torero

Usually spend alot of time during market hours just drawing trendlines as the market is constantly changing so are the trendlines and S/R levels that need to be redrawn. Doing this keeps me from getting bored but keeping out of trouble. I post in forum and chat once in a while. Good thing is MP and pivots are already in place during market hours.

The entry would be the break of the low of the previous bar on the second top with the stop at the highest of the 2 tops. Yes, since I'm a big believer that charts say it all or charts don't lie, what better way to talk about markets than explaining using charts? I spend alot of time drawing charts and making note and saving them for myself to study later on. Best way to learn about your skills levels on how you view the market at that moment in time.

This is an example of my trade last Friday. I chose 600 because the tendency for prices to fluctuate between pivot high and low is 2-4 points. So my stops are usually 1.5-2.5 pt. I took my short at 758.1 and didn't exit until 754.1 where there was resistance 1 pt away. I move stops until the target is hit or my last stop gets hit.

If you have the discipline in place to consistently use stops, then mental stops are ok; this is why I say only experienced traders use them because they already have the discipline to cut the losses when it's time to the pull the trigger. For people like us, who still require the discipline, physical stops are a must. When we will the mental stops the slack from time to time. But those are the times we lose more than we like, bigger hole to get out of. The best way to find the stops is to use pivots (higher highs higher lows and lower highs lower lows) I mentioned in other threads I posted today. I usually place my stops just below the previous low pivot for longs and previous high pivot for shorts. Research this for yourself and see if it fits into your plan. If you have tight stops, move to a timeframe where the low and pivots are closer together to your range of stops. But keep in mind, the lower the timeframe, the more difficult it will be, you have to keep higher timeframe in mind on direction.

I think on average I see 2-3 good trades a day (excluding trendless days where ranges are too small to bother) and I'm a trend-follower. But I'm not a scalper so I can't say for you if you are or not. Scalpers trade more at high volume. My trades can be from 10 mins to an hour depending how trendy the market is. The trait of my trades are the winners stay in position longer than losers. The counter-trend trades (I do little of them) are quick ones since I determine they are scalping trades. If you're overtrading, it may be because your entries are off (this may be from chasing) and your stops might be too tight, getting kicked out too prematurely so you enter. If you hold off from chasing, you'll start to see ideal entries (high reward/low risk trades) don't come that often. You have another psychological weakness is that chasing is caused by greed or envy. You feel the market (and profits) are going without you. Need to curb this emotion. You need to see the downside (risks) from trade. You tend to see the profits but not the losses. Need to consider the losses first. Once you keep this in your head, you will start to trade less because you will be aware of the potential loss from the trade. To consider your loss, you need to set your stop loss order, it's a real loss if you take the trade and consider it gone if you take it. Mental stops are fine if you're an expert but I still make physical stops (I am and will always be a newbie!). Try it. One other problem you may also have it not knowing where the trend is and range is (thus overtrading due to thinking every moment is an opportunity moment). Need to work on your chart reading or study and research the indicators you're using more. Test them out and find if they work in certain conditions and not in others. Need to go back to paper-trading to work on your entries to prevent chasing. When you paper trading chasing, you'll see for youself how unprofitable it is and maybe this will open up your eyes to the problem. Good luck.

I find using non-time charts such as volume or tick charts help forget about the doldrums or no volume areas. This goes for overnight price action. Prices are moved by volume not by time. So I see time-based more meaningful in higher time (day or higher) because it a natural separation periods. Although there are beliefs that time influence prices (10:00am, 2pm, etc), but it's more volume moving pricing, not time. People use time as a cue but it's still volume making the difference. If you ever watch the lunch hour bars in tick charts, you hardly noticed the difference from the open or closing hours except maybe the range is smaller. But those bars is within range of larger bars in opening and closing hours. It shows you shouldn't be trading in that area anyway since it's small range. Just IMHO. Here's the comparison: The 2min chart shows a faint double-bottom, hardly see it. But on 200 tick, the double-bottom is more pronounced. And at the beginning of the shaded gray box, there is movement upward before dropping to 2B area. On 2min chart you can see the smoothed pivots, on 200 ticks, the pivots were more pronounced. This helps me see higher highs/high lows and lower highs/lower lows much better. If you can see the pivots, I easily draw trendlines to mark the trend, on 2 min, it's a bit more difficult (check the red trendlines). Of course, I welcome disagreements to this argument;)

lopen, Pivots are important but they MAY be support or resistance. There is no guarantee that prices will stop at these levels. I have them there to see how prices react to them: will prices stop and bounce or pierce through and continue? Only prices will answer the question, not the pivots. I used to make this mistake and think that's a 100% bounce area. Not true. For me, this is one way (of many for others I'm sure) to determine if you're seeing trending or trendless market is viewing them through higher highs/higher lows and lower highs/lower lows. This works in any timeframes. We all know prices move in waves. Learn to read this and mark them throughout the day so you can identify if you're in an uptrend, downtrend or notrend. Start from the higher timeframes (day, weekly) then work your way down (60min, etc) to see your preferred intraday timeframe. This is the meat of my strategy. Good luck.

soul, lately you've been signing off early. Are the market hours not convenient for your time zone? I can sit only 3 hours as its dinner time by the time NY lunch time comes around so have to leave trading. Sucks but gotta play with the hand you're dealt.

agree, soul, their platform is excellent by far the best in the industry, but their brokerage and services are less than desired. On days where there are freezes and lockups, you visit the forum and tons and tons of not so satisfied traders waiting just to speak to a rep, 30min to 1 hr minimum. Not impressive at all. I use their platform but I trade with MBTrading. Services are great online chat or phone. Tradestation does only phone. This brings me to the problem with auto-trading with Tradestation. Most experienced system traders don't recommend leaving the dang thing at home while you're the beach sipping pina colada. Many sit and watch it, believe it or not, it's not so "auto". When s--t happens, gotta be there to pull the plug and call customer service, else... Murphy's law takes over.

soul, I have a question. When you say tape reading, how do you do it? You read from Time & Sales matrix or Market depth? The word seem to lose meaning from the time that it was really reading from the ticker tape machine. Now everyone uses it without clearly stating what it is. For my own meaning of tape reading, I read price action from bar charts (higher highs/higher lows and lower highs/lower lows). So no idea what others do. Thanks.

Won't make it today. Today's a holiday in Spain so gonna be out with family. See you all tomorrow.

It gave me weird lines after the upgrade. But I deleted the MP files and reinstalled it, worked fine.

The charts are frozen or the orders are frozen? My TS is ok here.

never mind, I uninstalled and reinstalled it and works fine again. Just a heads up for others who plan to upgrade TS.

I think we have a problem with the new TS build with Ant's MP. I just installed a new 3247 build and got this chart with MP enabled. Is there a fix for this problem? Thanks.

I think volume on tick chart is non-existent since ticks pretty much replaces volume (not saying it's a better or worse replacement because the chart counts the tick movements not volume traded per se). I measure the time of completion of each bar to see the pace of trading activity there. So instead of measuring volume on a time interval, it's measuring time on a "volume" interval.

i'll be there.

Same as you, I usually take 2-3 trades max per day, that's pretty much what the market offers in terms of intraday trends. What's the best time to trade: morning, near closing?

Your style is swing trade these instruments? Thanks.

According to John Carter's website, you have to book the place and fly out to their trading room to learn and be mentored in person, it's not a webinar or virtual trading room.

I think John Carter gives trading room sessions plus mentoring. Check out tradethemarkets.com. I'm not promoting him or anything, it might be something close to what you're looking for. One other thing is Level II, not sure about trading such a super duper short term based on level II. My experience was negative. I learned more from Time & Sales than from Level II. Best of luck anyway.

Man, that CBOT, they seem to halt every 4 months. I witnessed 2 already in last 6 months and one spike about 6 months ago that no one seemed to explain. Seems more unreliable than CME, IMO. Another reason not to trade YM.

Michele, are you using MP to trade the European futures? Which ones? How are they working for you? How's the volume compared to US futures? Who is the best broker for trading these? I'm interesting in getting into DAX and Eurostoxx so want to get some insight. Thanks.

I remember I used to daytrade stocks. Looking back, drove me nuts having to open so many charts, juggling them all at once with all the indices on top of that, I had 3-4 monitors, all the flashing signals all over the place with your heartbeat pumping 140/min. What was I thinking? Stocks are better for swing, not really for daytrade, at least for my simple-minded, untalented, un-multi-tasked brain of mine. When I finally moved to eminis, especially ER2, things got a little calmer, relaxed, sometimes fun and sometimes boring. Don't have to deal with news spikes, which stock is correlated with which, now it's just plain vanilla (only 3 charts max of same symbol). I'm not as emotional anymore. Now, I just wait and snipe. No more charting flipping. Signs of aging I think.

My trades are not that complicated... yet. I have one entry and 3 possible exits: stop loss, target and trailing profit stop, whichever comes first. Although my bias sometimes is the target itself: should I take profit at target or let the market take it higher. Sometimes it works sometimes not. But my limitation of holding it longer is restricted to my inability to be physically there the entire day to babysit it so have to take what is given to me. Having a target gives me a reason to take the trade, but it's also a hinderance to letting it run. A dilemna indeed.