"I get the 4 market correlation. But how do you use that if you trade the ES from 14:00- 16.15? The DAX and the ESTXX are dead by then, right?" Or, for that matter: How do you trade the ESTX50 or the DAX at 3am in the morning, when the ES and the DJ Minis are not yet trading RTH? What benefit do you gain from having them on your monitor- the ETH Globex session is hardly indicative of anything, right? Isnt the 9:40- 11:30AM EST the ONLY time slot when you can actually have all markets trading and generating valid signals?
The DAX & ESTX50 shut at 14:00 US Eastern - so there is no four market analysis for the final time period - just ES and YM. Maybe that's why my results are not as good in that time period as the earlier two! Know what you mean about the German Swiss - they put the capital C in the word 'Conservative'! Still, there's lot of expats floating around the country to hang out with, and to break a few rules when the locals aren't looking
I was on a ski competition in Grindelwald once, next to the Matterhorn- years back. We parked in the parking lot of the hotel- which was empty, but in an area where for some reason you were not supposed to park. Every morning, a policeman with what looked like the uniform of a soldier in the Thirty Years War came along and put a ticket on my windshield. The parking lot was the size of a football field, and there were maybe 10 cars! Just to see how far he would go I ripped up the ticket every day and dropped it right there. After 5 days I had 10 tickets on the floor. The last day when we were about to drive off he caught up with me. He was almost crying with frustration that anybody would do this! He gave me a 10 minute speech about why it "just wasnt right" and when there are laws one must respect them, even if they seem nonsensical. No matter that the law was positively insane... I said-"I have to get the money for you in the hotel. Can you meet me in the lobby in 5 minutes?" He walked over to the lobby and waited. We drove off and out of Switzerland. But I disgress...
Do you find yourself making many trades during the 1st hour of Euro trading, i.e. 3-4am east coast time? It seems to me like probably highly descretionary at least per the system you describe as it takes about an hour for the BB to come together on the 5 min chart. During this timeframe would you ever consider a smaller timeframe?
I've vacillated between charting the ES & YM from 03:00 - 05:00 EST and not charting it. I even used to trade the ES in this time period (until I got comfortable with the ESTX50 & DAX). Anyway, I no longer chart this time period in the US markets. So you're correct, since I only chart DAX & ESTX50 from 03:00-05:00 EST ...then the only time period where I have all four running is 09:40-11:30 EST.
One winning trade per time period and I stop. It doesn't take an hour for the bands to be viable - they are still working on bars from the previous day. So no, I do not use smaller timeframe bars.
I think I was really thinking about gaps, just didn't articulate it. I'm sure that's a thread on it's own.
want a good laugh? I started a journal, and my 1st post was a great trade on the S&P index: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=18651 and so far, mostly all the responses have been negative! People crying "nothing will be learned here", "you didn't really make money", and "you're doing this for ego" are the responses. Even Magna chimed in with a non-productive response. To me, it shows shows how true your pecking order is as posted on the 1st page of this thread. Talk about groupies and gurus etc. It's enough to make you vomit! They'd rather get 2000 posts from Gekko, and then find out he had a $2000 trading account, and then write 50 pages of help to him. Lame goddam wankers!