I remember that exciting discussion when some newbie named fortydraws boldly claimed to want to get profitable within six months or quit, and all the commotion that statement caused. Gringo
Take care not to jinx 'im. Detractors will of course chalk it up to beginner's luck in order to rationalize their own failures. The fact that they have no (thoroughly-tested, consistently-profitable) trading plans won't enter into it.
jinxed? Does that mean someone is going to come by and start demanding I do one of those combines that no one seems to be able to do?
I have received a few PM's, mostly polite, about my use of the one minute chart. Some just ask if that is the only chart I use to trade from, but a few have questioned how I could use such a short "quick" time frame and not get, as one put it, "chopped to death." I tell them that my time frame is the first two hours of trading in New York, and that the one minute bar interval allows me to see what it is I need to see in order to trade: Where price is in relation to support and resistance, and how traders are behaving as it reaches, or fails to reach those levels. If 3100 is a potential resistance level, it will be important to watch it whether the bar interval I am using to display the transaction data on my screen bunches the data into one minute segments or 60 minute segments. The shorter bar interval is sufficient for me to see if buying or selling is having the upper hand at these levels, and lets me take a position close to the danger level. The closer to the danger level I can make my decision to enter, the less I am risking to find out if I am on the right side or not.
Is anyone even looking at the charts you've been attaching with your daily recap? You clearly show your entries and exits on your 1-min charts and this entire thread mainly shows how to use a 1-min bar interval (except for some dinosaurs who use longer intervals). Leaving that aside your response is so smooth you might have won the miss universe contest with this answer had I been the judge! Gringo p.s. Winning miss universe contest for a guy is tougher than it is for a girl. p.s.s. By the way where's your daily recap?
In addition to not having a trading plan, another observation I have made from my reading here and at the other message board is this - a lot of the people who want to day trade don't have any money! I'm not a rich man. I started day trading stocks with a 60K account, and once I felt I was ready to increase my size I brought the account higher still. For futures, I trade a separate 30K account. I bring money home every time accumulated profits exceed $1500. I currently have about $2600 in accumulated profits that I have kept in the account, as I am considering accumulating profits to bring the balance up to $40k in case I wish to trade larger size. (Typing this prompted me to review IB's intraday initial margin for NQ, and it is only $1375. At $30K that would let me put on 21 contracts! I do not see myself trading 21 contracts at a clip anytime soon). I have never traded so many contracts that I used all my available margin - not even close. I read these journals and other discussions where people are trying to day trade for a living with $2500 or $5000. If you are trading with IB, then 1-3 contracts would have you using all available margin. If you are trading with a $500/contract margin broker you could rapidly get yourself in trouble trading a size that fully margins your account. I guess it could be done, but I wouldn't want to do it. Some might think that $30K is too little, but for the size I am trading it feels right. In fact, as I give it some more thought, I can probably still go up in size from where I am now and still be sufficiently funded at $30K. But if all I had to my name to fund a trading account was $2K or $3K or $5K? I don't know if I could trade without being afraid of any and every losing trade. And if I were always afraid of losing, I might not be able to let the trade stay on long enough to see if I was going to win.
Like I said in a previous post, even I have a hard time believing how easy this is at times, so I hold back from posting my recap some days. But you asked, so here it is. Here is how today went for me: Price traded down to 3060 over night and then rallied. During the hour before the open, price pulled back to 3069.25 at 8:11 AM eastern and the tested that level again at 8:43 AM. During this time I was eating breakfast and responding to ET while watching and noting that level. Price rallied from 69.25 to 77.50 by 8:56 AM, and then pulled back to 72.25 at 9:08, bounced a couple of points, tried lower again at 72 during the 9:20 bar interval. At this point, I had two trades in mind. On a break below 72/69, I would short a pullback to test those levels as R, or I would buy if 72/69 were tested again as S and held. During the opening minutes, traders looked as though they were first going to test the 77.50 premkt consolidation high, but stalled at 75.75. Price then again tested taht 72/69, trading as low as 71.50 before buying pressure started to rise again. This, to me, was "the dog didn't bark" scenario, with three tests of 72 +/-, with each test a tick or three below the last test but with no selling interest materializing to make for a test of that 3060 overnight low. I got long 74.25 during the 9:35 bar interval. I exited that trade at 84 during the 9:50 bar interval on what I interpreted as a LH/LL, though both in hindsught and as it was happening, I thought that the whole sequence between 9:47 - 9:52 was a consolidation and that buyers still held control. They did indeed, and I was long again at 87.75 during the 9:56 bar interval. Not the best entry, as 86 during the 9:53 was indicated, but I missed it. I exited at 94.50 during the 10:28 bar interval. Buyers were not yet finished, and I was long again at 95.75 during the 10:36 bar interval. My last trade was a stop from long and reverse to short at 98.50 during the 10:56 bar interval after buyers failed to retake 3100+ during the action from 10:49 to 10:56. At this point, it was getting late in the day for me, and I simply exited on a limit order at 94.75 during the 11:07 bar interval. Not my best day in terms of trading close to the danger levels, and there are at least tow or three shouldwouldacoulda's, but 23 points to the good is still fine by me.
I was hoping someone would post something about this. Price hammered away at 77 from midnight to 0900 and finally broke through at the open. Even if one didn't go long there, a retracement occurred just few minutes later. Not to take anything away from 40's trading, but how hard is this? Is resistance that exotic a concept?