The screen looks like this. I usually just look at the chart on the right (5min) only. Dom, OTR, 2 min YM charts are hard for me to use for now...
The screen looks like this. I usually just look at the chart on the right (5min) only. Dom, OTR, 2 min YM charts are hard for me to use for now...
View attachment 191689
Ok, having one monitor for 'carving' turns is a bit of a handicap for intraday.
Generally charts are on the left monitor and the trading platform is on the right. The trading platform is setup into roughly 3 equal vertical sections. In the leftmost section are two OTR charts. One above the other - ES 5m and YM 2m. The center section has the DOM ladder with bid/ask histograms and the rightmost section has two T&S streams side by side. The left is filtered at 50 or 100, the right showing all.
The idea is that you are ‘sweeping’ at regular intervals from coarse to fine detail. Two things begin to come into view as all these information streams are processed as a whole. One is ‘dwell’ or lack of movement. The other is movement from this state of dwell.
The fine will want to suck you in, but the key is to stay focused on the coarse annotating and logging until you come to ‘turning points.’ At first you will only see the turning points after the fact, saying wtf.
So there’s what’s happening now, what came before this and what comes after this.
You soon notice the role of the doji and how it manifests on every bar. This will take you into the 5x5 drill.
The goal of the drill among other things is to create ‘registers’ in your mind’s eye. Price migrates.
Annotating actively ecapsulates this migration of price from a single bar into tapes to slower and slower containers.
Once the doji is placed into a finite context then doing/programming IF1/IF2 APA will have more utility. If1/if2 opportunity exists on every bar.
The trading overlay of hold and reverse has many more distinctions within it. Early entries, early exits, re-entries and sidelining are aspects.
It all starts at the 5x5 and the two paths any of those single form bars can take.
I still haven't figured how one can reverse almost to the tick
I seem to be able to extract anywhere between 1/3 to 2/3 of ATR for the AM session. That's with half of my trades being stupid mistakes.
The hard part for me still are OB's and laterals. I find those more risky and prone to unexpected moves.

This is a fact of life trading live. The whole point is to recognize change is/has occurring/occurred, and to position yourself properly. Same applies to "wash"... but ALWAYS at least try for BE+1 so someone else pays the commish!!
The stoopid mistakes go away with experience.
OB's, particularly consecutive OB's are hard for me. Laterals however, are no longer... Jacks method is soooo much easier (tradeable too!) and to me, make much more sense versus Spyders method. YMMV.
I have seen Jack discuss daily ATR in aggregate number of contracts and also per contract. Let me tell you... if you do 1/3 to 2/3 consistently, aggregate or per does not matter. Think Oskar Schindler. And the more experience, the fewer stupid things. 2x and more will happen along the way... the more you do the "luckier" you get. But we know that we know, it is not luck or chance.![]()
!
uh oh, usually any talk of ATR brings out the trolls. Maybe this time will be different.
I saw a vid a while back, I think it was student though, trading 18 contracts at a whack. MBTrading was the brokerage: I recognized the (proprietary) platform since I had been an MBT client some time earlier. I remember not being impressed. Several consecutive 6 tick losses, interspersed between some 2 to 4 point gains. I also remember thinking how it seemed like scalping and why is this guy using a 5 minute chart? The chart was not seen however.