That is my charts. Ensignsoftware.com AUTOMATICALLY finds the opportunities and voice alerts me to look and take trades. Looks like a mess. However I am alerted to take trades and can determine the value of the info given for trade selection in 2 seconds. So Never a Shortage of trade opportunities.
EnsignSoftware.com has a Free Trial and works with most data providers and broker platforms for free. However charts are not the answer.
I have no trades on now and this time is normally not a good time for trading for me -- could trade anytime -- and I do not tend a Garden -- but I do relax and hopefully count my money. LOL
I took a third trade. I will stop or today at least for now. My brain is getting tired. And I have other things to do like attend to my garden and do some book-keeping. Yellow arrows indicate the phases of the cycle (i.e. the larger context). Please try to understand that this cycle is very important to intraday scalping and or trading. It happens over and over all day long. At times it is larger and and times smaller in duration but the process is the same. It is the nature of the markets. We have to devise strategies and techniques to help us take advantage of this phenomena. There of course variations at times, (such as range stepping i.e. one range goes right into another range without a real strong BO), but more often than not PA goes from range to BO to channel then back to range. Then it repeats. The "trend" is composed of the BO together with the channel. In essence, we are then going from range to trend and back to range then to trend again...etc. There are many setups that can be played in the market cycle. The intermediate context will have price patterns. usually micro price patterns...such as trends..wedges (top and bottom)..triangles...flags..pennants..H&S...reversal..DT's DB's prior highs and low..probing...etc ad nauseam. The immediate context will have the moment by moment dynamics of PA as time goes by and the setups that one can play in those patterns. The patterns and setups working out depend largely on the larger context in which they are found AND what I call the immediate dynamics of movement i.e. "how" it was made (fast or slow..hopping..or paint drying)
Ensign is charting software only. A compatible data-feed is needed for real-time data. Choice of broker is irrelevant beyond data feed compatibility as Ensign does not offer or have order or execution features.
A decade-plus ago, I used Ensign/IQFeed as a backup system. That was back in the day when platforms were NOT plentiful, and brokers offered some white-labeled datafeed/order/execution/charting platform for free! I liked Ensign, and with a non-broker-provided data feed, it actually saved my ass more than a couple times! I always felt like a chump tho.... I lived in Idaho at the time and had to pay sales tax on the Ensign subscription! LOL
The answer to my post #1364. It is often useful to have two charts open on ones platform. Let one run naked with nothing but MA's. The other chart can be marked up with the phases of the cycle (larger contexts), the chart patterns within the phases (intermediate context), and the immediate context (dynamics of the moment and setups). The reason for a naked chart is to spot the tendency of the day without getting distracted by all the stuff in the marked up chart. It is important to try and decipher "what" kind of day the session will likely be. Why? There are many different strategies and techniques for entry and exits, however, a trader wants to also know how the session is panning out. He may or may not modify his entry and exits points or methodology of making entries and exits for the day. Brooks speaks of "what kind of day" are we having in his books. Ok notice Gap up open of RTH's. Then first PB being in the form of a 7 bar flag followed by a resumption of the trend. This is typical of when SPBL trends are starting. I saw the makings of a SPBL trend early but did not wish to point is out at that time. I wanted to see if anyone here noticed it, hence my question in a previous post. See, if a trader is not in the mental makeup to deal with details in trading that particular day's PA then he can just trade a cleaner chart utilizing SPBL trend techniques. One technique is going long on PB's and then exiting on surges north scaling 1 to 8 points in the ES. Doing this over and over as the trend grinds north. Another technique is going long on the first major PB that has a H1 or H2 entry for the day when price is staying above the EMA (THE EXPONENTIAL MA), especially after a gap up open. He can then hold that initial position for the entire session adding more on PB's to or through the EMA and holding until there comes a strong enough reversal to take profits before they evaporate, or the end of the session. You do have to pay attention to deeper PB perhaps materializing around the 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 time frame. They may or may not but the tendency is often there. Trading is hard work and mentally taxing and there are days it is just better to take the easier, less detailed route. Much depends on the traders mind frame for that day.
I am done for the day but will re-visit the charts in posts#1341 and the 2 min chart in post #1361 later today to make some comments. Also, will make some comments on my chart in post # 1352. Might be tonight.