That's kind of what I was thinking even though I have no idea what that is or how to read it. This one was taken from the NinjaTrader site and is called TSSuperTrend. There wasn't much of an explanation to it. I plotted the SAR on my chart and it has it a different look. There are different variables in the trend indicator that I have such as: SuperTrend Mode (ATR, Dual Thrust, Adaptive), Period, Multiplier, Moving Average, Smoothing Period. No idea how those all affect this thing or why it starts with its initial values to what I was advised to change them to.
I didn't see that, but it's where it came from. I scanned that first page, but nothing stood out to me explaining how it worked. I'd have to do more digging, just don't feel like it at this time. I played with the settings a little bit and the way I have it it looks a lot nicer and has a better feel to it. I also just realized that I had my opening arrow in the wrong place on my current day's chart. I had put the chart in right at the open before the bar closed so I moved it off to the side with intentions to move it after the first bar closed, but I forgot about it. No big deal.
I've come to realize that these are as good as standard high/low breakouts if not better. My opening trade today was a similar setup, a "perfect" short setup that turned into a 2-tick failed bar breakout (yes, I almost sold the low tick), and I prepared in advance to take the loss and reverse long by way of a double buy stop. Easy money, that was, and would've offered me 20-40 ticks more had I held through the news.
Yes, I see it. Nice trade. It's what I call the "it should go down, but since it didn't, it's going up." Right at a higher pivot low too. It should have went higher, failed to go higher, so it's going lower, but failed to go lower so it's going higher. It's one of those failed failed failures. Question: What made you think to flip? If you get a short signal and it starts going down, closes on a small bear bar, are you not holding it for a further move down with your stop above the high of the shooting star? What made you flip it on that small bear bar? Was it just something you prepared for, but were looking for it to go down more and would have held on if it did? (if you know what I mean and could follow that)
Because I did this pure price action analysis last night and proved to myself that this kind of SAR works really well and offers that little buffer of potential gain as price retests the pivot high, especially when there is a total lack of downside momentum off such a strong with-trend short signal. It wasn't easy because I kept thinking "you're just gonna get chopped up doing this", but I really really wanted to be "by the book" this morning and pretty much forced myself to place that double stop no matter how scary it looked at the time. I've seen how this setup plays out again and again. Later in the day I called the other one and didn't put in my order because of the depth of the previous move down. In a way, though, that makes it even better, doesn't it? You likely have way more shorts about to get burned than earlier in pre-market when the down move was much shallower. Still smacking myself for not trading that one. If I can only sustain the machine-like attitude I brought into the day!
I would have probably taken a loss on that first one as it was a short signal that could have still held and then it would have been too late to get back in, but that second one was a beauty. I should have just taken the trade. Missing that one was painful. haha
I'd like to add to my previous reply about this. On the long position that I reversed to, I placed a double sell stop at 81.87 and would've been right back short again if the long had no follow through. Had that happened, price would very likely have continued down and my total loss between the two shakeouts would've still been less than my max 15-tick per trade loss. It's all about being positioned for "The Move". I've no interest in scalping. I want to catch the runners. When I have a 20-tick minimum profit target, it's just that: minimum. I yearned for a 70-tick move for months and finally got an 80-ticker recently. Now I'm looking to capture a 100-tick move. A 30-tick move is starting to feel a little stingy. I let a 27-tick profit evaporate the other day because I expected more. It takes a lot of trust and patience and solid trade management and frustration and shoulda-woulda-couldas, but I think it's worth it in the long run. Austin said it well right here in your journal: "take the trades, honor the stops, let winner run. the same ones taken off at +10 cents or +20 cents very often, aka constantly run +100 cents and more. so just assume all of your CL trades will do that... and a goodly number of them actually will. you won't care about the others which stop short after that"
This is something I've been working on. It would have been great today if I wouldn't have taken myself out of the breakout trade and just honored my stop. Either my stop gets hit or price makes its move in my direction and then I can manage it after that. I really like the idea of moving to +1 after some kind of move and/or weakness, but I need to stop moving it too soon. Little by little I'm working on it. I mentioned earlier about not putting in a hard target right away, so that way all you have to do is manage your stop. The only downfall to that is that you're always giving up some kind of profit. If price goes +30 and you move to +20, then you're giving up +10 if it comes back, but it also leaves you open to not having it come back to +20 and going to +50 and little by little I'm realizing that I'm willing to do that. I think that +30ticker I got in sim yesterday opened my eyes. Now I just need to take more trades to catch those moves.