jsmooth, thanks for the response. For the last couple of years I end up taking most of the summer off to run kids here and there. I don't like jumping in and out during my trading day, so I plan the days I can trade and take the others off. I also am helping my Dad these days, and he is out in Mequon also. If a time works out I'd love to find a lunch time that works. You and the people you mention sound like you are way above my analysis, but it works for me.
Does anyone here have a consensus about what the consistently "best" markets to trade ACD are? I myself would say that Soybeans are the best grain market to trade. Over the last couple of years that I have been manually backtesting results, I've only seed about 4 losing months over the entire period, and that is just trading ACD's without filtering with ACD number line or pivot ranges. Pretty impressive. Also, when beans are breaking out well the 2 cent buffer outside the opening range is not necessary to use. Just a breakout outside the first 15 min bar is good enough. Sugar is nice because you can setup trades with a 35 cent stoploss consistently and therefore don't have to worry about getting killed on stops. C trades tend to work pretty good on Sugar as well. Out of the indexes, I would say the Russel 2000 contract works better with ACD then both the Emini or the Dow Mini. Coffee was working well for a while, but has cooled off a lot lately, and you need pretty deep pockets to trade it. (Stop loss, plus 200 pt buffer). The buffer alone has a dollar value of about $650 per contract, let alone the stop. a 45M breakout ACD on /ZB has been working very well lately. 8am-845am range, 5 tick buffer. I expect it to continue to work in the near future based on the problems in the US monetary system, but beware, in the past this combo of time period and buffer has not produced great results, but lately it has been excellent. For the near future, I think I am going to start trading Nat Gas using ACD. Oil has gotten to a price level where you are starting to hear news stories about people driving distances to find cheaper fuel, cutting back on trips etc. It seems reasonable that going forward until Crude cools off, Nat Gas is going to gain at least some popularity relative to crude. Any boy is it volitile. Avoid the 1030am Nat Gas storage report on Thursdays though. I also think the mother of all good C down trades might be found in Silver at some point in the future. Regardless of the long term outlook for it, Silver is due for a significant and sharp correction very soon. So these are my thoughts at the moment, feel free to chime in.
<object id="cnbcplayer" height="380" width="400" classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" > <param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash"/> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/> <param name="quality" value="best"/> <param name="scale" value="noscale" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"/> <param name="salign" value="lt"/> <param name="movie" value="http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000018295/code/cnbcplayershare"/> <embed name="cnbcplayer" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" bgcolor="#000000" height="380" width="400" quality="best" wmode="transparent" scale="noscale" salign="lt" src="http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000018295/code/cnbcplayershare" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /> </object>
The answer is all markets work with the ACD levels. I have yet to find a market that does not produce robust signals. Granted I may be using different parameters then you are. I also use longer term ACD levels along with the intra-day levels. Here is a tip I'll give out. What type of trader are you? Do you like momentum trades or fades? If you like momentum, use very tight opening ranges. If you are a fader, use much wider opening ranges. You need to fit the ACD levels to your trading personality. This is very important. There is no right or wrong way to do this. What you are trying to do is construct levels and parameters that allow you to read the price action most effectively.
Mav, Thanks for the infor. When you say "longer time frame ACD values" do you mean that you use something similar to the rolling 3 day pivot as described by Fisher, or take opening range of first day of trading and use that as your breakout/stop placement for the rest of the week? A little bit of both?
<object id="cnbcplayer" height="380" width="400" classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" > <param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash"/> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/> <param name="quality" value="best"/> <param name="scale" value="noscale" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"/> <param name="salign" value="lt"/> <param name="flashVars" value="startTime=000"/> <param name="flashVars" value="endTime=000"/> <param name="movie" value="http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000020455/code/cnbcplayershare" /> <embed name="cnbcplayer" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" bgcolor="#000000" height="380" width="400" quality="best" wmode="transparent" scale="noscale" salign="lt" src="http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000020455/code/cnbcplayershare" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /></object> Looks like Fisher's kid is getting a lot of air time lately.