Yeah, I know about monkey bars.... it's just a volume profile, something I've never gotten the hang of but thanks anyway. The problem with TOS is they don't have a way to segregate bid/ask data when it comes to order fills. They've said they're working on it but that it won't be happening in the near future. C'est la vie. I've seen some vids on market delta and it's very intriguing but I have to remember they're only going to show winning trades in those vids. The reality is surely a lot more ambiguous so who knows if I'm missing out on anything or not. For now probably best not to complicate things with additional indicators. G - I didn't mean to imply that I wouldn't have taken any trades in that chop because who knows what I would have done in there. By saying I got the right answer I meant that if I was looking at the right edge of NoDoji's chart that I would not have been looking to take any trades from there. I assumed that's what she was asking.
3 trades so far. Long on the 3:45 bar that took out the doji high. Stopped out. -9 Short on the 4:00 bar that retested the channel line (entry off the 1-min chart). Stopped out on the green 4:20 bar that poked above the 20ema. -7 Currently back in short again at 1.4480 on the 4:25 bar.
Nice channel-based trades. First was short the break of .07 (see 5m for better picture). The premise was that price had only gone 60% of the way up the channel, and a break below this level would likely see a move to formally establish the lower channel line, which it did quite nicely. The target and following reversal were heavily influenced by the fact that 93.88 was yesterday's pit low. The reversal to long was a break of .01, and can be seen more readily on the 5m chart. A reasonable volume base was put in, and this was really what I needed to confirm a long entry. The target was the top of the channel, which at the time was around .50. However, as the clock struck noon and volume dwindled to a screeching halt, the second push above .28 hesitated and a cover was in order. There was no really good reason to cover except that the future looked too uncertain to potentially give back 27 ticks trying to capture another 20.
Got stopped at breakeven on that last short. the rest of the session went as follows... Next trade short on the 5:30 bar which made target. +33 short on the 6:20 bar, got wicked 2 bars later. -15 short on the 6:40 bar made target. +29 long on the 8:35 bar, false breakout. -9 Poor win rate but still came out ahead. There were some good long trades in there but I didn't see them until 1-2 bars too late, so ended up passing on them.
Your 3:45 long was edgy because price had the mobile resistance of a falling 20 EMA to contend with as well as previous support that could now become resistance since the trend line broke. What I do if I put on a trade like that is I scratch the trade if price fails to break through the 20 EMA.
Yeah when i'm unsure I typically blend the bottom candles together. There wasn't a signal aside from a break of indecision. The pin bar with the wick above is the red flag something isn't right.
Dv, You might want to look at Market Delta for their footprint charts. It will give you the delta on the trades executed at the bid or ask and the imbalance in chart format. They offer a 30 day free trial; you must have a data feed. There are quite a few traders that trade simply R an S levels and use the footprint order flow to tell them when big trade imbalances are coming in on either the buy or sell side. They can therefore better time entries and exits. http://www.marketdelta.com/ If you want to see someone use it live , you can get a 5 day trial of these guys who trade it on ES live each day. http://www.ioamt.com/ I have trialed the software and could not see where it gave me an edge. Some others seem to swear by it and that is OK too. I have no vested interest in either one of these services BTW. Wolf
You've really been doing excellent. Keep it up! You're on the right path to some consistent gains and your most recent update is a clear indication of that. I wanted to show you what i was looking at. It sometimes helps to see what the bigger guys are doing on the upper TF. When you feel comfortable scan out to a higher TF. Here's the 1hr and what they were battling against. Note the circles. Close below that line will bring in some additional selling. It popped up to retest it and then the green candle broke (very bearish). But at that time it was either a sit and wait or attempt to trend follow on the bearish pin bar (a bit more aggressive none the less).