Apparently I don't understand rules

#1

Frustration doesn’t begin to describe the reason I am reaching out for help from those who may have experienced the emotional roller coaster I am on… I would like a little feedback on whether I am doing everything wrong and why I am just always picking the wrong direction on every single trade I take. I am done loosing in my live account and decided to see if I am just having a loosing streak, or if I am just flat out never going to win. I start every trade in the red, and it just continues from there. I am always getting stopped out of every trade I take. $20 here $20 there and just keep adding up. I decided to jump back into demo and test my theory and here’s what happened to me.

First off, I always set stops immediately after I enter a trade but for this test and topic, please ignore the fact that I hadn’t placed any stops as I wanted to test a theory that I can’t win no matter what I do, so the stops aren’t the main focus here. Setting a stop order wouldn’t have let this trade go south to the point I wanted for this test. Now on to the test chart.

In the screenshot below, I looked at this chart and thought, OK the trend is your friend. I marked up the swing highs and saw this kept breaking and moving up. You can see at the last swing break at about 163.55, I jumped in twice for 10 contracts. Now here’s where it just seams to prove my point. IMMEDIATELY after I went long, it TANKED!!! I was following the trend and wanted to go along for the ride, but as usual… WRONG!!!

At this point I am lost for words due to the fact that it doesn’t matter if I’m in live or demo. I enter the trades, set my stops, and never profit and all I have been doing is giving money away. I’m ALWAYS on the wrong side of the trade. I go long, it tanks. I go short, off to the moon it goes. At this point I am about to throw in the towel. I have spent way too much money up to this point and have only won two trades for a total of $16. Yes, sixteen dollars!

Should I just find something else to do? Buy a raft and paddle around the lake? At wits end here. Anyways, any help would be appreciated because this is something I really want to do, but it’s hard to keep getting up only to be knocked back down every time. Thanks

#2

A few things that are small but have a big impact from what I see.

1st you stated you started in live and went to demo.

It should always be the reverse. Succes in demo before live. It’s a lot cheaper to make mistakes.

2nd swing breakouts are scalp trades per the rules. You talk about your stops but I don’t see you talking about trailing them and I don’t hear about you setting your take profit at 10 ticks above the entry. I see a lot of profits on here but don’t see you taking profits why?

3rd It seems your NOT using the end of day spread. It’s much wider and therfore moves much faster. Your choosing intraday expiry spreads which are going to move slow and for scalps especially you need speed. If your using stops the expected risk is the same either way. Why are you these spreads even though we say use the ntm daiily spreads?

4th Have you watched the Izone Sharp Shooter course?

5th are you active in the room and actively posting charts or just when frustrated. Posting charts consistently to clear up issued a lot.

#3

Hi:

I am not sure if you watched all the IZSS videos ( you would have, mostly), but allow me to highlight the fact that you went LONG at the wrong place - at least not by the books. Watch the Red Belt around 163.5 - that is Izone ( Institutional Zone) where the big market movers tilt the headwind. Red is for Short and Green is for Long. So you should have gone Long at that place. You had the opportunity to go Short in 3 places, that particular place where you went long and two prior. Retrace the steps if you can to see Long only on Green Zones and Short only on Red zones. Hope this helps. Let me know, otherwise I am learning as well.

Best, Koti.

#4

Correction. Please read ’ So you should have gone short at that place.’

#5

Hey iNitrox,

I hope I can help with my interpretation of what I see, and what I have learned. You set out to prove a theory that " I cant win no matter what" but the only proof I can see is that the IZSS system is very successful. When I briefly look at your chart I see about 6 winners and 1 loser. In this chart you just happen to take the one loser. I had the same problem cherry-picking trades. I was not trading through the losses and allowing the system to work. I was catching the losses and missing the winners. Just look at your chart, you marked every winner as well. SO don’t ask your self why am I losing this one trade but why am I not catching these 6 winners. Yes its frustrating when you enter a scalp in a long trend then it immediately reverses. It happens to all of us, but look what happens right after, a confirmed IZSS short trend that immediately wipes out your loss. Maybe this inst your issue at all, but all I can say is I felt the same way at one point until I started to take every plausible IZZS trend entry. Just test that theory in demo. I do not trade Forex, but I can say with confidence, if you take every plausible IZSS trend entry on NQ you will profit! Hope this helps.

#6

Thanks for the reply’s. Let me first state that I expected to get the… you should have did this and you should have done that. This is the problem with trying to get a point across in text without ever actually talking to someone.

1st, I joined Nadex on Dec, 10 and started demo trading there before I ever found Apex Investing. I have been demo trading for almost 2 months now, joined the Elite membership on 1/27 and had just went live on 2/10. The only way to use all the systems and indicates is to join a paid membership and the only way to pay for the membership is to go live and start paying for it. As for using stops, I stated earlier that this wasn’t focused on stops. It was to focus on how every trade I enter, I am on the wrong side no matter what I do.

As far as not using NTM spreads, it’s hard to enter $300-$500 risk spreads when your account is less than $300. In the trade room it was suggested that I use the intraday spreads. I have been in the trade room almost everyday and have posted several charts and asked many questions. Last chart I posted chart was right before you had came in with the info about tne Alchamy System and my chart post never got a response to. Some get answered, some don’t. Sometimes the answer is… it’s in the video…

Now, I know you can see every course I have taken so it shouldn’t be a question whether I have watched any courses. I have watched all the videos, some several times. I know what a valid entry is in the IZSS. What I did in the post above was to look at what should have been an entry. In the post you can clearly see that every swing break was going into a red Izone and broke through it every time EXCEPT when I entered. If you look there were 4 swing high breaks and the fifth one was where I entered and it TANKED. Correct me if I am wrong, but after seeing 3 swing breaks into the red Izone, wouldn’t you think it would be the same on the 4th and maybe I can jump in and look what happened… This wasn’t a “look at my chart for a valid entry” post, but a " look what happens every time I try to take a trade, post. It’s very frustrating to demo then join and try live and every trade goes against me…

Also let me add that I didn’t sit from 11:00 to 8:00 and try to enter at any other spot other than at around 7:40 area it was after the loosing trade, that I went back and marked up the chart so I could explain what I was going through. So there was no way to take any of the entries prior to the one around 7:30is.

#7

Here is screenshot of a post i showed to Lori in the room because I was curious as to why I wan’t seeing any valid entries. Now, you can see that I have been studying enough to believe I have a decent grasp of what an invalid entry is. And like I told Lori, now I just need to find out what valid entry looks like. If I know what an invalid entry is, then I’m pretty sure I know what a valid one is. I just don’t see them like others do.

#8

Apparently I don’t understand rules?

But, Apparently I posted these in the forum a month ago!

#9

Whoa! I haven’t really done anything in the IZSS yet, but I see a HUGE mistake! #2 you went LONG at a RED Izone! That’s a HUGE no-no! You should only be looking for short trades at red izones. You even had a good setup for that short trade a few bars later. The area where it tanked should’ve been YOU on board riding it down!!! :wink:

#10

Thanks for the input. But did you notice I said “Also let me add that I didn’t sit from 11:00 to 8:00 and try to enter at any other spot other than at around 7:40 area it was after the loosing trade, that I went back and marked up the chart so I could explain what I was going through. So there was no way to take any of the valid entries prior to the one around 7:30ish”

Did you also notice that what I visually saw was 4 swing high breaks, and that those breaks were BUYS going into red Izones? So far everyone has noticed that my entry point was at a red Izone and should have been a short. What everyone is missing is the breakouts that happened prior to my entry following and was attempting to follow the trend. Look at the breakouts and you can see why I was going for another swing breakout when I entered at the top.

Pulled back and broke the previous high 4 times and was expecting a 5th. to continue up. But it pulled back. And yes, I should have been riding it down but what I saw in that very moment was another swing high breakout.

This is the system people are trading on and people are killing it. Doesn’t matter what I say, or post, I’m not doing it right. I was on the wrong side of the trade which is what happens on almost every time I take a trade… Apparently, everyone on this site catches every entry but me. No matter what I do it’s wrong. Spent a lot of $$$ to get here and it’s just not paying off for me. Maybe this just it’s for me. I just know that if I can’t make the $200 a month to cover the membership cost, then I can’t afford to stay.

#11

My own thoughts on your situation have absolutely nothing to do with IZSS or APEX and everything to do with the gray matter between your ears.

One of the cardinal rules of trading that applies no matter what market or instrument you trade is this: Never trade with scared money. In other words, don’t trade with money you can’t afford to lose. Trading is an inherently risky business, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you a pipe dream. I see:

To me, that is a textbook indicator of scared money. Far be it from me to tell you what to do, but if you’re in a situation where you have to go live and be profitable within a couple of weeks of even seeing the APEX systems in order to keep trading, you might want to reevaluate your priorities.

One other comment you made jumped out at me:

No, I would not. Markets don’t work like that. If they did, they wouldn’t exist for long. If you listen to any financial advertisement, they all include a statement (usually recited at triple-speed) saying that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Each moment in time is an independent event, and the fact that it worked the last time or the last four times is meaningless when trying to decide if it will happen again.

The purpose of a trading system is not to predict the future. It’s to find and exploit an edge in a manner that tilts the risk-reward equation in your favor. Judging from the screenshot in the first post (a tiny sample to be sure), I would say that the system did very well in exploiting an edge in the timeframe shown, going 4-1. The fact (and reason) that you only took the last trade is not relevant. The market doesn’t care. The market is not an ATM, and every time I hear Jim Cramer’s radio ad that says they have a system where small stocks can be tapped like an ATM for repeated profit, I want to reach through the radio and strangle him. Even with a good system, you will lose money. Sometimes you will lose a lot of money. You have to have enough capital to withstand the drawdowns. Even great traders with solid systems can lose a lot of trades in a row. No real equity curve trends smoothly upward all the time.

I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that Darrell’s S1 is Sanity and S2 is Stewardship, and that System doesn’t come until S10. Without having a handle on your mind and your money, no system will ever work for you. In the end I’m just a guy with an opinion, but these are things that I struggled with and only learned by blowing up accounts. Do yourself a favor and get your Sanity and Stewardship straight. You’ll give yourself a much better chance of Success.

#12

Take a look at what just happened in YM and was verified in the trade room as a valid LONG swing entry into a RED Izone… This was the point I was trying to make last night in that it does happen and it is a valid entry…

#13

Thanks for the insight, very helpful words.

#14

I do not believe there is any rule stating you cannot take a long into a red Izone especially with swing trades. By the very nature of a swing trade you will often have an opposing izone. Izones get broken all the time, just like any other support or resistance level. You have to look at the big picture. How strong is that Izone(when was it made), is volume exceeding, do we have momentum, have we bounced off this level recently…

Hope this helps!

#15

Good points to consider. I may be too focused on the small picture and not the bigger picture

#16

I haven’t tried to do those swings. I’m keeping it simple. I also have never traded the IZSS. I’ve watched it quite a bit. As far as those swings, I’d definitely stop doing those when you get to an opposite izone. There’s bound to be some resistance.

#17

Their is no rule to not take the swings breakouts at a izone. They are scalp trades and work very well. Your following random rules that are not in the rules. This seems to be the main confusion.