If I understand correctly what your charts are showing, I have to say trading breakouts for scalps on ES is a tough way to try and make a profit imho. For one thing, if you add up all the 1 tick breakout ticks you give up just getting into your trades, for let's say 8 trades in one day, that could be 20% of the whole day's range (2.00 of 10.00). You might have a little better succes trading SPY this way, if you're capitalized enough to use some decent leverage. The other thing about SPY is there's better opportunity for scaling. But if you're hellbent on trading ES, I would check out the ES Journal and see how most of the successful traders there make money. Most of them are faders (anticipators), even if trading with the overall trend.
Like NoDoji, I`m having some difficulties reading your chart and trade entries If I read it correctly, you are placing way too many trades using a 5-minute chart. If you want to scalp, that`s fine, but not on a 5-minute chart. And like NoDoji once told me, there are instruments that are better to scalp than the ES. Day trading the ES IMO should be about capturing the swings and moves between the various levels. In the current environment, there may not be more than 1-3 good trades in a day, at least for my style of trading. Perhaps an idea would be to limit your trades to 3 per day for a while? Fake breakouts and pullbacks to test the breakout point in case it is a real breakout is the name of the game in the ES. A neophyte trader sees price picking up and gets excited (not even waiting for the bar to close), chase price and enters on a top/bottom, price then pulls back and run stops on those early traders before resuming the actual move. The frustrated trader then chases price once again and the same thing happen again. In order to avoid that, you either need to be positioned early or enter on the pullback with much better confirmation. The risk is of course missing a move, but that is very rare in the ES these days. Missing a move is okay. If you miss 20% of the moves waiting for the pullback, does it matter if you`re capturing the other 80%? I remember NoDoji saying how she started to enter her limit orders at the price where she normally would have placed her stop had she entered where she usually entered. Something to think about Attached is a review I did of op ex last Friday. I identified two trades that I would have entered that day. An important part of the game is waiting patiently for a set-up. There was a good swing down during the open that I did not take, much because I anticipated that the AH low and previous day low would act as support. I also did not have any clear downside targets, although we got the 50% range expansion and 1325 was also likely. However, the gap above made me careful about shorting, so I stayed flat. Another thing is that if you realize that a move is happening, but you are late to enter, you should not chase price, but accept that you missed the move. The right thing to do then is to wait for the move to end and fade it or enter on a pullback. Just some random thoughts and realizations that have helped me PS: Have you considered removing one of your MAs since last time I mentioned it? I use a 20-EMA, but it`s not very important to me at all. PPS: There`s also an IHS on that chart. Do you see it?
Hi everybody, I took some time off from trading. I needed to clear up my mind and attend to some family issues. I will be working on refining my rules and trading in SIM.
LF, you are correct, way to many trades. I'm working on that. You said it exactly, I was focusing on the bars ignoring the levels. I'm planning to focus more on the levels and look at the bars in context. and of course not worrying about missing a move...
The break was rather long, 2 months, I didn't plan it to be so long, but I wasn't ready earlier, and now I'm.
P&L +2.9 points 5 trades today only with trend, which was down today. I wasn't able to trade in the morning. 1 impulse trade that I've closed right away.
I look at that chart and find it hard to see profit in this, it just seems like you are buying and selling pretty much randomly. I guess it is following the moving average but in the end it looks pretty much random to me, then again i dont know anything... not being sarcastic here