I’ll start with the usual – Just blew another couple of accounts after great starts. I swore I would take a break, but then APEX went ahead and offered yet another 80% discount with $85 PA fee. I like TPP much better because their total cost to pro is only $100+- for a 50k pro account – but they take 20% cut. Versus APEX which costs around $125 – but the first 25k is 100% and then 90% after that.
Another difference is TPP does not have any unrealistic consistency rules once PRO – vs APEX which has a myriad of gotcha rules. To be fair – they are up front and are designed to protect themselves from windfall traders gambling themselves to large wins. My only complaint is when you break a rule they are very vague about when and where.
Anyway, I don’t agree with all of the rules, but I have to live by them if I want to use APEX.
My new strategy
I’ve been analyzing LCE touted by TradeWriter on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Tradewrite_
The basic theory is price moves between institutional price points with great consistency. I’ve adapted it a bit and backtested. My thought is to not be greedy and enter a trade when it is 20% into a range and exit when it is 80% complete. Not cast in stone, but it seems to work with a reasonable win rate.
I could be much better as emotion still plays too big of a role in my trading.
My analysis shows about a 60% win rate. But, with a stop loss of 20% and a break even at 40%. and a trail every 10%, the risk reward is around 1:4. This means I can lose three trades and break even on the 4th. Yet, because of the break even, it is more like only a 20% total loss with a 60% total win rate.
In other words – for every 10 trades with 1 mini NQ lot – there are six wins at $800 each ($4,800), two losses at $200 each (-$400) and two break even trades for a net profit of $4,400!
Now, I want to be realistic. This absolutely requires taking a loss when it happens. Moving my stop loss has been the bain of my trading experience. The problem, emotionally, has been not having the confidence that I could make up for the loss. The solution, of course, is to let the raw data speak for itself – institutions really do move markets and even if you only catch one in five trades, your at lest at break even.
Two days in and even though I’ve broken the SL rules a couple of times, I am up $1,200 in those two days. I’d be up MUCH more if I hadn’t moved my stop – gotta drill that into my head!
Thoughts going into Monday
It occurs to me that my worst trading day is Monday. When I think about it I realize that I tend to be impatient because I’ve gone two days without trading. I’ll try to keep this in mind this time and maybe I can avoid an implosion!