As a modification of the "line in the sand" method, mentioned by inandlong I believe, try the following: 1) Your line is the Pivot point in the ES or NQ. 2) Go long 1 point above this line or maybe 2-3 on NQ 3) Hold trade til close or it crosses 1 point below Pivot point, or use trailing stop of 5 points or profit target of at least 2.5x risk. After 5 points of profit, move stop to breakeven on ES, 10 points for NQ. 4) If decent profit intraday, hold overnight and close on crossing of current days' pivot point. Repeat and rinse. 5) If you get stopped out, and the index trades on the other side of the line, wait for a retracement to within a couple points of line and go short approaching from below or long from above. Place stop 1 point on other side of line (preferably behind whole number). 6) Stopped out twice in one day quit. I'll do some testing and modifications to this. Maybe we can come up with a basic functional trading system to use as a core for other ideas.
I place my stop one tick below the low/high of the retracement, for targets I watch a stochastic(7,4,10) to reach overbought/sold levels and to turn down from there. Should I reach a profit of 10 pts I always exit.
No, my first trade was closed at a loss of -2. I didn't SAR, but waited for the first MACD-crossover in the direction of the SMA