This is for NQ. How long until you were pretty sure of the day's trend? For me, its D !! TRICKY DAYS!! At the start of the day, I thought this was definitely an up trending day. The easiest part was by far the end of the day Quick summary: Bought A and B, sold C. Short D. Covered at end of day. It was tough to wait at that consolidation after D - it could have gone either way. After the breakout, it was clear how the day was going to end. I also traded ES in parallel. That didn't go as smoothly. Basically I bought up on the spike after B and sold on the bottom at C (but sold more than I bought to enter a short position) just like the NQ. That obviously didn't work judging by the spike that followed. I exited near the peak of the spike by going long again, but too late. Ended up selling after a small dip from the peak. Took quite a bit of loss. I'm starting to realize reversing position on the same trade isn't really something that works so well for me. All in all, I netted positive a few hundred bucks - but tough stuff. These mid-day reversals are almost expected, but the swings are so large its hard to tell which is which.
How tricky is it, scriabinop23? If you go to the beginning, that is the place to start. What are almost all the threads at ET about? Answers & devices .. but to do what? Find the 'trend'? The trend for 5mins, 5hours, 5 days? Or a trend which keeps on going up or going down - how about that? Wrong. Wrong quest. You see it in front of you day after day; the upmoves and downmoves, the daily gyrations. Todays gyrations in YM so far today .. just the main gyrations (with figures/times approximate) 21 points down 09.34-09.49 62 points up topping at 12.21 120 points down 15.08. Pretty tasty huh? Thats where you start your quest.
I was so sure I loaded up on qqq puts at 1:10 with the dow up around 100. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=65265&perpage=6&pagenumber=26 Rennick out
I was listening to the news on the way home from soccer last night thinking "I bet the market opens higher and then reverses back to end up about even" after I heard about the ceasefire. In my opinion Mideast violence only effects market sediment in the manner of a short term catalyst. Now even if I had the PPI and CPI number right now I still don't think I could tell you what the market will do.
Was about to pull the trigger to long this morning but my gut feel told me not to. August is too casino like with most of the big boys on vacation. Probably won't trade again until Sept.