out @ 9369, 1 trade for the day @ original target level and prior day high. = more than beer money and kept the skinny R:R that the original trade was setup as. not great but for a counter-trend trade i'll take it. i'm probably going to be away for awhile as my sideline occupation is going to require some attention going into the weekend and will be picking up activity going forward. it's more of a hobby at this stage of my life but i do get compensated for it and enjoy doing it still. also for other folks involved it's NOT just a hobby so i'm committed to show up and deliver.
Enjoying your posts, especially how you're sharing detailed charts with regular updates, and especially your trades, but I do wonder about your reliance on pivot points. I looked into them a while back and have removed all but the main PP. I analyzed by simply looking at the chart and seeing how often an S1 or R1, etc., provided a tradeable turn. Here is a quick chart I put together with some notes of just the past few days. What I saw in general was that they weren't really that helpful. If the pivot point lined up with something like an overnight high or low, or perhaps a round number like 9300 or 9350, then I would put that as the reason for the turn on that level, and not so much the pivot point. Of course if you're having luck with them then that's awesome, but I just figured I would chime in here. The other thing I wanted to mention though was the calculations of these levels. I added the price scale of my chart beside one of yours and the values are off by about 3 or 4 points for most of the different levels (ie. S1 of 9166 for you vs. 9162 for me, or R1 of 9462 vs. 9458) Now of course this is a calculation, so I'm not surprised its a bit different, but this is one reason why I don't like pivot points so much since I'm not really sure who is right and what people are basing their decisions on. Lastly, when I compare your RTH chart with the 24hr chart, its amazing how far off the values are. Clearly the platform is doing calculations but with different data. In this pic below, I put your RTH chart on the right with your 24hr chart on the left. For both the left and right, it starts about 9460 at the top which is where NQ opened, but look at how different the values are, like PP of 9267 vs 9314. The RTH chart is the one of course that has it wrong, but its still interesting to notice. For reference, my PP value today was 9265, and you have 9267 for the 24hr chart, so that is not too far off.
thanks for stopping by and for your comments! pivots; they're not the holy grail to be sure. just landmarks and road-signs that others in the market might be observing or following. JMI not fact to base it on. as for the differences in plotting. yes, the RTH(regular trading hours) vs. ETH(extended trading hours) will be different because the calculation is based on respective high-low-close of previous session. they almost always open and close at different times and price, so.... as for the difference between your PP vs mine (wait a minute, i don't think we know each other well enough...) i know that on NT there are 3 options for calculation. 1) intraday data 2) daily bars 3) user defined. i have mine set to the default of intraday and find that it matches my TOS platform levels exactly. not saying TOS is right either but i do know there are a heck of a lot of users of the Thinkorswim platform and so I just go with that. every now and then there will be a network hiccup and the data for TOS will be off until next day but i can count the number of times that i've observed that happening on one hand. back to the pivots, or any other indicator for that matter. i have nothing to base my use of them on other than i'm pretty sure (not certain) of ones that are very common and widely used. my whole reason for using any of them is to in some way give me an edge or clue as to what other traders are watching and possibly basing their trading decisions on. moving averages and floor pivots are pretty much universal in the math that goes into them and daily hi/lo levels are what they are. round numbers are round numbers. not a science but just like shoppers gravitating to the shortest check-out line, market participants, who or whatever they are seem to pay attention to them too. i know there are a lot of traders that also use market profile and i will sometimes look at that as well but my application of it is not too unlike the way i use floor pivots. as i posted previously and quoting a conversation i had with my cousin on some deep subjects, he said, "there's your way and there's my way, not just THEE way...". so i try not to get too wrapped around the axle about such things. my wife and i have some family friends that have a big wrought-iron sign hanging in their kitchen that reads, "Simplify". often easier said than done but if a guy can do it he might stand a chance! sometimes i have to step back and strip everything down and start over. in fact that is part of my daily practice with my charts is to remove all my drawings, trend lines, etc. and start anew the next time i sit down at the trading desk. if forces me to reset and double check my perspective. ok, enough of my rambling. time for a drink! cheers!
I went ahead and compared my to IB platform and here is what I get. I have no idea how to get the pivot points to show the value, so I just have to do it visually from the chart, but it looks like S1 is at 9162.50, which almost matches my Sierra value of 62.25, and R1 is at 58.50 when I zoom in on the chart, and this corresponds with 58.50 on my Sierra. So at most I have a 1 tick difference it seems. Funny how this all works, and thanks for your explanations. I completely agree with this. The more people that see something, the more of an affect it will have. Its for this reason also why I'm not a big fan of moving averages. Everyone has a slightly different MA. Perhaps a 20 period is most common, but then there are various ways to calculate it, and also it can be on the 1 minute, 5 minute, 30 minute, etc. I find that VWAP is a bit more universal and hence why I have it on my chart, but of course on some days, you have to wait till price eventually gets to where ever VWAP is. As an example, at 09:41, on ES, price got within 1 point of VWAP and then went sideways for several minutes. Then, 3 minutes later at 09:44, NQ got within 3 points of the previous day high. These 2 occurrences gave a good reason to try a long. I totally agree with you here and have been down this road many times. Nothing, on its own, works even 70% of the time really. After collecting stats for quite a while, I saw that previous day levels provide a tradeable bounce about 50% of the time, and same thing with overnight levels. Its not like there was any level that I could say worked 80% of the time. But the magic is putting it all together along with some trade management. Enjoy your drink and congrats on the past few profitable days.
after being on the road over weekend and getting back to headquarters (home) i've recovered from activities and started looking at markets again. posted this daily chart yesterday @ sstheo journal thread but thought i would put it here. 1st is the screen shot from yesterday and then another that i just took today showing the march towards the 61.8 swing extension (fib tool). here's a zoom closer showing close yesterday outside of upper channel boundary and bullish candle (in formation) towards 61.8 extension. i'm still waiting for the illusive pullback to support or some other area. at some point there will be an event or something that will cause a correction or pause. until then i will be waiting like a spider. additionally i'm working on a strategy that will focus on 1 day-trade per day as i have too many other things going on right now that require my attention and i can't sit strapped to the trading desk. also want to avoid the trap of over-trading. i observed a week or so ago that my best trades were consistently at or near the U.S. session open so it makes sense to focus on that window of opportunity if an edge exists. so here's the one trade i took this morning and will continue to do this type of thing until i get more comfortable with it and can scale up. meanwhile back at the ranch the retirement accounts are rockin' with this extended rally and i hitched my trailer to the right horse in July of '16 (QQQ), rolling options ever since. anyway, back to this morning trade. snapped this shot just after moving stop to BE plus a few ticks as i was pretty sure it was going to tag central pivot near 9603 but didn't want to allow a winning trade to turn into a losing one. target hit, give thanks and then get on with life. trade duration ~1hr.
found out some good news today. i was wondering about some discrepancies between my NT platform reporting and brokerage. i had received brokerage templates which had my commissions set for .41/side for the micros (MES, MNQ, M2K). when i calculated based on brokerage statement it turns out the commission is actually .31/side. called them up and confirmed. the commission fee is still .09 per contract but apparently my clearing fees are less than the boilerplate template they sent out. i'll take it! depending on where we close today i may see a buy signal but may wait for a deeper pull-back to 9400 zone before entering.