good question db. im trying to do position trades on daily and daytrades on intraday. but daytrades is more important for me to master.
Daytrading doesn't necessarily mean scalping, tho. If you're used to trading trends, stick with trading trends. --Db
Db, what's your main basis of detecting a trend of the lack thereof in a day like today (4/08)? Thx Tom
I started a thread called Determining Trend under Trading. Unfortunately it got derailed into channels and indicators and wound up not being about trend at all, but I didn't see any point in arguing about it. Nonetheless, you may find the early stuff that I posted of value (it's not a long thread; I abandoned it fairly quickly). As for days like today, you first have to expect them after a day like yesterday. Even so, you do sometimes get good action after a trend day (look at yesterday compared to Friday), so you can't enter the day with a bias. Just don't fall into the trap of trading yesterday's chart. Trade what's in front of you. Having said that, you have to let the opening range establish itself. Once it does that, you then allow it to develop a trend, if it's going to do so. Today it never did. Except for one little blip in the afternoon, it never exited the opening range. Therefore, there were no trades for a trend trader. This, however, does not stop people from trying to force the market into doing something it doesn't want to do. More than a few people gave up most of what they made yesterday (if anything) because they still don't know how to determine trend, much less trend direction or trend strength. All of which is probably out of place here since this is somebody's journal. But I really can't understand why so many people have trouble identifying chop. If you've got lower highs and higher lows, you've got chop. It's really that simple. No indicators. No gurus. Just the chart. You know how to do this. Just trust yourself to do it. --Db
Great...and one more question cos I know it's traderkay's journal , how long do you give the day to establish it's "opening range"? For eg, today the 9:30 - 10.00am ES range was 881 (9:40am) down to 874.50, but then the bottom of this range was broken at 10:30am when it went down to 873.50. Thx Tom