I did not really chase the market. My entry was 1 point below my plan and my stop was 3 pt. above the value-range. The reason I decided to offer at 1278 was because of the price action that I had noticed in the past few weeks. For example: The value-range on Feb 28th was 1297.5-1298.5. On feb 27th it closed at 1296.5 and on Feb 28th it opened at 1291. The high for the day was 1292.5 and it closed at 1281.75. Similarly on Feb 15th. the range was 1267-1268, the market opened at 1277, the low for the day was 1272.75 and it closed at 1282. When the prices open away from the value-range I usually watch for an hour and short near the high or buy near the low of the hourly bar. It seemed to work in the past. What I did today was well within my risk tolerance level, too bad it did not work as well as I would have liked. I took 1 pt. profit which is still better than 1 pt. loss. Thanks for your comment.
The range for tomorrow is 1277-1278. I will look for an opportunity to short at around 1277 unless the market opens at 1281 or better. There were two ranges for today 1287-88 and 1279-1280. The market was unable to come close even to the lower value-range. This is not a good time to be long. Today was another classic market divergence day. On a day when the Dow closed up 22 pts, every other index was down eg. Transportaions, Utilities, S&P, Nasdaq, NYSE, and the Russell. Russell is down more than 1%. Bonds are near the low too. I do not see more upside potential at this point. If I see any changes tomorrow, I'll keep you posted but for now my plan is to short unless ES opens above 1281.
interesting..I see a rally day tomorrow ..but thats what makes the markets so cool...so many different opinions...with average ranges being 8 - 12 points in the emini I think a better strategy would be to trade at least two contracts and take a 4 point profit and then swing for the fences on the last one...if the markets trend less than 30 % of the time ( unverified statistic) than this holds true for intraday too..so odds of a trend day are not good in general.I hope you have high success ratio.....we'll keep watching and thanks for posting these trades... I think emini has some unfinished business up in the 84 - 85 area tomorrow to clean up...on Wednesday....
Updated Value-range 1275.5----1276.5. The value-range has been moved down again due to the over-night price action in the ES.
Thanks for the suggestation. It makes a lot of sense. I had thought about that where I reduce the size by half when I get 4 pt. profit and leave the other half and reduce the stop by 2 pts. This way I'm guranteed to make 2 pts even if the market reverses. I'll do some backtesting and update.....
I'm starting to think if I should have 4 pt. profit target and 4 pt. loss instead of closing at eod. The last 3 trades all started in the direction that I had anticipated but they all reversed towards the end of the day and I ended up losing money on those. So far 3 trades and total of 7 pt. loss. I might move my stop to break-even after I get 4 pt. profit. I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow morning. Any of you who is actually following my journal might have noticed that 1267-1269 would provide major support whereas 1289-1291 will be major resistance. Anyway, the value-range for tomorrow is 1279.25-1280.25.
Hi Emini, Since you mentioned Bolter at the begining of this thread I thought I would throw out this idea for you. You might recall that Bolter was taking profits ( theoretically) at support and resistence points....so why don't you do the same ..instead of having a fixed amount ( although I like to cover some fairly quickly). Why don't you just buy back if short at the next significant point on the chart ...perhaps it will be the value area low or a longer term area...or whatever works for YOU...perhaps the pivot numbers....etc....I guess the real point is maybe it is best to peel some off at some point using some method and then let it ride on the next as we " talked" about in the other reply...Besides all this rambling my basic point is ...maybe having a fixed amount target isnot the best for YOU with this particular method.....and since you are using Bolters ideas than matbe use his exit ideas too...