In business news, the stock market closed unchanged today.... yawn... I would be nervous long or short over the weekend. Seems like there is a lot of event risk out there, whether it's another problem at a big bank or central bankers saying something reassuring.
Here is an intraday chart. Bottom in the morning, and higher lows all day. This was a good day for a scalper I imagine or short term grail setup. Based on all the posts I would say that the US FED was the story today.
Like I've said before any system that you need to lose more money to ultimately make money is a bad system. That is the best way I can describe saxon's system (see link below from previous ES entry) I wish him the best but I won't be surprised when it ends poorly. He could also make a bunch of money and quit before he statistically gets taken out since he is trading with a lot of capital. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1559525#post1559525
What I am saying is that once my DOM is showing -15,000, I close all my trades and go smoke a pack of cigs.
The past several days again have given very very distinct signals from the hourly chart. Even yesterday, the trend was easy to spot as being long right from the get go. That means that short trades are filtered out even though they may look profitable. Now the hourly was countertrend to the daily (short although a case could be made for the long side daily), so one would need to use a tighter leash on the longs, but still the trend was long yesterday ( especially with the retest if the low from earlier in the week. --- Look back at your 60 minute charts and see if you are able to define the trend on that chart each day. That is the first thing one must do in order to trade profitably. Extended gains are where it's at. If you are using a target and that target is 2 points, then your system needs revamping. 6 or more points is more like it. Good trading to all. One housekeeping note: I would like any personal attacks and foul language kept out of this thread please. Of course, I cannot control it, but I would simply ask it. Thanks!
Noise is the activity between reaction lows/highs. It is where the market is placing trades that they hope move directionally. The professionals have placed their trades around the reaction lows/highs no matter what time frame---that's why the market has reaction lows/highs ie professionals and large players are trading there. It's not Joe Retail who is trading there. What we must do as Joe Retail is place our trades inside the noise with the longer term trend, and place our stops outside of the noise. The calculation of where that stop is determines position size. Position size should always be full position size for that stop out area with no averaging in or out. In this manner you will be fully on board , with the trend when the big one comes. (Most folks are scaling out when the market is just beginning to move favorably). If you are getting out of any of your position, it's time to get out of it all.