At a glance I would say that you are trying to trade a breakout after a pullback. You will be done like dinner with this tactic. You must allow opposing strength to wash out of price before you enter and ideally you need to enter from the opposite side of the consolidation channel to the direction in you wish to go. What does this mean. If you want to short a pullback you need to see the longs washed out before you enter at the top of a green bar. This will place you close to your stop, reduce your risk and greatly amplify your RR. Just food for thought. regards f9
400 ticks you are chasing way too many little insignificant moves IMHO. 5 min is still a short time frame but lets you take in more info at least. Also, so many traders look at 5 min charts for daytrading that patterns emerge a little clearer at times. Now PA can appear in any time frame you follow I suppose but 400 ticks is way too volatile for you right now to learn this. 5m bars is a better place to start. Suri does not pick a specific time frame and it is a personal choice but you might have more success getting away from tick charts to start for right now.
Interesting. I've heard pretty much the exact argument in favor of tick/volume bars, too. Wouldn't using a bigger timeframe necessitate using larger stops, then? On a 5 min chart, the range of the bars will be much larger. A stop "above the previous high" will be huge.
Tics do not move price, only contracts can do this. A tic can be one contract or several hundred and a traders choice of his/her bar needs to be thought through very carefully. Anyway, it is just my opinion. regards f9
Do 5 min bars even give you enough bars throughout the day to make a decision? I just changed to 5 min bars and the day is almost over and it fills 1/4 of my screen. Stops would be like +40 ticks away, too :eek:
Ironfist, I was going to make some much needed comments on your chart, but this is much more needed.This isn't going to be want you want to hear, but its what you need to hear. You are trying to run before you can walk. Right now your goal is to make sim points, when it should be to become a trader who can make money. I did the same thing. I sat in front of my sim account trading, trying to learn about PA. On the surface it sounds good and it isn't a bad thing, but if you think about it...you have much more to do first. Ask yourself why you are working your ass off to make fake points? Its a simple question. You will likely say something a long the lines of "I'm learning PA and the fake points are used to determine my progress so I will know when I'm ready for cash". The truth is that fake points have far less t do with cash then your mental state. Best case scenario you make boat loads of sim points doing whatever you're doing. Then you will think to yourself "now I'm ready". Then you will go into cash thinking your PA reading ability will not be affected at all by the fact that there is real money behind it. What will happen then? We both know and it happens all the time. Good traders sucking the big one when there's money on the line. The only way sim isn't a complete waste of time is if you can honestly say to yourself that the results would be the exact same with thousands on the line or more. Can you say that? If you trade from today had worked, could you say it then? If not, what is the point of what you're doing? Having said that, here is what I think you should do first. Figure out what you want to do. You seem to have done that somewhat. Ok, now write it down. It may say something like "short the pull-backs in a downtrend (uptrend vice versa)". Now, in order to guarantee your results cash your are going to have to define exactly what you're looking for. What a qualifies a trend? A retracement? The ability to create and follow those rules is going to be the determining factor on whether you can really trade for a living. Do that and then all you have to do is hone your rules, but thats secondary. SIM points will be necessary when you have defined set ups to test how effective they are, but right now you don't have that. Discipline is the key, and unless you're unlike any trader I know, and I know some good ones, you're going to need very strict and defined rules and the ability to follow them in order to maintain discipline. Tackle that first as that is the most important thing, then worry about how effective your rules are via sim points. When I first started making my rules, I wrote them down and followed them. Those rules caused me to not have a profitable trade for weeks. lol not ONE. But I followed them. As my rules got better, I have gotten better and will continue to do so. Now I am very happy with my performance. So, define what you want to do. Define trend. Define your exact entry requirements, (TL break..how much does it have to break by?) Define your targets. Define your maximum risk. Make no mistake, this will take time. A lot of time. If you have the replay feature, you can test your rules and see how well you do. PA will always be a little discretionary, but if your rules are well defined you can expect the same results live, SIM, and replay. Once you do that you simply have to follow your rules. NEVER BREAK THEM!! If you do then everything will be pointless. Follow them when they work, follow them WHEN THEY DONT WORK. Just follow them. Get in that habit and eventually you will make your rules better and better, and you will get better and better.
RTH: 0930 - 1615. A 5 min TF will give you 81 bars a day. If you don't like that maybe try 3 min bars. Not as popular as 5 min but it's certainly not unheard of. If you are stuck on the idea of tick charts maybe just increase the size of the bars. 1000 ticks is a nice round number. I tend to prefer time charts myself partly because of the uniform refresh.
Interesting. How does the uniformity of refresh effect the flow of contracts through the CME. regards f9