Haven't taken any trades yet today. Instead, giving myself a 1 week critique to figure out what I have learned over the past week through trading, advice and reading generally on these forums and how I will implement it moving forward.
My goal is to go live within 30 days if I can maintain profitability.
1. Having read a good deal and being around trader friends, I already had the hang of key concepts like support and resistance; I chose the macd's to trade with because I like how the movements within can show directional change in price.
2. Being new to actual trading meant learning the trading system-- NinjaTrader free, demo account for 30 days to test how I want to trade. Learning how the Chart Trader works has been a work of trial and error, but I think I have it down now.
3. Understanding exactly HOW I want to take trades based on combining my support, resistance and macd's. Taking trades when price turns off of s/r areas and the macd's show a change-- either turning down and the bands cross, or crossing the zero line and strong in the direction while my price breaks the s/r area or turns off of it. This works well for me and is easy to see.
4. Understanding my exits; I don't have a set stoploss or profit target; I typically just put my stoploss behind the s/r area I'm coming off of, but in effort to reduce my losses on negative trades I am trying to tighten those up and place them (when the trade is farther away from an area) behind a pivot within the area-- this reduces my stops from 20-30 to around 10-15 in some situations.
5. Profit targets; I have been putting my profit target at the next s/r area, and that seems to work fine.