Just going to post a chart of my trades for the entire day when I feel like it. Why? I like attention... But, who doesn't. I am not paranoid of people stealing anything from my system. I use technicals to confirm and judge situations, but for me to enter a trade both technicals, L2, and my gut must agree. Yelling at me for stupid trades and bad entries and exists would be most appreciated. Heheh... I trade the ES and when the ES is too dead to trade I might trade the NQ a little here and there. Trading is simple... Buy low sell high, or sell high buy low. Technicals are not that important IMO. If you are perfectly emotionally balanced and in control... With zero bias or ego you should be able to trade profitable with mere candles and trend-lines... I have seen a CME trader stop by the public ToS chat at 4-7AM EST to show off and name and nail 10 trades in a row in what most people here would describe as pure chop... He said he was just using a full L2, T&S, and 15 minute candles with support/resistance levels. We all had no doubt because he named each move before it happened and showed us his support/resistance levels chart. Kinda envious of his L2... Only get 20 ticks of bid/ask data from the Infinity futures data feed personally. For those of us who are not perfect we need technicals, blaring green/red colors, rules, and text shouting "bull market don't short" or "bear market don't long" to hold us in line. Attached is a big picture chart with notes. It shows my history and experience in trading. I also noted my thoughts about the market big picture, but take that with a grain of salt because the most I hold a trade for is 30 minutes. I am primarily a software developer and programmer... I experimented with coding a couple autotrading strategies, but they only worked in specific market conditions. Quite useful for backtesting trading entry/exit strategies to increase confidence though. My personal technical indicators have a unique "keep it simple" style that I don't see too much... My trading indicators are coded in SierraChart, not ToS. I only use ToS for long term time charts. I should have a SierraChart trading chart up monday/tuesday but am probably not trading FOMC day and the jobs report because things just get too chaotic for me. I can also post the transact statement trade data the day after but I don't think it's too useful.
Gawd... Having one of those Monday mornings... I'm a little out of sync. Screwed up my entries by around a point each time. If I was only paying attention and measuring my retracements properly I would have had at least one great trade. Retracement target technically on the first cycle was 1401.25 while I entered at 1402.25 for some reason. Retracement target on the second cycle was 1404.75 which price only reached within a tick of. The first one was also a daily pivot which should have made it obvious.... I need more coffee. *Pounds head on table.* Jumping in too soon... And when I jump in too soon I just get scared and exit the next 1kv cycle near resistance for a quick profit if possible and wait for the next trade setup. I should just hold for a 4kv cycle when I screw up my entries. I'm on the right side of the trade nearly always. Screw perfect timing! LoL... My gut is telling me the only chance of any short trade setups is in the afternoon session. Technicals say the same. We shall see... Keep on trading boys!!!
Self critique of order entry... My morning entry and exit were also a tick different than current short term support/resistance. Unacceptable! The second entry was proper... Exit wasn't. Need to keep my mouse on the ladder and away from the market order buttons...
Took off and didn't trade the rest of the day at lunch. Things were getting too slow and were not picking up at 1PM. Wasn't feeling it today. Getting two entries in a row off by a point told me I wasn't properly in sync with the market today anyway. Oh well, still ended green. Tomorrow should be better and I should get in around my usual number of trades. Around 6-8 or so with proper entries/exits hopefully. Btw, the green/red arrows with the lines between them on the chart show my trade type, entry, and exit.
Things were going good then got clipped... For some reason I was expecting a continued runup to the minutes off that divergence low... Blah. Guess I'm a little bullishly biased right now. I was thinking "Meh, one light downtrend signal... The market shouldn't break. This is just a temporary dip caused by the weekly pivot. Oh crap, big signal... Gotta get out asap." Still kinda amazed that uptrend just fell apart like that. +2.25 Points captured for morning session total. Should be some good trading after the minutes... Still getting bad entries/exits with market orders... I really need to break that habit and enter orders on the ladder only.
Okay... It seems like nobody cares for this thread and rated it one star. I'm discontinuing it as keeping a stupid journal makes trading more stressful. LoL! My trading late today was worse than expected... I got clipped once again miss-timing the bottom... Ended the day exactly 4.25 points into the green. It doesn't seem like anyone wants to see the chart.
Harvesting usable energy from noise is an engineering challenge. I tried back testing reversed trend following signals on noisy price charts and got mixed success. The best range system I found was a bollinger band fade, but it was very sensitive to slippage effects. The only robust range system I've ever seen is The Market Maker: buy all weakness in tiny size and sell all strength likewise..... pyramids of limit orderz