For me 1130-1400 EST are the worst times to open a new trade. Usually, the market is full of chops and fake breakouts during this time. It might be great for scalpers though.
I worked at a market maker (liquidty provider, whatever they want to call it) and they don't have a lunch 'break'. They cater in-house and eat lunch at their desk. True however, 11-2:30 its really ho-hum boring...
If you "tape" trends you can eliminate some problems with seeing the end of a trend. The essence is slowing down. Trends are formed with bars. and their envelope is usually a channel at it's simplest. Math of bands does not work for obvious reasons all well documented. If you go to slower fractals, you see the character of a trend change. At some point most of the bars in a trend look to be the same length and the channe; appears as having width that is filled with bars. This is a "tape". Like putting tape between the channel lines. If you monitor tapes, then life is relaxing. To maximize profits, you slip down to the next faster fractal and use indicators to get you out. After while you can use trend endings to decide the modus of the market. Sometimes it is an enter/exit modus and other times it is a reversal modus. About the time you notice you cannot differentiate the favorable and unfavorable parts o the day, you will be at the point where you can adopt a twin modus approach. You are only at the entry/exit modus now. If you use reversals now you will be giving back some porfits.
You can get past this. It takes about three distinct steps, some of which you may be doing now. Do not exit on stops. Learn what stops trends and complete your turn then. On screwed up entires do a flat exit. When you are fluent in executing on all these unemotionally and have thus cut drawdowns almost out of existance, you can begin to trade ahead of scalpers (See scientist and some of baggerlords actual trades when posted) and let them "push" your trades during what you now see as chop and fake BO's. Leading indicators will always be there to use.
Bubba7, Thanks for your post. I agree with you. But I don't like that style of trading since it takes too much mental energy out of me. I'd rather stay out and conserve my energy for the rest of the day. Thanks. Chinook
most profitable trades for me is during the time of most volatility: first 15 minutes at the open and last 15 minutes before the close
You've identified that it is 'full of fake breakouts etc., waiting for them to occur and fading them is a great way to make low risk $$$, and you can even switch sides quickly on the less frequent occasions that they turn out to be real and pick up decent moves because you are in the groove of the market... Best Natalie
fwiw I like 9:40-10:30 am best, rarely 10:30-11am and that's it. no trading after 11am unless a rare 2-day high/low continuation rally/selloff day. for the other 95% of the time, it's all first-hour trading.. "Prime time" = Tue/Wed/Thur 9:40am-10:30am I also take day-of-week into account (eg I prefer tue/wed/thursdays primarily... as fridays have lighter volume, and mondays may be slow starts etc) and seasonal/holiday/triple witching etc for which days are best.. also take trin, current strongest-moving sectors, "how many gap stocks are there this morning - many or just a few?", and nas premkt futures ($QMI in esig) into account.. ken
Thanks for your post. Usually during this time (obviously) volume is very low and it takes a long time for NQ/ES move. Trading during this time just drains my mental power --I'd rather wait or do something else and get ready for the rest of the day. Thanks, Chinook