I find Trading in the Zone the most direct book within the trading & psychology sphere. Trying to rank books that cover different topics is equivalent to arguing whether emotion or logic, food or water is more important. I have more than one book in my collection.
not really meaning to interfere here.. but.. jut got done trading my morning dax session - seeing this thread active, was hoping traders would discuss some actual trading here.. e.g. short-term dax action today quite similar to friday morning, imo..
yes, noticed that too. Guessing your name comes from "fading the gap " Market gaps up fails, fills overnight gap (though no daily bar gap in this instance.) Gaps that occur right outside of the prior days range seem a bit differnet again, if they fill the gap often they trade on as a strong trend day to finnish miles from the opening gap.
i am a more short-term trader - i mind the gap but i don't specifically play for the fill of the gap - these last few days the gap fills have been creepy and tough to trade short term - yesterday's lack of entusiasm at the top was good sign this rally needs to consolidate/pullback before going further.. - this morning's action imo confirmed that.. but.. very tight short-term trading action - the bid was packed solid with 100s-200s throughout the push down to the 4130s on this dax - as it started going for the 30, i kept thinking, at least perhaps will see a nice quick push down to 4125 but.. alas, to no avail, no volume to break further - i guess with this creep up on the s&p, they are holding this dax together for now..
I only trade the DAX from 7 am (Chicago time) to the close on most occasions. How did everyone do on the rally this morning after the US opening? It would have been a good day to catch a recording of the trading for my journal, but I'm travelling and don't have the horsepower to record on my laptop. For a scalper, days like today offer more hope that this product can still move. I'm finding that it is getting thicker with tons of fakes in there much like the ESTX50 was last year. We did have some great pops and it headed right for 4190 (previous high from Jan 2,'04). I hope you all had a good day.
Of course, this is why I didn't even bother replying to Wittgenstein. He always knows everything better. For example, on the ER2, given an initial margin of $1,750, you would have to make 9T a day to make 100% on initial. I think if you can't even average 9T (in a 7-hour day), then you might as well not waste your time day trading. Just said this on another thread, I try to make at least 100% on initial every month, if I fall below that, I really have to review what I'm doing. S PS: Nice to see you back, FT! Hope you enjoyed Canada!
oh yeah - re. fakes i love seeing like today this 200 lot kept coming in and out - and i especially love it when it does get whacked! - in any case, what a day on this dax - first little upside fakeout, then better move down this morning in Europe, at least more power down than yesterday - then what a reversal back up after 11 london time, straight back to test HOD- and then the u.s. session break was quite clean imo, i.e. on the break of early high (first 30 min) of 4162, the little pause did not go below 62.5 - otherwise i would have been looking to bail if all started dumping back at 61.5... finally some nice runs.. been waiting since last Thursday's move !
Kinda sad in that really good moves in the DAX only occur on economic numbers that are waaaay out of whack or some explosion or airplane falling from the sky or something. Other than that, it seems like chop then push then chop then push with the occasional correlation with the US markets. Days like to day shake the bushes a bit and make those size-demons crap their pants a bit. There was this 160 lot offer after the big move up the US open and the ensuing sell-off and people kept selling in front of him. As soon as the ES printed on the offer and the ESTX50 also printed size on the offer, I took that guy for 32 contracts before he disappeared. There was an immediate whoosh up as the shorts covered and the offers disappeared. It was awesome in that the fake size was exposed for what it was... just fake. I use CVB's at 100 contracts per bar and it sometimes reveals what is fake and what is not. Much of it is. Glad you were able to capitalize on this. Like I said before, it was a great day to record some live trading footage for training. I look forward to more days like this. Good luck.
What is CVB? I know VBs (volume bars). Could you explain why you prefer them. do you use volume alone as an indicator also?