ES Journal Archive (2006 - 2008)

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Quote from spike500:

If you want to become really successful in intraday trading, you have to find a system that takes the big moves.
Friday you had to go short and stay short till the close. As long as you cannot see these kind of trades in your system you have a
problem.

Friday was one of the easiest and biggest trades you could make.
I had to go short at 1321 and stay in till 1303. These kind of trades unfortunately don't happen very often, but if you cannot see them your system is not good enough. This trade should have been visible, even with your eyes closed.
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Spike, would you have bailed out @ 2.40-45pm if 1309.25 level had been broken?

I, personally, have not yet enough real trading experience to stay in the trade for longer periods of time, that is why I exploit smaller gains in smaller time frames. Your system seems to be outstanding, but is it just the system or in combination with your experience? No system by itself is perfect.

Also, from what I've been told by a very successful veteran trader, systems that identify big moves are not the only way to success in day trading futures. If one has a system that identifies smaller moves, that could be just as fruitful as your suggestion. Than again you did say REALLY successful.
 
Spike, would you have bailed out @ 2.40-45pm if 1309.25 level had been broken?

That would depend on my system. I follow indicators, not quotes. After we touched 1309 i got a signal to even add to my short at 1307.25. I knew we would go down again.

Your system seems to be outstanding, but is it just the system or in combination with your experience? No system by itself is perfect.

It's basically the system; but the system is the result from my experience. And my experience told me that i needed several different setups for different trending of the market. So in fact my system is a combination of subsystems.

Also, from what I've been told by a very successful veteran trader, systems that identify big moves are not the only way to success in day trading futures. If one has a system that identifies smaller moves, that could be just as fruitful as your suggestion. Than again you did say REALLY successful.
Indeed there are many ways to make money. But the ideal system would be a system that takes all the bottoms and all the tops of the major moves. In general that means 1-3 trades a day, depending on the trend.
 
SPIKE could u tell usmore specifically what your system is based on.......moving average crossings? 15 or 5 mnin charts.......does it need changing if market changes..........just how robust is it and how long has it been so excellent? what settings do you use for indicators........what markets do u trade with the same system........... thanks a million porgie
 
Quote from porgie:

SPIKE could u tell usmore specifically what your system is based on.......moving average crossings? 15 or 5 mnin charts.......does it need changing if market changes..........just how robust is it and how long has it been so excellent? what settings do you use for indicators........what markets do u trade with the same system........... thanks a million porgie
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All i wanted to share has been posted on ET in other threads.
 
Porgie and others...
you are still looking for something too simple and i don`t think spike did meant by "indicators" what most understand by this word or? I try to define some stuff why i did believe yesterday becoming a trendday, what would be the "setup" for one (single)subsystem. But that needs experience you can not use it "as is"

Look on the bigger picture, small numbers in Bollingerbandwidth on daily, simply the daily bars itself with no/less trend gives some hint for a coming bigger move in the 5-18 days area. Cause already very high in overall trend, higher Prob. of downmove. Also the saisonals say down, we are entering the saisonal down time of the year.

Low ADX on ~120 min, pointing to a Breakout, and prices are in a no trending channel for longer time.

The longer days in series there was no trend, the higher Prob. of a coming trend/Breakout, otherwise 2 consecutive trenddays are unlikely(unless there is very high pressure) Low range trading days are also good for higher Prob. of coming trendday.

the days before were already a lot of fake and large reversals, means a lot of traders got faked playing already on trend, cause the above conditions are wellknown.

The highest Prob of success have false breakouts, first the fake and than the move, means also chartpatterns visuable to most traders like head and shoulders cause most traders get trapped by the fake the resulting move is often powerful, here first BO over resistance/highs, fast coming back under BOlevel and openprice, additional a very high(bearish) TRIN (ARMS index)not seen for a very long time, so i got short the first stall, little pullback and saw a very high Prob. of a trendday >>> added probabilities from a lot of sights and timeframes.

My main mistake was not trading higher size and not adding in pullbacks....(sissy man....)


I have to add, I´m not too good in rangeenvironment, there are a lot of different types of rangedays too, you have adapt your method to every type of day, and it`s important to know when to stay on the sidelines if too flat, too choppy...better also not to trade every time of day, just choose the best 1-2 hours, a lot of trades means not a lot of $$$, for me was vice versa.

And S&P is different from others, EUR/$ for example...or european equities

no easy answers for complexe questions...

Or did you heard of weatherprognosis with one or two indicators? Market is a very complexe and random system too.
 
An indicator is what it is : an indicator. A visual representation of calculations. These calculations can be 2+2 or it can be a complex 4 pages calculation with lots of “if then else” statements or loopings. The only purpose of using an indicator is that it is easier to analyse than a list of figures.

Good trading systems are indeed complex; they have to take lots of things in account and have to make the right analysis for every situation. But there is not such a thing as a universal indicator or system. Single indicator grey- or black boxes that are sold for 3000 $ are useless. Trading systems should have scenarios for all kind of situations. The difficulty is to have a system that defines which subsystem has to be applied at that particular situation. And of course have subsystems for each kind of situation.

There are indeed no simple answers for complex questions.


Quote from mechtrader41:

Porgie and others...
you are still looking for something too simple and i don`t think spike did meant by "indicators" what most understand by this word or? I try to define some stuff why i did believe yesterday becoming a trendday, what would be the "setup" for one (single)subsystem. But that needs experience you can not use it "as is"

Look on the bigger picture, small numbers in Bollingerbandwidth on daily, simply the daily bars itself with no/less trend gives some hint for a coming bigger move in the 5-18 days area. Cause already very high in overall trend, higher Prob. of downmove. Also the saisonals say down, we are entering the saisonal down time of the year.

Low ADX on ~120 min, pointing to a Breakout, and prices are in a no trending channel for longer time.

The longer days in series there was no trend, the higher Prob. of a coming trend/Breakout, otherwise 2 consecutive trenddays are unlikely(unless there is very high pressure) Low range trading days are also good for higher Prob. of coming trendday.

the days before were already a lot of fake and large reversals, means a lot of traders got faked playing already on trend, cause the above conditions are wellknown.

The highest Prob of success have false breakouts, first the fake and than the move, means also chartpatterns visuable to most traders like head and shoulders cause most traders get trapped by the fake the resulting move is often powerful, here first BO over resistance/highs, fast coming back under BOlevel and openprice, additional a very high(bearish) TRIN (ARMS index)not seen for a very long time, so i got short the first stall, little pullback and saw a very high Prob. of a trendday >>> added probabilities from a lot of sights and timeframes.

My main mistake was not trading higher size and not adding in pullbacks....(sissy man....)


I have to add, I´m not too good in rangeenvironment, there are a lot of different types of rangedays too, you have adapt your method to every type of day, and it`s important to know when to stay on the sidelines if too flat, too choppy...better also not to trade every time of day, just choose the best 1-2 hours, a lot of trades means not a lot of $$$, for me was vice versa.

And S&P is different from others, EUR/$ for example...or european equities

no easy answers for complexe questions...

Or did you heard of weatherprognosis with one or two indicators? Market is a very complexe and random system too.
More...
 
Hi Spike,
I just surfed randomly through posts from you and found you to be "The Man"...great respect. So i would appreciate to hear your opinion about the next point.

To use one single system only would mean a "Subsystem" should work too. So using one Method only, cause you have not yet the others, should earn some money. So a newcomer should concentrate on one method first, doing stats/backtests, look for higher prob. conditions. etc. I found it`s of great importance not doing more than 1(one) trade/day or less. Cause there are so many days this method will not work, and it seems that conditions stay bad whole day often, you lose much $$$ by more # trades/day. The next day otherwise you have higher probs of different marketenvironment. Every simple method backtested was not more (or much less)profitabel by doing more than 1 trade/day.

This leads to only few trades/month and this is against human psychology, most are not able to sit on hands. I read you have ~2.5 trades/day, this includes the use of many subsystems, so the average trade#/month per system is estimated ~3-8 i would say. Most are not realizing this facts and searching a (simple)system trading every day and doing more trade#/day.

Wrong or right?
 
there is no need to be in a trade every single day, unless your system indicates a highly probable opportunity forming. If one can't learn when NOT to trade, should first achieve this and only then attempt trading, though mistakes are inevitable anyway.

And I am sure even experienced people like Spike500 still have a day during a week that they are either in the red or flat, no system is 100% perfect, as the world of trading CAN be unpredictable, how well will his system perform on a FOMC day? We simply can not program to the extent of including all possible outcomes, especially the ones affected by the news, which can be indeed random. What's more important is how our systems perform in the long term.

I tend to think that the majority of losing trades are the ones where no clear signal has been generated by a trader's system, though a trader decides to enter into a trade on psychological grounds, frontrunning his indicators.
 
The frequency a subsystem is used depends only on the trend. Hypothetically it is possible that only 1 subsystem is traded 5 times in a row, or not at all for 2 weeks. All depends on the strength of the trend . Once the strength is known you can choose the corresponding subsystem. If you don’t know the strength of the trend you cannot trade, because you don’t know which subsystem to choose. The markets are dynamical, this means that trends can change, which means that subsystems have to be changed also. Sometimes even within 1 trade.

I never listen to news. The only thing that counts is the quotes, because the whole system is based on quotes. There has never been a day that I didn't get a signal, but that doesn't mean that every day is profitable.

I NEVER trade if the signal is not clear; not trading is part of a good trading system.
 
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