Well for me (key word me) after the first half hour I recognized that the market was volatile and I made some adjustments, I reduced my size and widen my stop and I road the trend down for the rest of the day. That's the problem on this site everyone thinks there way is the only way to trade, just because something works for you doesn't mean it will work for others. There's more than one way to trade and your way isn't the only way.
frustrating Friday
- Thread starter Eddiemorra
- Start date
Well for me (key word me) after the first half hour I recognized that the market was volatile and I made some adjustments, I reduced my size and widen my stop and I road the trend down for the rest of the day. That's the problem on this site everyone thinks there way is the only way to trade, just because something works for you doesn't mean it will work for others. There's more than one way to trade and your way isn't the only way.
Ok thanks. Good luck on your trading!
Hmmm..., wonder how many times have I posted here - that there are more ways to trade successfully than I care to count
Undoubtedly..., more times than I care to count
Increasing stops is a band aid - no matter the TF..., no matter the environment..., no the trading style..., no matter (fill in the blank)
Each trade breaks down / fails (reason for entering is invalidated) - where it breaks down / fails
Giving it any more room - is simply pissing away money - and trading hope-ium
RN
There are thousand ways, but there is only one BEST way to trade. So the challenge is to find the best way.
Watch first in hindsight what happened, look what would have been the best way to trade (low risk and high profit), and try to make a system that will always trade the best solution. Probably you will never achieve the best way to trade, but you should be ambitious.
This scenario will take years before you will reach a way to trade the biggest chunks of every move.
And because markets can have many different behaviors your system should adapt itself to this. That's the most important part, but the part that is skipped by most people.
I'm getting in late here, but I just wanted to show how I would view this. Keep in mind, its all hindsight, and keep in mind I don't really look at the ES, just the NQ, so this is almost more of an exercise for me than anything else.
One of the big things I have come to realize is that context is what separates the men from the boys. Figuring out what levels matter and which ones don't is important. Figuring out what lower high is significant and which one isn't is also important.
I personally don't like diagonal trendlines so much because they can be drawn in so many different ways, but they do work well every now and then. The thing though is that if I'm gonna control risk, I want to get in at the trendline, not above it after I might think I have some confirmation of a lower high or what have you, and if I'm expecting price to act a certain way at a trendline, if it doesn't, its time to bail. The closer I can get in to the trendline, the tighter my stop can be. Plus, a few of your trendlines are kind of in between extreme areas, so you're trading in the middle where its a bit choppy.
I made a few notes onto this chart here based on your chart. So first, at the end of the day, you mark a great short you took based on what looks to be a case of support then resistance, in fact, you took this trade twice.. two great shorts. But this exact same thing happened earlier in the day where I mark my support line I would draw from the opening low that was put in just after the open. When we break through and come back up again, we have lots of difficultly. 2 hours later, once again, we cannot cross.
Also on your chart, you mark a trendline break trade. The first is a winner, but the second is a loser. I mark why I think the second doesn't work... the area just before started to show support with the previous swing lows that just weren't dropping lower.
But I also mark another trendline that provides a great short when it breaks, but you don't have this on your chart. When you actually start to skip some trendline break trades, you might be skipping the winners and only taking the losers, thereby totally messing with what could actually be a profitable statistical edge. More importantly also, this trendline follows price up to the area I already marked as a level to watch, so when this trendline broke, you have not only your regular trendline break, but you have price not being able to go above a previous level that was support then resistance.
Anyway... I'm just an amateur, but I wanted to share what jumped out at me.
Attachments
Was there any reasons why it was obvious that today wasn't going to be a 'trend day' on the ES?
After the decent gap up and continuation for the first 1.5 hours, it looked strong and looked like how lots of 'trend days' start out that have only very small retraces and kill the shorts.
The person whose trades I usually copy (although stupidly, not today since i've been having an unusually good patch myself) went short near the high. Shorted at 1973. However, what impressed me more than the short, was that he knew we were going to go down to at least 60 (which we have now at the time of writing this post)
Anything obvious that said this move up was 'fake' and that we'd fall most of the way back down rather than being a trend up day?
After the decent gap up and continuation for the first 1.5 hours, it looked strong and looked like how lots of 'trend days' start out that have only very small retraces and kill the shorts.
The person whose trades I usually copy (although stupidly, not today since i've been having an unusually good patch myself) went short near the high. Shorted at 1973. However, what impressed me more than the short, was that he knew we were going to go down to at least 60 (which we have now at the time of writing this post)
Anything obvious that said this move up was 'fake' and that we'd fall most of the way back down rather than being a trend up day?
I have nothing to offer, but I'm just simply amazed. Looking at the ES chart, to once again short at the very top of a move, without any sort of previous resistance here that I can see, is simply incredible. If you had asked why a short at 10:28 at 68.75, that is obvious (only good for 5 points mind you)... but up at 73, not a clue!
I do hope that someone comes along with something tangible to offer, but it seems that this secret is just too good to let out.
Oh.... I would like to say something about this though. I don't think its right to say the move was "fake". It was trending for the first 1.5 hours, and the trend simply ended. The bulk of the traders (those with the most money who are the ones that in fact move the market) got what they wanted out of the move. Its like when price gaps up on the open. It first moves down to fill in the gap, and then starts rising. In this case, price moved down to fill in all those price levels that weren't explored by the NY guys, and once the gap was closed, the need was fulfilled, so then it was off to the next trend, which of course could always be more down or back up.
I only call stuff fake when you see a trend, but then perhaps you see some support level broken, perhaps some swing low taken out. When it quickly recovers, this is what I consider fake, because it flushed out the late longs, or perhaps the weak longs, so the minor down move was fake in relation to the original up trend. Or a fake breakout from a range, as so often happens, only to see price drop back into the range.
You can typically find good support/resistance levels at previous closing prints in the spx/ES...Just based on that 1973 level, my guesstimate was that the other trader felt that a rally into Monday's close was a good low risk short...It works the same on the way down..For instance, a swing low in Russell 2000 was at the previous close and then it rallied into the first few hours today...
Look at Friday's SPX cash low/combined with the closing SPX from Monday...it's a resistance "zone"...Granted the 1973 entry is really good, but maybe the guy saw some divergence in NQ and Russell or such and just sold into the early strength (combined with the cash level resistance).