I like my indicators as far as entering a trade in the right direction but I never know how many ticks to target. Consequently I either leave a lot on the table or try to get too much and get caught in a reversal. I trade the ES mainly on a 2-5 minute chart. Is ATR the indicator I could use and does anyone know the right way to use it?
Price will tell you more than any indicator. You never know how far a move will go. All of us geniuses can see the support and resistance levels, but none of us know which wll hold or fail. And no indicator will give you that info. My 2c
2 min has too much noise(in my opinion), 5 min a lil better, you could look for a developing divergence using CCI or MACD to signal a trend ending or trend starting, even better when those divergences happen near or on a pivot point
I like to exit when volatility is expanding. There is no one size fits all. A dynamic exit method which is shaped around the market itself, price action ,and context is your best bet IMO
This is truely a question that doesn't provide enough information. Much of the information you seek is gathered through extensive backtesting. I have found for my own trading, I segment the day session into three, morning session, lunch and afternoon. The morning has more of a pop to it, lunch becomes tight ranges normally and afternoons for me are skidish Price Action trying to nail the high/low of the day. Also comes into play is how you get in, if you are doing trendline breakouts, you can expect less on targets, whereas if you are waiting for price to retrace back to your limit entry you might be able to expect twice as much. Another area is if you have mastered counter-trend trading in which you would reverse into a reversal trade. Also if you trading off 2-5 minute, are you using 30 or 60 minute charts and taking trendlines on those for longer term view of support/resistance. Often times Price will bounce off these lines. I spent years trying to make ATR work for me and never mastered it to my liking, that is not to say someone else can't. I am more of the singles and doubles trader of getting two points on 90% of my contracts, then have the "attaboy" contracts remaining for 5/10pts, but all the backtesting on how I trade shows me I lose profits on going for more on three minute bars. On counter-trend trades I can target more but not much more so I can consistently get a high enough percentage. One thing many traders don't keep is a 10 period ave of day session range, I always want to know where Price is in this ave. range, if we have a ways to go and I just entered, perhaps I can seek a bit more in the trade, but if nearing the top of this range, I may pass on the trade all together or take much smaller target. For me, it is all about consistency. I am just a trained monkey. I think I just learned to accept who I am as a trader whereas years ago I wanted to make the biggest profits on trades. Now I just concentrate on getting the smallest weekly losing percentages under my goal. So leaving "money on the table" don't concern me in the least.
That makes you a noise trader IMO. Just think, how many at that timeframe are willing to lose money to you? HFTers? No, no. Market makers? No, no, no. Pros? No, no. You basically belong to a group everyone else targets to profit from.That group has always many opportunities to enter the market but literally none to exit with a profit. Increasing the timeframe to hourly or even daily will provide more clues for correct exits.
What time period do you use for entries? For intraday trades I think the 5 minute charts are excellent for entries and shorter time frames for more exact entries. IMHO of course. I also look at the daily chart and 15 min. chart to help from not seeing the forest for the trees so to speak.