I personally wouldn't trade it if I could find something better. Famous last words, eh? Though with only one day of sample data, maybe that is what I am trading. From my view, it was consider range bound until a truly significant break higher or lower, which never happened. The reasons being that we've had a truly huge run up the past four days, so there is very little energy left to continue up. And that starts people thinking it might drop. Yet even so, it has been so strong, and we broke 8000 over the gap, so who would want to short such a strong run until there is proof of a fall. In other words, absolutely no one has any idea what to do and is waiting for the other guy to pull the trigger. That was my thinking.
phoenix .... in your scalping technique do you use the "scratch" at breakeven as a trade exit? I have only been trading the es and nq for a little while but when scalping you will often get a false signal or maybe you got in a little early or late and sense that your trade was wrong. Getting out at breakeven can be a very important exit strategy. Wait for the next setup that you feel better about. I have also noticed that quite often I will be on the right side of the trade but will not take my profit quick enough and suddenly you are negative in the trade and never get another chance. If I am up by 1 point and it turns against me I will try to lock in at least .25 and be happy with that rather than hoping it goes back in my favor. I will usually scalp until I can get a good cushion on the right side of a longer trend then I will use a hard stop and lock in a larger profit. This hard stop will keep me from selling to quickly and missing a larger move. I will keep moving my stop in the direction of the move. This can quite often net several points that will off set those small losses. I will admit that scalping the futures is a really fast moving ride with little time to analyze much but sometimes it is necessary to take a breather and get out of the fast lane and check the bigger picture and see where the market is as a whole, there will be good setups ahead. Nas
This is something I will watch for and evaluate going forward. Certainly most my loses from Tuesday did at least work their way back towards breakeven for at least a short period of time before heading south even further. Thanks for the advice.
Quick plan for the day. I will keep any trading in the morning to a minimum (if at all) so that I can watch the action and try and come up with a consistent and repeatable entry. The exact win/loss and win$/loss$ of the entry is not as important right now as the consistency at this point. If I can determine an entry method that is consistent, I should be able to tailor it into a system. Any trades I do make will have a real, honest-to-goodness hard stop placed directly onto the Globex servers so that I can't let losses slide past the point of sanity. Or at least so they are in some relation to my targets. I'm not sure I will ultimately use hard stops, but for now I think they will help me survive. BTW, I could not fall asleep last night. I felt like I had a pot or two of coffee before bed (which I certainly didn't). My mind was racing in an attempt to come up with a game plan. Could this be what is referred to as "The Tampa Effect"?
As stated, I have kept trades to a minimum this morning so I could spend some time just watching the action. And, when I did trade, I used hard stops. Made two trades for -0.75 and + 1.25. In the meantime I have been looking for potential setups and may have one which is definable (not just gut). I'll watch it a bit more before trying to trade it. On the other hand, my trend system would be up 2 points right now with a -4.0 and a +6.0.
Not really the end of the day, but I am closing up the trading shop. I have developed a scalping entry/exit system for good or bad. Tested it a few times this afternoon (along with my "non-system" trades) and will use it exclusively tomorrow. Final results: 5 RT / 1 contract / +1.5 points
Oh yeah. If I was following my trend system today, I'd be up 6 points right now. As always, I am fighting the battle in my heart between scalping and this trend system.
Maybe I shouldn't fight it. I could try and use the trend system on the NQ and then scalp the ES? Something to think about. Though maybe it is something I shouldn't deal with until the ES scalp thing comes along a bit.
Because it appears that tampa might be curious as to todays results... 0 Turns / 0 contracts / 0 points I didn't lose nothin'! Not that I was slacking off mind you. I decided it would be worth while to test my new system in real-time to see how it does and to afford opportunities to fine tune it. I plan to continue the testing and tuning for at least tomorrow, if not into the middle of next week. Since today was only one type of day, the tests aren't complete. That is all.
Today will be just like yesterday. I will not take any real trades, but I will be making as many simulated trades as my new mechanical system generates. I made one tweak to it from yesterday. I had a little epiphany while laying in bed not wanting to get up just yet. At least I'll call it an epiphany until it proves to be just another foolish idea. I just can't stop thinking about how I would have had a $600/contract day after commissions if I had just placed stops instead of target limit orders on the first day of this journal. The epiphany was... Maybe I'm not as good at guessing where prices will be in five minutes in the future as I am at guessing where prices won't be in five minutes. So what's the difference? Just a state of mind I guess, but if I trade with that different state of mind I will playing into my strength. Who knows. I'm going to play with my 100% mechanical system for at least a few more days to see if the data gathered shows any promise. I would rather trade a system that requires no guessing on my part at any time.