AmCan1

Lately gold has been a great trading market. Also, as crazy and volatile a market as it has been lately, I continue to have consistent success with the Russell emini. It just requires a lot of discipline and a tight trade plan. But long term, I've had great success with it over the years. I also really like the EURJPY during the US session. Ok, so I cheated with three choices.

My broker (Tradestation) told me that the OCO orders aren't actually sent to the market until the price gets close to your levels. So it wouldn't really be possible for someone to intentionally try to hit your stops since they wouldn't actually be in the market yet. The drawback to that approach though, is that when your order is placed, you will be near the back of the line. To avoid that, you'd have to place unattached orders and manage the bracket manually, by yourself. You would get your order in the cue sooner that way. Always a double edged sword with every trade decision it would seem.

Lol.. That's funny MMScientist! Like you said, it's just a market. Bars on a chart. I guess it doesn't matter what the instrument is if you can find success trading it. No point trying to shove a square peg into a round hole though. I love chess but if someone were to start talking about Bridge, my eyes would glaze over too. In fact, anytime I talk about trading and what I actually do with any of my friends and family, their eyes glaze over too. I think the eyes glazing over is a good 'stay clear indicator.' Anyway, so what are the best times to trade gold? How about silver? Since I haven't yet subscribed to the data feed, I feel a bit in the dark on the metals.

I know there are a lot of techniques on how to use the Tick to gauge strength or perhaps more importantly, weakness in a trend. I used to watch it along with a few other internal indicators but I never fully got a feel for it. I ended up with a dynamic, price action based method that kind of had everything I needed baked into the strategy so I stopped watching the Tick. I'd be interested to hear other's take on it or way of using it though. I know that it is a very useful indicator/tool when applied appropriately.

Yeah Dude, analysis paralysis is to be avoided at all costs. I think simple is better than complicated. I go so far as to only trade one chart. I don't pay attention to another chart as far as allowing it to influence my trades. I like one clean chart per market I am trading. But I am monitoring my system performance on a variety of charts unto themselves, so the extra monitor space for me, is very important and I want more.

That's ok. I got it under control. As long as I take the family to Hawaii some time this year, I'll be able to do anything I want. lol..

Ain't that the truth! Despite popular belief, I gotta get at least 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night whether I need it or not. I think there's enough tools on that chart to come up with a decent exit strategy. I got a momentum indicator overlayed on top of the channels, the yellow dashed line, and a slower one, the cyan line. The channel itself can be used to trail and the histogram could signal when to tighten or perhaps move to a 3 bar stop type of idea. Lots of ways to figure this one out. Or, we could just read the book. Lol..

Jajuan2 offers some good advice I think. I would only say that there are a lot of ways to skin the cat and everyone has a different learning curve. Still though, to be considered Pro at anything takes about 10,000 hours. You can shorten that perhaps if you get yourself a good mentor. Most indicators do lag but they can be very useful as a component of your trading. I base my trades on pure price action, which is happening in real time at the right edge of the chart. I use a very few select indicators, not to base my trades on, but to either confirm my trades by corroborating the price action, or to actually calculate the size of my trade. The idea is to use the indicators to 'tune' the size of the trade to the current market condition. I didn't hear Jajuan2 mention anything about that type of application of indicators and in fact, I don't think there are very many out there that use them for that sort or purpose. But for me, it has been very effective. Like I said, there are many ways to skin the cat.

Indytrader, welcome to the forum. I agree that the NQ is a good futures market to start on but I would not be overzealous to jump right in without a well reseached and practiced trade plan. You can get good size trades with lower risk parameters due to the $20 per point and $5 per tick price movements which is good. But, you need to be on top of your form from an execution point of view becuase it moves fast and forces you to get good, real fast. I use the HVMM trade system (google it if you want more info). I think it is an awesome trade system. It uses proprietary indicators but what I love about it is that it is dynamic and adjusts to current market conditions, and uses price action to base its setups on. The indicators are used to confirm the setups and then to calculate the entire trade profile, which then shows up right on the chart. It is too easy. lol.. I don't mean to sound like a commercial.. That's not my intention. But since you asked about indicators, I thought I would share with you what I use with the NQ and the 2 point range bar, although the 1 point range bar looks great too; smaller risk but requiring more execution skills due to the speed at which it can move at that faster timeframe. Hope that helps.

Here is an informal look at some mid session squeeze trades on the TF 233 tick chart. I've indicated with arrows what I would think to be good setup bars, without really studying or thinking through a formal strategy. Looks like it could have been 2 winners and 1 loss and a very positive end result; or at least some sort of variation to that, depending on trade rules. Seems to give some good signals though.

That's great. Are you using the UTA to post all your trades? I still haven't subscribed to the comex data feed. I assume that is the exchange your trading, right?

Me too Cuttshot. I'm ready to add a 5th and 6th. Mainly because I want to test and see how other markets and timeframes are behaving with the trade systems I am using. I quickly mark my charts with arrows to show the setup bars and then go back later to enter them into my spreadsheet/trade analysis tool. The only problem is that I would need a whole new computer because I've already maxed out the motherboard's capacity with my 4 monitors; two per video card. My wife is going to kill me too. She thinks each monitor is a separate computer! Lol.. "Honey, isn't 4 trade computers enough?"

Definitely a great day on the NQ 1pnt rangebar today.. All week, in fact. Also, the 2 point which is a much slower, easier chart to trade, had a great day and week too. In fact, last week was also amazing. I think I only had one loss last week. This week had a few more losses but still ended quite strong. It ends up being a 7 point trade and if you just trade until you have at least 2 winners and a positive result you'll have a happy ending most of the time. Not as exciting as the 1 range but not nearly as manic either.

Mitsu, I respect your comments and your approach. Oddly, I've kind of gone the opposite was as you. I traded with instinct and feel (discretionary) for a long time and not without success. I have actually since moved to a trade system with very clear rules, but I brought some of my instinct with me. I call it the 10% art side of trading. Anyway, I guess the points I want to make are 1) a good dynamic trade system that has within it a way of self tuning to current market conditions has proven to work for me steadily, over many different market conditions (and markets/timeframes). In other words, a system that self adjusts. The trades will have different profiles depending on the current volatility. If a market dries up or range disappears, you just apply it to another market and voila! It works. It's not easy to find a system like that but they do exist and they are out there for those with their ears to the ground. And 2) Now that I've said that, I would be the first to encourage anyone finding success with what they are doing, to NOT change a thing. The objective is to make money! That's it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I find your charts and interpretation of them to be quite refreshing actually. Thanks.. Glad it's working for you and I'm sure there are plenty of traders on this site that could learn something from your outlook.

Hmmm.. Nice! 55 points is nothing to sneeze at. Fibonacci must be doing the two step on that one too. 55 is a fib number. lol..

A share bar chart is just another name for volume chart. So I guess what confused me is the term constant volume bar chart. I was wondering if it were just three different ways to describe the same kind of chart or if there is an actual difference between a volume chart (sharebar chart) and a constant volume bar chart. :doh:

Great advice Sanchez. I appreciate your feedback.

Yes! TraderWill offers up a very important word of advice. The developer or purveyor of the automated system should provide all the rules as to how and why a system sets up. Black box, while seductive because of the dream it promises to deliver, is just that. A dream! Play with it with a sim account if you want but if you think it will produce REAL profits, as yourself first this question: If you developed a black box trade system that actually worked, consistently and reliably, would you want to share it with the world?

Great Traderwill. Thanks for the info. I think I'll keep my eyes open for his book. I'm always looking to read and learn about different trade methods and I can see the merits of this one. The principals make sense to me.

Thanks Sanchez. I'm guessing by your response that you feel the same way about Bernanke Testimony days too? I find those to be the sessions where my performance is at its worst. I just never do well on those days. Well, never is a long time but, you know what I mean.

Sure thing Cuttshot. I believe the idea is a good one and if it leads to profitable trading, that's all that matters. I didn't know JCarter had it working with TOS though. That's news to me.

Would be interested to see what you come up with. Keep in mind that much has been written on this trade technique and while it might not be THAT well known, it isn't a novel idea. The folks at Trade the Markets base their bread and butter on this exact approach, I think, although I don't really follow them.

Traderwill, you make excellent points. You have succinctly stated the benefits of automation, which mainly are about developing and testing trade ideas vs. manual trading. Even if you happend to program in all the nuances and were successful in debugging, a trader still might need to intervene at times. For example, and I'm sure you'd agree, but if you try to write in rules to adjust around key levels and you consider newly formed swings to be key levels, well, those swings might crop up just outside the parameters of your written rules or code. It's just one example. Trying to navigate through choppy action is another. But the benefits that you describes so well are so true. Manual backtesting on the other hand will give you a chance to relive those trades and to be able to scan down a win loss column and begin the get a deeper understanding of the relationship between the wins and losses vs. the equity curve itself. Hard to do that with any sort of way to take ownership of it, with automated results.

Interesting chart and observations Mitsu.. I like your 'stepping back' observation of the 'drifting forward and selling off from the high' on fomc days. My trading is darting in and out of smaller moves, either up or down, based on my setups so I never noticed in the way that you described, this kind of price action on fomc day. I'm going to keep my open for that. Of course, inherent to the definition of 'high,' I think you would expect some kind of selloff, or it wouldn't be the high. Still though, I see your point and it's an excellent observation.

I see. That's great. Any idea what technique is recommended for establishing targets and stops?