Hi Guys, Starting this journal to practise and learn the Straight Line Analysis that some of the other members are investigating on this forum. At the moment I mainly concentrate on the daily charts, because I have time at the end of the day. However for this thread I will try use the short term charts whenever I am free at the US market open I live and work in Europe and cannot get on at US market open every day, and sometimes travel takes me away for a few weeks at a time. Good luck to you all in your trading and learning.
At the moment this is just a learning exercise. No real fills just a simulation. When I can ride the bicycle properly without falling off, I will try to post real time.
None of that is necessary. This is a journal, not a trading log (journal? journey?). It's for you to use however you please, even if you do nothing but make observations. Those are after all what will form the basis for the hypotheses you eventually test to develop your trading plan, if you decide to stick with it.
Today was an relatively easy day to start learning this. There was a retracement soon after the open which allowed a long entry, and then a steady rise until I sold at resistance to previous January daily highs. Like most people I don't have too many problems making the descisions on those sunny clear days. My problem is seeing entrys and exits fast enough when we get more varied behaviour. Hopefully today the difficulty of the game will be increased slightly, although not enough to annoy the people who are placing real cash on the line.
I have made some comments on the day. They are numbered below and indicated on the attached chart. The times on the chart are set to our local time, so I'll have to figure out how to change that on Investing.com. 1. Price fell fast at the open, and then retraced to 50% of the previous down move, and also the last swing high and rejected both. 2. Price then fell fast and looked for a retracement and a possible entry below the recent low at around 3642. The retracement happened, but price did not fall below LSL. 3. Price moved back to opening highs, tried and failed to breakout, stayed in congestion ofr a number of bars 4. Breakout, waited for retracement and went long at 3655. Note:- This was very close to previous all time highs at 3660, and came after a large rise in price from 3641. 5. Set stop at LSL at 3653, which was triggered. 6. Demand line was now broken, so looked for a retracement. Entered short below 3652. 7. Price was already close to 50% of previous up move, so it bounced off that and was congested for a while. Supply line was broken but had set stop at 3653 so wasn't triggered. 8. Eventually exited when supply line was broken and price started making higher highs and lows. 9. If I had just turned up at 11am, I would possibly have taken a long around at around 51 because price had broken supply line and made higher highs and lows. But after watching price since the open, and feeling that I wasn't analysing things fast enough, I just stopped for the day, watched from the sidelines. Overall, I was able to make two entries, and give them a bit of room to move. But they may have been made a bit to close to possible support or resistance. Interesting day. I'm more used to EOD analysis, and it definitely tests your descision making to try this on 1 min charts. Looking forward to Monday's open.
I know. Research and back-testing comes before the trading plan, which comes before entries. Monday seems to be a futures holiday, so I'll do as much learning as possible. Thanks for your input, and for keeping us all honest.
1. Open had breakout and retracement for potential long entry. 2. Broke through previous daily high of 72 and stopped rise. 3. Demand line broke after lower high. 4. Support line broken and pausing at 50% level of overnight rise. 54 is the next big low. 5. Hit low of 57, and climbed back up until support line broken. There is a retracement and potential for a long entry. 6. Continued past today's high 7. Eventually got above 80 but settled into a trading range.