This week wasn't too bad, but it wasn't great either. I had 7 losers and 6 winners for the week. I didn't take any premarket trades or trade in any other accounts.
I'm generally getting the direction right, but timing the entries badly. I think it's because I'm still not used to the way the ES moves on the 1 minute chart.
This week I focused on trying to find repeatable patterns in the way the ES behaves to narrow down exactly what I'm looking for in determining a buy or sell trade, thanks to easymon1's question.
What triggers a buy or a sell to open?
What triggers an exit?
My overall trading plan hasn't changed. I use the same indicators and general plan for finding direction and timing entries, but adjusting how I was using it on the NQ to how it works on the ES has been difficult.
Yesterday's chart below shows a few of the things that I use for getting into trades.
There are 3 numbers on the chart, so here are the explanations that go with the 3 numbers.
1. Overall down trend, so bias was to the downside. There can be strong moment around the open, so a retest and rejection of the lower high at the open is where I went short.
If you were to look inside the candle you would see that it shows the same problem I'm having with most of my trades....I traded the momentum instead of waiting for a small pullback, which seems to be important in trading the ES.
2. This shows the reversal at the bottom I also posted yesterday. I really, really like the price action there. The way the ES seems to bounce at every support and resistance level, I think...though I don't have the experience with ES to know for sure... that it should be very easy to know that the ES is likely to have some sort of bounce at that level, even if only a small one, and so it seems like it was a high probability reversal. Also, considering the time of the day....reversal in the first hour after the open, adds to the trade's potential for continuation, in my opinion.
What's also nice about this reversal is that there were a lot of opportunities to get in safely around that area. Unless someone is like me and tends to buy late.
3. Hey, I DID buy that late. Very late, because I was on a long break and missed it all.
The next trade had the direction right, that we were likely to continue moving up, and it followed my rules for the Nasdaq perfectly. But that doesn't seem to be working for the ES. Instead it seems to consistently make very distinct retracements while still trending. That trade was stopped out, but I re-entered, although, again, it was a late entry and was nearly stopped out, but that trade worked.
So, at this point my thoughts are that the triggers to use for a good a buy or sell trade is to find a larger trend and wait for a retracement. Rejection of that retest of support or resistance....likely a trendline, is probably a good place to jump into the overall trend direction.
Today's trading:
So, I tried waiting for a larger retracement to get into the trend this morning on the ES, like I explained about in #3 and never took a trade in the first leg up after the open. Opportunities were there, I just kept thinking they could drop even more and waited too much. So, I'm still finding it hard to be really accurate with the ES.
However, a little later I took only one trade today on the ES, and did get a perfect entry. 1 tick retracement, then it went straight to 10 ticks. So, maybe all this time studying how to STOP buying AFTER it starts moving is starting to click.
I might start posting charts of my trades again someday, but I'm not ready to show my trades each day. What would be nice would be getting the low of each day and holding onto it, rather than going for only 10 ticks. Those would be good trades to post.
