I'm going to modify my exit strategies a little bit. In a range bound market, I'll take 4 pts. profits whereas in a trending market either it is 8 pts. profits or close at end. Now the difficult part is determining whether we are in a range-bound period or a trending period. I might have an answer to that soon..........
In Feb when I first paper traded this strategy, there were frequent intraday trends with very few nasty reversals. In March there were more reversals than intraday trends. So I got screwed in March, but looks like we have entered a trending period again. So hopefully this strategy will work now. I will try one last time tomorrow and if it doesn't work, I'm out for a month, re-evaluate the strategy and come back.
Hi Emini, Sorry about the spanking today. I just wanted to interject a few key items for you to think about from Bolters thread. I do this because you have started this thread based on ideas inspired by him. I am in no way endorsing or rejecting his ideas but there are some subtle nuances that you are starting to pick up on....which is cool first off 1) He is ideally trying to risk 2 points to gain 4...so I ask you how many 4 point moves would you have you captured..? Based on your posts it seems like many, which is a good thing..unfortunately the market has turned around on you quite often...... 2) he also mentions that he will be buying and selling at other key numbers so he is not just using HVA, LVA and POC...he is also using these numbers as targets and places, I beleive to tighten stops.. Here is almost a quote from his thread which you are alluding to with your current post.... "When the market is range bound, Like we are at the moment, I will use the open relative to the POC to set my initial bias.....in a strongly trending market ( up trend I will usually use the LVA)...reverse for down trend...." 3)so now your job is to fiqure out when we will trend....but I still think you are having good entries...it's just the exit and the initial risk...You will have to capture 8 points when risking 4 if you want to trade a two to one reward to risk...that seems like a big percentage of the average range in hopes to capture the 2 -3 days a month we get the "big move Larry williams I'm going to make a million" type of trade... I think a subtle but key point from Bolters thread that you should tune into is he is buying back and selling back for exits at other support and resistence levels.... Here is just an example which could have been used today... Something as simple as even the floor trader pivots....coming into Tuesdays trade they where r1=1319.75 PIVOT 1316.50 s1 = 1312.50 Ok so you sold into the 1316 area..then why not cover some at some well known S/R number ( Like S1) or another number that makes sense to you.....You get your 4 points and let the other one ride......of course if you had a good signal above near R1 ( for short)then target the pivot which happened to be near your key numbers...........I guess the only point I am making is maybe you need to just find a non-fixed target( this would be a key S/R number) for each day to take off the initial contract then go for the homer or some fixed amount after that...Anyway I hope this feed back isn't messing you up and provides some help...I've been trading the emini for 8 years now....i'M NOT BRAGGING AS i WOULDN'T WISH DAYTRADING THIS MONSTER ON MY ENIMIES...LOL It is tough..I think you are doing a great job and I give you a lot of credit for having enough guts to post your results..I hope I have given you something to think about....The last piece in the daytrading puzzle for me is finding some consistent methods of using the TICKs..I just can't get them to go for me..but I'll have to start a thread and pick some of the fantastic brains out here on ET.....all then best One more thing which I think is/are cool targets..You may have already read this from other Market Profile sites...Take the first 60 minutes range and divide by 2...add that amount to the 60 minute high for an initial target and/or subtract it from the 60 minute low...use the full range as a complete target...almost like today...KEY point: Look for other S/R to coincide with these numbers..you can also use this to initiate provide you get a good signal....ok..nuff said
Wow!! Thanks pitbull. Thanks for putting the time and effort to write this. This is exactly what I was hoping for from fellow ETers when I started this journal. Your suggestations are very good and I'll certainly try to backtest some of those and see the results. As I mentioned in my previous post the reason this strategy did not work so well in March was because ES was range-bound for most of the time. I realised that my strategy works well during a trending period. During a range-bound period 4 pt. profit target and 4 pt. stop-loss would be ideal. In this case although the risk-reward looks 1 to 1, it is better than 1 because the chances of reaching the profit-target first is more than 80%. In March I basically had a losing month but had I taken 4 pt. profits, I would have had 1 losing trade and 8+ winning trades. So after all is said, the main thing is to determine whether we are in a trending period or a range-bound period. I think I might have found something here to figure that part. Will keep you guys posted. I have considered using Pivots and/or Fibs in addition to my value-ranges but I wanted to keep it very simple so I did not mess with those. Thanks again!!!
Okay, here is the range for tomorrow: 1313-1314. I will look to sell at ((Open+1313)/2 with a 4 pt. exit. We have officially moved from the range-bound market to trending market. My profit-target is 8 pts.
Just as a further example...today the Value area low is 1311 and the Floor trader pivot is 1311.50...so I thought this was good confluence to initiate short side....certainly isn't making me a fortune but my runners aren't stopped out.....YET...lol....trying to get to 1307.50...I only post this to demonstrate the power of conluence.......dow seems to be leadingtoday but that's another thread too....there are those ( like me ) who like to fade the "breakout boys")..these folks buy and sell at plus and minus 4 points off the open.....look what happened when market dropped minus 4 on Tuesday....and some days they win...and then I lose....I also use the plus and minus 2.5 and scale in...but that's another thread too...we also know that they will move this outside the first hour high or low...so this is just another possible trade idea...with a 6 point range you can add and subtract that to the hour highs and lows....use plus 3 points first...(6/2 = 3)....the plus 3 point off the highs will bring us to the point of control so I will look for a short again if I am stopped on runners..I have bias short so will not be trying to step in front of the hour breakout...of the highs would prefer to fade...the high breakout ..Just typing this for demonstration purposes only and the concepts...It really isn't important to anybody here if I win or lose on this particular trade and probably should have been omitted.....it's the concepts////that's all....man can I babble.........be well