jashanno

+1 on the pop up box.

If I try to practice on a replayer on anything > 3x I miss a lot of things that I would notice otherwise. I also find that I trade completely different. Markets are fractal and make waves within waves within waves. So I would think it would be more valuable to look at a faster chart in real time versus a slower chart replayed at a faster pace. Might work for you... doesn't for me.

Jonbig04 trades breakouts of s/r levels and he uses tiny stops. Go to his journal and look at his trades. Basically if you are trading a breakout and it doesn't move in your favor immediately then you are wrong and need to get out even if you are in the green. A breakout of a s/r level should make a strong move with almost no heat and no pause at all. You have to be able to tell when it's breaking out v.s. when it's testing s/r. If it looks like it's breaking out and then you find out it's just testing then you need to bail. Now if you are entering on a breakout and find that you are constantly getting stopped out then what does that tell you? It tells me that a lot of times when support becomes resistance (which is what a breakout is) it will test it at least one more time. So what do you do? I would let it break out initially and then look for an entry when it retraces to test the old support/new resistance area. I will use your example... 1100 ES you are buying at resistance. I would wait on the resistance to break... ok it does now it is trading at 1110. I would anticipate the market coming back and testing 1100 again and probably going a little below it. Ok, now the market is at 1099.00...1098.50...1098.00... now put in your limit order to buy at 1100.00. You want it to be far enough away so that it's not filled by noise but instead a direction change but close enough to give you a nice small stop. Sometimes you can move the limit order with the market (I guess it's the same idea as a trailing stop) because the s/r levels will bend a bit sometimes. Again, with this method you still have to be able to tell if old support became new resistance or was it a test w/ a little bit of a bend (i.e. taking out stops or a 2b) because there's a different approach between the two (at least for me). You mentioned... "And, of course, if I hadn't put on the order at all then price would blast thru without me on board, etc.". If this tilts you then I would lean towards the way JonBig04 plays breakouts because if you do what I suggested you will find yourself waiting for the retracement and it never comes or price gets to 1110.25 and reverses without you on board.

I have looked around but all that I have found is IB. They require $10k minimum to open an account but after that you can withdrawl a good portion if you want to. They also have a demo that you can use that is supposed to replay the previous day but I haven't ever gotten it to work. Another contract.... What about the DAX?

LOL. SIUYA beat me to it. We basically said the same thing. There's your "confluence" :o

Draw a couple of random horizontal lines on a chart and watch price magically bounce around them like they are important. This sounds to me like what you are running into. With that being said I do think they can be used in a profitable system. The key to it would be to have a huge risk reward ratio and I would use it as confluence for support and resistance. That way you have two things confirming that your entry might be good. I would imagine the accuracy would be terrible though so if you a guy that needs 50%+ then this wouldn't work. I have attached two charts from a trade that I did tonight as an example of what I am talking about. I did not use fib levels in this trade and were drawn after the fact but are there just to illustrate what I am thinking. In fact I don't even know if I drew it correctly because I know nothing about fibs. The blue line was what I determined to be support that turned into resistance and I wanted to take a short on the test of the new resistance. It is at the 38.2% fib level so I feel confident in this area holding. On chart 2 you see where my entry was at and my small stop. On chart 1 you see where I am shooting for the new support level as my exit. One thing that might be frustrating with this is if you try to short 38.2% and then 50% then 61.8%... etc. So you need to find the most important S/R levels and the most important fib levels and only trade those if they both match up. To me the most important level would be 50% (again I know nothing about it). But I think about it like this... lets say you go look at a car and the seller wants $10k. You offer him $9k. He counters w/ $9500.... 50% fib. That may be too simplistic though. I also think what you will find is after awhile the fibs are just getting in your way and all you need is the support and resistance levels.

We had our twins 11 days ago. One of them peed all over my shirt while I was watching your video. :haha: good luck on the sleep.

What is your criteria for taking the 2b trades? I would guess you are looking for them off of support and resistance? One thing I like about 2b trades is the risk/reward is usually huge and you know if you are wrong really fast. What I don't like about them is that if I am not careful I find myself fading the trend way too much. My approach is usually to think counter trend as price approaches support/resistance and then to go with the (hopefully new) trend once I am in a position.

I did the exact same thing and got the exact same results so i decided to not even bother. Instead I decided to start looking at the currencies on the CME and to my surprise they look awesome.

move 1st target up to 1.35079. Move stop to BE. Going for homerun on second target.

Here's a trade I like. Just an observation and not even sim. Edit: How do you post your charts? Mine just come up as an attachment. Do you have to have a web link? euro.bmp

Thales, I have spent the last week reading pages 1-300 and the last 50 pages of this thread. I must say this is a great thread and it ranks right up there w/ AHG on ET (if anyone knows what that is). I want to try to force myself to participate and see if I can learn something in the process. I am one of those that reads a lot but rarely posts. I am on sim right now (I watch 6E and NQ) and I replay the day when I get home from work. I eventually want to trade the Asian futures. I tried out Oanda last night and I think that is going to be too painful for me. I really wanted to try to trade the same markets as everyone else here but I couldn't get the data to match and order entry was harder than it should have been so I am just going to stick with what I am doing. I do things a little bit differently than some here so maybe some can help me fix my glaring errors and in return I can .... well I don't know what I can give in return. Maybe some bad advice.