NumberZ Day Trading Journal

[maxinger]

It looks about 5 points higher than the Brooks entry I used. My fills, albeit SIM, are printed bt Ninjatrader on the charts for you to compare.



But doing just that gave me an entry with what appears to be a significant advantage over what you advise as an entry, doesn't it?

Brooks says to use either day session or 24 hour so long as you are consistent and stick to one or the other.

My entry price 2233.

Your entry price was better (based on Brooks').
But you have to test your system over many years
and see if it works.

I don't follow the books.
don't believe what the books say.
after you read the books, you have to develop your own trading strategy.

 

[toon]

It looks about 5 points higher than the Brooks entry I used. My fills, albeit SIM, are printed bt Ninjatrader on the charts for you to compare.



But doing just that gave me an entry with what appears to be a significant advantage over what you advise as an entry, doesn't it?

Brooks says to use either day session or 24 hour so long as you are consistent and stick to one or the other.

Your entry price is not comparable to Max's. Your entered a short trade, while his would be a long trade.

 

[Handle123]

Day One:

The first day is in the books and below is a screen shot of the chart with the notes I made during the day based on my limited understanding of the Brooks course at this point.

I set the SIM account to $1000 starting balance as that is all I plan on starting with if I ever start placing live trades.

I just exited a long, the second of two trades. Both are shown on the Ninjatrader chart below.

As I said in the initial post, I will have to be done by noon eastern time most days, so as I plan my approach to this, one rule I have is that if I get an exit or entry signal after 11:00 AM I must take the exit and skip the entry.

View attachment 269253

Here are some notes I made during the last few hours:


Using Brooks Market Cycle terms I see Friday around the NFP news as "spike" and the rest of the day as a "bear channel" that transitioned to a trading range overnight and breakout attempt this morning.

Trade 1: I shorted the low of the first five minute candle (filled 2227.7) after "wedge" top on the breakout attempt (Brooks says "Most breakout attempts fail" and "wedges are fairly reliable patterns"). Price did drop to the top of the range and it looked immediately like a test of that range as support. I hit the "reverse" and was covered for the short (filled 2226.80) and filled long (filled 2226.40) and my stop loss is 2225.40 (below the low of the day per Brooks).

My profit target is 2253.7. Brooks says that price will often test the high or low close on a five minute candle chart and I believe he means the high close on the day session chart (I might be wrong on this). 2253.7 is the high five minute candle close from Friday.

He also suggests using "measured moves" of "opening ranges." The measured move of today's opening range (I assume that is the first two candles today and Brooks says is different from day to day). Price is currently slightly above the 2246.4 measured move target.

A bear bar closing on its low below the "measured move" level would be I believe a "warning" and if price breaks the low of a bear bar closing on its low and below the measured move level will be an "exit" for me.

Market went sideways and did make an H1 and H2 attempt to reverse back up. The H2 failed, and 11:20 bear bar closed on its low, and I closed the trade as 11:25 started to show bear follow through.

I exited before the candle close which looks like an error in hindsight as what looked like a wedge bottom is acting like a wedge bottom. Will have to work on waiting for candle closes. Brooks warns repeatedly that the look of a five minute candle can change dramatically in the closing seconds. I let the time of day rattle me out.

Time to go to work on my real job.

Am little lost on how you draw your "wedges", though perhaps I might be most rigid.
But I use this, if you are interested.

Pattern Index (thepatternsite.com)

Good luck on your journal.

 

[NumberZ]

Your entry price is not comparable to Max's. Your entered a short trade, while his would be a long trade.

Please look again. I entered short and then REVERSED to long. My long entry was almost 7 points lower than Mr Max's [2226.4 vs 2233]

My actual, albeit SIM, entries and exits are clearly marked on all charts I posted. Thank you for reading my journal.

 

[NumberZ]

Am little lost on how you draw your "wedges", though perhaps I might be most rigid.
But I use this, if you are interested.

Pattern Index (thepatternsite.com)

Good luck on your journal.

In one of his early videos Brooks says he considers any three tests a form of a wedge. He does say that many of the "wedges" based on his criteria will not look like "traditional" wedges.

My purpose here is to do my best to learn and apply what Brooks teaches in his course. Thank you for your comment and the link to the website. I'll keep it in my back pocket for now. I really want to give this Brooks Trading Course a fair try.

 

[NumberZ]

Your entry price was better (based on Brooks').
But you have to test your system over many years
and see if it works.

Brooks says he has been trading over 30 years. Why would I have to spend many years reinventing the wheel? If the stuff in the Brooks course is accurate, shouldn't I expect to become a profitable trader too?

There are professional traders trading for professional trading firms, aren't there? Do these firms give new hires YEARS to become profitable? I can't imagine that these firms let a guy sit there losing money year after year waiting for them to test and develop a profitable system just "to see if it works."

Thank you for reading my journal.

 

[NumberZ]

9:49 and my Ninjatrader is "frozen"

No data since right after the open.

The connection light is "green" but nothing is coming through.

Just logged on to my Think or Swim Account. That confirms the market did open lol.

 

[NumberZ]

No data since right after the open.

Not going to work for me today. All kinds of problems. Uninstalled/reinstalled and made me enter my credentials again. When loaded my workspace was gone, SIM account reset to $100K, no notes on chart.

Will spend what time I have left today trying to get ready to resume tomorrow. Probably going to use a laptop going forward.

 

[volpri]

@NumberZ Glad to see you doing a journal. While such patterns as wedges ..triangles ..pb's trend lines...etc are embedded in what Brooks teaches not every wedge has the SAME probability of succeeding. That is important to understand. This is WHY a lot of traders give up on trading such patterns or they will say 50/50 chance of it working or not working.

You might wish to be cognizant that larger context has a lot to do whether or not a patterns succeeds as it is postulated to succeed. For instance, a wedge top in a tight and steep bull channel that started with a spike, even though a wedge top is made and one expects a move south, it will likely fail, and a trader will see one wedge top after the other. Shorting them is a losing strategy.

Even if the channel is not that tight and one expects price to head south and it doesn't then Brooks calls these sort of things the "unexpected event." This can happen when one see a wedge top at the top of of say a trading range. One is expecting price to head south. Instead there is a successful BO of the TR. Anytime the unexpected happens then Brooks looks for a measured move likely 2 legs of movement in the unexpected direction.

So, I pay close attention to the larger context (where price is at in the phase of the channel cycle) i.e. where the pattern is located within that larger context and I pay attention to the immediate bar by bar context (who is winning bulls or bears?) AND when the unexpected happens I go with the unexpected direction and try to get a measured move. At least I try to capture the second leg.

I don’t know if you have gotten far enough into listening to brooks to have heard of the “unexpected” happening and what to do when that happens.

And remember the market is uncertain. Not random but uncertain. We operate in a 60/40 band. At time we have a 70% chance and at very rare times a 90% chance of a trade succeeding.

Just thought you might find this interesting or helpful.

Here is an example of wedge wedge top after the other failing:

 

[volpri]

That first wedge in my snapshot above is actually composed of a spike (on a larger TF it would appear as a 1 or two bar spike wedge i.e. the first 6 bull bars in this first wedge shown here). Shorting after that spike there was a PB then a resumption of the trend causing the larger wedge shown on the chart and labeled as the first failed wedge. Since a wedge is a 3 push pattern if you look you will see a smaller wedge nested within the larger first wedge shown. It starts at the end of the spike then the PB followed by a second push up which is followed my another PB then a third push up. A nested wedge.

Larger context: some sort TR (bottom left of the chart) BO via the spike. Then a PB and that is where a bull channel starts. The intermediate context is the wedge patterns. A larger one with a smaller nested one. The immediate context is only two bear bars in the last 15 bull bars. Tails on bottom of bars. Gaps between close of one bar and the close of the previous bars and between the highs of bars and close and highs..etc. This is too much buying pressure to consider shorting the wedge top. Any PB is likely to be minor and not a reversal from the top of a wedge top.