Ralf's Journal

[Skywalker]

Today's afternoon session was much better. I bracketed at NEO and while the short was a rent, the following long with add-on turned out profitable. Then a nice long AA turned up which I could not resist even though it was already close to Xetra closing.

[kiravon]

Hello Ralf
The last chart is very encouraging in a realistic way!

If we can win two trades and lose one, make +43 pips
and pay back -17 rent that would be 500 - 600 pips
profit a month on average!

Fantastic!

PS You mention FO. I started getting up early for it but
like many feel, LO seems to be where things happen more
than all the other Opens. just IMHO, if trading is hard
anyway then why would I want to trade at a less than
optimum time?

Even Americans stay up from 3am - 5am to trade LO

I often used to wonder why

[Skywalker]

Thank you Mickey for your comments. The last chart is encouraging indeed but I'm actually not too optimistic that my setups will have an average win rate of 66%. I would be absolutely fine with a 40% win rate (as analyzed by Immy) as long as my average winning pips are much higher than my average losing pips.

I long thought about yesterday's FO trade and came to the conclusion that trading right at FO carries a disproportionate high risk with low volatility and inaccurate setups and that I only took it because of the fear of missing opportunities. However, the advantage of early entries at low volatility is that often the bars are very small, i.e. the amount at risk is low. By saying this, I actually had some nice winning trades which started before LO. So I'm thinking of adding a rule to my trading plan to take trades (at correct setups of course/don't want to ruin my DS) not before the second half between FO and LO and use add-ons only after LO. The latter to avoid having too high risk before market really starts. Let's see how this plays out...

PS: I really enjoy reading your post! (wd) It's usually the first thing I do in the morning ~o) ...even before FO )

[Skywalker]

Today's morning session was very good as I sticked to my plan and besides made some pips. I started with a nice short AA right before LO with add-on. When a valuable long fruit turned up, I took the reverse fruit and moved SL of the shorts above reverse fruit which went perfectly fine. At the second short AA I again moved SL below AA but market went up again after a strong battle sideways around 12100.

[Skywalker]

Nice morning session today: first long breakout at LO, then reverse fruit with add-on and finally a long AA. For the last trade I did not add-on as I had to leave and asked TradeManager to do the job.

[Skywalker]

Took only one trade during today's morning session: Missed the short breakout at LO (bracketing: long was in but I was too slow to set short as well) but took following short AA looking for w5 and closed it at reverse fruit.

[Skywalker]

At today's afternoon session I tried bracketing at NEO, of which both were rents. However, I'm fine with these trades as I gave the opportunity to catch any upcoming volatility at CIPS while risk was ok.

[Skywalker]

Morning started with bracketing at LO: both rents. Then I took a short fruit but did not add on due to upcoming important news. Missed that these were GBP news which should not have such an impact on Dax.

[immy]

I'm sure you know that but if you stuck to the rules and added on you'd have doubled your profits! Sticking with the rules is important!

[Skywalker]

This morning right before LO I set PO for a breakout short in the direction of the trend looking for something like w5. As price went south strongly, I decided to move SL close to TZ2 which then got triggered. For a second I thought about taking profit at TZ3, which was right at where price turned, but who am I to complain )