Ray's amnesty page

[wiseambitions]

I don't know why with a 5 day ADR usually of more than 200 the market for DAx has been stuck within less than 100 pips so far today and all of yesterday.
I've made gains but not always by staying in as long as my exit rules would suggest. I usually come out on a stop loss, eg gator lips, opposite end of aims box etc but I think when it doesn't feel like moving far there is more to be had for just taking a nice little profit eg 20 pips when it presents itself rather than getting whipped left right and centre. But it is not proper trading.

Here's another lucky shot. AO of m5 was turning down at the time of entry. It is also against the rules too, but most of today's profits came from starting inside the aims box rather than waiting for a break of aims.


Hopefully normal conditions will return next week. I have spoken to people who have stuck to their own rules and entered a fair number of trades this month, we are half way through, and they have made neither a net gain nor loss


today 41 pips, PF 1.53. Yesterday was negative. Of course the system is NOT broken but it's not pleasant when there is a period in the Doldrums and an experience of consecutive failed trades

[wiseambitions]

The market seems to be a bit more lively this morning, compared with Thursday and Friday

I've had a few losing trades and a few winners, net being up just over 50 which is very acceptable

I'll attach an example of a loser and of a reasonably well executed winner, could of course have done better

[baldeagle]

Ray,

It looks like your journal cracked the 1000 post mark!

Thanks for showing both trades. Do you think there is a way to cut our losses earlier or is that going to take us out of some winning trades?

Ed

[wiseambitions]

Hi Ed
Thanks, this one about exits. There is no easy answer. I have done lots of statistics on various tactics eg green line, break of fractal, trailing stop loss, stop at bottom of 4th preceding bar (if long, vice versa for shorts), divergence, cross of AO, donchians, bollingers, fib lines, etc etc.
I think in the main one has to stay with the same strategy whatever you do. But sometimes it feels like a spike, eg 50 pips profit present themselves on the m1, and you don't know if it is going to go further, you wouldn't go broke by taking the 50 but it needs a few of them to offset bad trades, and then how would you feel if 50 became 150?

As to cutting losses I have 4 measurements. The current oppositefractal, the 2nd fractal out, the Donchian setting 21 and the EMA 50. Not all exactly Aims, but I have endeavoured today to keep losses fairly small. While I trade m1 some of my transactions are more akin to m5, so I think the most I would be prepared to suffer should be no more than 15.
Here are my profits and losses, in order. 4 consecutive losses really did hurt, but look at the end result.

-9.2
-15.5
-12.5
-10.4
15.2
24.3
-8.4
18
25
24
-2.1
1.9
-3.5
-5.6
-8.6
39.6

Net result about +72 pips
PF, in monetary terms, just over 2.5

Just now, around 1515 BST (1415 GMT) I got out of a long trade with about 40 pips, on touch of alligator lips. It will probably have to be my last trade of the day, I need to go out soon

With Thursday and Friday being decidedly YUKKY it has been good to restore some profits. I did say Friday the system could surely not be broken, but we do like markets that move (in our direction)

[baldeagle]

Ray,

Thanks for your detailed analysis after my query. Your stats have always shown me to hang in there. One advantage to short term trading is that you get to see the recovery of your account in a day or two. Trading the H1 and H4 it takes much longer to recover! I think that is were the psychology comes in. Your stats ( I am working on mine) help me to see that with a losing percentage of 56% you are still making great progress. I am now trying the QQE Adv set at 1,8,2 instead of 1,8,3 to see if it will get me out of these fast reversals that are killing me.

Again, I appreciate your work.

Ed

[wiseambitions]

Thanks, I use a different QQE on which I have a simple setting (5), but beware this is not an aims related strategy. But it is better than Stochastics FWIW (which is not an aims strategy either).
Meanwhile a study of how AO works could help you....eg colour changes, divergence of peaks of AO relative to peaks of price, they are core parts of Aims. I was also told a couple years ago that prior to "inventing" the AO, Bill Williams used the MACD. But I bet he wasn't using the default 12 26 9 setting as there's nothing fibonacci about that.........

[baldeagle]

Ray Thanks. Yes, I probably need to study the AO more and I will take another look at it. I think the real problem is my confidence level vs losses. That is where your statistical analysis has helped.

Anyway, it is Tax day here in the US and I better go over my calculations to make sure I don't give our government any more than necessary to waste!

Ed

[immy]

I made peter do an exercise, I asked him that he will have to point out every change of colour and cross of zero line on the ao and report it , type it, i nthe skype group. He started doing it and a couple of months later he shared results of his live account that he doubled. He's been at it for a more than a year or 2 and finally it clicked... there is magic in it...

[wiseambitions]

out at 0759 with +14

LO, 0800, is a dangerous candle!

[wiseambitions]

Both myself and a trading buddy missed the amazing slide on Dax which according to our rules we should have opened at 0812. Other work was in my way

We both agree that if we had been in it and kept to our own rules the interesting part is that we could have made 107 and held it open in spite of a few touches of the green line (lips) because of what was happening on m5, and co-incidentally also to the AO of m1 (also MACD setting 6,50,50, and QQE). Hindsight is marvellous stuff, anyway it was just one of those beautiful setups which come along 2 or 3 times a week. And we missed it

Not to worry, I found a few more setups and even if my winning rate was less than 1/2 I eventually closed the day with enough gains to claim +7% even if it was hard work compared with that wonderful opportunity