Well we are at least starting to get somewhere now, and I must congratulate you for your honesty. The first thing that sticks out is that you have a defined approach, and not jumping all over the place like some others seem to think is the best way to trade, which of course is not. You are getting close to be called an Elite Trader, but as I have not seen any live trade details with chart marked up, we will delay that title for a bit. Let us now move on and look at the first 5 min of RTH trading for the ES. It is very important as you have rightly identified.
Questions for experienced ES daytraders?
- Thread starter wtfauoa
- Start date
The benefit of trading equities over ES is you can trade at the time of your choice. For every hour, you can always find something to trade, because at any given moment, there are always some stocks on the move that you can catch, providing you have a good system to catch the move.
Well a lot of people think it's a dead artform, but I'm just watching the DOM. I've done it for almost 4 years now, so with that much time watching I've got a pretty good feel for it. Really though, I don't care about resting orders (L2 data), I just watch the best bid / ask and how it's behaving. From there I make a call on whether or not I think the bulls are participating and if they are, I'm setting orders at the levels and waiting.
I have to agree with you somewhat, as the DOM can be very advantageous when daytrading the ES. However, I would not use it in isolation, as I like to know where price has been for the very recent past as in seconds to minutes to hours, depending on time of day. We will continue the discussion around the first 5 min of RTH for now, and forget all other times until we are happy to move on. This thread might now get a bit interesting, but remember without some marked up charts showing entry and exits it is all just words. For now, we will drop the live trade requirement and allow marked up charts to be posted for discussion. Charts include DOM and Time & Sales. It must be ES charts only, as we are not interested in any other market, as stated numerous times already.
I trade the ES Daily to obtain 4pts. Starting this week, i will try my strategy on the CL market to see how it performs. The ES does have its trending days, but after 3 years of watching it, it does take some experience with seeing the price movement.
Here's my question. If the ES is not typically a trending instrument, why even bother trading it like one? Wouldn't it be easier to trade it from the approach that it isn't a trending product?
Regarding "order flow", I don't use time and sales and have never found that useful. I just watch the price ladder and focus on that. If you stare at it enough, pay close attention, and take notes, you are going to find something that repeats.
It's not something that can be captured in a screenshot, it would probably have to be videos...
Precisely. The minute you find something doesn't work all that often, or move in a certain way, you can more than likely figure out a profitable strategy from doing the opposite.
So, let me see if I can modify the ORB to come up with a valid approach. Everyone is looking at the same information, with a very slight time delay for retail traders which I believe does not make that much of a difference for trading small size (10 contracts is small size). The whole purpose of doing this exercise is to come up with something to forward test with 10 contracts (test with live data feed so will probably have to use ninjatrader linked to TWS). Feel free to join if you are going to post some marked up charts of ES during the first 5 min of RTH.
