Hello, I am having problems with my trading. It seems that I always pick tops to buy and short at the bottom. Attached is a chart of the ES from today and yesterday. I shorted the ES today at 15:08 at 1421.50 and covered at 1418.50. It happened to be profitable but I want to know if it was a smart trade or stupid luck. The reason I shorted was because it seemed to be going nowhere but up and down half a point. I figured the up move had finished and the next move was down. Was this a sensible trade and why? Thanks in advance for your advice!
Looks like you did the opposite of what you normally do and it worked out. Nice job Castanza. Worked for him.
If it was not a trade planned well in advance it was not sensible. Hunch trades will absolutely kill you.
There were about 6 of those today at your level of trading. Here is the rule set to use to do 3 of 6 trades like you did. 1. See low volume. 2. turn off the price chart. 3. when volume picks up on next bar, then trade long if volume is green; short if red. 4. Exit as soon as you know volume is tapering back from level of last bar's volume.. (this takes 30 seconds to a minute to figure out). Why can't you use it for the morning? Answer: because volume wasn't low all morning. What can you do in the morning? answer: Make up some rules that work with the price turned off. The rules above are called BO trading rules. They are in books except for the turn off price part of chart. So now you are making 10 points a day just in the afternoon doing BO's. Every four days add a contract. And cut the number of days between adding contracts in half. At 5 contracts, you are adding contracts every 40 points which is less than a day. At that time of profit of 40 points exit and reenter with one more contract. When you get to 50 contracts always take out the left overs on fridays so you only have 54 contracts of margin every Monday. If you invent an AM way to trade post it here first and I will fix it for you so it works like the rules above for BO trading do. The trade you did wasn't smart. Posting what you did was smart. I just made a set of rules for you to make money doing what you did. That makes what you do smart because you are using a set of rules which is a Simple Profitable Method* * name is copyrighted. After you have gotten to 50 contract level turn the price chart back on.
Thank you Jack for the detailed response. I really appreciate the feedback!!! A couple of questions. What interval chart should I be using? 1, 3, 5 minutes? (I currently use 5 or 3 min. ) How many points below should my stop be? When you enter the trade do you use market or limit orders? (Meaning, are you waiting for the price to come back a little or you dont take the chance of missing the move. ) I assume there is no target exit because you only exit when a decrease in volume tells you too. Thanks.
Please excuse the intrusion, but I like to stalk Jack with a pooper scooper minority report. Sounds like a strategy, huh? Define "low". Define "picks up". Explain how you are confident volume was "green" based on the price bar alone. Define "tapering back". Of such definitions are testable (equals tradeable) systems made.
I like to stalk Jack too and let any newbie know about his use and mususe of patterns of Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP in his posts. Google Milton Ericksonian. Very useful but I believe in full disclosure. Buy the book Patterns of Ericksonian hypnosis and play his game with him. That is what he is doing with you. I am putting very well today too.