I am looking for feedback on what you are doing right now if you trade NQ. Obviously volatility has increased in the last month or so. I use a traling stop on my positions, PSAR is what I use right now. BUT, I need to set an initial stop until the trail stop catches up. I was using 40 ticks (10 points) but that is creating too many stop outs. I would go 1.5 X ATR, but that is over 30 points (120 ticks) on most trades as ATR is 20-24 lately. What do you do?
Look left and read the various highs and lows of the days/weeks and how price moves between areas. Then you know with some reasoning if you are genuinely likely to be just a few ticks away from the bottom/top of the move or not with your stop. Just don't move too far. The few nudged stops will make a lot if done will skill.
I never use greater than 12 point for signals in NQ, my back testing shows signal generally either loses or break-evens way beyond my parameters for intraday drawdowns, it is like a signal that happens on an inside bar, stalls. I never trail stops once it gets to breakeven plus 2 ticks, but all still comes down to your back testing to show probabilities of what might be expected.
for day trading NQ , my typical stop loss is 5 points. past few days, I increased it by 2 or 3 times. for yesterday market, even if you increase stop by many more times, I doubt we can profit from such chaotic messy market.
%% Mainly, print off a chart, even if you have a photo memory-weakest ink>> strongest memory..... And unless you are scalper in Chicago with commercial comissions, stop using the words ''Break Even'' Its a profit or a loss, someone has to pay rent/home + power bill. If you HATE the word ''loss'' as much as most of us do, LOL, use business expence or educational exspense! And right now cash market QQQ is same as your emini-below 200day moving average, which is bearish//bear trend. Most bear market$ dont whip saw around 200dma= even though 2008 bear did LOL. Good question
Yup. Yup. Not sure how to profit in such a market. Vxn sky high readings. Stopped out of many trades. Just frustrating, seems like it should be easier in such crazy moves.
I don't like such market too. The number of twists and turns and swings suddenly increase by many many folds. and candlesticks become extra long, and there are many false signals One possible explanation is that suddenly millions and millions of investors and traders around the whole world were trading using resulting in huge volume and jerky spiky erratic movement those swing traders and heavy scalpers probably see less of such headache. I trade quite a few index futures. so I can pick and choose the more trendy one. But sometimes, all the index futures are equally untradable.
The market is behaving very similar to last February. Do some backtesting and see how your method would have done then.
@They. You are right mister. It is very similar to Feb Solution is very simple. DON'T TRADE!!! Some instruments are simply very difficult to trade during certain time of the year & certain session of the day. Look at NQ over past few days. It was rather trendy during Asian and Eur session (ie very easy to earn $$$$). Come US session, it was messy chaotic though its range was huge (ie very easy to lose $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ). In fact, when Daylight savings ends, I wouldn't trade US session. It is my sleeping time anyway.