Well, today the person running the trading room spent the entire day teaching us how to recognize some of his trading setups. This was a presentation that involved showing us pictures of setups from past charts. As a result, todays market was pretty much ignored. While it is nice that he took the time to educate us about his setups, I feel that we likely missed out on some great trading as a result of focusing on the lesson plan pretty much the whole day. Not one trade was taken today in the room, because he was focusing teaching us and not the current market. Not too happy about that. I tried to trade on my own but during the last trade I took, I got whipsawed and stopped out around 1028. Ouch!
Today wasn't a good day for retail (newbies) to trade. The pending rollover causes the markets to trade kind of whippy as you saw. Just a quick comment if you don't mind. If you are a new trader trying to trade the ES contract (futures), you should probably try to find a way to trade the "off" the open...What that means is you watch the first 5 minutes at least. This is the opening range. You see where that move ends, and try to trade the second move off the open. If you go back through your charts you will see that this market makes an initial move, testing either previous resistance or support, then goes on to a counter move. Thats the one you can make some money on if you have your act together. Check out todays market on a thirty minute chart. Just as an exercise, put in a horizontal line at 1023.25. Now follow from the open to the left and you can see how off the open, price moved down to test a previous price, then countered to the upside for 13 points. This is happens a lot. If you learn to analyze the longer term chart prior to the open you can plan your entry off this countermove. Get your risk management in place (your stop) and you have a chance to make some money. Take it slow and watch as much as you can before going live. Protect your capital by trading small at first....and be smart about it. Good luck Stevesbg
Admittedly, my trading instinct sucks for figuring out the moves of this beast called the /ES. Actually, today I was THINKING about going long around 1023.5 this morning, but didn't have the balls to pull the trigger. I thought "what if this dips to 1019." I agree that we've seen similar patterns in the morning where it dips down near the open and then reverses upward. Problem, is that, for me, it's hard to tell exactly where it's going to bottom, although I agree that looking at past S/R would help. The intraday bottom doesn't happen at the same time every morning. Sometimes it might not happen until way later than the open. At some point, we'll get a trend-down day and that's probably the day I get the nerve to try and go long in anticipation of a bounce. ;-) EDIT: and what really sucks is that I try to do the "right thing" and use stop-losses, but the market just stops me out and then eventually reverses. If I didn't use stops today I would have made money.
Actually, that's Steve46, one of the resident GURU wannabe's, who spent the whole day posting on ET and creating threads instead of trading the huge 10pt run-up, so I have no idea why he's trying to give anyone trading advice! :eek:
Rickshaw The only "powercharting" guy I know of is Robert Hoffman I know who he is, and I have checked him out but I don't know more than that. What I hear second hand is that the guy makes money but that it is hard if not impossible to follow his trades, because he trades size and mostly scalps.....So...thats the opposite of what I would do.....I like to get on the right side of the market and stay there for at least 5 pts.
Hi Stevesbg, You mentioned you trade in an office with other traders, and it sounds like you trade es futures as a non retail trader. I have not heard of any prop firms that trade futures. I was wondering is there any way I can join? I have been trading futures real money and have been doing well, but would not mind going to the next level and trade prop. Currently I am in escrow selling some property, but should have $ 25,000 to fund the account.
Actually I do spend a lot more time at TL as they don't put up with crackheads like you steve46. It's not my fault you lied about your imaginary relatives jumping to their deaths on 9/11. You should be ashamed of yourself. Many good people died that day and you try to use it to your advantage. What a prick you are.