Side Note To All, I am looking forward to having all you guys participate in this thread. Jimmy, Saico, Dominck, Sandygray. Everyone that has a good attitude and something to offer we need in here. Lets all make this a really decent thread. And as for other people knowing what I do and what my entries are. I am a small fry in these markets. I don't believe that somebody bigger cares what I do or how I trade. I leave plenty of money in the markets for anybody else to profit. Besides I am usually riding on their coat tails, I help them as much as they help me. Sincerely, 4re
There are a number of suggestions I could make, but threads like this are easily derailed. But since you've asked about taking profits at hesitations and bailing out of what turn out to be reversals, I will make one small suggestion that might enable you to use data rather than an indicator. Which is to plot the TICK -- i.e., data -- and look for divergences when price begins bumping up against your target, rather than use the BBs, which require settings of some sort, just like any other indicator. This may mean having to use a chart of the "underlying", such as a tick chart, along with your candle charts, but you may find that when price has trouble getting all the way to your target, the TICK will begin -- or has already begun -- to reverse. This provides you with a signal to get at least to BE, if not apply a follow-stop, if you don't want to exit altogether. If your charting program offers replay, just collect the data for a week if you can't backfill it, then play with the TICK data afterhours via replay until you get comfortable with it.
I've noticed that as well: if price is unable to close outside the BBs during range bound periods it normally will reverse. I plan to use BBs to help me to stay in trades during tight range bound periods, in other words to better mange my stops.
You may find the attached volume profile (VP) of Friday's action interesting. Your levels are very close to VP.
Can this be done quickly while you are in a trade or can you plan this ahead of time. Unfortunatly this is something I don't know about.
Pretty cool isn't it. You can look at your charts from Friday and see that when it hit my entry the candles really took off. I won't say I had anything to do with it. I just saw that as a point that it would take off.
It's done neither quickly nor slowly, at least by the trader. Price and the TICK move however quickly or slowly they're going to move. You just watch. If your target is 10 and price hits 9.5, retraces, then hits 9.5 again, but the second time the TICK makes a lower low or collapses, then you act rather than sit and hope. Don't know what you mean by "plan this ahead of time". If you mean automate a limit exit, then I suspect not. But if you weren't there, I assume you'd allow price to fall all the way back to your original stoploss point since the target was never reached.
I got ya now. And you are correct this is a good way to do it as long as we don't go into a complete reversal and never see 9.5 again that day. Then you use a pre-determined stop. Is that what you mean? Sitting and hoping is what cost the most to any trader.
Let me give you an illustrated example. The subject of the example -- in this case the NQ -- isn't important. In this case, the target was 25.5, and everything was fine when price hit 22. But when price rose to 22.5, the TICKQ didn't go along for the ride. Here I'd raise my stop to at least BE, if not initiate a tight trailing stop or follow stop. When price hits 22.5 a second time, the TICKQ is even weaker, and tightening the follow stop even further might be in order. In this way, you get out at maybe 21.5, rather than watch it fall all the way back to the stop loss at 19. As it turned out, price made it only to 19.25, but if you add commissions to your BE point, you'd be out. Price then resumed the advance and broke through the same level again, this time making it all the way to 27.25 with only a little consolidation just above 24.
That is what I thought you were talking about. And yes that would provide a safe escape or another chance to let the trade work in your favor.