If you get stopped out, you used a market order to close your position.

What is the alternative then? What is the proper way to do it?

Get out with a limit order when you decide to get out.

I already have a limit order set....??? If I get in at 1096, my stop might be at 1090 so when I get out, I don't get out at 1090.25 or 1089.75. I get out at 1090. When I moved my stop today on my first trade to 3 ticks below my entry, I set a sell limit (is that it?) at the price. I never hit the "Close" button or use the "Market" button.

There are times on my entries and profit targets where I'll have it set at say 1098 and price might bounce on it a few times before it actually gets triggered.

Am I still wrong?

A stop isn't a limit order. Instead of giving your broker a stop you can give them a limit order to sell if it reaches your stop.

So based on Ninja Trader, should I be manually putting in my limit orders for target and sell? Should I NOT be using the "ATM strategy?"

If I set a buy limit at 1050 and want 2 points target and 4 point stop, should I then go to 1052 and put in a sell limit, and then go to 1046 and put another sell limit?

I have it set so that the middle mouse button will "sell stop 1 contract," but left click will "sell limit 1 contract." Which one should I be using? I think one time I was long, I went to put in a sell limit below the price and it immediately sold the position.

Sorry to be asking so many questions and sounding like a tard, but I just want to get this right. I was following what the other guy was doing in that he would put a limit order for the entry and then it would automatically calculate and put in the orders for his profit target and stop.

ATM strategy is fine, just drag the green bar to a price close to the inside market or across the bid/ask and it will get you out with a limit order. The red bar in ATM is a stop market usually the green is always a limit order. Also I wouldnt take "using market orders is bad" to heart, it can be OK and definitely can be appropriate when you think a trade is going against you.

Hmm, I'll have to try it out. Maybe the reason why I haven't been getting any slippage is because I'm only on simulation? I've always been getting out at exactly where I wanted to. I had one trade that was triggered 1 tick from where I wanted and I was kind of confused why it did that.

What do you mean by "price close to the inside market or across the bid/ask"?

When I do the ATM it gives me a green bar at profit and a red bar at stop. Should I redo the stop to make it green? Thinking about it, today when I changed my stop on the first long, I manually did the sell stop (middle button) and it just entered a new stop. It didn't take away the old one. When I cancelled the old one, it also cancelled my profit target. I had to act quickly because price was getting close to my target. After adding back in the sell limit at the profit, when it triggered I got the alert that said, "Order cancelled," but I still had the 2 point target. Not sure if that was a bug or not.

Stops are important! I exit virtually every trade with stops because I almost never use targets. Yes you occassionally slip a tick or 2 but not really all that often and if you consider the alternative of the market running away from you it is a bargain.

FX, if your purchase price is 1050.00 and the last print went off at 1049.50 the best bid is 1049.25 and the best offer is 1049.50 your stop is at 1048.25. You can drag the green bar to 1049.50 and wait expecting that a lot of the time you will get someone to take the other side or worst case scenario moving it down after the best offer moves down or you can get out immediately by placing the green bar at 1049.25.

There are two types of stops. The "normal" stop becomes a market order when your price trades. That is, if you have a sell stop at 1096.25 and the market drifts down to trade 1096.25, your stop automatically becomes a market order to sell.

You'll get filled, you just don't know where. Most of the time you'll be filled close to your stop. The risk is that you may get filled many handles away from your stop price.

The other type of stop is a stop limit order which immediately becomes a limit order at your price. You won't get filled worse than your limit price on the stop...but you might not get filled at all.

I don't use stops in my own trading, but my time frame (days to weeks) is a whole lot longer than yours.

This isn't going to be a daily log, just some thoughts.

Today was horrible. I didn't stick to my plan. I kept trying things. I got up and saw the early move, didn't take even 2 points from it. Then market bounced and started drifting. I got 1 short signal that got stopped out and then 1 long signal right after that missed the target by 2 ticks. Thinking I should refine the entry on smaller moves, less volatile signals, or look for a smaller target. I would have hit the target perfectly 2pts if I got in on the lower of the window. I got pissed after this trade because I was trying to play with the stop thinking about limit stop instead of market stop and I clicked on the price column, must have dragged, I don't know, but it immediately closed my position for a 1pt profit. I was pissed because it took me out of the trade, but I guess it was a good thing because the market started drifting down after that. Eventually it came back up, but it would have taken over an hour and 40 minutes to get there.

I watched the TopStep video that I posted in the trading thread and it gave ideas of where the market was going. I was getting bored so I started doing a few other things trying to anticipate the move and all that happened was that I kept being on the wrong side.

I need to 1) stick to my plan and stop trying to get fancy, and 2) trust what the TopStep guys are saying, and 3) stick to my plan and stop trying to time the market, and 4) stick to my plan and take what it gives me.

Today was just boredom and knowing that it wasn't real money. I started to question whether this was something I wanted to really put my effort into since it seems so discouraging when you get a setup, but it still doesn't work out. I actually shut down NinjaTrader about at 3:30 because I was just pissed at what I was doing. Pissed at myself for being stupid. I ended up missing a trade at the end because of it. Who knows, I might have even missed the entry because it didn't go down to where I might have entered, but it did touch a logical point based on what happened earlier in the day so in hindsight I might have entered right there. Who knows...

My personality wants me to keep doing things so I can keep seeing green, but I don't think I can scalp all that well. I don't even know how to do that really. I guess I could probably have a goal of 2 points per day and over time that will build up as I would increase contracts. At the same time I am thinking that I could try and go for more if I get more signals. Right now I'm really hating the losses due to the fact that the stops are bigger than the profits. The last 6 years have always been having a positive reward:risk ratio like 2:1 or 3:1 so it all just seems backwards in a way.

Do you see anything in your comments that might be counter-productive to successful trading?

Trading is a terrible occupation for those who cannot accept that you're going to have a mountain of losing trades over the course of your career. Sometimes these losing trades will cluster together to form losing days, weeks, or even months. (Though hopefully no losing quarters or years!)

You do not seem to fully understand the Reward:Risk ratio. You must apply the win percentage for it to be meaningful. For instance, if your Reward:Risk ratio of 1:10 on a particular set-up, but it's right 95% of the time, you should take that signal every time. Conversely, if the Reward:Risk on a particular set-up is 3:1, but it's only right 20% of the time, you will go broke taking those signals.

Yeah I know it's counter productive. Psychological issues are definitely a big problem for me and I'm glad I'm doing the sim so I can recognize what those are.

As far as the stops, I understand how that works now. It just seems backwards to me right now, but I'm slowly getting used to it.

For the last 2 weeks I've been hanging out in a UStream channel, Day Trader Rockstar..something like that. I posted it in this thread somewhere. Anyways, he trades stocks, but he has the ES trader pit audio in the background. I usually only listened to that. I get annoyed sometimes by listening to the guy do his commentary while talking to his "members."

So anyways, Wednesday I didn't sit there listening and today I'm not either. Both days are up so far. Wednesday was +4 and today I'm +4.75 so far (would be +5 if it wasn't for a stupid error of mine). Thursday was really bad.

He has alerts on his ES chart that sound like a cricket for new highs from the previous bar and a lesser clicking sound for lower lows from the previous bar. He watches the 1 min chart. The problem is that hearing those clicks gets me excited and feeling like I'm missing out on something so I start trying to catch the rides.

When I'm not sitting in there listening to all of the garbage, I tend to stay patient and look at price objectively and try to see what the price is saying rather than having some clicks and crickets getting me paranoid.

I'm still having a little trouble navigating with Ninja Trader. I stopped using the ATM right now because I wanted to manually find my stops and targets if I don't want them being +2pts and -5 or 6 points, whatever.

My latest trade was +1.75 (because I F'd up trying to get out by putting a limit on 1 tick above my target (on a short) and it was a mistake to do that). I had my stop originally 2pts away, but I noticed that the big down move from the morning stopped at where that 2 pts was so I moved it 1 more tick up and price hit that low exactly and reversed to go to my target. I would have gotten stopped out if I didn't move the stop 1 more tick away.

I don't know what the deal was earlier, but I made a losing trade and closed it myself. I checked my account and it didn't move. I then made another trade and got out early, but I had manual stops in there and what not. I closed the trade and again the account didn't change. So I shut down NT and rebooted it. As soon as it connects it says my order was filled, I was short again! So I hurried up and closed it for a breakeven trade. Not sure what the deal was with that.

So anyways, today is feeling better. I'm still working on this trading stuff. Al Brooks's book is helping me a lot although it's like reading a bunch of jumbled words. It's hard to read, but it's starting to click. And listening to the TopStep guys is a huge help too, just knowing what is going on and where they are seeing the market going. I strongly believe I can do this. I just need to get over the psychological hurdle and learn how to be patient again. In time I think I might take a real money shot and set an IRL stop. If I hit that limit then I will either withdraw the money and reevaluate or I don't even know what.

Since the day is done, I'm just going to lock it in. Saw one more scalp, but decided not to take it because I felt like 62 was a congestion zone.

I ended the day +6.75. I finally saw a few scalping opportunities after having no clue how to find them yesterday. It was nice in the small drift down that we had because I could actually see where the longs were getting trapped and it was a nice 1pt scalp on the break. I only did that a couple times.

One mistake I made was going short, put my stop above a recent high, but it was on a round number. Price moved to that round number and immediately turned around and went to where my target would have been. If I would have just put it 1 tick higher I'd probably be +8.75 today. Something to learn I guess. Only lost a point.

Now my problem really is how to catch the ride for the big moves like the one we had in the morning (ES). I took 2 points out of it, but could have maybe gotten 5 or 6 or more. I'm only trading 1 contract at this time.

Good end of the week. Hopefully next week I can stop making dumb trades, stop screwing up the order system on NT, and have an entire positive week.