Today was one of those days when just about every trade I made with the E mini went wrong. As I reflect as to the correct moves and the incorrect moves I wonder how others (besides those on the opposite side of my trades ) made out in a market like today. Maybe some tips?? Thanks
In a choppy market like today or a narrow range market with little direction, it is best to rely on the use of standard oscillators and look for OB/OS areas and divergence with price. Even trendline breaks on the oscillator itself can fortell an upcoming reversal. Moving averages, etc. will only cause whipsaws like you were getting....IMHO.
I definitely find (trading listed stocks) I have to be careful after a day like yesterday. It's seems like the specialists play around alot more -- you pay up, they fade the bid...very difficult to get a fair fill. It's a congestion day on the charts, right? Who likes to be congested?
Bad day for me too, 6 ES trades: 1st lost one tick, 2d lost a point and a half then made one tick then 3 breakeven...... holding time is less than 3 minutes. I tried to make it back today and of course the market sucked. I stepped up my trading in the emini S&P but never catch the big moves, ticks and breakeven can't make up for the few 2 point losses with 50% of losses. It's not that I don't let my profits run or don't cut my losses my gains are just too small and I end up scalping but I don't feel it suits me. I think I have a sound pattern based methodology but I can't catch the big moves. When I am very fast to pull the trigger it doesn't move when I am a bit slow it shoots up and I missed it , the next entry yielding a tiny gain if any.
That was me all day, At least the part about being slow when I should have been fast and fast when I should of gone to the bathroom. I would like to thank the posters on this thread as it helps not to feel totally stupid when at the end of the day you have a lot less money then when you started.
I use a patterned base approach as well Kicking, and today only my morning trades were successful. That is until the 10:00 a.m. bar took my hard earned 12 points in the NQ eminis in about 7 seconds by whipsawing me down and short, and then back up 10 points before I could cover. I slowly lost money the rest of the day (no follow through).
Funny I always seem to come out ok on days like this. I was +15 today although I started out poorly. What I find is that definitely under trading works well when you are above obvious support and below strong resistance. In todays trade for example we took out yesterdays highs fairly early before retracing, but we did not retrace under yesterdays 50% CTL ( close to low ) level which tells me the market is fairly strong. I will admit I got lucky on the ORCL spike late in the day as I had a buy order in based on something else ( I never really thought it would trigger ). Ended up making about 5+ on that little spike. Here are my trades for today, not sure if any of you will get anything from them but here they are: 10:03 Long 1194 stopped 1188 @ 10:13 -6 10:15 Short 1191 cov 1185 @ 10:22 +6 11:14 Short 1174 cov 1166 @ 11:45 +8 12:31 Long 1174 out 1178 @ 12:51 +4 14:32 Long 1180 stopped 1176 @ 14:43 -4 15:26 Long 1184 out 1192 @ 15:29 +8 AllenZ
Well since were sharing here is the QUICK version for me today. Covered my short at close of AU for a gain of 1.64 share ( that one was nice) BUT only 100 shares for about $160 pop Lost about $950 in the Emini rollarcoaster. ( my head is still spinning. I can't belive how many back and forth trades I made) It would appear that today was the wrong day to use 15 min trendlines I shorted SBUX at the close for an average price of $24.93 with a new close/overnight signal that I have been working on. I call it the WILLIAM after my son. As this is the second WILLIAM I have done ( the other / first one did really well) that was not on paper it will be an interesting morning. Ok, back to reading my tech / trading books again....
Really stupid question but could you give me the symbol for the emini on stockcharts. I'm assuming there is one. TIA.