Hi Matcha, Not need to be embarrassed! It has been a rough week..... Today, indeed it was quite choppy. It's like alternating the red and green bars on the 5 minute chart for most part of the day. I took an identical SHORT trade at 11:26 p.d.t. I guess we were looking at the same thing and traded accordingly and got trapped. Soon after I got stopped out, I traded another SHORT when the 5 minute stochastic made a Divergence. The ride down was sloppy and choppy. I was able to recoup some of the losses ended the day with -1.75 ES points. But I learned a lot from my mistakes I made today. (Still staring at my charts for hours after the close.) Next week, I promise myself not to try anything new, but to forward test only my favorite "refined" setup. And I will try to keep things "simple". At least for 1 week! I think you are correct and you will do great narrowing it down to trade only a couple of your favorite setups and to SIMPLIFY your environment. I know you did quite a bit of back testing. The forward testing (in the SIM) will reinforce you to become "robotic" on spotting your favorite setups and will be able to execute them with no hesitation. Let's hope we both can make use of the SIM and train ourselves to become robotic and lead to CP soon! Thank you everyone for all your great advice and mentoring. Have a great weekend ALL! --po
Boli, that's an interesting chart! Catching the start of a new trend is always gratifying, and there are definitely hints that a reversal may be coming (I say "may" because strong trends can run through the entire day and right into the close with nothing more than a consolidation flag to trap counter-tend traders and fuel the next move up). Looking at your chart, if there was nothing more than price bars on it, you can see the first hint of a reversal as the range narrows (triangle formation) and breaks gently to the downside around 7:30. If you didn't short the triangle break and are waiting for further confirmation, you can short the break of the new lower support level, which positions you for the entire #1 move. The area between the high and the initial weak breakout (just before #1 zone) is where the early shorts and the nervous longs start selling. When price breaks the early #1 zone support, the reversal is confirmed and the deep selloff begins. The best counter-trend opportunity comes off the first higher low. Buy the break of 8:35 resistance because that's where the intraday shorts have their stops and where trend-followers look to enter a potentially new trend on a confirmation of strength or weakness. I'd like to add that I realize this is a 1-min chart, and I trade off a 5-min chart, but price action is price action in any time frame.
Great Journal! Been reading for awhile. Figured I'd throw my 2cents in lol. Choppy day with no real trend but looking at this chart there are a couple decent trades that I see. I always pay close attention to shooting stars. Even though it's not my main signal, they're very reliable reversal setups. A little before 900 theres a short. A little before 1030 theres another short. I also probably would've taken the long setup at the intraday support just before 1100. These were just scalps, but good for 10-30 points each. Don't overwhelm yourself with trying to look at too many things. What you've been doing is working great. If you look back through your charts though, shooting stars on a 5 min YM are pretty reliable at S/R areas. Just another tool for the shed is all... Good Luck Matcha! And thanks to all the others for sharing as well!
I have been trying to ID the preludes to an intraday directional run. I can only concluded there are many different cases and I can't count how often each occurs. e.g. 1. It starts with a narrow range consolidation first, then price breaks out/down. This is the textbook example of a break. Lots of newbies are looking for these "breaks". But... from my experience, a stock (at least the ones like AAPL) rarely starts a run from a narrow range consolidation. It does sometimes. And I remember a few of them. Just not often enough. 2. It starts as a pointy reversal: either to the upside or to the downside. Events caused by news, interpretations of news, subsequent big players rocking the boat one side or the other. Remember that day AAPL had a 10:00 am conference call about the iphone4 antenna issue? Steve Jobs said something... I saw it on the chart... immediately shot up $2-$3 after 10:00 am... then immediately sold off. And the selling continued the next day. 3. Very common - some headfake. And there usually are multiple ones. Price moving up. Oh no no... it's not up... it is going down. Oh no no no... it's not moving down, it's actually moving up. The gyrations go a few times... then suddenly... BOOM! Price runs directionally one-way. It's like kids playing a "pass me if you dare" game in the playground. You don't know which side to trust. Many traders get ripped out. So it might just be easier... to save from these headfakes... wait until the trend is more "underway". You sacrifice some potential profits, in exchange for not losing to headfakes.
Playing in chop zones can be frustrating. I occasionally do it, trying to position myself early for the break, but I exercise absolute risk control and usually stop out b/e several times in a row. Then what happens is I'm frustrated by watching $100-$150 profit evaporate 3 or 4 times in a row, I take a break and then miss the real move. You're right, better to wait for more confirmation and catch the real move!
Yeah. 1-min chart. I would tell Matcha to stay out of it. I would tell everybody to stay out of it. It is my playground. For AAPL, 1-min is not fast enough. I need to watch the 42-tick. You remember on Tuesday 9/28/10? AAPL had a mini flash crash. I have not seen AAPL moved so fast since 5/6/10. Dropping from 291 to 275 in TWO MINUTES! T W O M I N U T E S!!!!! And it bounced back to 283 in the third minute. 500,000 shares traded in 1 bar. You blink your eyes, you missed it. You have a stop-order set? Whatever price it was, it was triggered. On the 42-tick chart, it did show some details of the V-shape run.
Matcha Well this sure explains the quirks I've noticed with your MA Lines at the open. Once you have the bars necessary to calculate the average your lines get "back on track". Now, if we can only straighten out that 50 pt "wiggle" in your VWAP. I do both, I begin 1 set of charts at the Globex open, another at the NY open. One will dominate over the other during the trading session, but as you know, previous price levels (no matter when they were put in) are important.
if u care to look at s/r levels, u can find tons of opportunities on this chart. timezone is est. tons and tons of opportunies.