86834

If you want to trade break outs, then you should be looking at the bigger time frames such as daily, monthly and weekly for key s/r levels and over all direction in the market. For example, last week in ES has been a great trading week as the market has been repeatedly trying to test resistance on the daily chart and consolidating, and on the weekly time frame we're approaching key resistance. I've attached a couple of charts.... Remember that 'day trading' simply means that you close out your positions at the end of the day. It doesn't mean that you're restricted to use small time frames like the 5min chart, which isn't really going to tell you that much in the grand scheme of things. You need to know what the market is doing, and looking at the large time frames will help you identify this so that during a trading session, you can position yourself to take advantage of the big runs and breakouts during the day. There's no point taking a breakout to the upside on a 5min chart when there's key weekly resistance 2points above you.... trade smart.... boost

5, 10, 15, 60min, Daily, Weekly and Monthly. The weekly and monthly charts i glance at every now ever couple of weeks

bang on mate, couldn't of said it better

What he said You wouldn't think you would become a top barrister by just reading a few books and an internet forum would you... I do find it shocking the amount of people who think trading is going to be easy to learn and is a quick path to riches. It's a job, a professional job and it takes time to get anywhere with it.

I hate these types of questions lol 5 ticks is just fine for my trading, but it all depends on market conditions, if there's massive momentum and volatility in the market then at times i will go up to a 2pt stop, but only rarely. If you're right you're right, if you're wrong then you're wrong, no need to use a massive stop. Plus if a trade changes after i'm in it i'll just scratch it or take a 1tick loss on it. As for exit targets, once again, all depends on how the market is trading. For example yesterday was pretty damn slow, complete lack of volatility etc, so i was just taking 2pts on my trades. Near the end of the day we broke the tight range of the session and momentum kicked in and i took 6pts on that trade. It's all about feel, being able think quickly on your feet and being fickle. There's no A+B=C in trading, you just have to put the time in to develop your feel and find what suits you, because no two traders are the same. I know it's not the answer people want, but it is what it is.

Lots of people seem obsessed with volume thinking that price will follow it. So for example they would be looking for volume on a break out to confirm etc, and when the trade does won't work out, then they're left wondering why because it did it on volume. What you should be doing is watching how the price is trading, watching the speed of it, watching out for the current open interest, watching how many is trading into the bids and offers, keeping an eye on parked orders on the book, asking yourself which side is heavier, watching the flow of balance in it, watching out for large parked orders and watching if they lift or not when high ticked. These are just some of the things you need to be looking at constantly when trading day trading. Volume is just the sum of a trade, nothing more.

For me personally... listed below 1. Ditched the indicators 2. Put the effort in and learned how to read price action and momentum 3. Gave the market my full attention from open to close, what i mean by this is that i stopped messing around with music and websites when it got quiet. There's always money on the table to take. 4. I stopped basing stuff on volume. Someone that i used to trade with ages ago, who did really well out of trading, always used to say that it was a load of bollox's that price follows volume. For me it took a long time for me to realize this, and my trading changed dramatically when i just focused on how price was trading. 5. I started off really young, and i'm still young now in the grand scheme of things, but as grew up a little bit and matured more, that took me from a good trader to a great trader.

Just posting a chart of my trading today to illustrate the point i made earlier in the thread. It was a really slow and boring today, there was a complete lack of volatility in the market and after the worse then expected figures we just trended down all day. I had four trades, all going with the trend using a trading style that i like to use when volatility and momentum is low. I went with the trend,adjusted my came plan to how the market was trading, and i walked away with 8 points on ES, and not one of my trades was a buy. Do you need a better example of the trend is your friend?

In answer to your question about how often do i get stopped out before the market goes where i was expecting it too... pretty rarely to be honest, and i only use a 5tick stop per trade. That's not to say i don't have losing trades, everyone has loosing trades, just some more than others, but i very very rarely have a loosing day, but i still have them. I understand that you're frustrated, we've all been there, but you seem to be looking for a set rule. There are no set rules that are the same every single time you enter a trade. I know it isn't what you want to here, but that is the truth of trading and it is what it is. You have to develop a feel for how the market is trading. You have to also remember that day trading is the hardest discipline in the trading world because there are so many time frames above you, so you need to be aware of all the time frames and where you are in relation to them, as well as anything else that may effect the market such as economic data etc (people who were using an array of indicators that told them to short just before the consumer confidence figure will know what i mean lol) I'm not trying to put you off or anything, but don't underestimate what you're trying to accomplish. Learning to trade is hard, really, really hard, and it will be a long time until you're proficient to do it full time. Speak to any full time trader on these forums and you will see that we've all walked the long right of passage before we eventually got there. Regardless of what some stuff advertises, you ain't gonna be a millionaire this time next year. This time next year you're probably going to be thinking to yourself that you've finally cracked it, only to find out that you haven't... You have to remember what you're dealing with... you're active in the global financial markets, so once the romantic view has been removed, you're trading on a field full of banks and professionals. Put it this way, you wouldn't decided that you could all of sudden become a top lawyer by reading a couple of books and a forum would you? Or you wouldn't get up one day and decide that you want to be a professional football player because you want to earn lots of money. If trading was easy to master, then everyone would be doing it. As with the lawyer example, if you put the work and time into it then you can become a lawyer, and that's the same with trading, but it takes hard work, time and dedication. There's a post somewhere on here from a full time trader who stated that it took him 8 years to get where he had and it cost him a marriage. It can be done, and if this is what you really want to do then don't give up on it because you will get there, but you have to take it for what it is. My advice is to put your levels in and watch how price trades all day for as long as you can, then you'll start to see what i was on about in my previous post. It is what it is.

The trend is your friend, but in day trading you need to learn how to guage price action and momentum in the market. You have to remember that support and resistance levels are not set in stone, they are merely points where you can enter the market, but price action and momentum will determine how you use the level. So for example if price is trading quickly to the upside, momentum in the market is high and there's high volume to add fuel to the fire as well as strong open interest to the upside, then in this case you shouldn't be looking to sell a resistance level above you, if you did you would be standing infront of a steam train trying to fight the market. In this situation the highest probability trade is to wait for the level to break and turn to support and then use it as an entry point to get onside with the trend and momentum. Even when volatility is low, you're still looking to stay on side with the trend, buying support into an up trend and selling resistance into a downtrend. I've attached a chart that i took from wednesday last week of the emini spoo. Here you can see the trades i took that day with explanations of why. As for cutting your losses quickly... it's not the road to ruin. Remember that a lot of the books out there are based on swing trading, but it doesn't matter what style of trading you're into, the principles stay the same. An example of this would be the other day when we reached the high of 2009 in the emini sp500, we traded up to it on the back of very strong economic data, so even tho i had a quick short at the high, the best trade at the time seemed a be a break above the level where stops would start getting hit, shorts would get nervous, and the chances were that the market wouldn't look back once broken. So we high ticked the level which failed to produce a follow through, market traded off, then at the time if we high tick it again it should go with a bang, so on the second break i got long off the high using a 5 tick stop, the market failed to follow through. So seeing as the the market failed to follow through on the second high tick, i didn't need my stop to get hit to know i was wrong, i just scratched the trade and the market ended up trading off. In trading you need to fickle and think fast on your feet. As for letting your profits run, this is also true. If you're in a position and you have no reason to get out of it, then why get out? When you lack the ability to read how price is trading and momentum then you have no way to gauge the strength of your position. For example if you're long, and after 5 points price starts to struggle to trade higher, the open interest on the book is leaning more towards the offer, and there are very large parked orders on offer that won't lift no matter how many times they get high ticked, then you gotta start thinking to yourself to this move is coming to an end. Learning how to read price action and momentum is key to being a consistent day trader, but unfortunate it's also the hardest aspect to get a feel for and the only way to learn it is to put in the screen time. There are no indicators that are going to do it for you, you gotta put the hard work in. Welcome to the hard knock life of trading You'll get there in the end as long as you put the hard work in.

no, a sneak preview of something that i like to use. I'm not one for giving the golden goose away, but think it's something that people can apply whatever methods they're using to trade. A move is a move, and this will help people stay in it

I've made a post on trailing stops in the emini's so check the blog out if you're interested It's a nice and simple practical method and is something that you can implement straight away into your trading. Let me know what you think about it, or if you have any suggestions Boost!

You're in luck because i just made a post on my blog about a method to trail stops http://868347.blogspot.com/ I'm not leaving it up for long tho. Kinda like a sneak preview Boost!

my first trade of the day on es was a real jammy one. I'll post it on my blog later but i was long from 837 with a 6 tick stop, market came down to my stop, kissed it, didn't fill, then shot off and i got my 3pts lol

another thing that i want to add after receiving some pm's off that steve guy who posted earlier.... On these forums that are a small handful of traders that are actually successful traders, DbPhonix, Firewalker, SoulTrader, Atto, myself included to name a few. Amongst them they've had a various levels of success, some have have reached the magic million mark, others are well on there way, but regardless of how much they've made so far, for us this our full time job, our living which we support our families and nutty girlfriends with (maybe i'm the only with a nutty bird) so getting into arguments us telling us we're wrong, we're just trying to sell something etc isn't really gonna help your cause when you're trying to learn, especially seeing as we're trying to help you. We don't have do, it's not like it's our job to help new guys, we do it out of our passion for trading. Just had to get this off my chest as i think traders lab is a really good resource for new guys and there are some cracking traders here like the ones i named above, so don't go ruining it for yourselves by turning the place into a bitch fest.

two trades so far this morning on ES... a long from 841.75 and a long from 847.50. I've posted charts on my blog of the trades setting up and entry. Boost!

My blog is free, and i like to think what i post on my blog is helping people. Mentorship is advertised, and lets be honest, it isn't exactly in your face advertising, and this is the first time i've spoken about in on a public forum. It's only really aimed at people who would like to trade exactly how i do in a live room to see how i actually enter my trades, and it only came about because i get a few emails a week with people asking for mentorship. Not particularly interested in having hundreds of people in my trading room, nor am i bothered about doing webinars etc If you have the basics down, then i think just reading my blog can help a lot, but that's just my opinion, and i've never suggested people should read my blog over anything else out there. The way i see it, i'm a full time trader, but at the end of the day i'm just another guy out there. My blog is my take on things... take it or leave it, i'm not particularly bothered, but if people are liking it then great, and i'll continue with the blog. One of the reasons why i started the blog was because personally, in my opinion, i think it's hard to actually give out advise to someone on a forum because there's too many people who will just steam and in go 'no you're wrong' or 'this guy isn't real' or 'this guy is talking crap' and the thread is just turned into an argument. With my blog i get to post my take on the market without any of that crap ruining it. It annoys me that someone might just say 'oh he's just marketing something' or 'he's selling a dream' because i genuinely don't care if you read my blog or not, let alone pay for mentorship etc. If you like what you see then read it, if you don't, then don't read it. Pretty simple really. Just adding my 2 cents seeing as i was dragged into it.

in my opinion i think for retail traders infinity futures is the best

No but you can read about me in the june print of stocks and commodities magazine. I haven't had time to read through the whole thread, but if you're only going take advice of someone who will show you their personal financial statements so you can see how much money they have then you're gonna be looking for a long time. I share the trades i take on the blog and often post the trades live, for example i''ll make a post of the market as a level forms, then later on when the trades comes into play, with the profit target and a chart showing the target met. Can i see your bank statements?

have a look at my blog if you're after some guidance http://868347.blogspot.com/

Past week has seen low volume days in the market. I've written a post on my blog being able to adjust to the different types of days if anyone is interested. Happy trading!

Right guys, made a a new blog post today on ways to use your order book to read order flow to help comfirm your trades around whatever levels you want to trade, whatever your style is. Let me know what you guys think, because if you like it then i'll try to make some more posts on it. http://868347.blogspot.com/ Boost!

ok guys, if you fancy it, it check my blog out as i posted two live trades for today... Hope everyone else is have a good day too

I found this post on "Re: Trader P/L 2009" interesting and have nominated it accordingly for "Topic Of The Month April, 2009"

Today was a slow a day, but it's a fine example to carry on from my post the other week on knowing when not to trade. The first chart here is a 5min chart of ES a couple of hours into the session. One aspect that a lot of new traders seem to do (not saying any in particular, just making a general comment) is they get the whole 'seeing the trees before the forest' syndrome, and get caught up too much in the general price action. The 5min chart here shows exactly the type of trading that you want to stay out of regardless of your style. In situations like this, price can act like a leaf in the wind, and in many cases you'll just get caught out by whip saw. Now even tho it was a slow days, and much of the lower time frames looked like this, there were still some great opportunities today. Within the first hour we had a nice channel develop on the 15mins (my fav type of trade). Within such areas, as i've said before in my posts you are like to find low momentum and choppy action, such as the 5min chart that i posted above. Now when this channel breaks, then it's a different story, momentum now comes into play and the market has a stronger sense of direction (see second chart) Here you can see the break out (red circle) and retest (blue circle) Now what ever you style is, picking the right areas in the market to play in saves you a lot of pain and heart ache. Relax and go with the flow, you've got pretty much 8hrs to trade, don't trade on the markets terms, trade on your own terms, and one term that should apply to all traders is staying out of the crap. Today there were some beautiful trades, especially when we broke 800 area and the sell off afterwards, but i'm saving them for my blog. No point in having two exactly the same posts! Boost!