Micro E-mini Madness (2% per day)

[Overnight]

Great question Mr. ES . Usually I use limit orders for both entries and exits, but when the market seems to be moving quickly, I use market orders, especially for exits. I have seen $15 MNQ profits disappear in mere seconds before. I would rather get $10 on that trade than -$10!

I would strongly suggest you use only stop markets on your protections...stop limits can be blown through, as you said, in the blink of an eye.

Limits on entries? Mreh. I find them to be of limited value, as even those can be broken on fast moves, so you never get in. 6 of one, half-dozen of the other.

 

[Bobiz]

Bobiz, the red/green SMA is from the public domain. What is interesting about this one is that in a tight range it turns blue. As with all things I discuss, you have to tweak to fit your style. ET doesn't support uploading of the .pla file for MC, so here it is on OneDrive.

What is its application? Its one more visual reminder for me not to be an idiot and fight the trend. My favorite indicator of all time is a red 50 sma. But adding the green to the SMA has helped me step back and rethink some entries.

I am still looking for another version of the SMA that changes color with the slope. This one simply turns green if the price is above and red if the price is below. It is good, but the other would be better in my opinion.

Regarding the Big and Medium charts, yes both are 15 tick ranges, but the big chart is a line chart that can easily show me multiple days, whereas the medium chart is my volume delta chart that only shows me 15 to 20 bars usually.

I used to use a 7 tick range bar on the NQ and a 5 tick on the YM, but with the current volatility, I had to stretch things a bit.

View attachment 209304

Which of your Big,Medium and Fastest charts is your "Entry chart",where trade are triggered and managed? Is the smaller points in profit targets not enriching the broker at your expense?

 

[sstheo]

Have you ever tried to trade the MNQ in the evening?

Es

Yes, but with the lighter volume things are much more erratic. They either go NOWHERE or jump ALL OVER the place. Neither one is fun and my confidence in my normally good setups is shot. I am a momentum scalper at heart, so without momentum I am nada. So I am doing much less of this trading now. In fact, I may stop all together soon. Sometimes I have traded for hours to make $5 (on the micros) and within minutes of the NY market open I can make $15. So why even bother with Asian session trading at all?

 

[sstheo]

I would strongly suggest you use only stop markets on your protections...stop limits can be blown through, as you said, in the blink of an eye.

Limits on entries? Mreh. I find them to be of limited value, as even those can be broken on fast moves, so you never get in. 6 of one, half-dozen of the other.

On my stops I only use market orders.

In the previous post I was talking about profitable exits. I actually prefer to front-run reversals by taking profits before everyone else does. As you can see in some of my previous trade graphs I have hit the exact top or bottom tick. That was a limit order.

On entries, I often change them to market orders if they are not hit within 10 or 15 seconds.

Unfortunately, I have a very bad habit of clicking the buttons in the WRONG ORDER. I end up entering the market order and then cancelling the limit order. At least 25% of the time this gets me TWO FREAKING POSITIONS when I only wanted ONE. You would think that I would have figured out how to fix this dumb error by now, but I did it yesterday even. (see yesterday's trade graph posted previously!) Where you see two positions? That was an accident. LOL.

 

[sstheo]

Which of your Big,Medium and Fastest charts is your "Entry chart",where trade are triggered and managed? Is the smaller points in profit targets not enriching the broker at your expense?

The fastest chart is my entry chart for sure, but I am watching all 3 right before an entry. I manage the trade on either the medium or fast chart.

Yes, the brokers love me, but as long as I come out net positive at the end of the day, all is good. I don't care how much the brokers make. My spreadsheet shows it is working - however slowly I plod along. But again, I am working on increasing my profit per trade by listening more to some of my friends who are bigger position and longer time-frame traders. I will continue to scalp in consolidation ranges, but I am now doing better at holding during the trends.

 

[Bobiz]

Your performance as shown by your spreadsheet is commendable,but I'm curious about the psychological impact of so many scalping trades in a day.You seemed to have a sound trading strategy that need a little bit of fine tuning to weaponize it for average 6 points (24 ticks) MES/ES rewards per valid "confluent swing" .

 

[sstheo]

Your performance as shown by your spreadsheet is commendable,but I'm curious about the psychological impact of so many scalping trades in a day.You seemed to have a sound trading strategy that need a little bit of fine tuning to weaponize it for average 6 points (24 ticks) MES/ES rewards per valid "confluent swing" .

My gray hairs are only showing up in the sideburns so far, LOL. And I am working on the fine tuning. I do see the benefit of bigger, longer trades and am working that direction for sure. The 24 tick ES mark is a great goal.

 

[sstheo]

What a crazy day today. I got three live account micro longs from the bottom after the FOMC report today. One was MNQ, and the other two were MYM. I waited and waited, looking for the bottom. I almost got it.

Of course, after these long trades, the market fully reversed the down draft of the day and reached new highs. NUTS!!!

(And for the record, I do not consider these $8 profit trades "scalps." They are equivalent to an $80 YM or NQ full E-mini trade. Just 4 of these brings in $30 which is like a $300 regular E-mini day. And I haven't met anyone yet who has complained about a $300 day.)

 

[Jasper]

My gray hairs are only showing up in the sideburns so far, LOL. And I am working on the fine tuning. I do see the benefit of bigger, longer trades and am working that direction for sure. The 24 tick ES mark is a great goal.

24 Ticks (6 points) is more than many swings on ES which means few of those will be hit. On the other hand if you trade a 3 lot and take the first at say 6 ticks and the second at say 12 ticks and then leaving the third to run to a natural conclusion then you will firstly skew risk more into your favour, secondly provide yourself with profitable trades off swings that simply don't run and there are plenty of those, and thirdly be more able psychologically to stay the course on the big swings that hit the home run...

Consider this. If you start with a 6 tick stop on 3 lots and then take one lot off at +6 you have moved your break even scratch point to entry -3. That's that bit extra wiggle room and still have the abilty to scratch for break even at -3 on the remaining lots (obviously comissions are a cost)

This is just an example. Play around with numbers in a spread sheet. you'd be surprised once you start plugging number in...

 

[Overnight]

24 Ticks (6 points) is more than many swings on ES which means few of those will be hit. On the other hand if you trade a 3 lot and take the first at say 6 ticks and the second at say 12 ticks and then leaving the third to run to a natural conclusion then you will firstly skew risk more into your favour, secondly provide yourself with profitable trades off swings that simply don't run and there are plenty of those, and thirdly be more able psychologically to stay the course on the big swings that hit the home run...

Consider this. If you start with a 6 tick stop on 3 lots and then take one lot off at +6 you have moved your break even scratch point to entry -3. That's that bit extra wiggle room and still have the abilty to scratch for break even at -3 on the remaining lots (obviously comissions are a cost)

This is just an example. Play around with numbers in a spread sheet. you'd be surprised once you start plugging number in...

That's all fine and good, until you hit your 6 tick stop on 3 lots on the first attempt. Now you would have to next achieve two perfect trades to make the amount of money you would have made with the original trade.

It all looks great in spreadsheets, but in practice it never works out. The real key are the entries. That's really the only way.