Monday 27 September 2010

Exits

On Friday afternoon I was talking to one of the people I mentor. We were talking about exits. This trader was one from the July training and had hit a win rate of almost 70% fairly consistently. The main issue this trader had was exits. When to exit.

I think you all know by now that I believe in scaling out if the market allows. My trading plan has a first exit a the "first logical scale out point". I then have a requirement to scale out at every resistance point. Pretty simple but there is a plan. Without having a pre-ordained and tested plan, a trader has to make the most critical decision in trading - when to exit - in the heat of battle, not the time to try and figure things out. There is no time.

It's pretty critical to know where you will exit before you enter. Now, you have really no idea how far the market will go in your direction or whether it will at all, but I make an assumption that my first logical scale out point will be hit - and more than 70% of the time, it is. My only decision when I am approaching that first scale is to decide what percentage of my contracts I should scale out or even whether I should be all out.

Today was great. Morning was the Euro FX future (6E) which had three nice pushes up. I then switched to the ES for the RTH. No Gap trade today but there was still money that you didn't have to bend down to pick up around. Another of the EL pictures. See it in the vid. Indicator on the bottom is in test. Remember, you can see it in HD. One of our blog readers said:
If you click inside the video once it has started it opens up in Youtube. You can then click on the lower right to expand it to full screen. You can also change the resolution to 720p and get what you are looking for and more.

Rino

2 comments:

  1. Hi EL,

    The video of today is a perfect example for choppiness. During the time period prior to 12:30, you notice lots of overlapping bars, indicating choppiness. Have you ever considered adding an indicator, measuring choppiness to solve this problem? Flat EMAs might not be sufficient, as this video shows... Usually, choppiness correlates with the average time which bars need to complete. In Ninjatrader, there is an indicator, giving the time each bar needs to complete. In choppy markets, you notice that the average time spikes up. The same occurs during low-vol markets, when choppiness (=overlapping bars) occurs more frequently. Would you consider a smaller "timeframe" in this case (decreasing the size of the range bars)? Or would you simply stay out?

    Thanks a lot and best regards,
    Samer

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  2. Samer, Between the flat EMAs and whatb the CCIs are doing, I have no issue with choppiness. Usually you can get caught in the first chop trade but then scratch it.

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