A $77 GAIN is great compared to my $1100 LOSS. I was cut up severely by the whipsawy action of today, offsetting my cool gains on the MSFT litigation issue. Oh well, such is the life of the trader ... to not take the occasional $1k+ loss is just not possible. I am still remain very +'ve for the week, because Tuesday was a gift.
To me there are whipsaws and then there are other whipsaws. For the first time in many months, we saw what I call (courtesy of Joe DiNapoli) railroad track bars in the futures ------ what you might call gigantic, ultra-rapid whipsaws. These are not that hard to trade with tick-by-tick tightly wound corroborating indicators, linking together SP, ES, and NQ. To me RRs are rare but wonderful gifts, though they put an exceptional premium on rapid-fire judgment and instant executions. They are whipsaws, but such huge ones that just catching 70-80% of the moves in each direction gives you a few thousand dollars in just minutes on ES or NQ, It's the narrow, tight-range-bound whipsaws in chop that are always the hardest markets to trade. Even dead zone action today in ES had a 5+ point range bouncing between the Bollingers, more than ample to take reasonable profits. The markets really have changed enormously since the Labor Day break ------ moves are much faster, much broader, often reasonably sustained, and ranges have expanded enormously, both in trending conditions and in range-bound times as well. I am definitely enjoying these conditions, near ideal for e-mini trading.
Some good points on whipsaws armaniman. Good points on the trading environment too ... somewhat of a paradigm shift in the markets ... I will need to drink more caffeine to keep up with the speed of some of these moves! You are correct in what you have said ... on such days, the hare wins and the tortoise loses ... the gym beckons me.
I missed amt. It really pissed me off. I made a lousy 300 bux, cause I came to it late. That was a 50k trade if i've ever seen one. Ohhh well.... Did you trade it. That was about as ideal as they come.... Armanian- your observations are very accurate. Candletrader- Sorry to see you took a loss. 77 dollar days just irritate me. Either I make a good deal, and can be proud of myself, or I loose some and can look over the day and say here's where I screwed up, lets not do that again. 77 bucks is just a wasted day it feels. Better luck tomorrow.
p2, I did load up 9k around 9.50-9.51, sure hard to get my order fill for 5k lot. It was nice, sold around 10.20-10.50 range. Made $7000+ on it. Knew it is going higher. It is like CLS yesterday, I had 9k CLS but got shake out. Before seeing CLS going up 1.5 points higher.
p2, I was about to quit, but suddenly this AMT show up in top loser list, and it was down big too from $11 to $9.70. I was thinking p2 must have made a bundle on it, since it is GNP pattern. It was good, thanks to AMT, I was able to hit a $10k day as well.
The coming of the new post-summer environment has reinstituted a variety of discipline that was necessary prior to the Summer. Now that volume-induced volatility has picked up, time-of-day based differentials in follow thru have become starker than they were through the Summer period. This simply means that the mid-day Dead Zone 'move follow-thru' is now considerably less than that in the morning and late afternoon environment. Traders are participating (as proxied by volume) the most in these time periods: 9.30am-11.30am and 2pm-4pm. 11.30am-2pm is, on average, a difficult period to trade as a result of minimal volume follow thru on the moves. The immediate conclusion is to stay clear of this so-called Dead Zone period unless your intraday charts show that volume is still on a par with the morning. As a result of yesterdays poor performance, I simply traded the morning and the late afternoon, and was amply rewarded. The Dead Zone proved to be a somewhat choppy affair and it was heartening to view it from the sidelines, and only participate in the trenches when the conditions were closer to my perception of optimal. A pictorial addendum is here: http://www.geocities.com/rangecontraction/sep7.html
Rough day for me. Look at q. That massive block and subsequent volume bar really got my interest. I charged in with 20k shares, and gave it a 20c stop or so. Guess I was that guy who got stopped out. Lost about 7k yesterday, 13k on the week. I think it is rather hard to be picking at bottoms while the market melts around you..... I bought some really cheapie dis 25 calls for 20c each, and I hope to flip em monday for like a 400% gain.
p2, I got in MXT but got out very early. Later it rebound 1.5 points more from where I sold. It really sux to see it go up so much after I sell.