yeah i tried different tick time frames as well and i found 3 minute seemed to be a good compromise for my sytle of trading. seemed to be less noise for me and easier to pick up nyse commitment. Ive also found it a valuable timeframe for spotting trends.
I should have my TradeStation account up and running this week so I will let you know how I like it. I was trading Futures at ThinkorSwim which is great but TradeStation is cheaper in commissions ($2.50 v. $3.50) and I get the platform for free due to my trading volume which means I can stop paying $99.00 a month for TCNet for its technical analysis program on S&P and TICK. Phil
I'm very interested to hear your thoughts. I'm using IB with Quotetracker. Inexpensive, but slightly cumbersome.
I just wanted to tell you about my experience with a profitable scalp yesterday. I did not have time to post the graphs so I will just mention it in general because I want to hear input from other E-mini daytraders. I had a long entry set-up and bought 5 ES at 1192.25. The uptrend and support was still in place so when the futures pulled back to 1191.75, I added 5 more to scalp the pending move I was expecting on the charts. Well the TICK on the 1-minute chart, suddenly dove negative and jumped past -300 and more. The futures started moving lower and I figured the move was actually going to reverse not continue higher. I placed an order to sell 20 contracts at 1190.75 to close my first 10 and now be short another 10 at 1190.75. In other words I flipped my trade and direction based on the TICK swing. Well the TICK hit almost -700 and the futures fell to 1188.50 where I closed for a net profit counting the previous position. So I lost 1.25 points on the longs and then made 2.25 on the new short position for a net 1 point. I have done this a few times where my indicators where one way and then the TICK and market started swinging the other way and I flipped the trade. Does anyone else do this or have an experience to share? The risk is when I flip it, the market moves back the other way and I am adding to my loss. In this case the TICK swung so far south that a move lower in the index seemed so likely that I not only closed my longs, I went short. This is how I use the TICK sometimes.
hello sir ... in my opinion ... you are swinging too much for the fences ... too much size for someone who has only been trading ES for a few weeks what happens if something strange were to happen and you had 10 contracts on and there was a spike of 10 handles against you ? good luck ... :eek:
Seth: Thanks for the input. I started trading ES in late August with only 1 contract at a time and then moved on to 5. This trade ended up being 10 and that is the most I will take on now because of the reasons you cited. What I did is took some discretionary cash and put it aside for trading this to keep my position sizes limited. I spent quite a few months studying the ES and the market and did not trade until I was comfortable. I trade options but wanted to be extra cautious before trading futures and I did not want to jump into futures without some preperation. I think 5 contracts is a sizeable limit for me. I intend to be in the trade for a few minutes at a time so if the market is running against me I close out immediately. The TICK has been helping me avoid those large surprises pretty well. I am not trying to hit home runs here really, just get a point or so and get out. I still have more to learn and 5 contracts is the most I want to do.
On the 5-minute chart we look like a triple top or form of Head and Shoulders forming which was just broken. Hence the jump in S&P from 1188 to 1185. I jumped in with a short scalp and will post the chart in a second. Looks like short-term downward pressure incresaed with some support at 1185/1184 for now. Would like to see it hold. WIll go short if neck of H&S is broken. Bounced off so far.
Here is the trade I referred to above. I put small notes on the page there which is easier to read and follow the chart.
Neck line of Head and Shoulders was broken on a loooooong down TICK so I went in for a short and got 1.25 points. Chart is attached.
By the way just to be clear I am not only posting winners. I had some losses before I started this new thread and most of the trades during this thread have been winners. BUT I also posted above where I lost my days profits overtrading, I just did not have the time to post the charts on that one since it takes a while to do so. It is above in the thread. So just want to clear that up.