HMB

interesting

went long after the green 1M candle rising above the weak short-term resistance

...and now a Doji and hamemr - confirming my conspiracy theory..: the market against me...

yea. just again confirmed support around there. closed the trade.

closed at 13186.4. don't like the 13182 support

great - got it! thanks

how do you get those funny points into your charts...? seriously, just read the basics about pivot points, another one yet to become confident in...

thanks, yea, looks like it was wrong - perceived weak support at 13182 held very well... and 13205 didn't prove much of a resistance.. watching..

thanks!

short at 13186.9, stop at 13225. minimum size. looks relatively quiet. drop earlier accelerated after h&s pattern formation with declining neckline - rebound stopped below right shoulder level. no significant news. don't expect US consumer price release to have much impact on Dax. Expecting US starting to give back most of their overnight gains before open - and pulling Dax down with them. medium conviction. semi-experimental trade. (risk 20 quid). if it moves in favor, review at 13130 the latest. if not, staying out of DAX for today.

Watching DAX and Bloomberg TV and waiting to see what US morning price action brings... hoping for an (subjectively) attractive short set-up

LOOL ...yes obviously, by posting them thrice and then failing to delete two of them... so I'm almost as successful in trading as in guarding my secrets..!

The 50% level I considered relevant at that specific time, based on the overall impression I got from recent observation. Not thinking about using this as a general specification. To be honest, I do not see myself having a "method" that would be explicitly defined enough to be tested in that sense in the near future. My focus is still more on understanding and identifying changes in dynamics and maintaining a flexible approach. Kinda every trade can be motivated by a totally different set of factors. Maybe that's fundamentally wrong, maybe I'm just at an earlier stage of a learning process. Will keep thinking about that.

sorry - thought I had deleted two of the three posts with the screenshots

very good template, thank you very much! I started with something similar (screenshots below) - will use your template as a guideline to improve

Dear THT, Many thanks for your clear, comprehensive and detailed answers. Very thoughtful - I highly appreciate, you gave me a lot to consider. Will read more on Gann. Great, concise trading plan template! Yes, please, I would be most interested in your definition of rationally looking at markets. Will check your profile frequently to not miss that post. Our exchange covers some of what I believe are core issues - would maybe be also useful in the general strategy forum. Below some thoughts on your responses: Form your posts and what I've read from other traders here and elsewhere, I conclude that many traders take historical relative frequencies as good proxies for probabilities. Personally, I find it very important to stay aware of that, so I would like to emphasize one of my core "investment beliefs" here: true probability distributions are unknown. (I would even say the concept of probability touches the boundaries of human imagination, like "infinity", or "nothing" - but that is probably not the most practically relevant discussion...). Working based on historical relative frequencies is hence also a prediction - the prediction that nothing has changed fundamentally enough to significantly lower the quality of relative frequencies as probability proxies which are relevant for your current portfolio and the time frame of interest. That being said, I do certainly believe the growing number of market participants and technological progress (in particular so called AI) likely improved the accuracy of this prediction in recent years - because of the corresponding growing importance of technical strategies, and hence their influence on markets - i.e. the well-known self-fulfilling prophecy narrative also shapes my belief set. Nevertheless, I'm convinced that if you trade, you can't avoid explicitly or implicitly making predictions. And all apparently very technically focused traders I conversed with, have actually a very strong understanding of current non-technical narratives - see e.g. @Caseynotes highlighting the Reuters story on Softbank in a response to my response to his dashboard post a few days ago - although maybe here the line is blurred or depends on how you define technical. I'll stop here, and wait for your post on rationally looking at markets! Best HMB

today I haven't seen anything that could reject the hypothesis that NDX has yet to go lower - and likely turns higher again as soon as CNBC/Bloomberg TV call it a bear market (or maybe a bit before...)... yes watching price action tomorrow will give us a additional data points.. also one could think a bit more about the alternative hypothesis...: back to highest-since-tech-bubble valuations/exponential rise...? what could trigger that..? Fed buying equities? Trump election win and immediate tax cut and reconciliation with China..? ...where would NDX then end the year...?

very interesting! - the time aspect contradicts somewhat a saying which I believe to have seen confirmed repeatedly: "stocks go up on the escalator, and down in the elevator" (don't know the source) - think for cryptos it's the opposite...

I absolutely agree - however, about how a plan looks precisely, which components, etc., I may have at this stage not (yet?) exactly the same idea as most participants in this forum who shared their views on this (for which I am very grateful - I believe one learns a lot from discussions, guess Dalio would call that "thoughtful disagreement"). I need to plan better what to do when a trade doesn't work - which I think in my case should always mean an immediate, extensive break to become aware of my emotional state and then make conscious decisions about if/how to react (again loosely quoting Shull). Also, at this stage, I need to find more/better ways to avoid behaviors that impede my abilities (if any...). I can't every day deliberately drive in rush hour traffic for hours just to distract my urge to trade before my planned/scheduled trading time... More general: one big issue of mine (among many others) is the inability to execute even the simplest plan - I need a plan to improve that...

I haven't studied indicators in as much depth as you apparently have. today I looked at MFI 14 and VWMA10 on a minute chart while my trade was open, and the only thing I noticed it that it made me feel better when they confirmed what I was expecting (not to say hoping for...) - guess that's a good example for the misuse you refer to.

and those probabilities are typically subjective, IMHO

closed at 11184.7. for me personally a relatively successful trade. If you ask me why it worked (and if you don't, I post it here anyway, for my own records...): can't tell you anything objective at this stage. will have to think about that more. my current hypothesis is that I was lucky - and given the tight stop: very lucky. however I can say I avoided one mistake I used to do frequently: I didn't increase exposure as soon as it looked like it goes my way. typically that would have come with moving the stop even closer - and then of course getting stopped out on the larger size. not sure if it was right ex ante not to wait for a better entry level - I think it was, I believe I sensed the market signaling the chance for a better level had faded. this likely sounds funny, and I'm not sure if it would stand closer scientific examination - however at least I was thinking quite a bit about Denise Shull's work while staring at the screen, constantly contemplating to close the trade earlier...

sorry for being brief earlier, THT. After opening the trade I was glued to the tape and 1 min. chart. There's a lot of interesting stuff in both your posts. And I will come back in more detail after having recovered.