I thought about giving daytrading a try. I have a full time job but work from home 2-3 days a week so I can still trade. I am starting with $2,400 so I have 4 tries to make it. If the account goes below $2,000 I'll stop trading. I am trading off of 30 min charts therefore I do not have to watch the price at all times. I just have to look at it at every 20 and 50 minutes for the next 10 minutes. I will be buying pullbacks after a break-out. My stop is 20 pts and target 50-100 points. Here is the set-up. 13p Bollinger bands with 1.5 std. I have charts for ES and YM side by side. A close above/below the Bollinger bands and an expansion of the band confirms a trend. After the prices close above the band I like to see the price not pullback much for few more bars and the MA to have an upward slope. As the MA and prices get closer I'll put a buy-limit at the price of the last completed MA. My stop will be entered at the same time and it is 20 points from the price. Today I went long at 11256 (1 in chart) with a stop at 11236. YM came down to 11246 and went up to 11293. My target was 11306 and the price never went up there but after it was up 40 points, I moved my stop to break-even. I got stopped out at 11257 which basically paid for the commissions. I have watched the price action many times and 6/10 times you get your price. 2/10 times you get stopped out at a loss and 1/10 times you get stopped out at break-even and today happened to be that day. My target on the first trade is always 50 points and if the set-up occurs again then my target is 100 points. I am not into this journal thing and English is my second language so I apologize if this is confusing. I will answer any questions if you have. Here is the set-up.
You used a 20 point stop for a flat profit this tells me you've been hanging around or have been in PureSlicks room- both bad. The trade went in your direction 37 points why not move your stop after 10 or 15 or use a trailing stop???
Here is today's set-up. Since the volume is low and the spread is 4 pts. in YM, I am not trading today. At 00.00 - 00.30 ES closed above the BBs but YM did not so this is invalid break-out. At 1.30 - 2.00 both ES and YM close above the band so this is a valid break-out for our purpose. Now all we need to do is have at least 1 - 30 min bar that just sits there and the MA to approach the price. But the next bar was a sharp sell-off so we do not buy. At 2.30-3.00 both the ES and YM close below the BBs. The next few bars were just what I wanted to see. YM was showing some strength and ES was relatively week. At (1) on the ES chart was the price that we want to sell. In the next bar (11) the price gets there so we execute the trade in YM with a stop at 20 points. YM went down 44 points from the high to low (probably because of holiday so the target and stop has to be lower accordingly on such days). We have another set-up again at 8.30-9.00 bar too.
Thought about moving the stop too but in the past few months since I've been watching the market, I would have been stopped out more often than not. I do not trade everyday and I am trading a high-probability set-up so I'd rather get out at a target. The only trailing stop that makes sense here is below the low/high of the last 30 min bar. Not sure who PureSlick is. Like I said I have a full-time job that I love so I don't have time for other stuff during the day.
Here is how the day would have been today. At (111) in the ES chart the MA was at 1262.25. So we'll sell YM when ES got to 1262.25 (1111), at that moment YM was at 11275 (1111 in YM chart). If we were to close the trade at the close we'd have 40 YM points. In ES it was possible to get 5 points. As usual our stop would be 20 YM points or 2 ES points. The price never got to our stop point. I usually trade on Tuesdays and Fridays only. Hoping to have a similar set-up on that day.
How did you arrive at the bb settings? The default setting for a lot of programs is 20 period with 2 SDs. Why 50 points for 1st set-up and 100 points for the next? Have you considered using the BBs to get you out of the trade?
I just tried different settings and by the time the price reaches 2 std. we would have missed a lot so I use 1.5 std. It can be changed in any charting program. The reason for using 13 period is because there are 13 - 30 minute periods in a regular trading day. I have 50 points as a first target and 100 as the next one is because if I have a winner on the first one and I get stopped out on the second one I am still up 30 points. After I get 75 points on the second one I'll trail my stop to 50 points. This has worked at least in the past few months due to volatility, if the volatility diminishes it is probably a good idea to have the stop at 10 points and target at 25 and 50.
I have noticed that when prices penetrate the BBs the third time, it is ready for a pause or reversal. I tried coming up with a divergence strategy based on that but the result was 50/50.
So what do you guys think.... can I do it? What are the things that I need to consider since I have very few shots available? One of the things that I was thinking about was using a trailing stop of 1 YM point for every minute that I am in the trade. So if I have a profit of 30 points and I'm in the trade for 10 minutes I trail my stop to 10 points.