The Turn

There are some similarities between trading and poker, although there are important differences too. As a trader, I decide which hands I want to play without putting up an ante and I have a stop loss. What may be a commonality between Hold'Em and trading is The Turn.


If I can identify change in the trend - and I'm talking about the only trend that matters, the trend in the chart I am trading - then I can often get a long ride. The question then becomes one of style: trying to catch the whole move until another trend change or just trading the peak to trough or trough to peak of the moves along the trend. There may be more than one attempt to catch the Turn but positioning myself is important because I can start scaling out in case there is no follow through, and I can capitalise on it if I have indeed caught the Turn.


In the Euro futures chart below, you can see the Turn that I have marked. After that there are arrows where Flo and I have identified entry pictures. She's gotten pretty good on the entries and our exit algos are not bad, but my trade management is better manually. Catching that last move up on the Turn was awesome, pure Flo.

In one way trading the way I do, catching peaks and troughs, is more difficult as I have to be right more often than if I can identify the Turns. But for me, it's a matter of what suits me or is in my trader's DNA. I was always very short term and my experience on the floor reinforced that preference. However, it's not the same for everyone. There is a choice and the TP should reflect that.