brownsfan019

6-15-09 The 'issues' w/ me and the 6E continued today. Had a couple rough days there lately but I'm coming out ahead on most of these fights... so to that, I provide this smiley for those thinking they can shake my boat on the 6E... (note - if you are offended easily, stop now and go to a new thread)

How do people even find threads 2 years old? Who has the time to do that? And the desire to do that....

Differences? Market liquidity - futures have plenty of volume Pricing structure - if anything, futures are more transparent than FX Leverage - you can control an ES for $500, how much more leverage could one possibly want? Hours - can trade around the clock if you wanted, but just like FX, has high volume areas I'm missing what you are calling differences.

I think BR knows what he's doing.

I've been using OEC for awhile now and very happy there. I like the setup.

As I've said many times here, the lower the timeframe, the less reliable candle patterns by themselves are. You MUST use them in conjunction with other tools - I would recommend defining support/resistance and then use candles to aid in your trading. For example - if you see a hammer and just a hammer randomly on a chart, that's nothing IMO. Now if you see a hammer at the previous day high or low, along w/ some other support/resistance, then you might have something there. In the article referenced in this thread, the author uses moving averages to use w/ candlesticks.

Yes it's true and that includes real-time data. I believe it's $25/mo or something like that. Very good option for those wanting real-time charts/data and don't want to pay $100+ to dtn or some company.

Just trade the one w/ the most volume. On your charting platform, check intraday volume w/ the current month and the next month out. When the next month out has more than the current month, time to move on. Example: Current contract has 50,000 contracts traded at 9am EST. Forward month has 15,000 contracts at same time. = trade current month When those numbers flip flop, go to the new contract. And if you happen to be trading the contract that is going to expire soon, it's not a big deal if you are daytrader. Sooner or later you'll notice the dom become empty and then the light bulb should go off. :idea:

Atto brings up a very good point - if you enter on limit orders, your losses are GUARANTEED to fill; meanwhile your wins MIGHT fill. If that seems backwards to you (like it does for me) considering entering on buy stop or sell stop orders. Your winners are GUARANTEED to fill and your losses MIGHT fill. Personally, I only enter on buy/sell stop orders - I want to buy into strength and sell into weakness; not buy into weakness and sell into strength. Just

Regarding trading the ES w/ limit orders, IMO you should assume that price must TRADE THROUGH your level to get a fill. As BR has said, if it just touches your level, you may get partial or no fills. That is one difference of trading the ES vs. YM or even NQ for that matter. If you are reviewing previous ES charts and you see that price touched your level, don't assume you would have been filled. Sometimes there's 10 contracts traded there or 1000. If it's low, you more than likely will not get filled.

After reading some of the other replies here, I would say whether or not you chase and what to do depends on... 1) How many trades do you get per day? If you are a 1 and done trader, then you might need to chase a bit. If you get 5, 10 or more trades per day, missing 1 may not be a big issue. 2) How far are you willing to chase before letting it go? IMO a few ticks is not worth missing a winning trade over. 3) And the real question is - why are you missing winning trades and what can be done to stop it? That's probably the most important question of this entire thread.

6-12-09 Nothing to report today. A few trades there but I missed them.

^^ Someone has their mojo back!!

I think it depends on how far it's moved in relation to your ideal entry price. If it's under 5 ticks, I would consider getting in. If there's been a big move, I would just wait for the next one. Depends on how aggressive you want to be. Of course the easiest way around this is to get in @ your ideal entry. Easier said than done, I know how that goes.

That's the one I use and you can clearly see at 1pm today there was the 30 yr auction. Buyer beware though Abe - watch how the ZB operates on releases, it's not always one quick move to the upside.

I don't use volume whatsoever in my work so rollover is just a matter of a few clicks on the charts/doms to be on the new contract.

Been a busy week - after trading I have been getting ready to play in some semi-finals poker tourneys this week. I play in a league that is sponsored by local bars and this week is our semi-finals, and Sat is the final table. Good news is that I did qualify for the final table on Sat w/ the top 3 prizes being seats to a WSOP event (not main event, the smaller ones). So wish me luck on Sat as I will be playing for one of those 3 seats. There should be about 20 of us in the finals, so the odds aren't terrible. But here's how my week of trading has looked: 6-9-09 Blah day - a lot of work to have a small loss on the day. 6-10-09 Again, nothing special but 2 smaller bond trades. I must have been in a hurry to get that screenshot since I cut the date part off. Oh well. 6-11-09 Today was fun on the ES b/c I hammered it 3 times (2 ct's each time) all around the same level. I bought, price moved up a touch and then pulled back to my buying zone and I bought again. It did it again and I bought again. A total of 3 buys there, but there was at least 1-2 more but I didn't add-on after 3. Adding on 3 is rare for me, but it just screamed get long b/c I am taking a little breather before going long again. In hindsight, I could have been long there up to 10 contracts if I wanted to push it. And the worst part is that I exited too soon. I was long, enjoying the push up when it happened and then it gave a quick little retracement and off to the flatten button I went... Of course it was a very brief pause before resuming the upmove and right to my profit target. That's part of trading heavier than normal - your emotions can take over easily.

Thanks Robert. A few things to note for today's performance or lack thereof: 1) Good thing I am trading multiple instruments b/c if I was 100% all-in on the 6E, it would have really hurt today. 2) It should be noted that the way OEC's software breaks out the trades is by market, not necessarily the order in which they appeared. In other words, my real-time P/L did not drop on the 6E trades and then bounce back on the others. The others were scattered in between that 6E mess. If anyone is using OEC and knows a way to get a report based on the time of the trade vs. grouping by markets, please post here. 3) The rebound to get back to close to break-even on this day was a result of believing in the system, trading it and trading multiple markets. I knew that the odds were that while the 6E was the market to avoid today in hindsight for me, the others still had a 'clean slate' there and could make up for it.

That was a nice trade Thales!

6-8-09 So this is what the 6E felt like today... Not sure how much cussing would be tolerated here, so we'll leave it at that. Definitely not in sync w/ the 6E today.

Thales - can you explain more on the ES trade? You're talking my language now. lol Was that mainly a gap type play where you used the gap level on a retest as the short area?

Bonds can and do move quickly but stops are pretty much honored there (minimal slippage) whereas on oil your stop market can turn into a nightmare quickly. Basically I am willing to take trades on markets where news will be impacting them if my stops can hold for the most part. That does not apply on oil for sure. This post shows you how to do it directly on TL.

Great question BR. Here's how I treat news - on most markets, I LOVE it! And you can see why in the above charts I posted. Basically I just take my setups as they occur, regardless of news on all markets EXCEPT oil. I have to stay out of oil trades on Wed inventory numbers b/c that is way too jumpy for my liking. But on the indexes, bonds and currencies, I will get into a trade and hold through the news if I get a setup beforehand. If there is not a setup, then I just wait. In other words, I don't try to guess where the news might drive the markets (I'm not a fundamental trader at all). With that said, trading news is not for the faint of heart. If you want to see your P/L jump hundreds/thousands in seconds, then give news a try on SIMULATION. I can't stress enough that I only take a trade when my normal setup occurs and that I don't trade oil on inventory day.

BR - that's basically what I've seen as well. I'm sure if we spent hours on it, there's so many other options but just glancing it would seem put up a 5 min (or longer chart) and buy the first hammer you see when it gaps down and vice versa. Some days, that's all it takes and 1 easy trade. Other days it's a matter of how many times you want to fire a bullet. My reco is 2-3 shots and then shut 'er down.

Hal - You are so right. Once I decided to trade only the morning session (when things are moving), I really stepped my profitability up. If I was still trading the entire day, I think my profit would be down and commissions up. But that's part of the process - finding your edge - even if that is a self imposed limit on the amount of time you can trade.