Old angles gone

d08 said:
This year seems to be a turning point. The last one like this was 2009.
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SoesWasBetter said:
There were a number of opportunities that used to present themselves with some regularity , that have simply disappeared

Any suggestions as to what's working now
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The best traders, in my opinion, don't have or use...'fad' or temporary trading strategies.
If your trading strategy relies on such...maybe you should change it. Or discover something new and more normal.

Just some food for thought o_O

A good trader, or trading strategy, trades bedrock. Day in, day out. Or at a higher frequency then investing or swing trading.

You can't be a master of something...if you're hopping around all the time, or chasing something different or rare or infrequent.
 
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Something similar has happened to me with my scalping strategy, but its strictly due to low volatility. I scalp the ES on the 1 min charts until lunch. Usually have 10-20ish trades. But the opening 30-60 mins over this past year has had a lot of 2 tick clustered PA. Meaning prices trend or chop, then clusters over 5-10 bars in 2 tickish ranges. Tells me price has discovered an equilibrium point and rarely does this offer me opportunities worthy of trading. System is churning out 2-4 trades on average, and all 1 or 2 tick winners not worthy of my time.

I've shifted my strategy over to the NQ b/c its purely price structure based and works on the indexes. NQ has a healthy volatility right now. Unfortunately, NQ can't handle the size I trade scalping so I'm forced to size down. Plus winning percentages aren't nearly as good in NQ as ES.

Longer term ES strategy is long only and i'm doing fine. Key is to have multiple strategies and not put your eggs in one basket.
 
Jeeebus....
"Everyone is a genius in a bull market."


Trade long enough, and you will see your shit dry up -- I'm talking about your "milling money" set-up -- the kind of stuff where you're just clicking all day long, bringing in nickels and dimes and quarters, and you massage your mouse finger at the end of the day, your Golden Finger, because it hurts so.
But eventually, the magic leaves it. Did the market change? Was it a fluke anyway? Was it a structural anomaly overhauled by some regulatory move? Doesn't matter: it's gone. And that's the OP's point of the thread.
So! Whattaya gonna do?

My own plan was to have multiple tools in the fire, half-way warm, ready to be tested and brought out into the main battery. For myself, I ended up in options -- premium-selling -- which was damn sweet for a number of years. But put up a graph of week-averages VIXs, and you'll see how gnarly life has become over the last 5 years.
So! For me: Broken-wing Butterflies. LONG butterflies. 1-x-3-2 ratios. And I *think* I've discovered a little tweak in index calendars that might prove fruitful in sub-10 volatility regimes. {hint hint hint}
 
As old dies, the migration of new continue to affect the old ways of trading. Even with Hft's and Darkpools, many old systems continue to produce profits. Yes, volatility maybe gone, but price continues to trend and that's enough Bank for me.
 
lawrence-lugar said:
The best traders, in my opinion, don't have or use...'fad' or temporary trading strategies.
If your trading strategy relies on such...maybe you should change it. Or discover something new and more normal.

Just some food for thought o_O

A good trader, or trading strategy, trades bedrock. Day in, day out. Or at a higher frequency then investing or swing trading.

You can't be a master of something...if you're hopping around all the time, or chasing something different or rare or infrequent.
More...

I'm not trading fads but things that have worked for decades can and will stop working or at least change significantly. Sure, I haven't analyzed how it performed in 1949 but I do think markets now are different compared to then (I'm sure you'll disagree).
Higher frequency doesn't give me any answers, if you look at the price over decades, you'll notice the oscillations becoming more rapid as information is released faster and the reactions of the market are faster as well.
I takes someone delusional to say they're the "master of the markets", I think that's illusive and a signal that the trader has no idea what they're doing. You have to be malleable.

(excuse me, I've had a few.)
 
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