Thanks for the suggestions Mccullek. Good to see you back on here. Now off for a weekend road trip. Till Monday.
Here is my contribution for price action only, trading of the ZB 30 year bond futures. I use the pitchfork for S/R. I don't really need it as single bars tell me all I need to know, however, it keeps me from over trading. All trades were short. The first I meant to enter higher, but it was bath time for my three toddlers, so I picked a quick entry. The exit order was entered at the time of entry. Had I been there I would have held on or entered another short due to the price action (PA). The second trade was just a quick in and out. PA told me that we were just a little strong to think of holding shorts. I was then looking to go long and I had a long signal on the third bar after the blue arrow, but I got distracted, missed the signal and didn't want to chase it. The final two trades are just quick in and out trades. If you look at trade three and consider bar 1 to be the starting point of the third pitchfork, then bars 4 and 5 gave me my sell signal. I wasn't watching at the time and took the retracement trade you see (sell 118 160). The reason for the lack of trades is that the main event occured pre-market and up through 0830 EST/ 0730 CST. There really isn't a reason to trade much after such an event, i.e. 3 point moves in the ZB don't come around often.
Hi everyone, I'm wandering how much in the day the markets are "tradable"? The charts of many traders (incl. Anek's ones) look very well ordered and easy to trade. But in my charts they look much more messy. There is seldom some order. There is just no such good order as it is in the others' charts. Where is the answer of this question? Cheers.
There might be several answers to your question. 1. Higher time frame charts typically show well ordered price movement. 2. If traders show charts that include real time trades, you should see less order and entries that are not perfect. 3. If traders take a chart and highlight where setups/entries might be, then you should see a little more order. I find that my charts and entries typically look messy... today I will show you my entry charts (look messy) and my setup charts (look a little more orderly). Cheers Toucan
EPETROV This is my execution (entry/exit) chart of my trades for the day. I will post my setup chart next. There is quite a bit of volatility in this chart and entries/exits are late many times. Cheers Toucan
EPETROV Here is my setup chart and price action looks much more orderly... at least I think so Hope this helps toucan
My best piece of advice to you is to determine the best times to trade and to decide in your mind that you really don't need to be continuously in. By time, I don't necessarily mean an exact time like 0900 EST, but more of when $TICK is doing this and my 15 min to 60 min study shows that we are strong, then I'll only enter long trades on the 1 min. My observation is that throws out about 75% of trades I would have taken. With ES, when I day trade, I only look to take 4 to 6 ticks. I can't begin to tell you how often I've watched a 4 to 6 tick trade end with only 1 tick or worse a loss captured. With ZB, I look for a specific setup on the 1 minute that occurs infrequently. Meanwhile I simply give a quick glance to the pitchfork to tell me the direction. Bottom line, to avoid the messiness you describe I found it is important to not watch every tick of the 1 minute bar.
Firstly epetrov is your 10kv ES chart clean like Aneks? http://i38.tinypic.com/2e1hq1c.jpg List the top down analysis that Anek would do to keep on the right side of price. It should be clear why he was looking for shorts or why he reversed and took longs. Follow the price action, follow the channel, the support and resistance. Find the reasons why price retraced to where it did. Keep up the reviewing, covering the right side of the chart and watching it unfold. Record your thoughts as the day progresses, what you were thinking and why in your journal or text on your real time chart. See where the conflicts arouse to the top down analysis steps. WTF trader is probably on of the biggest and best traders to have posted on ET. look over his charts. Stop trying to capture everything. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=131353&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 It took me over 3 years then the bulbs went on faster than you can imagine and conflicts were removed. Sometimes it just happens that way. Where is the answer of this question? the answer lies within