Matcha's Dow E-mini Journal

Too many trades today. Totally 18 trades. And I turned high 3 winners to losers. I am not too happy with myself. Missed the last our break out trade-the break out I have been expecting the whole day….

A few trades I took worth mentioning:
Trade A: 7:07am Stopped out once
Enter: 10119
Exit: 10135
Out too quickly again, the trend isn’t reversed yet, it just did it’s own “thing”

Trade B: I went in again. Didn’t want to miss the move. The trend was strong, so enter with the trend anywhere can be a winning trade, according to the text book. It ends up only 5 points
Enter: 10172
Exit: 10177

Around 7:30-9:00, I have been waiting and anticipating the break out trade with trend(3rd leg up). So I constantly went long when price touched EMA-they all look like the great set up to me. But market ended up trading in a range.
Made about 6 meaningless trades here, 2 winners turned to be losers since I “think” it should be a breakout trade.

TRADE C: this is the first counter-trend trading I took so it was worth mentioning. And it went well, I had to thank to yesterday’s brief study of Al Brook! Price rejected at previous pivot high-long up tail Doji. Price also breaks the trend line. Long reversal red candle with decent body, body way over shoot the doji star. Price has decent distance with my EMA. Momentum is down; %D and %K are angling down from the overbought area. On larger time frame, long up tail red candle are forming, the body of the red candle penetrated 50% of the previous long green candle. Target exit will be on the EMA acting as Support area. I think it’s a pretty good enough counter-trend trading set up!
Enter: 10197
Exit: 10179


TRADE D: I was out so quickly, missed this entire break out trade finally happen in the last half an hour! I was so exhausted by those range bounds and my over trades behavior! And I left my desk to look for last bag of potato chips with Sex and the City 2 this weekend in my head.
Plus I usually don’t trade the last half an hour, I thought that the trend often times reverse and it tends to be volatile. I will look into the last half an hour from tomorrow.
Enter: 10192 Long
Exit: 10201

Today P/L: +66.80, 44%win rate

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Quote from Snowman75:

Matcha, all the best in your pursuit. I also trade the YM. I've been doing it part-time for a few years. Daytrading is tough but I think you are on the right track studying bar to bar. I also started Al but put it down for some time as its very badly written and I already have some setups that I have been working on that are bar/candle based. I really believe every candle is important. Especially while scalping. I use a 5min chart as I think there is too much noise in the 1min. I also used 42ticks and other tick variations. I think I've tried a zillion different approaches. At the end of the day I believe you need to keep searching until you find something you like and feel comfortable with. Then its all about the money management.
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Thank you for your comment, Snowman75, your journal looks cool!

I admire some traders like you can work full time and trade. To me it's very hard. But if I can't prove myself I am capable of daytrading, I will have to go back work full time too.
I am so struggling between all the time frames now. I traded tick charts, 100, 300, 900, 133,233 , range bars all of them. I do like the smoothness of the tick charts. I like to see all the great patterns. Then I understand I wont be able to analyze bar by bar. The 5 minute chart is a little too difficult to see patterns, plus I can't seem to find a good entry, the stop can be very wide. So now I have 5 min chart on the side and 2min on another. 5 min to see overall movement and candles. 2 min to see details, triggers and patterns. I will also look for confirmations on larger time frame. I know I probably look at too much... But it seems like I can get rid of any of them. Starters problem..
I understand there is no perfect time frame, I got to find what's the best for me. I am still exploring them. Believe me, they were in my dream everyday, 300 tick, 100 tick, 1 min, 2 min, 5 min....

I wish I can only trade from 1 time frame!
 
Quote from Bolimomo:

I don't think Al Brook's bar-by-bar approach is good for anything less than 5-minute bars (or even 15-minute bars). The main reason is time. We don't have enough time to analyze each 1-min bar (or sub-minute tick bars). The market just zoom by you when you are measuring this and measuring that on the bar. Oliver Velez advocates the 55% mark on a bar. Imagine doing that on a 1-min bar with your calculator (and the bar is still forming).

I trade AAPL on 42-tick charts (not 42-tick alone but it helps me time my entries once I have a bias). It can be 10 bars in 1 minute. a bar will zoom you by in less than 10 seconds.

It takes only 1 trader somewhere in the world to invalidate what you think as the "support" and "resistance". LOL.
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I aggree it is only applicable to 5 min and daily. longer time frame. I figured if I finally can't use it for daytrade. I will use it on daily chart for swing trades.

So far, I picked up some important theories on his book.(still don't understand 90% of the book)

On 1 or 2 min chart, I look at combined series of candles instead of one candle( you will probably say it's same as just looking at 5 min, but I just can't see details with 5 min...)

I think after practicing and finishing up the book(untill really understand what he is saying, I will make decision on wether trading tick chart or min chart. Right now, 2 Min and 5 min chart seems doing ok for me....
 
Put on 2 swing trades this week in SIM. I haven’t been swing trading with neither live account nor SIM since Feb. Those were the first trades ever since then. I am only watching 4 stocks so far.

Swing trades;
BUCY:
5/25 Bought 200 Shares at $49.33
Stop: 46.00
5/27 Sold 50 Shares at $54.03, Move stop to 49.50 break even.
Worst comes to worst, P/L is $235.00 2% on the trade. It’s a stress free trade now:-P
Target 2:59.00


HLX:
5/25 Bought 400 Shares at $11.43
Stop $10.50
5/27 moved my stop to $11.10, stopped out at $11.20.
P/L -$92, -2% loss on the trade.
Lesson to learn, for a volatile stock, don’t rush to move stop too quickly

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For someone who just started out, I would recommend getting familiar with how to trade using the daily pivot numbers (S2, S1, PP, R1, R2) to hold a longer view intraday to trade rather than doing a bar-by-bay analysis on 1-minute bars. It should be easier.
 
Quote from Bolimomo:

For someone who just started out, I would recommend getting familiar with how to trade using the daily pivot numbers (S2, S1, PP, R1, R2) to hold a longer view intraday to trade rather than doing a bar-by-bay analysis on 1-minute bars. It should be easier.
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I drew S/R, daily pivots, Yesterday open, close, high , low on my chart everynight. I tried to memorize them everyday.(sounds crazy) I do look at them while trading. The challenge No.1 is I was often scared of holding the position too long. Even when I traded 2 contracts, when I can scare out one at the breakeven level, I was scared of letting the other one run to the pivot level or measured move level. But like you said, I can gradually improve by practicing.
The challenge No2 is, When we have a wide trading range day, stretch is so high. The next day's pivot point will be extended so much due to the formulas. Vice versa to small trading ranging day. When that happened, does that mean I shouldn't be looking at the pivot points? Or is there any other caculation to reflect the pivot points?
I once listened John Person's pivot points webinar. He has this methodology to caculate and predict his"pivot points". I couldn't really understand his approach and didn't want to pay for it at this point. But in TOS , they offered his indicator. Tried once, couldn't understand. Have you heard of it?
 
Quote from Matcha:


I drew S/R, daily pivots, Yesterday open, close, high , low on my chart everynight. I tried to memorize them everyday.(sounds crazy)
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No need to manually draw them. You use TradeStation, right? There are script to draw them automatically. (all that you mentioned)

JP's indicators... tried them for a month. I wouldn't say bad thing about them but they didn't work for me. I saw no significant difference between his indicators and any indicators that simply signal moving average cross overs.
 
Woke up late this morning, I only traded the last 2 hour session. Missed the early morning move.

Total 3 trades today. +$167

Took a reversal trade and it came out nicely. Took profit too quickly again. The second trade was a buy at pull back, it worked out nicely at first and I set my target to yesterdays close 10235 area. But at 12:50am, a large red candle ran my stopped a $185 profit turned into $25 profit….

TRADE A: Stopped once. Reentered
This is the first reversal trade I took since I started trading. The thoughts behind it are, Market in a bearish trend and made 4 leg down. Bar 1 was the 3rd leg reversal bar with long lower tail, and it broke the daily pivot point 10105 but bounced up. Meaning lots of buyers are here to buy-lots of demand around this level. Plus the previous leg was a parabolic move due to the downgrade news. The Bar 1 was the bar to end the spike. I didn’t take the trade because it was 9: 50ish. Around 11:00 Price retested the previous low and 3 tick below the previous low then quickly reversed-Doji and follow through a long engulfing candle. This is made the reversal trade more reliable-The second attempt to end the bear trend. The long lower tails also told the story.

ENTRY: 10115
EXIT: 10156 Out too quickly again
41Pts

TRADE B: Enter on a pullback within trend. This time I choose to stay with the whole move. I used measured move, S/R etc to set the target. But the long nasty red candle ruined everything in the last few minutes. The nasty candle came into play at 10208(resistance level). That could be the level I usually take profits, but this time the trend was so strong, I stayed in.
ENTRY: 10181
EXIT: 10186

Weekly recap: +$440.
Avg daily trades: 10.
Win Rate: 45%-too low
Mistakes: 4 ((Trade too much, didn’t wait for the perfect set up, stop too wide)
Cost of mistakes: $237

Can’t wait to watch SATC 2 this weekend, YEH!!!

Have a great long weekend, everyone!
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Quote from Bolimomo:

No need to manually draw them. You use TradeStation, right? There are script to draw them automatically. (all that you mentioned)

JP's indicators... tried them for a month. I wouldn't say bad thing about them but they didn't work for me. I saw no significant difference between his indicators and any indicators that simply signal moving average cross overs.
More...

Is it "floor trader pivot" indicator? the lines are different with my daily pivot points. The formulas should be the same, right?

PP= (H + L + C)/3
R1 = 2P - L
S1 = 2P - H
R2 = (P -S1) + R1
S2 = P - (R2 - S1)

Are you also using Market Profile?
 
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