Here is the OEX using 15 min bars. I keep this chart in front of me at all times. Again I have both my own Pivot System and Standard Pivots in place.
Lefty, I enjoyed reading your comments. Thanks. Would you care to divulge some specifics on performance characteristics you have enjoyed with your pivot system:Sharpe, vol, drawdowns, down days/months, whatever you measure and have found to be useful? I just recently started experimenting with pivots and have been pleasantly surprised by the very encouraging initial results. I get Sharpes of nearly above 1 with basic setups and between 1.5 and 2 with some basic tweaking (not optimizing, just common sense stuff on volatility and trading hours). This is in the US equity index futures. Will try the ideas in FX and Bond futures this week. Thanks again for the interesting thread.
Hello: While I appreciate your comment, I prefer not to reply. I am posting here as a favor to my old mentor who passed away in December. In a few more days (June 21st) I will have fulfilled my promise and I will be stopping. I am glad you are seeing initial success. What I will say is simply that I have used a "modified" system of pivots. They are the same ones I used to signal into the pits years ago. They have worked for others, and I used them myself both on the floor and upstairs. During that time I never once worrried about the data you are asking about. What I did concern myself with was weekly and monthly P&L. When I am done here I will have posted a few trades including at least one example of how to trade the FOMC announcement. I am sure that a motivated new trader will find a way to use the examples and posted comments to improve their trading. I hope you make good use of the concepts I have posted, and I wish you good luck in the markets. Lefty
Lefty if I may a couple questions on the chart you posted with these quotes. "I wanted to be short at the close of the 4th bar after the open" Why? I was monitoring and there just wasn't any significant volume nor "punch" to the downside just a gentle fade into the 10 am turnaround. Were you looking for a quick scalp into S1? Luckily I sat on my hands until it was "obvious" the open was a fade for the blast up. Do you use only previous day's data to calculate your pivots? BTW best info on pivots I've read. Person's book on pivot's not as good as your own explanations. Thanks
Hello Duard: Thanks for your comments. First regarding the short trade. In retrospect, the short trade would have been a mistake. Nevertheless, it is a mistake that I probably would have made. Regarding the pivots, I am sorry but I am not willing to give you that information. I hope you will read my previous posts and create your own "modifications" to the standard floor pivots. Finally, as regards the use of pivots, I hope that you will look at them as tools and use them with skill. How you use them will depend on your ingenuity. In addition, I use many other inputs to trade. I hope these comments and the trades I have posted in other threads, will provide some help to you. Good luck. Lefty
Everyone seems to make trading seem so complicated. I personally don't understand this. Pivots are Pivots there really isn't much to them. Try designing analog/digital chips now that can be a bitch. Trading is more psychology than anything. ozzy
I like to think of "learning to drive" as an example. When you are first learning, you have to pay close attention to everything around you, speed, lights, pedestrians, signs, etc. As you become more adept at driving, not only can you do it without monitoring all the details, but you can and often do, drive while holding a conversation with other people in the car. After you have driven a few months, you may think that you have it down, and in fact you may be able to carry on a conversation while you drive. But check out what happens as you approach an intersection. Conversations "pause", and the new driver switches from "auto pilot" to "manual" in anticipation of the light changing. I think there is a similar difference between skilled, experienced traders, and newbies. At this point in time, I could trade with pivots, with MACD and Stochastic, with or without volume indicators, all together, individually, or just looking at the levels. I can "make it look simple". In fact, (and I think this is why I sometimes lose my temper), for me it IS pretty simple. What you have here is a bunch of newbies who still need to monitor all the inputs. Also they need to ask all the questions, to understand how everything works, and to some extent, they have to make all the newbie mistakes, before they can "make it simple". Good luck with that. Lefty
Dear lefty, Thank you very much for this thread. I believe that most important is HOW to trade using a certain tool rather than knowing what a tool is. Everybody knows what pivots are... any 1st grader can understand the simple arithmetics of them. But how to trade them is another story. Your thread is so good because it illustrates the HOW. There's very few threads like that on ET, and you're one of the very few posters that keep me checking ET every once in a while (I'm mostly on other more informative boards).