Quote from TRADERguy:
I day trade the Eur/USD futures (E6). If it looks like a trend day is forming, I will look to get in on a retracement. Because my costs for trading are so low (about 1/20th of a tick (pip) plus the spread if I chose to pay it), I can trade frequently if I want to. During directional moves I can exit when it gets over extended and enter again at a better price. In this way I can capture more than 100% of the move even if I miss the beginning and end of it.
If the price is moving up and down in a range, I get in when it is at an extreme and exit a little over half way through the range. Then I wait for another extreme and do it again. I can also enter if the price gets a couple of tics out of line with the cash. These trades are for one to three tics. This is tricky because sometimes the futures get out of line with the cash because someone who is about to put on a large cash trade will load up on futures first (or the forex desk at a bank will front run a customerâs cash trade in the futures). Knowing the difference is more of an art than a science and comes with experience from watching the futures order book (depth of market) and the cash.
My trades are discretionary and not from a system. I use chart patterns, support and resistance, moving averages, Bollinger bands, and order flow. I have studied a large variety of quantitative indicators but I have internalized most of it and don't display the indicators on the screen. Remember that most technical indicators are derived from price, so it is really all there on your chart to begin with. I still have the MACD w/histogram at the bottom of my EUR/USD charts, if for know other reason than I feel like my charts are naked if they don't have at least one squiggly indicator at the bottom.
I look at charts of the market I trade in several different timeframes: 5 min, 15 min, 60 min, and daily. I use 7, 10, & 20 period EMAs and put the 200 day average on the daily.
I also look at 15 min charts of JPY and GBP as well as the e-mini and the 10 year US treasuries. Other markets that I follow with a quote board (all futures except gold) are the 30 yr bonds (US), 5 & 2yr notes, Bund & Shatz, Dow, NASDAQ, Dax, Eurostoxxs, oil (WTI), gold, Footsie, EUR/JPY, EUR/GBP, & CHF.
I go into major economic releases flat and trade when the number comes out. During really important releases I trade the 10yr treasuries at the initial release because of lack of liquidity in the EUR/USD futures.
Stops are generally 1 to 10 tics, and are mental (not in the order book).