bathrobe

I have to recommend Mirus/Zen-Fire/Ninja Trader. I rarely have a problem, but if one arises my broker gets back to me in less than 5 minutes by email and always picks up phone.

How do you post the P/L directly to the post so we can read it rather than switching back and forth? Thanks

Since I have been watching ES gaps (since I first stumbled on this thread) and I cut out off hours, the only consistent gap trade from my point of view is to trade candlestick patterns. This can still be very risky due to the RTH open madness. However I see no other way to trade this than using candlestick patterns. Just my observation. FWIW

Hi Brownsfan, Do you take trades regularly based on how what you think the news will be? Personally and I do not claim to be even somewhat good at interpreting how news will effect markets trades like this can be a lot like gambling for a day-trader. I usually sit out news, speeches and fed announcements.

No trades today or rest of week. Brownsfan, do you use the same setups on bonds as you do on indecies or currencies?

Thanks Brownsfan, Thales The only difference is my capital, which makes all the difference for me because in this market I have become a scalper. When I started posting in this thread I just started scalping with a very small account, which left me trading scared money feeling I had to take tiny profits.

Done by 10:30est. Size back.

Currently fear is a function of capital for me as a few losers could wipe out my required margin. Since I have been trading with real capital which goes back about 4 years my winning % hovers around 92%, yes most of these are between 2 and 6 ticks but it far outweighs the 3 point losers 8% of the time. I have stated this before in this thread that I made a personal loan to someone close to me which came from trading acct. so currently I am trading with a small account which makes me nervous, but I would rather trade this than SIM, because I personally treat SIM like an game. Had I been trading normal size May would have been a great month. Yesterday was the first and only day in which I lost money. FWIW, a couple years ago I let trades run for multiple pts. Trades would often take 2 or more hours, which I personally am not built for when trading futures. I want as little exposure as possible. Thanks Thales for your posts regarding yesterday. Today, took initial loss. Ended day +.50

Thales, Thank you for the insight. I started out up $87, then had a $300 loser. And the revenge trading took over. I would say my largest problem is that if I am in a trade and during the course of the trade it begins to turn ugly I do not scratch or close the trade with a smaller loss than I end up with, I always let myself get stopped out at 3 points. Another significant proplem is that my acct. is currently very small so I am trading scared money. You are absolutely correct about letting the wrong trades run. Early in the day I had a short that ran for roughly 14 points, yet I became shaken and exited at 2 ticks. Thanks Chris

Thanks Thales, Great analysis/strategy for b/o

Well, today I overtraded, first up, then down, then up, and on and on. I ended up -100 but I let trades run more so I am happy with that aspect of today.

Thank you for posting the code, nice work. Chris

I am currently reading Mind Over Markets. But need to switch software to have reliable MP charting. Currently looking into Investor R/T which seems to have an excellent Profile add-on.

Hopefully, to inspire some of you to share more, something I am currently watching is VSA at S/R levels, in the ES you must jump in quite quickly as VSA does not give all of the confirmations in ES as in stocks. I use my own S/R levels and not the ones in the TradeGuider software just to be clear.

Two trades today, both for half a point. Forgot to get screen capture. Looking for a way to trade breakouts in the ES, I wait for pullbacks which I do not see as much anymore all that often. I started this thread if any of you are willing to share ideas. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/breakout-trade-strategies-es-6052.html Thanks and good trading going into end of month. Chris

Hello, I have started this thread to discuss different strategies on trading breakouts, I usually miss them because I am waiting for a pullback, which do not seem to happen as often lately in the ES. Hoping any of you willing to post your strategies regarding breakouts would post. Today was a perfect example May 26 09 attached is a chart.

I used to get the TTM free videos and they claimed that a gap (cannot remember if it was on ES or YM) had a 62% chance of a half-fill and if a half-fill happened then an 82% chance of complete fill. You could definitely put the odds more in your favor by using candlestick patterns as Brownsfan pointed out in the first post.

Sure, Using MP levels such as VAH, VAL, POC, and Virgin MP levels I would fade the levels if I thought it was OB/OS or whether it was a virgin mp level or not. I also used VSA when it it worked in conjunction w/ these levels to strengthen the signal. Now I find the market rarely respects these levels (in fairness I have not looked in a while). I have now moved on to trying to get better at identifying VSA setups alone along with WRB's. NihabaAshi has done quite a bit of work on the latter. Chris

I could not find anything on a google search, where did you find the ones you have already watched?? Thanks Chris

Thinking about it more the two days were not back to back. More importantly when the dow dropped 777 points CNBC dedicated an entire evening of programming to it. Of course this is a huge event, but who is benefiting from this type of programming on a financial news network, not the pros, institutions, hedge funds, or pension funds. All that evening did was freak out every small retail trader even more than they already were, so in turn maybe many more removed what they still had left in the market, possibly leading to more volatility. Look at the High Low on the days on the following chart. I think this helped lead to where we are now. Chris

Last October/November I feel the market moved from being volatile to what I would describe as crazy-hyper-volatile. My bread and butter setup worked for years and all of a sudden no more, also the setups no longer really occur. I remember last October the DOW was down nearly 800 points one day and up 1000+ (Oct 13th) the next. As far as 5 years ago, I was just starting to trade, and was trading equity options rather than futures and my analysis was really not there so I can't speak to then, I just believe the market is an ever evolving beast. I can't remember where, but I recently read that the advent of CNBC, Bloomberg, and so on has changed the way markets trade as well. As a result of instant quotes for all even the smallest investors panic and pull out their money on a whim. I do not see as many pullbacks on charts above 15min. either.

I know a long term winner very well and his strategy is the ability to change his strategy based on what the market is giving him at that time. This probably is not the answer you wanted but the market does not trade today like it did 5 years ago or last November.

Robert, I have been watching this version of the Squeeze for a while, it is free for Ninja and was originally written by the paintbarfactory.com. You can get it free from TradingStudies.com - Custom programming for electronic trading platforms.... The divergences as shown on the chart below can be quite powerful, though I am yet to take one live. Here is a chart from today showing a good move on 512tick with PBF Squeeze using divergence as the signal. The Paint Bar Factory seems to react quicker sometimes. Does your friend use the squeeze? I would be interested if they have found success with it. Have a good weekend, Chris

Regarding TTM, I would do what they do also if I could. Enjoy long weekend.

I question TTM's model altogether. I used to be on the list of free videos and late one evening they sent me one called "Thanks fed for 25k" which included a 30 contract ES trade that was running and gathered many points. In later videos they discussed swing trading the ES with a 100 point stop (not kidding) and that there stolen squeeze indicator had fired off several 5k losses. I would not at all be surprised if most if not all of their revenue comes from selling overpriced indicators and web events, not trading. Of course this is just speculation, I was once a huge cheerleader of theirs, but the nonstop barrage of 7k training and 3k meetups in LA and 1500k indicators that are free on the web got to me after a while.