It goes without saying the recent ES market is highly volatile and some of the entry/exit strategies that once worked like a charm don't cut it now. I would like to hear from intraday ES traders what initial stops and strategies they are employing after the trade moves in their favor. At what point is the stop moved to breakeven, entry or trailing a profit? I ask this because I find my entries, in general, pretty decent, but have no clue what the market is going to give me if the trade moves in my favor. I would like to get more points from my trades that run but I never know which ones will do that, so I take 1 or 2 points and close out. Also, I am a strict believer in not letting a winning trade turn into a loser. How about you? This isn't meant to be a debate whether scaling out is better than all-out. Thank you all in advance for your participation.
It is important for a trader to know where he/she is with respect to the current trading cycle. (i.e. if you dont know where you are, how can you know where you are going and what it looks like if you are NOT going where you thought you were ) For instance, is the entry made in the dominant or non-dominant direction of the trend? What fractal is being monitored and why? What signals are you monitoring to confirm continuation or change within the cycle? Volume leads price, and price moves within channels (from right to left) - from a dominant price movement (increasing volume) with non-dominant retraces (decreasing volume) until the trading cycle is exhausted (peaking of volume then dry-up) and then the trend reverses (with channels overlaping). So with this fundamental understanding, a sound entry would occur after peaking of volume in the dominant direction and during the first rising volume in the new dominant direction. A prudent exit would occur at the peaking of volume at or near the Left Trend line. This is not a scalping technique and stops are not employed nor are they neccessary once a trader has fully mastered these principles of Price (annotated using Channels) and Volume (annotated using Gaussians). Reversals are employed and the trader extracts much of what the market offers every day with little or no drawdown.
I generally take profits on half, and let the other half run. The number of points I take depends on the trade, but usually around 4 pts, with a stop at BE if the 2nd half doesn't work. I keep moving the stop if it moves in my favor, and usually the stop eventually closes me out. Exceptions are a major spike in my favor, where I bail on a market order and usually get good exits, or a test of a major supp/resis area, where I almost always take profits (and sometimes reverse).
I'm familiar with the concept of a 'fractal' per Bill Williams 'Profitunity' group: is your concept based on/similar to that? Can we track volume intraday on the ES? I thought we could only extrapolate 'Volume' based on tick changes. If this is true: do you find it useful?
Entry IS BE. Break even on the portion that is still open, not on the entire trade. Once I have profits on half, I do not risk losing any of that. I do this on average a half dozen times per day, but I know people who do this much more often, but with really small swings.
the market has three "trading zones" and also a monthly cycle. that said the movements are close to the same year after year. the way you should approach a trade in the summer should be different than in november. lesser time frames etc