Yeah but it is a pattern. Just like Surf, hated technical analysis so everytime a thread came up on it he would jump in and shit all over it. Ruin the chat for people who actually wanted to discuss it. You shut down daytraidng every chanc you get. We get it.... no need to constantly fill the thread when someone asked a legitimate question on choppy days. Day trading is not for everyone and neither is Buy and Hold.
dozu888, Noone knows when a bull or bear market is coming, so I'm not sure I understand you clearly. We are talking about day trading. I think I speak for all day traders when I say, We don't care if it's a bull, bear, cat, lion, goat, mouse, dog, Trump, Obama, kid...blaH blah blah market. All we want to do is trade daily. We don't care about what happen yesterday. I don't even look at the day time frame chart anymore. I mean seriously, who cares about a bull or bear market. I have no clue what that even mean. I just wanna make money everyday.
%% Yes; in a bull market uptrend,stop trading when you have a loss.That's where my biggest string of losers comes from.If you are addicted to action, this will not help you; actually i also am addicted to action, better that than lazy. But i'm not addicted to futures or losses so thats why i do that; +do more research.......
If you are in to indicators, check out the work of John Ehlers. Specifically, his trend mode/cycle mode, and signal-to-noise analysis. These won't help you predict when the transition from trend to chop will occur, but can give you a quantitative definition of when you are in a particular mode. Basically, trade trend indicators, such as a MA when in trend mode, and oscillator indicators, such as RSI or bandpass when in cycle mode. Have predefined loss criteria for when the mode switches.
?!?!!?! "Avoid trades during choppy price action?!?!?!?? I don't get it. To answer your question, you want an ATR -- how to set it up depends on how long you intend to hold, and what sort of risk+reward you're looking at. If I wanted to scalp ticks on the ES future, and be in+out in a flash, a 1min chart with a ATR(6) works great: don't trade w/less than 50¢ on the ATR. (So, you have at least a 2-tick swing in every minute, regardless of trend.) If I wanted to be out quickly, I'd stop trading when the ATR topped 1.0 or 1.25 -- you could think of that as a stop-loss level. But I could think of no finer (trading) memory, than going weeks and weeks with low-to-flat trending days, but with little wavelets amid the slow tides, me just "milling money" one tick at a time. I've started to see more of that, this 2018 calendar year. Days with 'fuzzy candles' that, no matter the candle size or color, have nice long wicks at both ends. At any event, one man's wave is another man's tsunami, I guess. So, let the ATR be your wave gauge.
Don't ignore the possibility that you do not need any indicator...maybe you just need to understand what is "chop to you" while trading the Index Futures instead of using the interpretation of chop by others. In fact, your very own trading results in whatever you call "chop" most likely contain all the info you want to know about how to avoid choppy price action before it happens or in its early stages. Seriously, do statistical analysis on your own trades (real money or simulator) to come up with the stats about your own trading in specific chop price action in comparison to your stats of your trading results in price action that you do not classify as chop...I think the answers are there for you instead of an indicator...a reliable indicator. If you do the above and you don't understand the stats of your trading results...share the data with charts with the forum and maybe someone else can put a light on key aspects about your trading stats that gets you stuck in the mud, price noise, chop or whatever you want to call it. It could also improve your trading results. wrbtrader
It’s been a long time since I personally day traded, but there were TIMES of the Trading day which I either avoided completely by logging out and leaving the office or I really downsized. And pretty much the entire month of December. As you’ve probably gathered by now, technical studies are by nature lagging.
Here's some visual examples to go along with my earlier commentary on how I identify choppy conditions. When I see my MA lines flattening out / compressed together, that's my clue to take a break. When they are sloping and spreading out, I'm looking for signals. I would suggest you overlay some MA lines (or whatever you want to use) and then screenshot several months of charts and train your eye to recognize potential chop. Whatever you use, it's going to take a LOT of hours and hard work.