Just finished this thread. Great information and knowledge inside it. RedDuke, looking at the posts it seems like you are one of the oldtimers in here. Care to give some of your insights regarding changes of the DAX these last two years? Thanks,
Welcome to EliteTrader. For the most part 2006 and 2007 there were no major except for opening 1 hour earlier before cash. The first glimpse of what was going to come in 2008 was January 2008 during SocGen Kerviel blow up. DAX became much more volatile with a thinner book and a wider spread at times. I personally prefer deeper and less volatile DAX, but it is not up to any of us. Happy New Year!
Fun to see this thread still up and running! It is so fascinating seeing time (years) fly by in a thread like this. Not many posts ago, you RedDuke were still doing sim trading, and now (years later) you are allmost a veteran trader ! How about scientist or any of the other oldtimers, are they still around? It is allso fascinating seeing how peoples trading style change so much over the years. May I ask what kind of trading style you use RedDuke? Scalper or intraday swing trader? veggen
BTW: Do anybody know of any good threads here on ET focusing on short term scalping (profit target of 1+ points), which produce 20-30 signals a day, where reading the DOM and tape is a big part of the thread, and exclude any indicator? I know this is asking for a lot but if anyone have come across a thread talking about something similar to what I mentioned, than please let me know! veggen
Hi Veggen, I also enjoy reading threads that span over the years. I trade based on constant volume bars with 1 indicator â CCI. The purpose of using CCI is to help interpret price action faster. I place many trades, where most of them are wash (+/- few ticks). Then I have some large wins and never take large losses. My only large loss was several years ago when Eurex went down, and when it opened ½ hour later, it gaped against me for about 50 points. Unfortunately, Scientist and few other great traders no longer post here. Regards, redduke
I traded EuroStoxx a bit when I was deciding between EuroStoxx and DAX. EuroStoxx has great volume and market depth, but its moves are too small for intra day, for the way I trade.
Fdax has the better cost return ratio due to higher volatility and higher tick value. You need about 4 fesx contracts to create the same value per move.
Very interesting RedDuke. Sounds like your are doing very good, and that is encouraging to hear. I have been trading the NQ for about 6 months now, and slowly but steady starting to get the hang of it. I am still in "capital preservation" mode, but doing better and better. I only use price action to guide me, but more of intraday swing scalping with rarely more than 5-8 R/T a day. I currently only look for RR greater than 1:3. I guess you can say that I am a bit spoiled when it comes to volatility after starting serious daytrading in 2007. Therefore during last months lack of volatility and trending days (much more range bound than I am used to), I have realised that I am a bit vulnerable when it comes to market conditions as my method works best in trending days. I have therefore lately started focusing on making my trading plan a bit more diversified and beeing able to profit from more market conditions. More of scalp type plays is what I have started focusing on, with smaller R:R and higher winning % (exiting trades if things don't feel right even though target has not been reached), and of course more R/T (something which I feel very comfortable with). I live in Europe and have so decided to start trading the German Bunde during the morning and evening session before the US market opens. Have you had any experience with Bunde, and if so, how does it compare to the Dax? Could you maybe explain a little bit more about your scalping method? (of course without giving away any secrets or edges you want to keep for yourselve). Do you enter exit trades within seconds? Do you enter with limit or market orders? How about R:R? Do you focus a lot on the tape? Since I am not using, and not planning to use any indicators, I am looking to take scalps of S/R, some patterns and trend continutation plays, where I try to get in when the retracement is over and trend ready to continue. Really much the same way as I trade now, but with smaller targets and more trades (taking more plays in both directions). As far as stops go I have a hard time making them smaller than 1-2 points (NQ), how about you? I trade of 10k vol. chart as anchor, 233 tick and 10s. chart with vol. for entry. I realise now this post became a little longer than intended and had a few too many qestions maybe, but hope you find the time to answer at least some of them. Best wishes, veggen
There was a trader called "Mike" (sorry, forgot his family name) who traded the FDAX from Texas, getting up in the middle of the night. As far as I remember he used 5 - 6 stocks of the 30 making up the DAX which correlated best with the DAX as indicator: when these started moving he entered in the same direction. The problem with this method is you constantly have to check for this correlation and switch stocks. Maybe that info is buried in the "Ultimate DAX scalping" thread, I'm not sure. Neither do I know whether this method still works.