brownsfan019

James, Good idea! Sooner or later those will need to be printed, so I would suggest getting into the habit of printing them regularly. Exactly how to present everything is up to you. Depending on the amount of trades taking place, I would consider weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly binded, professional looking pieces. Full color is the way to go although it will cost more to do so. Another idea - you can also group by asset class. If you are doing quite a bit of ES analysis, that in itself could be a good binder. If there's some stocks in there, options, etc. find a common ground - maybe an S&P 500 binder that would encompass the ES, options and SPY. Good luck and keep up the great work. Some days it will seem silly but if your goal is to be a professional trader - for yourself or a firm - these will be priceless.

Abe, 10% return in 10 months is doable, but not easy, especially if you just park it into some funds/stocks. A managed program could work, but fees could be an issue as well. My suggestion is to either do it yourself and keep your expenses very low or settle for less. I'm guessing your experience in Oil and/or China is limited, if any at all. That's a recipe for disaster. Just b/c you want to pop that $10k does not mean you should just throw it somewhere you know little about. You have learned quite a bit trading the YM, so start there. Maybe not just your trading, but something else... I don't know what that something else is, but stick with what you know. You know how the YM moves. You know the margins, risks, etc. You've seen there's plenty of movements lately, so that $1k return could be had in days/weeks. As much as I do not want to say it, a signal calling service could do it. I have ZERO to recommend, but if you find a hot trader right now, you could get that $1k in no time. Just don't get greedy if you do. I am not condoning using a trading service, so please no one mis interrupt that. For illustration sake: $10k could get $500 margins = 20 contracts to trade. Since I don't care for the YM, we will assume the ES is being traded. Goal is $1000 return = 20 ES pts. Need 20 ES pts on ONE contract OR ONE point on 20 contracts. So, there you go - ONE ES pt trading 20 contracts will get you the $1000 return. Doesn't get any easier than that. Keep in mind that this is a idea or a :ciao: idea. My point is that the return needed/wanted is very attainable but risk is needed in order to do this. THE ILLUSTRATION ABOVE IS JUST THAT - AN ILLUSTRATION. BY NO MEANS AM I RECOMMENDING ANYONE DO THIS, INCL ABE. THIS IS MORE OF A GAMBLE THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

Two ideas in that one sentence. If your stop is a 'worse case scenario', as many stops initially start out as, then it's just that - a get me out of here price. That's a possible trading rule. Another possible trading rule is to trail the stop in some fashion - aggressively or not. Two completely different topics in my opinion. Neither is superior to the other as it depends on you and your trading methodology.

Nick, Here's what I see: Bullish looking hammer/spinning top on nice volume. I don't really see any strong support that the low touched or came close to. I would like to see an attempt to run at 1440 or so. To go long here would require very close monitoring at the 1500 level (note large, thick line representing STRONG resistance). There's so much that could happen at the 1500 level. We've seen it try to bust through and get rejected and then we saw strong push right through it. In summary, a long here is aggressive. If trading multiple lots, this could be a 'put your toe in the water' type trade, ie do not bet the house on this one. Assuming we get in around 1480, we'd be looking for about a 20 pt move. You are going to have to risk more than 20 however to get there. Not the risk/reward I am looking for. As for why we've seen some bearish movement, who knows. We can all sit here and speculate, but the bottom line is that no one knows for sure. More than likely a combo of events. I recall reading something here today or yesterday about the Chinese possibly dumping their dollars... not good. Who knows. Sometimes the market just wants something, anything, to move. As a trader, I don't care why it's moving just as long as it is moving.

Off the top of my head... Find a style that you like - either many trades per day or a few. I do better with taking more trades with small stops and decent profit targets. Study like there's no tomorrow. In the beginning you are going to go through so many things it's not even funny. Find what you like and appears to be working somewhat. You don't need to hit homeruns in the beginning. Singles are fine. Do NOT risk any REAL money until you've 'played' on a simulator for many months. This will take time. If you don't have time, it will be hard to get good at this. Hold yourself accountable - to your spouse, significant other, this board, whatever. Just know there is another set of eyes watching your progress of lack thereof. Only believe the numbers that you verify. Statistics and numbers are manipulated beyond belief in this biz, so only trust what you know to be true.

We are going to agree to disagree then. Just reviewing the 'trade' is very ambiguous and not clear at all. Just reviewing the day through some playback method will not shorten the learning curve. That, in and of itself, is not enough. Just staring at the screen hoping to get it is not enough. Our biz requires a solid methodology that creates that 'edge' with proper money management and emotional control. It's not as easy as just replaying your trades at the end of the day hoping to see something that gives you an edge tomorrow. I would say that all you are doing is curve fitting your trading for the day that just occurred. Who knows if/when that analysis will work again.

I think this is an unfair assumption to make scalper. To tell a newbie that it doesn't take long is very misleading to say the least. Not only is scalping profitably in a consistent basis difficult, it can take many, many hours of screen time to master this trade. There are exceptions and you may be one of the them, but it's not fair to paint a picture that is not accurate for newbies. Now, if you want to start a thread and share how you scalp so that we can have a group of scalpers here in no time, that's a different story. Very true - scalping works for some and position trading works for others. In order to find this out however, you MUST put in the screen time. In order to find your flow and what works for you, live screen time will be what is needed.

Good question OAC. You know, it's funny - I don't consider myself a scalper but I guess others would. What I mean is, I consider a scalper someone or program that buys on the bid and sells the ask. To me, that is scalping. I personally take bigger profits than this per trade, but much less than a 'position daytrader' would. Right now profits are ranging from 2-3 pts per ES trade. So I'm not sure that a 2-3 pt per trade goal is scalping or not. Regardless, there is no substitution for screen time. How long it takes before you can make money at it is anyone's guess. There comes a time when you've been watching your minute/volume/tick charts so much that you just intuitively 'see' things - you see when volume is low, you see when a certain level is heavily defended, you see when your profit targets are too much or too little, you see certain trades failing more regularly than they used to, etc. etc. I do not think you can quantify how much screen time is needed b/c it will vary person-to-person. If you watch a 3 minute ES chart with the utmost dedication for a solid year, you will see much more than the casual observer or the 'hindsight' trader. If you then continue to study that chart for another year, you'll have 2 years of screen time experience that simply cannot be purchased or replaced. The bottom line is that it does take time. Much more than most are willing to dedicate to this. A successful day-trading biz will normally take much longer than the majority are willing to put towards it. I suppose that's where the 'most traders fail' garbage comes from. Yes, most will fail, but not b/c of a bad system or even a small account. Most will fail b/c they simply will not put forth the time and effort required. That's it in my opinion. If you go into this thinking you will conquer it in 6 or 12 months, good luck b/c you will need it. We are talking about YEARS. And it's just like many other high paying professions in terms of YEARS needed to see the success. The difference however is that you can start in this biz for as little as $2500 and a computer. To be a doctor or lawyer, there's a little more needed from you before you could even consider it. Not so with day-trading, esp in futures.

I think for now James, and maybe what Tor was hitting on, is a simple guide/post that is sticky in ALL forums and in it has posting guidelines, expected etiquette, how to post a chart, etc. Something that is visible in each forum and subforum, but only ONE of these. I've seen forums that have a sticky on how to post, how to do this, how to do that and before you know it you have 10 sticky's on each forum. Even just a 'How To' sticky would work well... How to... post a chart, create hyperlinks, use smileys, etc. etc. While some things may seem basic, it would probably help someone out at some point. For example, how many know how to create a clean hyperlink? No idea, but I bet some don't.

What a bearish day today! The bears were in full effect! Just in case anyone traded this blindly, all longs should be exited by now! This one just didn't have it and this was a very convincing close below the 1500 level, which is a major psychological level. You could also view this inverted hammer as a reason to short. I gotta get to bed here, but the idea being that you have a close below our new resistance (old support that the long was based on) AND we are below the 1500 psychological level. I'd have to see where a realistic profit target would be to see if this is worthwhile or not, but there could be an aggressive setup here. Side note - days like today are why I really enjoy the day-trading part of this business. Today was just a great day to be grabbing points all over and while I knew the drop was not good for our long here, it was a great money maker on an intra-day chart.

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f30/for-those-that-are-full-time-2157.html

James, This thread - http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f30/how-to-post-a-chart-properly-805.html or something similar to it needs to be more visible in my opinion. Since our influx of new members, I've read many threads of 'how do I post a chart' or 'I could not figure out how to post a chart', etc. The explanation of how to do this needs to be more visible somewhere on the forum. Perhaps a 'New to TL, read this!' page would work and on this page would be a link to this info. Kind of like a newbie handbook if you will - rules of posting, etiquette expected, how to post a chart, etc. etc.

I don't think there's enough stuff on the chart.

I like Boiler Room. Not about trading necessarily, but a look at a pump-and-dump operation.

I think you'll find ed that some days these lines are heavily respected (coincidence or not) and other days they are useless. I've toyed with the pivots, mp #'s, etc. as you have done here and they did ok for me. I was mainly testing them out for exit points, not entry points though. It really comes down to if these make money for you or not. If they work over time, then I would use them! If the results are marginal, consider removing them.

Today was what we wanted to see: Good bullish move after our 2 hammers. Now we'll want to see a run for the 1540 level.

That's what I love about candlestick analysis MisterEd - while Nison is credited with bringing it to the west, I think some things are open to interpretation of the end user.

Good point Bam. I think too many are afraid of the ES b/c the pro's are there. But as you pointed out, that volume can be a good thing if it suits your style of trading. Like you, the amount of fakeouts is much lower there for me as well.

Post some examples sky and you may get some more response to your question.

If the stops are fixed, which they are here (fixed on the pivot level), then your entry is the only thing that can change. That's it. Your stop level is predetermined based on the pivot, even though the size of the stop may fluctuate, so the only change that can be done is to improve entries. Since you said the stop size is too large for your liking, that would tell me you are waiting to ensure the pivot level holds before entering the trade, which makes perfect sense. If you want that additional confirmation that the pivot will hold, then you will have to risk more to keep your stop above/below that pivot. If your entry was much closer to the pivot, then your stop will be that much smaller. Of course, with that will come more fakeouts. So the question you must ask yourself is - I am better suited taking multiple trades with multiple small stops or less trades, but larger stops? That's all I see at least.

James, We got another bullish hammer today. You'll note that the low of our buy hammer was retested and while it actually ticked below this hammer, proper stop placement (as I mentioned earlier) should have kept us in this trade. Now, today was not an overwhelming great feeling on this trade. Depending on the entry technique being used, we are either long at some point, or still waiting for the high to be broken. Through quote.com, the volume today was actually higher than yesterday: That may be incorrect, but it's quick and easy for me to pull that up. Currently we are feeling good about this long, but would feel better to get a bullish day here Tue or Wed. You'll note that we had similar price action in this post. Mainly multiple high volume hammers. So once again we have some serious buying/selling taking place here. Someone, somewhere is loading on longs and someone, somewhere is loading up on shorts. Our analysis here is saying the bullish stance is the correct one, but time will tell.

Open ECry has access to the Dax, among many other futures products. I would at least check out the free trial.

A few things Freddie - 1) A lower timeframe should result in smaller stops. 2) A lower timeframe could also result in more fakeouts and more stopouts, albeit smaller. I personally base my stop on the pattern/condition being traded. I don't use fixed stops. In order to max your stops smaller, you'll want to consider a lower timeframe or improving your entry.

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f110/credit-spreads-2683.html I'd ask Tin as he seems to be the only one actively posting here about them.

Well fellas, sure looks like we have some bullish hammers at support levels all over the place... These will either hold and produce some nice profits or fail terribly. That's my guess at least. What I mean is, if the ES gets below 1500 AND closes below 1500, that could spell trouble in terms of any longs working. So the next few days early next week will be important. We'd love to see these hammers provide some immediate profit and not look back. It would be easy if the ES just kept doing a /\/\/\/ shape between our S/R levels. Now that is EASY money. Eventually one of these will fail due to a break, so we will see when that happens. Right now, this support level, esp on the ES looks strong. We'll see how long and how many times this level will hold.