Staying on sidelines. the signals are all there to keep you sidelined right up until the MARKET takes you into a trade. this is a basic concept.
Yesterday would have been a good day for me, and I slept in. Today the markets are f*cked and choppy, and I get up early to trade. -FastTrader
It's abracket entry. If volume does not sustain BO, then you slalom on the right side of the market. Three trades minimum will come up. On ES pm sustaining volume is over 10k per 5 min on the trading fractal which is 5 min. It goes up to 15 min usually on quality BO with indicator divergence. this is seamless stuff being "pushed" by scalpers not in and out trading.
you can measure the "news" impact today. we had a "Bushy" (8th press conference in regime) to day that had the effect of shutting the whole place down instead of creating anything. If you know what the word ominous means this is a true definition financially speaking. No one trades when they are crapping.
Although I believe that sometimes it's good to know when not to be in, I still also believe it's good to keep searching your systems until you find the suitable one. Don't get me wrong, I do agree on "you've got to know when to stand aside", but I tend to live by "however, I still want to avoid standing aside whenever possible". Often, when market direction doesn't make sense, I just scalp. This tends to work particularly well then (it seems the pros know the same thing) Regarding "longer" exposure, though, that is more than 5 minutess, IMO, you can miss out on big moves if you're only in for the "cherry-picking". I prefer to put all my eggs in the basket and then watch that basket really closely. And I make sure I throw a few eggs out when the hawk's hovering above. It may also have to do with the benefit of specialization (ES, NQ), but to me this is one way of forcing myself to look at the markets and say: "What's going on now?" rather than just "standing aside", going out etc. I'm an extremely focus-addicted person, and I'm curious. I can never really accept that "nothing's going on". To me, there must be a reason for every kind of market action. And if it doesn't appear, I look at other timeframes, market flow, T&S etc until I find the answer. Again, that's just personal opinion and I wouldn't advice anybody else to do so. It's just my personal curriculum of discipline. This way, I make sure I make something in the markets everyday and don't deviate from my goals. Regarding the things I was talking about (also to inandlong)- Find attached a chart of what I was looking at when I wrote the last posts. I don't want to hear any lessons about "KISS" on my charts, though. To everyone else they look like chaos - To me they're perfectly clear. Constructive suggestions are appreciated, though... Sincerely, Scientist P.S: By now, I'm already a few points ahead again
I actually did that a month ago when we rolled over. I changed my data over on my charts (I now use the continuous contract), but did not adjust to the Sept. contract in TWS. A very frustrating and stupid mistake.