ok, a couple things. i'm not going to be "day-trading" much this week as we have contractors doing work around the place and i'm directing a lot of the work. today was net $1,465 and i made some slight but effective adjustments to methodology. additionally, i entered a long position on qty 1 MES micro contract at market open (5:00 p.m. cst) yesterday and i'll try to elaborate a bit on that. so finally we're seeing some sort of re-set and now comes the time to figure out where opportunities may lie but before i get into all that i would like to state something that i should've posted at or near the beginning of this thread, so apologies for the belated disclaimer. i would advise no one to try to replicate what i'm doing for the simple fact that everyone's approach to extracting money from these markets is different in some way. in fact every trading day and every trade within that period is unique and there's so much nuance to trading that (IMO) it's virtually impossible to accurately and effective convey such nuance to the reader that... well, it's just dangerous. that's it. so, as my dear cousin said to me a long time ago, "there's your way and there's my way but not THEE way." since taking those words to heart and further applying them to the task at hand (i.e., trading these markets), each person would be best served by finding their own way. it will mean more to the individual, becomes personalized, etc. and you will OWN IT! you will have proven the method to yourself and won't be second guessing yourself all the time. have i had mentors? yes. do i trade like any of them, no. i have had people sit in my cave while i'm putting on trades, taking notes, etc. and maybe they might pick up an idea or two but pretty much all of them have said in some way or another, "i couldn't do that, no way". mind you, not that they're not capable or able, just that they wouldn't. i've had friends who know me and know that i trade and invest for a living ask me about some advisory letter, this and that and i just tell them that by the time the receive the information it's old news if it's news at all. as my late father told me many times, "nobody will take care of yours like YOU do." ok, enough on that. about the long MES. this is part of the "next step" phase or maybe just another piece of the puzzle. but the idea with this account is to "plateau" the gains from 10k to 25k and then take 10k off and put it to work somewhere else. well, the somewhere else in this case is a longer term swing type strategy based on daily, weekly, or monthly timeframe. so that's what the MES entry is for. originally i was going to wait until i had the account to 25k to start this but seeing how these retracement opportunities are not so frequent, i went ahead and started one in this account with the MES contract so i could have that going on the side and still daytrade MNQ without the ol' FIFO thing screwing it all up. eventually i'll have a separate account for swing trades. as i'm typing this i can see that we're having another sell-off day and i will be adding more. imo, we're still in a bull market and until we're not i'll be looking for long opportunities. again, not advise. just what i'm doing. i'm usually buying when everyone is puking their guts up and selling when they're popping champagne corks.
a few folks have posted about entries, exits, indicators, settings, etc., so here is a screen shot of my 5m chart. what you're seeing is 20(cyan), 50(gold), and 200(pink) EMA's, floor pivots (S1,2,3,PP,R1,2,3) and prior day hi/lo (orange dash not shown). the yellow arrows and carrots are entries and exits. note that i was buying into the open but reached my max position size before the reversal and still made a decent profit off the opening chaos. then went short and so on. the MA's were essentially non-directional and a ripe environment for range trading. the horizontal magenta line is just a horizontal trend line that i tend to move around to mark where my prior entry was, etc.
subject: lot size as i posted previously, i had a terrible drawdown the other day and posted about it. since then i went back to square one on lot size and have capped my max position size to 10 micro contracts and am focusing on the 5m chart while still monitoring the longer time-frame charts (15m,30m,60m,daily,etc.). the 5m chart is short enough and long enough to give me plenty of rotations between the London and U.S. sessions to make (or lose) some dough. the rest is up to ME! so, i'll take this opportunity to comment on "range trading". most people hate it and that would include yours truly. however, at some point i realized that the markets oscillate A LOT more than they trend so i had better figure out a way to trade ranges if i was going to even do this at all. fwiw and my wife is my witness, when i first threw myself into trading, i spent countless hours in the evenings scrolling through charts on stockcharts.com identifying chart patterns until i got really good at it. i came up with some sort of scan and would just scroll through the list (and it was LONG). anyway, now i can usually look at something and somewhere in my pee-brain it's processing possible scenarios. everybody's different. find your strengths and exploit the hell out of them.
back the the swing trade on MES micro. i have NinjaTrader set to exit/flatten EVERYTHING just prior to the 3:15 p.m. cst close. this will side-step margin on a small account so-to-speak. the caveat is that if you're going to continue with the trade, you'll need to re-enter it at the 5:00 p.m. cst market open. again, this is just how I do it. it's not THEE only way to do it. yes, there's some potential slippage but in some cases this can actually work to your favor as it did for me yesterday afternoon. i.e., there was a gap down from the close at 3:15.
i meant to comment on this earlier but forgot to mention that the whole "plateau" concept is not of my making but rather something i picked up a long time ago from a John Carter video if my memory serves me right. anyway, credit where credit's due.
How do you know today was not a puke day vs a range day. Were you prepared to average down to max drawdown if it was a puke day? What happens when you hit max drawdown? Do you the discipline to really cut loss which is like many many days worth of profits.
i don't know which is which. no crystal ball but more days are range (particularly in the morning) than not. i don't try to get everything, just some of it. i will build position until it works or it doesn't. usually there is a point of failure (where i'm wrong) such as support or resistance or in the case of fib retracements a pullback past 75%ish. seems like if i plan on it being range (which usually is defined in first 30 - 60 minutes anyway) i do better. there are other clues such as VIX and $TICK that can help. no absolutes, just trying to read tea leaves or see stitches on a fast ball in many ways.
ok, so now it's 3 MES contracts long after close and re-enter @ 5:00 p.m. cst. note the gap (globex / extended trading hours). of course can always go lower to other support areas (fib, MA's, or S/R) but hey, i'm thinking there's a chance it'll fill that gap and i'm doing it for cheap. if it goes to the 50(ema) do you think there might be a reaction? what about 3181? or the 200ema/sma? just some thoughts.... not advice, just observations. remember, i can get crushed just like the next guy...
Side-stepping the margin would imply that you are max lever on your account. Why would you ever do this?
i'm not, i just don't want to carry it so i can trade my 10 max on MNQ tomorrow. playing it safe when i get to the 25k plateau or beyond with separate account it'll be different story but until then this is how i'm doing it. again, not THEE way but just how i'm doing it. bottom line, this is where i'm comfortable and for 2 days in a row it actually gave me better pricing.