That's the other advantage of entering the trade the moment it sets up: You can usually get your limit order lifted rather than pausing to think, seeing the price move in your intended direction while you're thinking, and then jumping in at the bid or ask so you don't miss too much of the move.
very sorry to hear you back to paper trading. ES is not a good trading tool. there is too many people on that thing, everyone tries to outsmart the market and extract some money. did you notice: when it starts to bump up, in blink of eye, it suddenly drops 3points or 5 points or vice versa. competition is too high. if you missed several major spots (8:30am news, the opening or the closing, 10:30am news, or technically speaking, morning low/high, intraday support or resistance or breakthrough/breakup) , the day is done. since only several spots in a day (major meaningful trades) on ES, you must be faster than others, execute your trade without any second thoughts. your three point loss is too tight. better loose to five point or 10 points. the tigher the more nervous you wil be. I do not know what account size you have. for ES, 5k is good enough for 1 contract/5 pioint loss . if you have 50k account, hold overnight several contracts is no big concern, why care too much about 3point fluctuation?
Nod, Yes, you were impatient entering that first trade. (if you would post the trade times of the bar along with price we all could follow it easier). Pre-open at 0810 est area Es dropped from 950.50 area down to 943.50 that proved to be the low of the day (no one knew it at the time). then price consolidated in a rather narrow range for a bit, then at 0900 it had a false BO to 947.00 and fell back into and to the bottom of the narrow range just before the open of RTH at 0930. then as the mkt opened price went back up and made a HOOK up past the failed BO high of 947.00 bar at 0910. I was not trading this because it was pre-open, just reviewing it for you. Well, young Lady why did you even consider a short at 947.50? Thats what you need to ask yourself. Well, maybe you already did by saying you did not wait for a proper setup. I think you will remember from chat that i said in the morning, i will grab a 5 handle profit to start the day if it is presented. Today it was and i grabbed it. Then it completly reversed down to 947.75 at 0945. That makes the coffee taste really good . Then the ORB was over and reverted back to regular TA for rest of the day. Agree with you about wanting to become mechanical or at least what we could call a well oiled trading machine. The ES must be the best to mechanize because of the high volume which means many players and that means many sets of eyeballs all looking for the same stuff. Thats why simple works in a nutshell. That also explaines why volume itself is not looked at, we know the players are there and when something happens there will be others to take all our orders. (and keeps the spread to just a single tick 99% of the time. Some other instruments have a smaller tick value but in a fast move the spread gets thicker, not cool. ) Yeah, that double top seperated by 4 bars in a small consolidation was a short waiting to happen if price dropped below the bottom of said narrow range. You are good at seeing what is happening even in this small daily range stuff . Todays RTH range was only 12 1/4 handles. The more you become familiar with ES (this is the value of trading less for more) you will see how well TA works with such a well followed instrument. Even todays small range had volume of 2049033. Thats a lot of range swingers in there. We adjust trading style relative to what the mkt offers. Nod, just imagine trading the SP when it had a tick value of $50.00 a tick, traded in 10ths and you had to call in your orders to the pit. A handle was $500.00 Hell, this is easy now. Just kidding, i know it is hard in the beginning. As i have said before though, a computer in a traders desk is like a slot machine. But when we get back to basics and wait for our GOLD signals, we can beat the casino. PS: I hope Obama wears blue jeans in speech tonight, haha. Funny how many are picking on our brand new president wearing jeans to a baseball game. That must mean he is doing a good job as they try to find fault. PSS: one fighter pilot said." the japs had a better plane than we had, we had to adjust. I had to anticipate what his plane would do in a dogfight before he made the move. I did not strap myself into the plane, i strapped the plane to my back, i anticipated instead of following"
ND - no real losses ... you're doing fine. Keep it up! Forgive the stupid question, but could you please explain what the "+6" line is? What is it and how would it be used? - Thanks.
Thanks, tomahawk. It's very frustrating when I let my opinion get in the way of pure technical trading. I can't seem to get out of this rut. I spoke with one of my trading roomies the other night who has a similar issue and we've vowed in a few weeks to get on Skype together, state our setups in real time and make each other put on the trades, ha ha! By +6 I refer to an opening range play on strength or weakness. A move 6 ticks above the high of the opening 5 min bar indicates strength; 6 ticks below the low of the opening 5 min bar indicates weakness. Worked fine for me yesterday and would've worked fine for me today had I simply waited a few minutes instead of jumping on a less than ideal trade and, worse, chasing the entry almost down to the level that a continuation move would occur (which it did). I almost gave as much to IB in commission (4.80) as I took for myself (7.70) on the trade; at least it's enough to go get some Thai food now
Nod, get consistent, build confidence...........small losses are not bad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Tf2lQvDz0 "there ain't no coupe De Ville in the bottom of a cracker jack box" Love that phrase.
Well today it certainly would've worked out. If you don't mind my asking, what's the general idea on stops/targets, and is this based on any particular backtested timeframe? - Thanks.
Yes it would've worked out great. I got the long signal @ 954.50 and didn't take the trade because I thought price was too close to resistance to rally much. Still kicking myself... After much paper trading, I've found that a 2 pt stop is fine. As for a target area, take profits when the trend signals a reversal, which so far today there hasn't been an inkling of that.
Ok thanks. The trade would've worked out today for a super-sized gain, but only because of the positive reaction to 10am news. With the trigger coming relatively close to 10am, the question is - should a trade be put on with 50/50 risk of a possibly blown-through stop due to imminent news? I'd be curious to hear both your and bighog's views on playing the 6 line (or all strategies in general) ahead of news.
Not having much ES experience, just how much damage would I suffer if a 2 pt stop were on 1 car was blown through on news? Seemed low risk to me.