Dinerotrader

Thales, At what point does historical S/R become irrelevent to current trading? I start looking back 1 month, 4 months, and even a year wondering if there is any point to using S/R from that long ago especially given the changes in the economy. Just curious of your thoughts on this. Cheers.

Here is how I am currently marking up my chart. I try to put red lines at S/R breaks that in my mind were unprofitable based on some general stop loss positioning and how far the break went. My hope is that I will start to see some of my problems as I go back and look through days of these breaks. Looking hindsight, it appears easy to see what breaks you should have taken. In foresight, you start finding all kinds of breaks not knowing if any of them are going to lead to that big move up/down. Thales' uncanny ability to call movement gives me hope to become successful. I liked that post Thales put up a few posts before. I am also trying to balance in DBPhoenix's posts on how to NOT find S/R in the middle of nowhere which leads me to want to put more major S/R levels from prior days. I attached the EUR/JPY chart that I have been marking up. I am now looking for breaks between the lines and inital profit targets out the outer blue lines.

I was looking at the same thing Thales. That is becoming a pretty flattened out pattern on the 15 min chart. Now I just need to figure out how to put in buy/sell stops correctly so I can go to bed and wake up to see how my trades went.

Wow, these charts can get very distorted if you post them from a larger monitor and them try to view them on a smaller screen. The arrow is pointing to a break of the prior day's low which I would definitely have played had I seen it in time. I am still doing extensive fine tuning of what S/R I breakouts I would trade but prior day lows and highs are almost always ones I would take. From what I gather Forrestang, you are also working to trade mostly based on S/R. Did you see the posts in the P/L thread that Thales provided to my chart questions? Pretty good stuff. Cheers.

I can't believe I missed this one. Got to my computer just a few minutes too late.

I wanted to be in a trade more than I wanted to be on the sidelines this morning, would be the most honest answer. I justified the long by thinking that the support at the pink line held so well that maybe we were on the way back up now that we bounced off support and broke above my "support zone". However, after noting on my chart that the resistance line I drew earlier was holding almost perfectly, (I didn't expect it to since my faith in diagonal S/R lines is still wavering) I am exiting that long trade. 2 bad trades but I think I definitely learned from the experience of trying to commit to a S/R level I drew and determine how to manage the trade. I realized I was unsure how much of a breakout below support would consititute an appropriate entry. How do you determine how far the breakout needs to be before you enter? Do you base it on percentage or ticks? I do like that moved up the stop once I realized I might have entered improperly. I don't want to have a habit of staying in trades that confirm I had poor entry analysis. Your comments are welcome.

1. Initial stop was at 134.045...what I considered to be the closest natural stop. 2. Look at chart #2 on post of this trade. I mean I tried to identify a good S/R break but I couldn't decide if the 3 bars at the beginning of the dotted pink line were significant enough to require a break below and after watching the trade unfold, it appeared that I should have initially put the support level down to the pink line. At the pink line, support was holding which made me think the trade was taken at true support instead of at true breakout so why stay in the trade.

EUR/JPY. Entered long now at 134.06. Annotating real time is not my forte yet.

Looking to sell at breakout below support zone. Update 1: Support barely broken. I noted my entry, stop, and profit targets. Update 2: My Support level appears to have been a little too high as support is being found just below my choosen breakout level. Moved my stop down since my entry appears flawed..... As I was writing this I got stopped out.

Okay. I guess someone tipped off Brownsfan that I was highjacking the beloved P/L thread (one of my personal favorite threads) with this S/R stuff so I will quickly post my last comment related to the EURJPY chart and Thales' comments. I can just picture Brownsfan sitting on the beach in tahiti during his "break" when he gets a call that his forum thread is getting highjacked....he throws his margarita........but remains calm and just posts a simple "thanks for keeping the thread going" comment so we all know he is still watching. No worries, Monday will come and we're back to straight P/L posts.:rofl: See #5 comment on new annotations to chart. This area would represent new resistance due to prior night's PA so a resistance breakout just below that area would make a breakout-then-reversal more likely and consequently make trade #2 not that appealing. I think I read this comment over 20 times trying to fully digest and visualizeits full implications and I am even still digesting. I hope that doesn't mean I am stupid. See notes #7 and #9 where I tried to comment about how this would be interpreted on the chart. See note #8. Not sure exactly what the full range of the zone you are thinking here but my guess is 131.80-131.50 based on prior comment on the "danger area". See notes #6 & #8. See note #9. I would agree the green line would probably be the best breakout area because of prior resistance and support found in that tight range below the green line. That's all I got. I also wanted to post this to demonstrate that the effort put into posts by contributors like Thales is equally matched by thought and contemplation of those learning what has been taught. The effort made by those that give such in depth answers is so appreciated. Cheers.

I trade at work also. I just started a thread today about watching futures on the web since I have the same problem with using Ninja at work. My hope is to become a full time trader as soon as I can prove that I can make money on a consistant basis. This forum has been enormously valuable to me in determining where to focus efforts to this end. Hopefully within the year, I will be posting as a full time trader. Only time will tell if I have the talent for it. Welcome to TL.

:doh: LOL. I can just imagine your reaction the moment you realized you made that mistake again. Hilarious. Thanks for the explanations. Next time I will be more careful of the times so I don't include midnight hours.:doh:

Thales, This thread seems easy to get back on track so I will ask a quick question using the chart you posted. I noted a few S/R level breakouts that would have appeared reasonable to me if I had been reading the chart in real time and I wondered if you could comment on why you/your daughter didn't trade those breakouts. I am trying to sharpen my eye for distinquishing between imagined S/R and real S/R and your family:) seems to have this down pat. Thanks.

Does anyone know of a way I can watch the futures charts at work on a website? I am unable to watch futures at work because I can't download software on my work computer and the data feed would certainly annoy the IT people's concern over bandwidth usage. I use freestockcharts.com for stocks and it would seem like you could find something similar for futures but maybe not. My searches haven't turned up much up to now so maybe there is a larger issue at work which keeps such a valuable service from being offered. :bang head: Cheers.

Jonbig, I wish I could take that post back now for sure. I somehow got in my mind that we were going to look for more than DB or DT chart patterns. I reread your initial posting and I am now clear on the direction of the thread. I apologize. I will come back with hopefully, a more productive post. Love the thread idea. Cheers.

I just realized my chart is excluding evening trading so I think that negates the value of the pattern. Sorry about that.

I would have thought this a reasonable bullish flag chart breaking out at the blue arrow but as I was getting the chart ready to post it reversed back. My chart pattern experience is limited so I still have a hard time knowing when a pattern fails or when it just isn't strong enough to give a solid signal. I would have hesitated taking this because after such a strong trend from yesterday, I remain very suspect that today would more likely be consolidation or a pull back day.

Nice trade forrestang! I don't think luck is the right word. The goal, IMO is to anticipate the most likely price action based on what you know and adjust the mechanics as you progress through the trade. If what you anticipate doesn't happen, you simply interpret the new price action and adapt. Keep up the posts. Cheers.

Exactly what I needed. Thanks.

:confused:Can someone tell me how to get my ninjatrade screen to chart like below. If you would post a screen shot of what settings I need to set up. It appears this chart has some automatic drawing of the high and low of the prior day and it only shows active trading hour's activity. Those are the 2 features I can't determine how to set up properly and I am very new to ninjatrader. Cheers.

Thanks for input Thales. I wasn't super excited about the setup of the trade but I wanted to at least get myself rolling on practicing reading the "right edge". I need to start managing other people's money so I can trade those $50 stocks in 5,000 share lots. Do you simply scroll through the highest percentage gainers and losers on the S&P to find potential setups or do you use some other type of filter to look for these before they breakout? Do you use Worden Telecharts to find these setups at the end of the day to analyze how they would have traded if you had found them? I'll try to get some futures trades posted real time in the coming days. Cheers.

Well, I stopped out at a $.03 loss. I increased my stops as things progressed because I figured if those levels were breached, the channel would be broken and things would just head south. A trade like this seems more likely to be profitable in the 1st 3 hours of the market when volumn has more chance to make something like this really move.

Looking for a breakout but trying to keep stop tight as market overall isn't trending heavily upward. Update: Bought at 6.99 at ~9:08.... will post another chart as it progresses Update 2 9:33: Here is where we stand. Sorry for all the lines. Just trying to visualize the channel as it progresses to see if it gives me any clues how it will trade.

I totally agree forestang. I keep meaning to start posting on it but get bogged down at my day job. This thread could grow huge and be even more beneficial if we can get more posting to it with. Thales' stuff alone is so good.

Thanks Thales. I believe you have mentioned that you have a second field of work along side trading. What has kept you from making daytrading your only business? As Brownsfan has said before, daytrading is one of the few businesses where making more money can be simply accomplished by adding more shares/contracts to your trades if your strategy is profitable. Alternatively, in most businesses, making more money requires more work/hours/sweat from the person. Based on this do you think you can become very wealthy as a trader once you find the right profitable strategy by just adding volumn to your trade lots? What keeps profitable traders from becoming wealthy retirees very quickly? You gave one large disadvantage, do you have any advantages to add? Thanks for your input. Cheers.