Niko

Sorry for the late reply, I was focused on the market and just checked here now. Traders were having trouble with 93 and 84, the MP of which is 88, just what they struggled with at the open. After the open bulls went up to 92 (MP 91-93 TR) and found no interest then prices plunged all the way to 82.

Prepwork - 050614 After finding buyers at the 50% of the move from 615 to 480 (570) strength was confirmed taking prices back inside the up TC in the hourly. But it seems like buyers ran out of steam at the top of last week TR at 604. We are currently at 87 (the MP of last week TR) where there has been struggle since the 22nd of april. So we could have some struggle as well. The 50% from yesterday´s upmove is 76, so, If sellers cant flood the market with contracts below that level then price shall rise to test 604, if they can the we should visit the bottom of the TR at 70, good old 70. Now, if we can break 604, that will be visible in the daily and it will mark the end of this daily downtrend and back into the larger up TC in the daily. Lets see what happens. As I pointed out in my journal yesterday, today cant be contaminated by fear, I have to be able to let price do its job and retrace, only scratch the trades that fail to make what is expected (rise or fall), give the rest a break. Since you're coming up on the open and you have clear rejections up and down, you can be more micro. What are the levels above which and below which traders can't find trades right now? What is the midpoint of this range? 0941: Note that the first five minutes represented a search for equilibrium bet 86 and 92, MP 89, which is also the MP of the 70 to 06 TR.

Thanks, that is what I am doing now, but in the future I expect to be able to take the REVs, some movements only give you that chance to jump in, and I don't want to miss those. Thanks and happy trading.

1. Regarding context, I will take into account mean reversion in order to avoid surprises. 2. Regarding the REV entries: Somehow I still dont feel comfortable with these yet, unless they occur at a level that has been tested premarket or the day before, perhaps is just a stupid bias, but I need to gather more input about these trades before going live with them. In order to do this as fast as possible, I will paper trade the REVs that show up and compile records. Besides, I will run more backtests on REVs during the week. You needn't take the REV itself, but understanding what it is -- or appears to be -- will give you the confidence to take the subsequent RET. And if it doesn't work out, just scratch. 3. Regarding early exits: Once price moves away from my entry I will give it at least two ticks below (above) the last level of price where buyers (sellers) rejected prices higher (lower). This will eliminate arbitrary scratches. Once the line in the sand is above the entry price I will stop trailing it and manage the trade according to the bigger picture. An example of this is in the following chart My main succes today was to be able to objectively assess the market after a failed SCR and reenter, so I will just apply what I applied today in order to take reentries tomorrow. 4. Regarding reentries: A failed scratch is a DTDB that just bit you, but still didn't bark, so the fact that you made a mistake in the exit means the initial position was ok so a reentry is in place, now the reentry price should be based in PA. Like in the attached chart. 3 and 4 are essentially what I ended up with after the SCR reentry exercise, but did not apply it today. Lets see how tomorrow looks like doing what I planned.

Regarding things to do better tomorrow is to take into account mean reversion, as it has been playing a major role in the last few months as proven today. In that way I will not be surprised by REVs out of the blue.

And regarding today. We found sellers at the same distance from 570 we found buyers at the open.

Whoa! . This looks like the "gravity" center for the market, and not only from last week, but all the way from January. What I did was just find a trends that crossed that level and I found that movements usually ended at the same distance from 570 as the distance that took them to get to 570. What is this all about? Is that the mean? Sorry if this should be evident by know, but it wasn't. Thanks. Technically, it's a mean, but I see it as the usual 50% indicator of strength/weakness. Even since price hit the mean of the 5yr channel at 3400, it's been trying to work its way back to the high. It got as far as 3620 before retreating. This overshot the 50% level of 3400 to 3620, but held well above it. From 3620 to the low of 3481 is where we get the 50% level that came in handy today, i.e., 3548. As to the significance of 3570, it is as I said 50% of the distance from 3400 to 3740, so is itself a measure of strength. That traders scouted as far down as 3548 looking for trades does not negate the value of that measure, particularly since we are now well above that level. BTW, the chart is a little big, sorry, I cant compress the hourly in less space.

I just finished reviewing my day, lots of replay, trying to come up with ideas to better my plan. I think I was just too fearful facing negative incursions and allowed a R bias to put some fog in front of me in the light of HHs and a solid up trending stride. Now, I still don't think I would have taken the REV so I will discard it for now as it would require my prepwork to get much better. What I think I should have done is taking the long after the HL at 9:41, the trend changed with the REV and this was the first RET. If we zoom in this entry on realizes it was a BO entry in the Tick chart, prices had congested between 51 and 57 for over 3 minutes and after failing to get followers below 51 bears gave up and buyers managed to join above 57. After the entry there was a normal RET, and the fact that buyers kept on buying at the top of the range halting the decline outside of the previous value area was meaningful to keep this trade alive. It was after this that the HH was achieved before prices returned to the DL. In this case I think I would have scratched this trade on BE and reevaluate. The second trade would have been the Failure to break the DL at 9:50, in this case I think I would have required an scratch and a reentry, as prices moved against me way too much for my system, but given that just after my exit prices stopped falling, it would have triggered an immediate reentry not too far from the initial one. This entry was different from the 1st given that it was a VREV in the tick chart, that means that as soon as bears notices that there were no more sellers they turned into buyers and raised prices rapidly. After the entry the DL of this newly formed trend got broken and there was a 2 downwave RET I have noticed this a lot during back and forwardtesting, perhaps in the future I could modify my exit criteria giving more room to the trades in order to allow for this kind of retracements to occur. This would save me a reentry or two.

10 bucks up. I ended up working for the broker today :haha: . I did not take the REV at the open, mainly because I was not interested in trading REVs today. Being the first day I wanted to play it safe with Line breaks + RETs.

Posting and taking live trades is not as easy for the inexperienced so too few "trading posts" today. Very interesting day for me, lots of mistakes, most of them fear related, fear of what, fear that what I have tested doesnt work out as planned, I guess is the result of many times getting burned, that feeling of this can go really wrong today make me deviate from plan somehow. Anyway, not such a crappy day after all, SCR kept my losses low. Lets recount: Things I did not do that I should have done. 1. Looks like the entry of the day was the REV at 48, that number was way off my radar, Db explained that it was a 50% from the move down from 618. I was really expecting it to get to 43 so I did not consider an entry here. But realized they did not want it below that level at this time of the morning so the upside was the way to go. But now I defined myself a limit in my head, I did not want to get trapped in chop in my first day of live tradind so I avoided the next RET as it was inside the OR. Heading South then reversing to look for trades North is not the same thing as trading within a range. The range hasn't even been determined at this point. Think of it as a Climactic Reversal rather than a Range Reversal, if you like. Unless you're making new highs (above 3740) or new lows (1700), you're always going to be heading back into something. This is only tangentially about support and resistance. Support and resistance are those levels beyond which traders can't find trades. Find the means. Find how far from the means traders are willing and able to go. 2. A HH, therefore buyers were in control, and then price went back down just to test the DL. This again as Db pointed out was the second opportunity to enter, but then again I wanted to see price above 61 so I skipped this trade. According to my current rules 1 and 2 would have been SCR, but both of them were legitimate entries that I did not take, fearing R at 61. 3. My first trade, After we broke above 63 I took the first RET, but then chickened out, I am not gonna be able to trade if I don't get rid of this damn fear, tomorrow goal is to follow the system rules no matter what. Lets give fear a day off. 4. Interesting spot, had I been long from below, this place wouldn't have triggered a trade, but given that I wasnt a LH after a DL break meant I had to take the trade, this one was rapidly SC, Given that I Sold at the precise location of the REV I should have SARed this one (a DTDB), 5. But I didnt, so I waited for the SL to be broken and took the next RET, here again price made a HH and I chickened out at the first sing of danger. By now is obvious how a first decision poorly made leads to a chain of bad decisions all the way to the top. Here I had the good sense of getting rid of fear and reenter. This was actually the entry of the day for me. 6. Here I lost track of the day trend, the one that started at the open, and focussed on the trees. Closing my last long and shorting just at the REV price, once again a DTDB, hence a long was called for, but somehow I managed to screw myself over again and reenter short. These trade was enough to clear my early winnings. Next time, if riding a trend focus on the forest and look for reasons to stay. 7. Being out I decided to take the short up here, but then SCR as it did not go anywhere. 8. The trendline was broken and a first RET so shorted this, but then I realized it was 11:00 and I was not really focused so I decided to close shop for the day. So take the next step.Otherwise it's just CWS. What are you going to do tomorrow to avoid making these mistakes again? What are you going to do tomorrow to replicate your successes?

Somehow the charts did not upload. 9:07 we just broke below S at 60 so the LOLR is confirmed down until it changes. 9:32 Failure to reenter the congestion area above 60. Strong REV . 9:41 Hinge of some sort,they dont want it above 60 but neither they want it below 48. Overlapping is increasing Wait for a break of either 61 or 48 before acting. 9:54 We broke above 61, first attempt was messy, But bow it seems like buyers are committing.

Prepwork So we are at the top of the Daily TC. There were no more buyers above 604. From there selling has been the thing to do. Now we are 40 points lower, and selling is drying up, seems like 60 is too cheap and is scaring sellers or motivating buyers. Anyhow, the stride of the uptrend from the 28 is broken and we seem to be in the middle of a RET in the hourly chart. Given than we have LHs and LLs, this is a downtrend. What could happen at the open. Given the trend the most probable course of action is an attempt to break below 60 (this could happen even before the open) in which case the first destination of this trend would be 40 (50% from 480) and from there 30 has proven to be an important demand level so we could expect to find some buyers there as well. from there is all the way to the bottom of the daily TC around 460. The other possible course of action is to reverse above or around 60, and try to go back inside the hourly TC, In that case the stride of this downtrend form friday should be broken before we are back in bullish mode, that would happen around 75, from there we would need to take 82 and deal with the MP of the up TC, but if we can clear all that clutter we would be on our way to 604. SO far seems like the upside has more trouble than the downside. So lets wait, see and act only on prime trades. If the day turns choppy at the open, will be better to avoid trading until things clear out. Remember to scratch and reenter when required, so to avoid fear and keep focus.

SLA entries of the day, the number of times you needed to enter will depend on your scratching-reentry style. When you see it from an SLA perspective it was a really nice day .

10:48 So we have a trend now. 10:58 And got stuck at PDL :crap:

Hehehe, you are right

10:39 Now this turned out to be a hinge day. Last attempt to get a following above "value" just failed, seems like 95 is all they are willing to pay for today. Finaly some decision here, now 78 is the line in the sand, is there gonna be a trend or not.

Damn dogs are filled with fleas , I have been scratching all morning.

9:37 Still cant make it above 05, the fact that they couldnt even reach 87, is a sign that buyers want it more than sellers want to get rid of it. But If buyers dont wanna pay more than 04 then is just another TR. No REVs for me unless 4.50 is actually tested. 9:43 Well, 3.75 was all buyers were willing to pay, missed the REV at 00.50, I guess Wolf took it 9:47 Now sellers are hanging on to their contracts, no selling below 90, still looking stronger than weaker. No the fact that buyers gave up at 50% is not that encouraging. 9:49 Ok, from strength to weakness in 2 minutes , after buyers gave up at 50% and some of them turned into sellers this started looking much better for the short side. This last move puts us back inside the TC from the daily. 9:58 Tried to get in the RET after the BO but got SCR too many times, the overlap was a b#$h so I just gave up after several tries. Lets see what happens at PDL. 10:08 Missed the PDL by almost a point so no REV, but the SLA entry was pretty straightforward. 10:12 Selling around the OR MP, perhaps this is value and nobody wants to pay more, perhaps not a HH will tell us. 10:27 No HH, that was value, untill someone realized it was way too expensive at 95 and decided to get rid of it.

Seems like 05 and 85 are the levels that do not provide any more followers, lets see what happens after the open.

Yep, not the most exciting days.

Monday, lets see how it goes.

Great stuff. How is that plan of yours working?

Have you included trend in the analysis, I mean what is the probability of the high being broken when you are in an uptrend?

Hehe, see you around, good trading to you too. What has happened to your journal?

Something to consider in this kind of environment: RULE #13 Occupy yourself while you are not playing. The fact is, if you are playing correctly, you are going to be doing a lot of folding, so you need to think of ways to fill this time. If you hate this period of time when you're not playing, and some do, it will have the effect of throwing your game out of kilter.