firewalker

out 1/3rd at 11770 for +50 and stop moved to breakeven for remainder prefer to have some profits in the bag before consumer confidence in 10min can't see how it can be any good, but you never know there was an unexpected rise in sales in Germany too (dax)

limit short triggered: in DOW 11820.

Perhaps that's already the reason why those instruments - in my experience - are much more prone to spikes and false breakouts than the NQ or the ES. If you look at how these markets react around NFP or FOMC, the NQ is probably the smoothest and there seems to be less spikes. I have no hard evidence for this, but just take any number of days and you'll see it's pretty much the case.

Nice work jason. One remark though: 40 days is already more representative than 20, but perhaps it'd be interesting to see how this plays out in an uptrending instead of a downtrending market... You could go back to last year and just select a number of consecutive days and see how the stats play out there.

Well there goes my plan to go short around 815... price dropped to 744 already. With New Home Sales and FOMC tomorrow, things could get nasty.

That's a good question, but I can't answer it I do know that in terms of average rage compared to tick size the Russell used to beat the rest. I haven't checked lately since I don't trade the ER2 anymore, but the greater the potential, the greater the risk as well...

After he publicly declared Bear Stearns was fine, three days or so before it got sold, Jim Cramer will probably get more infamous after people see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nkZ3eHeXlc&eurl=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=129917 :shocked:

looks like your average ranging day, not much to do not much news probably just anticipation until FOMC Wednesday, was kind of expecting something like this day

Stella's, from Belgium! Cheers!

It looks pretty weak, but last two hours have failed to go lower I think there might be some surprise coming to the upside though. Will definitely have to keep an eye out for those numbers!

Correct about the stocks, but I don't see how the tick size matters. For me, an instrument is attractive when it has a decent daily range. Tick size is irrelevant for me, volatility is more important. Suppose (pretty close to real life example): ES: $12.50/tick, average range/day = 20 points YM: $5/tick, average range/day = 200 points What would you prefer?

Could you point me towards the source of those statistics? I'm interested in this, since I've found the market to have much more 'trending' tendencies last couple of months compared to last year...

You have to be open for everything I guess, but where would that rise come from?

That's a good point, but the DOW mini has always been traded less than the other e-minis. I suspect the lower trading volume used to be a result of traders preferring the CME platform of Globex, instead the ECBOT. The ECBOT didn't have the stability of Globex imo. Although because of the merger of the two, the DOW mini trades on Globex since the beginning of this year. The difference in trading volume is probably something which has grown historically? Just a thought...

Too late to edit the post, but scratch the word 'not' please double denial is not what I meant to type (Saturday mornings...)

I'm not sure what to tell you, but if ever there was a day "screaming" to go short, it was yesterday for me. First, you need context. I'm not going to repeat everything I posted before, but basically where you note "original candle to go long", you had potential support from in April. I've posted the applicable charts from the ES a week ago in the "How to end a trend" thread, post #27, see here. So, the initial idea in your head would be to buy the (potential) selling climax on support, if you were confident enough to buy when the trend is down. You would then notice, that there was a very strong rejection of resistance couple of days later, on June 17. I don't know much about Fibs, but since this coincides with your 50% retracement and I'd rather be short then long in a downtrending market. The next day, we ended up right back at support. So what does this tell you? Background: strong rejection of resistance, the next day we landed on support again. If you move from resistance to support that fast, sellers are clearly in control. This still doesn't mean we will break support. Then we had Thursday. A smaller ranging day where we ended about in the middle. Despite buying off support (twice), price had a lot of trouble overcoming 1342.50 intraday. Eventually it did, it managed to get back to the other end of the range, and we saw selling come in, again at resistance 1349 (see chart). Friday, yesterday, we opened below support, but if you didn't short on the breakthrough, you could've entered when price turned support into resistance. After that price started falling sharply. Starting the night and the selling from 1349, we moved lower a lot and pre-market was very, very weak. When you see this kind of weakness approaching support for the 4th or 5th time, the odds are quite high it will give away. I didn't trade the ES yesterday, I shorted the DOW instead, but the principles are the same and the chart is very similar. I'd like to think of it as a bouncing ball: the first time you throw it at the floor it has high enough energy to bounce back up. The second or third time it loses energy and bounces only inches up from the ground. Eventually there's no energy left and it stops. When there's no energy left from buyers coming in at support, price does not stop, but it falls through. Which is what happened yesterday.

Why can't day traders not have a 'directional bias'?

I don't think there is an easy answer to that one... We should look at the tools available to policy makers. Basically I would divide them into two kinds of instruments: - monetary policy: implemented by the central bank (Fed or ECB) - fiscal policy: created by the parliament/government of a nation Typically the central banks 'play' with the interest rates... I guess one of the reasons policymakers use this as a tool, is because fiscal policy changes take a longer time to have effect (for example lowering taxes). The big problem is in a situation such as stagflation, where we see rising prices (inflation) and business conditions getting worse (decreasing output), there is no easy way to offset both of these effects simultaneously. Measures taken to put a stop to inflation (more restrictive monetary policy) often means less government spending and as a result less jobs, more unemployment and less productivity. Measures taken to help avoid recession (by increasing aggregate demand) lead to higher inflationary pressures. So it's something of a Catch-22. So what can governments do? Perhaps they just need to sit it through and let the natural cycles take care of themselves?

better miss your exit by a tick, than get stopped out for the tick!

other half stopped out for the exact tick re-entered short with same half @ 11930, stop 40. If I'm out now, I'm done for today.

If you don't mind me asking... How many minutes do you need to determine where value has developed itself?

stop moved to 11935 on other half.

Thanks... it definitely it was one my bigger profits. I contemplated of holding overnight though, but so far it's not decently backtested so I didn't...

first exit @ 11885 for +110

The short signal occurred at 1514 my time (16 minutes before the open) I was afk unfortunately, but I still got a nice entry