip away, trying to maximise my entry and exit points. But becareful as sometimes when the volume looks to be moving the opposite way, it was still swing in a second and fall away. Sometimes you can see the bottom and top prices as it swings from them over an hour, going up and down maybe a 3-6 gap, again possible to get in and out at those marks, but its all risky.

Im not a fan of bolenger bands, i would also have the parabolic SAR indicator running, it seems to have always given me good advice on the trend of movement, just some times i didnt listen to it.

If your only go to trade for 2 hours, make it the 1st 2 hours of the open market, some times an hour after it opens markets can stay flat all day until that last hour of trade where it can get busy again, but beware trading in the last hour, 5-10mins out from close, can be quite volitile.

Also if u want to break up your day, work out when the US or the Aussie markets open and watch them for their 1st hours trade, never trade japan, china, or asian markets, they move so fast its not funny and huge number jumps in seconds, i have had success a few times, by pure fluke, would never go back, lol.

 

 

[dmedin]

I think I'm just too stupid.  Just lost money off the recent spike after 13:15, everything came back > 50%. I'm just losing money all around the board.  Being eaten alive.  Time for me to get out I think....

[Caseynotes]

6 minutes ago, dmedin said:

I think I'm just too stupid.  Just lost money off the recent spike after 13:15, everything came back > 50%. I'm just losing money all around the board.  Being eaten alive.  Time for me to get out I think....

You need to show a chart, I not sure what market or time frame you are looking at. The ftse M5 shows what you say but before the big red candle there was nothing to indicate the pullback had ended. The actual candles are the last word, red must reverse blue and visa-versa, each candle tells you who's in charge, a pullback isn't over til the other side take control.

 

[dmedin]

For me, trading in five minute charts just doesn't work.  It's just noise; cannot make sense of anything until AFTER it has happened.

[dmedin]

Look at the daily chart with Fibonaccis drawn from 26951 high and 23554 low for DJIA. 

Look at the oscillator constantly dipping below 80, teetering; price drop beneath 50 MA; high volume on downside, then the turning up again on high volume.

How can this not be more meaningful than massive swings up and down on small time frames?  I despair ... this is obviously not for me. 

No wonder 80% of punters lose all their cash.  This is a mug's game!

[Caseynotes]

6 minutes ago, dmedin said:

For me, trading in five minute charts just doesn't work.  It's just noise; cannot make sense of anything until AFTER it has happened.

If I were to show a chart with no time frame label or price reference you would not be able to guess what time frame it was, the same structure patterns are played out over and over on all time frames. Larger time frames just give you more time to make decisions.

Very few strategies are genuinely single time frame only, most will work if they are applied to appropriate chart structure and if the rules are adhered to. Reading the thread I'm not convinced that any strategy is being applied, especially strict entry and exit rules, it all sounds very much edge of seat reactions, pull the trigger and hope.

Look at some of these simple strategies in the link below, see how they are written up, try a few out, make some changes. You must be able to define your own strategy in basic rules that can be applied over and over, that gives you something you can test over a number of trades to check it actually works before going live. Hard rules not reactions, if this > then that.

https://www.earnforex.com/forex-strategy/

 

[dmedin]

Brent oil seems to  have bottomed out, see below, with an outside candle forming but I would want to wait until tomorrow morning to confirm it.  Typically you get a 33 - 50% pullback, so my strategy would be to put a stop at about 5900 and go for 50% retracement.

I've got a strategy but not for 5 minute time frames.  I was under the impression that you are supposed to respond 'in real time' and use things like candlestick patterns (hammers, dojis) in order to give you signals to enter or exit.  I know about the strategy of waiting till there's a clear trend and then getting in when the price is above the MA, but that strategy is incredibly difficult to judge and only becomes obvious after it has happened.

Put it this way, if I have £2000 of savings and I want a better return than 2% from a savings account I can easily get a yearly return of 10% from occasional spread betting.  But I am not going to be able to day trade £2000 on a daily basis to earn enough to live off.  That is just insane.