Tough day to trade, unless youre Jack. I had made up my mind coming in that I wasn't going to give back anything unless the day showed some trend and it never did. Monday might be good.
It doesn't have to be complicated. Take a look at the chart posted. Its a mechanical representation of Channel trading. Use a moving average. Plot a line about the length of the average(modal) 5 minute bar above and below the average. When price has penetrated the upper band, take long trades by entering on the average line and reversing short at the upper band. When price penetrates the lower band, take short trades entering at the average line and reversing long at the lower band. <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=862286">
Ya got a rule or two in there ya dint disclose, son, like how fur ya let tha trade go agin ya. One a those was a prodigious 3 ES pints. I still maintain that you are ET's reigning unrecognized humorist.
When I first saw the sweep doc I thought its greatest use would be in isolating better entry/exit points, but at this point Iâve found sweeping most useful once Iâm in a trade. Previously I would enter a trade, get a jolt of adrenaline and all of my attention would be focused on the price bar, which left me incapable of making a rational decision. Iâve noticed sweeping slowing me down a notch, taking my eyes away from the price bar, reminding me where to look for clues. At this point emotions still get the best of me but I have noticed enough incremental progress to know that I need a tool like the sweep to develop discipline. A few observations of my sweeping... When Iâm flat my sweeps are too slow, and when I am in a position they are too fast. I find that I look at str/squ and the ym gaussians when I am flat, but once in a trade I am racing through monitoring and cannot bring myself to look at the gaussians or indicators. I have not yet developed a good mental loop of monitor, analyze, decide, act. I tend to lock into a particular element and spend too long in a narrow focus, watching, waiting, (hoping) for things to develop. I am also having difficulty separating the four activities into distinct boxes. Ex., I find that when I am updating charts and notice a signal or formation, I sometimes act immediately in hair-trigger fashion. I found the top to bottom format awkward to work with at my desk, so I transformed it into a left to right orientation (attached). Now it lies lengthwise on my desk below the monitors so I can view at a glance without touching it. I attempted to keep all of the elements of the original charts, with some minor mods for formatting/aesthetics. Please post any errors/omissions/concerns/suggestions to improve. Side note, I lost a lot of momentum with my trading over the past few weeks from travel, storms, work being done on the house, etc., but things should be quieter going forward and allow me to regain focus. Thursday was the first day in weeks that I was able to watch the markets from open to close and I was reminded how important it is to get back to doing so daily.
I use a simpler sweep doc (attached) than the one posted above. I took out the Fine level altogether and removed all but the Gaussians and Squ/Str from the Medium. Questions... Most paths through the sweep end in Continue, but should the others that suggest a specific action (like Enter on signal BO) be executed immediately, or should you complete a full round of Monitor, Analyze, Decide, Act... implying you may encounter other info that invalidates that signal? Is scoring used in SCT? Score is mentioned in a summary table under column Other in the sweep doc but there is no further detail. I'm aware of its use in equities trading so I thought this may be an unused carryover? The Trend Ending column of the Gausians table states: Short=Black Falling to Black Rising, which I would expect to be Long. I was under the impression the normal sequence for transitioning to a Short channel is B2R -> R2R -> R2B ???
Thanks txuk! I've been meaning to "rework" the sweep chart similar to what you've come up with, and had not gotten around to it yet. Thanks - awesome work! Best regards Anthony
Never ceases to amaze me how this stuff works. Rt trendline was drawn well before this last bounce. Price sat there around that line for nearly ten minutes. How can a seemingly random point provide such support?