Misssed all the morning action on some errands. I did get a setup in the afternoon but didnt get filled. The charts is attached. Max
ABC corrections are common. I look for them after a larger move, but you never know. Just get back on the next signal if you're stopped out. Money management is the name of the game.
Trades for today, +5.6pts Today was a really good day, I only had one straight-up loser. Annoyingly, on the first trade price actually reached my profit target of +3.25 points, but I didn't get filled and didn't exit till my profit-protection stop was hit (for +0.25). There's no reason I shouldn't have been able to pull 2-2.5 points from this, and on later trades I got more aggressive about taking profits when price appeared to stall. As a result I left a lot on the table with the last two trades, but I'm more than happy with the day overall. I had the feeling that P/A today was unusually straightforward. The action we're seeing now is almost the exact mirror-image of what we saw from 7/22 to 8/11 or thereabouts. Price hit and bounced off a down-sloping TL on my 60min chart, to the exact tick. If only it were always like that... I got sucked in to that long around 11:15 like some of the others here but escaped with a 2-tick profit. I was on alert here as price had retraced beyond the lows from 10:30, so I closed out on the first sign of weak momentum. I use Heiken-Ashi coloring on my volume bars as a visual aid. One thing I've found really helpful in recent sessions (essentially making the difference between profit and loss) is to wait until I see an 'up' bar to enter long or a 'down' bar to enter short. 7 months of trading to discover (and actually start doing!) a stupid little trick like that... I didn't do this on the last trade only because we were right at a TL on my 60min chart, so I felt comfortable entering with a very close stop.
I find HA gives many head fakes and lags a bit also, perhaps too much for entries. Lastly, isn't it considered an indicator?
As I recall some HA indicators (like, IIRC, the standard one for Ninjatrader) actually draw bars using modified OHLC figures. I just color my bars differently and don't really consider it an "indicator." After all, you have to use some bar-coloring algorithm, unless you just use a single color - which I actually do for my longer-term charts. I've never found that the standard higher/lower close method provides useful information, while HA is a helpful visual aid for seeing the current 'wave'. It's sort of like if somebody had the computer display an arrow or something at every 3BR. Not really an indicator, just a visual aid that frees your eyes and brain to scan for other things and collect other information - such as the current trend context, price's relationship to S/R etc. Oddly enough, I find this makes a world of difference.
Hi Specterx, if you waiting to see an up bar to enter long or a down bar to enter short does this mean you are entering with a market order? Thanks.
I too found the HA colors are quite helpful. Is that HA code in NT from the AHG thread or someplace else? I have it for TS, but not for NT. Would like to have it for NT. Thanks for posting your chart. Nice trading day for you.
1276.50 trade - how did you set the target at 1277? and is that a trade you usually take - .50 profit?
Well, I was today, but there's probably a better way to do it. It looks like I got decent entries but P/A might have just been friendly today. Thanks I have a HeikenAshi indicator for NT, but I'm not sure if it's stock or I got it off the forum. Either way, that one draws its own bars. I didn't like the way the bars looked and IIRC it was actually modifying the OHLC values, so I wrote my own indicator that just colors the existing price bars. I've attached it to this post so feel free to use it. You can change the colors by editing the source. I've set an ATM strategy so it creates a profit target order at 13 ticks and a stop-loss at 12 ticks, which I then adjust as needed. I remember thinking that trade was a bit dodgy because price had broken the low from 10:30, plus the S/R line at around 1276. There just wasn't much volume coming in and price hadn't even broken the high of the previous bar, so I moved my order back and got filled at +.5 (might have even hit the bid here). It was pretty much the same story with the earlier trade from 1277-1277.5, and then again with the last trade of the day.