Hey Steve, with this ES paper trading, I'm taking whatever the market offers and practicing strict discipline using a pre-defined set of rules for trade management.
Yeah, seems like everybody gets hung up on having "proper" entry setups but it's trade management that makes money. I will say that there are statistical bias techniques that will give you better odds on entry. Ideally you'd like to be right more than half the time. BTW I don't trade futures, just stocks and options. I've just done lots of reading on it.
Nod Nice paper trading there. I fully agree that the so called opening range is subjective, i use 5 minutes, the gal down the street likes that also but she admits she does like to just use the opening tick at 0935 as her trigger to get LONG above that or get SHORT below that. I tell her a +6/-6 line (also subjective, could be more or less) eliminates whipsaws. Here is how i originally explained the concept: When we wake up in the morning we have no real idea what will happen in the mkt except by what we see on the charts. That in and of itself tells me nothing. I only want to know where we are headed next. Thus we traders devise a battle plan and we feed the troops and load our weapons and head out to the front lines and put our life on the line. My battle plan is for the mkt to show me its strength or weakness by me going with the flow like that previously mentioned dead fish. Thus, above the + line the bias is long and below the -6 the bias is short. The area in between is a "DEAD ZONE", thats the penicillian area to help avoid whipsaws. I am not good enough to get the days entire range, i am perfectly happy to get half the days range. I realize i am a failure in jack hersheys eyes but i can live with that and lose no sleep. So IF a trader has rock solid discipline with the +6/-6 lines and COULD force themselves to only be LONG above the +6 or SHORT below the -6 line then the trader ..............would never be on the wrong side of the mkt. I have tried that and yes it requires more trades and indeed you will not always get filled "AT THE LINE" , BUT as long as a "RUN" does happen you will wipe out the losers just like in the 'whipsaw song". I prefer to use a dead zone though, more comfortable trading that way. September 2009 is front month in futures now. I rolled to ESU9 this morning. Run with the big dog pack or stay on the porch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4cC3uq42d0&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI2OqdgtvfI
+ $280 +$207 Week +$1703 Month Not too pleased with the income here, but I guess I canât expect much more with 200-400 shares. Time to kick it up a notch, since I seem to no longer have a problem with exercising strict risk management. It was actually order entry issues that cost me almost $800 this week. SYNA was at the top of my list this morning, and I joined the pack of wolves offering 40.80 on open. Someone got this price, but it wasnât me and the price dropped almost 1.00 a share immediately and I jumped into the lemming parade short @ 39.84, way lower than I wanted, covered @ 39.66 oversold pivot for +$34. Short SYNA @ 39.61, failure to thrive, covered @ 39.18 pivot close to round number for +$84. Short SYNA @ 39.28, failure to thrive again, covered @ 38.29 when big red candle fully retraced for +$196. This full retracement, leaving a long hammer at the bottom of a major downtrend is a major long signal. I really shouldâve gone long immediately (chart is attached). Short HAR @ 22.41, pullback from lower high, covered @ 22.28 on L2 action, .01 from the pivot low for +$24 Short HAR @ 22.46, pullback from the same high (double top), covered @ 22.51 when support was established just pennies from my entry price: - $25 Short HPQ @ 37.30, lower high, moved stop to b/e because it found support at a much higher low, hit for -$2. Bid 18.15 STEC on the selloff, missed by .11 cents. Long HANS @ 31.50, oversold intraday and daily chart, higher low, stop just below the LOD, hit after a total failure to thrive for -$30. Placed a very marketable limit order for SPNG @ .095, but it was not lifted, so I cancelled it. My friend in chat said E*trade takes 10 minutes to process OTC stocks. Oh well, figured it was worth a try, low risk price in case it went to $0, ha! Short MFE @ 40.48, covered @ b/e when it found support only pennies from my entry price. This wouldâve been a great scalp had I got HPQ into the DOM in time to get the price I wanted (40.60). The pullback was pretty abrupt, so my entry price was weak. You may wonder why I didn't simply hold my SYNA short from my opening price and this is why: SYNA has a 60% short interest and can stage a mighty bounce, so once it becomes overextended to the down side and settles into a tight spread, I leave my target limit order in place, and move the stop real close to exit off its pivot lows in case it bounces. When I then see no meaningful bounce after my exit, I re-enter the trade for the next leg down. This whole process cost me only $4 extra commission which I actually recouped with a better entry price on the last short position I took. The most important thing is I controlled my risk of letting a profit into a loss with this often volatile stock. The lesson today is: NoDoji sure does well when she trades ONE THING
I shorted HAR @22.97 for overnight hold,what do you think.Looks good on daily.60mts charts and on the top of the BB/big time overbought.
Hey Jack, I think these kinds of overnight holds are not bad. I almost shorted HAR into the close, but it felt so good to be flat into the weekend that I decided to leave it that way. HAR is very overbought and pulled the perfect distance from its 20-day moving average to take a dip back toward it. It also crossed the 200-day MA for the first time in almost 2 years, so that should also act as a short-term magnet. HAR has a decent short interest, so I would have to guess some of this run is short squeeze. Fundamentally the company has negative earnings projections for the next 2 years. Oh wait...darn, that's a reason to buy in this market
First and foremost I would like to thank NoDoji for keeping this log. Secondly I would like to thank the traders and people who have given advice and insight to help NoDoji and others reading. This is my first post on eliteforums I one day soon would like to start a trading journal as I am trying to find my edge and trading style very. It is not easy but like NoDoji I am dedicated and will not give up. Now to my question.. Bighog, when you say you prefer to use a "dead zone" what exactly do you mean by that? Earlier in the post you refer to the dead zone between the -6/+6... I am confused. Sorry but I really found your post interesting and want to fully understand it. Thanks
Here it is in a nutshell. A "dead zone" is the area between taking a LONG @+6 line and taking a SHORT @ -6 line. In the ES that is 12 ticks (trades in qtrs of a handle) or a total of 3 handles. Example: From 940.50 to 943.50 is 12 ticks or 3 handles. You can also use that area as your max STOP LOSS points, if you went LONG at +6 you use the -6 as your STOP. EXAMPLE: if the opening tick on the 0935 est bar is 935.25, you plot that horizontal line, then you plot another horizontal line at 936.75 and that is the +6 line which is where you would get LONG. Do the same for the -6 line where you would get SHORT at 933.75. No trades in between those lines because your battle mission for the mornings recon patrol is to be the "eyes and ears" as an old fashioned scout to "SEEK and FIND" the other guys and avoid being discovered yourself,................thus you do not get into a skirmish, you radio back and report while setting up a plan of attack with the tank force. THUS, as a trader your mission is to avoid the "NOISE" of whipsaws as you are preparing for the big show of firepower when price bangs above or below the 2 outside lines. Do not waste ammo on pissant moves, you want the main event. When you are a front line soldier (scouts play around ahead of the front lines) your ass is on the line so you best know the territory and know your mission backwards and forward. You always have a plan of retreat if the situation goes bad and the odds are against you completing your mission. LIVE to fight another day. .............................................................................................. Ok, todays mission is to watch SPEED and the 24 HOURS of Le Mans endurance race. Great stuff. That race is BIG race in the world of motorsports, HUGE race. PSS: Nod said: The lesson today is: NoDoji sure does well when she trades ONE THING Attachment: synachart.jpg This has been downloaded 22 time(s). AHH, yes, less is more. I firmly believe the trading learning process is a lot about eliminating items more than adding items. I mean computers have produced a boatload of indicators etc that all boil down to the basic up, down, sideways movement of price and price only. Never forget: A great man can only handle one good women and it was that women that made him great. LESS IS MORE. OK, time for the big race on Speed, 24 hours of man vs http://www.lemans.org/24heuresdumans/pages/accueil_gb.htmlmachine.
I read through some of it.your trading is very impressive I would say. I found you trade lots of stocks in one day, how can you mamage it? in some period, I trade mad like you, but every day I trade new symbols, particularly days top gainers and losers. later I found I trade too much, and the results is not better than just do one or two trade a day. I realize I need correct my wild trading habit, and want to focus on trading CRUDE and the stock index futures. I found the big winning days for me is when I just did several trades, those non-protable days are when I did lots of trades or traded wildly, maybe in premarket I already made my daily targeted profits, but I gave back in the opening, then won more in the noon, then lose back again in the afternoon. of course, my trading time is fragmented (most time hard to focus becuase I need seeoff/pick up my kindergarden school son, cook lucch for the kids, later afternoon I have other soical duties), the only time I can focus is pre-market 6:30am to 11:30AM. I try to start a journal to correct my wild trading habit and get my discipline get checked. my focus will be just crude (6:30am to 2:30PM), 2:30pm to 9:00PM will be just stock index future ES/YM. my daily trading activities should be no more than 10 trades. my risk control for crude is at maximum $0.3, ES/YM at maximum 5 points. profit for crude is $0.2+, profit for ES/YM is 3+/25+ points. and no overnight trading. no individual stock trading. I already posted 6/12/2009's trading activity. you may notice I already violated no individual stock trading.
Hey David, thanks for you kind words! You may notice that I trade a few stocks a lot over time until they "fizzle", because I've studied the charts in depth and know the "personality" of the stock. For example, this month I traded ESRX, JCG, STEC, SYNA and URS a lot to the short side, because price kept working around highs, sometimes making new highs, and after nice runups like these have had, price generally drops quickly after each new attempt or failure. I look for 5 days up/5 days down and glance at whatever's seriously hitting the hi/lo ticker each day. (How I missed MRK hitting highs all day yesterday is beyond me and if I'd noticed I'd have been short at the double top for that move down.) I have an extreme short bias but am working on this malady (I WILL make $$ on a HANS long next week!) The first 90 minutes and last hour are the best for catching the real moves, though I sometimes like to scalp small predictable moves in the afternoon ranges.