Question. What do you mean when you say no inside or outside bars? I have read you write before, something along these lines and taken out of context, that inside bars just aren't saying much, you want the move to contain outside bars to be meaningful to show direction. So when you say no inside or outside bars.. what's left? I am attaching a chart from DUST just now (I just woke up! LOL), and right at opening, and the 10:45 bar indicated by the crosshairs, I see two green outside bars. (the wick of the 10:50 bar does break slightly into the bar before, but the bodies of the two bars are outside, correct? So are you saying that if price breaks these two bull outside bars that you look to short since you are trading in the direction of the break? I am thinking that I am understanding this wrong, unless of course you are trying to scalp the retracement? In this case at 10:45, when the two bull bars are posted, it didn't drop much after it broke just a bit so unless I am not understanding you correctly, shorting after these two bull bars would not have worked.
NoDoji, can you provide some detail to this? In one of your older posts, you said a good signal to trade is to look at the last pre-opening swing low/high (in CL) in the direction of the trend and take the breakout of this swing with a 15 tick target and 10 ticket stop. How/when do you adjust the 10/15 tick parameters?
I see one outside bar on the Nov 1 part of that chart, the bar in your cross hair. An outside bar is a bar that breaks both the high and low of the previous bar. However, the previous bar is an inside bar and the break of its low means nothing to me in the context of a gap a go scenario. Inside bars are invisible to me as far as a trade signal goes. I'd be looking to buy a break of the red hammer's high as a with-trend pullback entry as long as that hammer's low remained intact.
I don't specifically remember that signal, but if I posted it then it must've been an idea I tested that had positive expectancy. The way I adapt stops and targets is when price runs very strongly and the individual price bars expand, I have to consider that a wider stop and proportionally wider target may be necessary or I'll end up with no setups. When volatility contracts and price trades in a narrow range I may end up scalping 10-15 ticks or I'll end up with no paycheck
Here is the link to where you detailed the signal I mentioned. But I see I had the bracket wrong... It was a stop of 15 pts and a target of 20. One last question. On average, how many trades per day do you make in your primary market (CL, I presume)? And thanks for all that you've contributed here over the years. You are one of the few who I try reading most everything you write. Even the plant based diet threads. You've earned your station in trading and are an inspiration for those of us who would like to trade for a living.
NoDoji Maam.... Which is more helpful..For Trading 5-min charts a) 60 min chart as reference........ or b) 1 min chart for finding 'signs of life'.....
So just to confirm, an outside bars needs to have both the body and the tails outside of the previous bar to be called an outside bar? If the body is outside, but the tail slightly overlaps the previous bar, would you not call this an outside bar? In this small little pic attached, the red bodies all are outside of each other, but some of the wicks overlap with the previous bars. So would you call these outside bars since the wicks that overlap the previous bars are so small? Do you let just a little overlap like this not bother you and still call them outside bars or are they by strict definition still inside bars?
Are you looking for a minimum of 10 ticks on every trade? And how do you breakeven a trade? Do you wait until it hits 1:1 and if it comes back to your entry then you make it a breakeven?
What I'm calling an outside bar is a bar whose high and low engulf the high/low of the previous bar, evening if the high/low end up being wicks instead of body. If only one side of the previous bar (the high or the low) is broken by the following bar, that's not an outside bar. (ADD: Wow, we all turned blue...)