Tips & Tricks
Many of you have expressed interest in obtaining more information on the companies, products, and services featured on my website and how I use them. This “Tips & Tricks” Blog is in response to those inquiries.
If you want to trade multiple accounts, I suggest a combination of NinjaTrader, Rithmic, or CQG and Replikanto. I would not trade group trade multiple accounts in Tradovate as you cannot place group orders with brackets.
Trailing drawdowns teach good trade management. I would fail evaluations all the time even with my stop in profit when the price would wick even if in my favor as I couldn't capitalize quickly enough on the movement and profit before it would come down hit my stop and I would bust the accounts. Even though I didn't take a loss as it would hit my trailing drawdown. I did this over and over until I started to trade much smaller sizes, especially in markets like NQ. When you have the trailing drawdown trade smaller size and get that stop in profit as soon as you can to give you as much downside protection as you can. While the trailing drawdown is in effect trading smaller size is incredibly important.
You should never be willing to lose more than your content to make in a day. This ensures the potential for a one-day recovery if you have a bad day.
Start with no daily profit goal. You can only receive what the market is willing to give and some days when markets are rangebound and trading sideways it’s best just to sit it out. Don't set your expectations too high. Begin by trading one contract. Allow yourself no more than three trades per day and if your first trade is a win consider your day done.
Be aware of the news but don't trade the news. News can be the catalyst that moves price to the next technical level on a chart.
Scale with accounts, not contracts. Rather than overleverage an account add another one and continue trading the same contract size.
Develop a strategy or a trade plan. It’s important to have a reason you took the trade. I like to draw up confluence across multiple timeframes. This can be fib clusters, support/resistance, trend, liquidity levels, previous day value area, opening range (first 30 minutes), initial balance (first 60 minutes), etc. The more confluence you have the higher the probability of having trade success. This can all be charted and ready well before RTH begins. I then watch these levels throughout the day looking to see if liquidity builds out around them in Bookmap.
If you struggle with discipline whether it’s overtrading, impatience, fear of missing out (FOMO), or a lack of risk management try sitting in front of your charts for a couple of days but don’t trade. Resist the urge to place any traders rather simply identify setups and observe the outcomes.
When profits and losses are simply a number on a screen you can become desensitized to it. I made it seem tangible by stacking poker chips on my desk to represent the day’s P&L even going as far as to use $100 bills at one point to drive the point home.
I only trade ES and NQ. My contract size depends on the time of day, whether the day is trending or rangebound, and what the biggest large-cap stocks are doing. I generally trade 1-3 mini contracts at a time. You can scale in a little bigger at times, however when you scale in with more contracts you must tighten your stops. I always look for much smaller moves when trading more contracts just to protect myself.
Trade your evaluations the same way you need to trade your funded account. Build good habits early. I didn't change my trading style even after my drawdown was fixed in my funded accounts in fact, I still trade my accounts today as if they have a trailing drawdown.
Don't double down on losing trades. The only time I double down on a losing trade is when I am impatient, and front-run my entry on the strategy or confluence I had identified. If the price then moved to the ideal entry I would double down. Outside of that condition doubling down on losing trade simply means you’re going to lose twice as much.
Stop losses do not always work. Since a stop-loss order simply issues a market order as soon as the stop-loss level has been hit, there must be enough liquidity in the market for the transaction to take place. In case there is too little liquidity, you may experience significant amounts of slippage, which means that your trade is filled at a much worse price, since there was no one there to take the other side of the trade. Even though this usually happens in markets with very low liquidity, it may also happen in more liquid markets, if there is an explosion in market volatility. When there are sharp moves in the markets, you usually experience more slippage.
It is important to remember that Apex Trader Funding functions as a prop firm, whereas the role of data providers, platform solution providers and any addons is fulfilled by third-party entities. This means you as the trader are fully responsible for and need to ensure your computer, internet speed, data provider, platform solution, any addons, Wi-Fi, battery backup, etc. all meet your expectations.
I used Sniper and Simplicity extensively and learned a lot about order flow as a result. There is a wealth of knowledge in the course videos.
I honestly wouldn’t trade without FinancialJuice. I have a lifetime subscription to it and consider it one of the best tools I have. I am surprised by the number of traders that don’t monitor the news. By this I mean be aware of key events like FOMC, CPI, Core PCE, JOLTS, etc. When you are in a trade their live audio commentary alerts you to events that could impact your position giving you time to flatten or tighten stops.
You can hear the markets with this tool. Even when not looking at a chart I can hear what the market is doing. I monitor NQ, ES, YM, RTY, TSLA, AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, GOOG, META, and EUR/USD but only have the sound on for the futures contract I’m trading. The others I monitor visually with the color indicator.
I still learn something every day with Bookmap. It can be very intimidating at first, but they have an enormous amount of training videos on YouTube. I bought the lifetime global plus subscription and subscribed monthly to their MBO Bundle + Tradermap Pro with a Rithmic data feed. When you look at higher timeframe draws on TOS charts from ChartPros and see liquidity build out on Bookmap at the same level it gives another huge pc. of additional confluence to that trade.
My introduction to the futures markets began with ChartPros. Their Price Action Mastery Certification Course is still the bedrock of my strategy. When I get distracted, I go back and rewatch the course. The simple support, resistance, trend, Fibonacci, and how to build out the confluence taught in their course is timeless.
I use NinjaTrader to trade and have found no one better for NinjaTrader indicators than TradeDevils. Some of my favorites are their Initial Balance and Opening Range Indicator, Auto Fibonacci Indicator, News Indicator, Multi timeframe Support/Resistance Indicator, and Market Profile and Volume Profile. Great training videos and an active Discord channel make it easy to get questions answered.
Jack Gleason is one of the best I have found at Fibonacci and does a live overview each morning on YouTube via a link in his Discord Channel.
I use their Replikanto trade copier in NinjaTrader. It allows me to trade one Rithmic connection along with several CQG connections at the same time.
I learned charting in Thinkorswim and still prefer it. More importantly, it’s free.
Perry Wilkey’s Equity Profiles/Startup Trading
Perry Wilkey does a live analysis each morning on YouTube via a link in his Discord channel on Startup Trading. I have listened to him each morning for years and his analysis “frames” the day for me. I also use his value area plots each day and load them into my TOS charts.
I use NinjaTrader for all my trades. The ability to trade multiple accounts via Replikanto makes it the perfect choice. It is also where I utilize all the indicators from TradeDevils including their market profile. There are some quirks with NinjaTrader however. One is if you have a situation where orders didn't appear as anticipated or did not appear at all do NOT press the "Close" button multiple times as this can create orders in the opposite direction. Always use the " Flatten Everything" button within Chart Trader.
Hardware
My computer is custom built with a LIAN LI glass case, INTEL I9-13900K processer, ASUS ROG 1200W power supply, CORSAIR H170I ELITE CPU liquid cooler, two CORSAIR QL120 RGB fan kits, Samsung 2TB 980Pro SSD, MSI MEG Z690 GODLIKE motherboard, two GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards and 128 GB of G.SKILL 64G 2X D5 6000 C30 TRGB B memory.
For monitors I have three LG 43” 4K monitors, one 49” UltraWide Curved LED 4K monitor, and two ASUS 28” 4K monitors.
Set your computer to Eastern Standard Time (ET) and ensure computer time is synced.
Ensure your computer meets your expectations. Running multiple programs while trading can be resource-intensive.
I do computer updates every weekend and take my computer apart to clean it every other weekend.
The content presented in this post reflects the author's viewpoints and is intended solely for informational and entertainment purposes. Vince Koehn is not a registered financial advisor or certified analyst. By engaging with the information provided, the reader acknowledges their acceptance of all associated risks. It's important to note that past performance is not n indicative of future results, given the inherent risks within financial trading. Please read the Full Disclaimer
