I just take it day by day. Short this morning. Long this afternoon. But I totally agree that in the grand scheme of things this is just an oscillation which may mean squat. I imagine tomorrow's FOMC data could easily spark this both higher and lower short/medium-term.
My target was low 60s, but I decided to trail it tightly as I've had one too many trades revert on me. Got high ticked on that one. Did another short at mid range with a tight stop, but scratched it and reversed long as I saw NQ ripping through the Open and realized I was on the wrong side of the market.
I won't say much since I didn't post my thesis or charts ahead of time. But simply, I've been trading YM for several months. Still am. I had 34640 as a downside target since the 14th. Today, I've done only 11 trades. For me thats low. For now, 15mins or so before the close, for YM going forward I have... 34950 for upside... after that it's price discovery for the Z contract. 34685 for downside... with a whole lot of pseudo-supports any of which can hold, down to 34500. So without a good catalyst, both ways, pseudo-scalp (smallish fixed exit) might be king.
Right. Can you elaborate on why you're trading YM instead of the other contracts? Do you find it easier to trade/read?
There are several "reasons". First there is the fact that I developed many of my trading skills using YM. That might be an embellishment... many of my failed ideas and concepts occurred with YM... Decades before there were micros! Oh man. As I'm typing this, the 3 hour outage at CBOT just flashed in my mind. Summer of 05 maybe?? That was not a happy day. But the lessons learned were priceless. It lead my way to FCM and data feed diversification. Both of which are more necessary today than ever! WOW. Misty. So there's that. Moving on... I like the 1 equals 1 tick. 1 point equals 1 tick. period. And a multiplier of 5. Daddy needs a crisp new $100 bill. 4 ticks X 5 cars. Earlier I mentioned pseudo-scalp... for me that's 6-8 ticks... times 5 works for me as a "scalp". $1000+ days are commonplace and "easy" trading that setup, even in narrow situations. The question is how many times in 6.5 hours? Or is it an early quittin time? Staying with your question, in Q1-23 I expected most index markets to be range-bound. Wide range but nonetheless, range bound. I also noticed YM decoupling. This is now obvious here in Q3/Q4. So I have a large range, not in unison with other indexes, with 1 equals 1 trading, and at least one proven and "easy" setup to extract $1000+ a day. Today, RTH was smooth. 300 down, 200 up. Travel of over 500 ticks. I only took 11 trades. 7 trades were not "scalps". All my trading is volume-centric. Bottom line: I like YM. And like everything in trading, the instrument, YM in this case is perfect, but I am not.
Thank you for your detailed write up, buddy. The reason I was asking is because I believe I've seen you also trade ES and NQ in the past, so I was curious what made you seemingly settle on YM now in favor of the others. On ES, the constant back-filling can be a challenge. Arguably, an instrument that trends and trends cleanly is easier to trade. I haven't looked much at YM in detail, but I'm studying/testing NQ a bit and while it also backfills quite a bit, there is more momentum in that market and it simply moves more. Which can make it easier to trade. Maybe I should give YM a second look.
12:45 Significant sell signal across the board on the higher/ relevant TF`s..... 4410- 15.25 target now in sights!