jonbig04

this thing won't upload my attachments so here: http://www.filedropper.com/78 http://www.filedropper.com/781 Problem that I'm having with the number 2 section of my rules. I'm only entering on flip tests (pbs) of areas like pivots, ORL, ORL, GLOW, GHIGH. These areas are just intraday s/r. I shouldn't be limiting myself to them. I should be able to enter on flip tests of any intraday s/r. There is nothing special about the s/r in the first 15 minutes. But what criteria do I follow? How can I test it? Hmmmmmm

Price never pulled back enough for me to short, and to further complicate matters has confirmed a DB.

I'm getting into the habit of posting a chart before the day as well as after. I kinda like it.

My ES pivots or S/R levels or whatever you want to call them: 926 919.25 909 898 885.50 (big one) 876.5 866.5 841

Flipasaurus Rex

I said I would have set BE rules a week ago. I have them now. BE at +5. I've been toying around with it and I simply can't move it at +2 or +1 without reentering. If you're going to re-enter, why get stopped in the first place? The exception would be if you had a really bad entry (in which case you could be glad to be out to get an improved price), which won't happen to me because my stop is tight enough to where a slightly bad entry gets me stopped anyway.

Thanks atto, I was hoping you would check out my chart. First I want to clarify something that may be puzzling to people following along, and will make it easier to answer your question. My rules have 3 parts. This is how I like to think of it. 1. The first is directionary (lol I made that word up). Since my targets are usually around 10ES this part of my rules is what, hopefully, tell me when the market may move 10 points and which direction that will be in. This consists of analyzing larger time frames (100k cvb, hourly, 30kcvb etc) and first determining trend. Then determining major levels of S/R. The big levels, the one that always have some kind of influence. Once that is done I wait for price to retrace back to a major level on a large TF. Assuming the trend is down (like now), on a smaller TF like a 1min, this will look like a rally. For me its just a PB. I wait for the rally to reach a major area of S/R, then I switch to a small TF. There I wait for a reversal formation of some type usually a DB or DT. When it confirms, then I enter. This is what I believe will tell me which way price is going to go (at least 10) and when its going to do it, but its only half the battle. 2. The second part is what I call entry (but you may not call it that). This is where I try to determine where I can enter on the trend that just developed that day (after the reversal). This I do by entering on the flips. As of right now the flips I can enter on are ORH, ORL, major levels, and midpoints of patterns. This part of my rules determines where my entry will be in the trend. This is the part I am thinking about modifying slightly to include more flips and perhaps more guidelines on those flips (as reversal formations don't happen all the time, when they do I shouldn't be missing an entry just because ORH didn't flip but some other level did). 3. Surgical entry. This is the part that ideally I find even more protection for my stop (and the part I dropped the ball on friday). Here I want to find out where exactly, to the tick, the level was flipped to and try to get a surgical an entry as possible. A lot of times I watch a specific point (to the tick) wait for the vol spike that always happens when the level breaks and see if I can figure out if its a break out or a stop run/exhaustion. Still need work on this section. Right now I'm waiting for a little confirmation before entering. I guess I will learn what works as I go. Having my rules split up like this help me determine which part I'm screwing up. For example, friday #1 was right, #2 was right, but I screwed up #3. So when I go to look at what went wrong, I know to look at section 3 of my rules because there other sections did their jobs. I said all that so I could answer Atto's question. First thing that comes to my mind is that looks like a double top. If the two peaks were at a major level on a time frame of say 1 min and the larger TF was in a down trend, I would absolutely be shorting the next test as I would see it as a hump retest. If that chart was a large TF (say hourly) then I would look for a reversal confirmation on the small TF chart (1min or 10,000cvb). If that happened then I would be looking to enter on some sort of flip after the reversal confirmation confirmed. If this was on the 5 sec (assuming all other criteria have been met) then I would be waiting for a vol spike at that level and then some hesitation before entering the short.

Oops, in that last chart, I meant to say that I CAN'T chalk that trade up to bad luck, not that I can. Anyways, that particular error won't happen again. Getting stopped to the tick sucks bad. There's no need to over-analyze this particular trade.I paid too much attention to the line on my chart and my stop was a tick smaller than it should have been. Simple fixes, but it did get me thinking about the flip tests in general. Perhaps I should draw my own lines in real time. Maybe the automatically plotting ones aren't helping. This would also mean more entry opportunities because there could be multiple flips to play during the day, I could also have stricter criteria (see below) on those levels. This isn't something I think I can sort out before tomorrow morn, but it could potentially look something like this: Remove the autoplotting ORH and ORL. Plot them myself (which 90% of the time will just be a formality), plot any other intraday S/R levels that cause a minimum reactionary bounce and play those flips as well (only, of course when all the other criteria are met-major area, reversal formation etc). I could have stricter criteria on the flips themselves regarding the bounce and breakout leading up to the flip. There's no way to know for sure whether a level has flipped or not, before it does. But the criteria I'm thinking of I like to call the "daylight" criteria. Just an idea.

I use itunes (but i've never tried the visualizer), pandora, and mainly the iheartradio site/app so I can stream radio stations. Denver has a good one, so does DC.

So we broke up, not down. Well I've got plans for that too lol. It would basically be a mirror image of what I was going to do on a break down.

Yeah you're right. Thanks for pointing it out, I can see clearly where I messed up. I have to remember to treat those big patterns accordingly. That's true about ORL and ORH, they simply find and plot the S/R that's already there. It's a shortcut.

Thanks atto. With one excepting I agree completely. I attached a PDF that will hopefully explain my behavior. tradeS.pdf

Bah. You're right. OK, I'll come up with solid B/E rules before Monday.

Atto, I'm going back and forth on it. Stop placement is the same regardless of entry. I'm not too worried about entries anymore because ideally my stop is protected by the level (s/r, OR, GL). As you can see even from today's chart, they offer pretty reliable s/r. jbtrades, thank you. took a stop today for -1.25. notes in the chart.

haha! I'm enjoying tracking her progress. Great work. Its amazing what can be done when we all aren't huddled around over-thinking what we're doing.

So I think I have all the details worked out in the new plan. I pretty damn confident this will get me my 20-30 ES per month. Its tough making a plan bc real time always presents you with a scenario that you didn't plan for. I've taken a few trades this week some worked out, some didn't (my short was stopped by 2 ticks before yesterdays reversal). My first plan was basically just an entrance plan. I just jumped in and got a good entry, but I really had no reason for thinking price would continue in my direction once I entered. Add in the discipline to hold for large targets and depending on the volatility, you can be profitable doing JUST this. I was for months and I was meeting my goal. I noticed though that the net was dropping while the VIX did. If I did this now I would probably do decent or break even. With this plan I had the entry but not the direction. My second plan was just s/r. With these rules I was right pretty often about which way price was going to head (remember calling all the HODs and LODs), but I had no way to enter. Sure I would get lucky and catch one here and there (and that was enough to be profitable), but it was luck whether I would get stopped out or not. With this plan I had the direction, but no good entry. What I have done is combined the two and more importantly, added patterns. Patterns are really making the difference and I should have used them long ago. Look at the DB (at globex low) this morning or the DT yesterday. I am being conservative and I'm only playing patterns that are with the larger trend. I also only take the patterns that occur at predetermined s/r. So once price gets to S/R I don't jump in like I used to, I wait. If a pattern confirms then I can be pretty damn sure which way price is headed (price reverses via some kind of DT or DB like 80% of the time). Once I have that information THEN I can use my entry rules. The reason I'm very confident isn't because of my backtesting, its because I really feel I've addressed the weaknesses in my earlier systems. That all said I'm gonna kick this thing off tomorrow. As you can imagine I don't get my set up very often. 2-5 trades per week. So on days I don't enter I won't be updating. After all this damn time and effort, I think I finally figured out what to do. Now I just have to do it.

I agree with Bear Mtn. There is no stop placement silver bullet. One thing you can do is wait for stop runs before entering. However, as you can imagine, you miss many trades this way. Another thing you can do is be extra careful during lunch hours. However I think the most important part of entering is that your stop loss must be protected. I personally believe that this is more important than confirmation. Just my two-cents though. Sometimes shit just happens.

So true, so true. Yet even in traders who have accepted importance of learning price action over just watching an arbitrary indicator we see pages of analysis based on a few hours of trading. My motto is ask myself this, is this going to make me money? and also KISS.