Questions for experienced ES daytraders?

Gotcha · Nov 9, 2016

Handle123 said:
I been in hospital few times this past month, so not posting much. And as far as several on the site, I have them on ignore, so even if they mention me, they had to have made a 2nd, 3rd, 4th accounts. I don't need more bullshit in my life by those I look at waste of time in my life. I don't understand why people never learned respect. There are those who write 30 plus posts a day and most of it is lacks positive information. Posts are supposed to offer perhaps a new idea or rehash the classics, but way too much of the 3 stooges.

Posts should also offer something tangible, and each time you say that you come up with a new strategy while just passing time, I have to want to see a bit more proof. You say you are already all automated, you say you have people doing all the trading for you, so one has to wonder why you keep looking for more and more strategies.

Listen, I watch the DOM in the ES, and I do not for one second believe that you can do what you claim to do. If you were talking maybe the bonds, fine, but in the ES, with these levels having 500-1000 on bid/offer, which can be taken out in a second, you cannot be making decisions quick enough and putting in your orders fast enough, simply impossible. Your idea of a soft 3 tick risk and hard 4 tick risk to me makes no sense because there are many times where the ES just spikes way more than this and you aren't going to be able to have your hard 4 tick exit.

Even if you see bids or offers added, or you see them taken away, this still doesn't provide an edge because this flips on a dime. The algos, which operate on micro second time lines, can instantly make it looks like offers are pulled, and yet do the complete opposite. There is a reason why spoofing happens on levels that are much further away from the inside bid/ask, and this reason is that its too easy to get filled. Now if a computer is scared of getting filled on an order they don't really want, how are you using this order flow to make your perfect entries? Granted, you don't say what you're doing, but with the ES, honestly, order flow analysis is quite limited in my opinion.

You say you laugh when newbies want to scalp, and yet we are to believe that you worked out a strategy for this while sitting in your bed with tubes attached? If you're targeting 2 ticks, I imagine that this needs to be a strategy that is co-located on some server close to the exchange and all automated, not orders sent from your laptop. But since you have a million other strategies, I'm sure its easy to just mix and match pieces together.

Listen, with full respect, you make outrageous claims and its time to back up those claims. Not with hindsight charts that are marked up, but perhaps some real charts which show your fills. Shouldn't be too hard since you say you easily have 40 trades per hour.

algofy · Nov 9, 2016

Gotcha said:
Posts should also offer something tangible, and each time you say that you come up with a new strategy while just passing time, I have to want to see a bit more proof. You say you are already all automated, you say you have people doing all the trading for you, so one has to wonder why you keep looking for more and more strategies.

Listen, I watch the DOM in the ES, and I do not for one second believe that you can do what you claim to do. If you were talking maybe the bonds, fine, but in the ES, with these levels having 500-1000 on bid/offer, which can be taken out in a second, you cannot be making decisions quick enough and putting in your orders fast enough, simply impossible. Your idea of a soft 3 tick risk and hard 4 tick risk to me makes no sense because there are many times where the ES just spikes way more than this and you aren't going to be able to have your hard 4 tick exit.

Even if you see bids or offers added, or you see them taken away, this still doesn't provide an edge because this flips on a dime. The algos, which operate on micro second time lines, can instantly make it looks like offers are pulled, and yet do the complete opposite. There is a reason why spoofing happens on levels that are much further away from the inside bid/ask, and this reason is that its too easy to get filled. Now if a computer is scared of getting filled on an order they don't really want, how are you using this order flow to make your perfect entries? Granted, you don't say what you're doing, but with the ES, honestly, order flow analysis is quite limited in my opinion.

You say you laugh when newbies want to scalp, and yet we are to believe that you worked out a strategy for this while sitting in your bed with tubes attached? If you're targeting 2 ticks, I imagine that this needs to be a strategy that is co-located on some server close to the exchange and all automated, not orders sent from your laptop. But since you have a million other strategies, I'm sure its easy to just mix and match pieces together.

Listen, with full respect, you make outrageous claims and its time to back up those claims. Not with hindsight charts that are marked up, but perhaps some real charts which show your fills. Shouldn't be too hard since you say you easily have 40 trades per hour.

+1

wtfauoa · Nov 11, 2016

Gotcha said:
Posts should also offer something tangible, and each time you say that you come up with a new strategy while just passing time, I have to want to see a bit more proof. You say you are already all automated, you say you have people doing all the trading for you, so one has to wonder why you keep looking for more and more strategies.

Listen, I watch the DOM in the ES, and I do not for one second believe that you can do what you claim to do. If you were talking maybe the bonds, fine, but in the ES, with these levels having 500-1000 on bid/offer, which can be taken out in a second, you cannot be making decisions quick enough and putting in your orders fast enough, simply impossible. Your idea of a soft 3 tick risk and hard 4 tick risk to me makes no sense because there are many times where the ES just spikes way more than this and you aren't going to be able to have your hard 4 tick exit.

Even if you see bids or offers added, or you see them taken away, this still doesn't provide an edge because this flips on a dime. The algos, which operate on micro second time lines, can instantly make it looks like offers are pulled, and yet do the complete opposite. There is a reason why spoofing happens on levels that are much further away from the inside bid/ask, and this reason is that its too easy to get filled. Now if a computer is scared of getting filled on an order they don't really want, how are you using this order flow to make your perfect entries? Granted, you don't say what you're doing, but with the ES, honestly, order flow analysis is quite limited in my opinion.

You say you laugh when newbies want to scalp, and yet we are to believe that you worked out a strategy for this while sitting in your bed with tubes attached? If you're targeting 2 ticks, I imagine that this needs to be a strategy that is co-located on some server close to the exchange and all automated, not orders sent from your laptop. But since you have a million other strategies, I'm sure its easy to just mix and match pieces together.

Listen, with full respect, you make outrageous claims and its time to back up those claims. Not with hindsight charts that are marked up, but perhaps some real charts which show your fills. Shouldn't be too hard since you say you easily have 40 trades per hour.

Careful or you will be added to the ignore list as well, LOL.

wtfauoa · Nov 11, 2016

Gotcha · Nov 11, 2016

@Handle123

I was hoping you would reply by now, since I had another question to ask you, or rather, a request, but since you haven't, I will ask you anyway.

I know you have shared charts in the past, from what you say is your house made charting platform (which does look like its made in house since it looks several generations old), but I wonder if you could could also post some screen captures of your DOM. You say that you use the DOM extensively to make your trades for this new strategy you developed while lying in a hospital bed, so could you show us what you're looking at and how you have it set up?

Since stuff on the DOM is more more appropriate for video vs a picture, I would be more than happy to upload videos of what my DOM looks like and ask for your input. Its all pretty fancy with all the DOM levels, trades at the bid/ask, accumulated bid/ask volume, and it even now has the ability to track how many bids/offers get added or taken away. If you ask me though, there is just too much information, and it all moves quite quickly.

Just when I think its telling me something (ie. more trades done at the offer, hence market buy orders, then you see offers pulled, ie. people getting out of the way, maybe even more bids added below to support the move up, it changes in a flash, completely flips) Now maybe I'm not the best at this type of thing, but I do not for one minute believe that you are analyzing all this information and placing your trades in time to capture your 2-3 ticks profits while risking only 3 ticks, or a hard 4 tick stop, oh, and especially on your hundreds of contracts too.

If this is what you're doing, I would assume that you need pretty sophisticated software for something like this. So this is why I would like to see your DOM setup and how you're entering these orders. Based on your crappy charting platform, I'm not sure if it would even keep up with how quickly those numbers change.

Crashed · Nov 28, 2016

Handle123 said:
I been in hospital few times this past month, so not posting much. And as far as several on the site, I have them on ignore, so even if they mention me, they had to have made a 2nd, 3rd, 4th accounts. I don't need more bullshit in my life by those I look at waste of time in my life. I don't understand why people never learned respect. There are those who write 30 plus posts a day and most of it is lacks positive information. Posts are supposed to offer perhaps a new idea or rehash the classics, but way too much of the 3 stooges.

I am in process of trading a new Scalping method for ES I made while in bed with tubes and wires hooked into me, risk is soft 3 ticks or hard 4 ticks and target is 1-2.75 ticks, trade 45 minutes then nap time-lol. Can anyone design such a system with limited experience, I doubt it. I know this market better than any, I know the ebb and flows of Indexes. For those who say making 4 ticks in ES is easy, that depends on where the trade is coming in and picking right direction. Those who say price action is better than volume is plain wrong, if you doing one's, no problem, if you trading 100's, all the price action in the world is not going to get out cause lack of volume. Bring up almost any one minute chart and anyone can see bars generally have at least two-three ticks in them, select right direction, you get it. Is it impossible to trade retail this way, it be pretty hard to get consistent daily profits cause you making $25 less comm, few trades make one tick and very few losses lose 3-4 ticks. And just cause I scalp, does not mean I can't read charting, I am very good at reading charts and can read the Dome, you spend decades looking at price, amazing something stuck, LOL. I laugh when I hear newbies want to scalp, cause when it is all done for the week, after paying fees, leasing fees, T-1 fees etc, you are making 1-2 ticks on average per trade. Takes incredible knowledge of self, instant memory of where chart showing end of moves based on stats, mistakes hurt. One loss can not be made up by 2 profitable trades, usually 3-4.

And you be surprised that leasing a seat if you are trading some size, you can save bucks each month. http://www.apexfutures.com/our-low-rates/futures-commissions/cme-membership/
CME is making a ton of cash for the fees they charge for like the ES as the ES is 10% of the value it use to be in 80s/90s, so back in the day, use to trade 5/10 contracts for $15 per lot retail, so commission to one point $500 was 3%, and now commissions of $4 to one point $50 is 8%, and CME curtailed most pits, so wondering if they lease less space? And less employees.

People who trade for themselves do not trade like each other, LOL, but most are focused and never think it is exciting, it is a grind. I applaud those who learned to make more points per trade. But now I simple don't have desire as I did younger to even design methods that trade all day. I prefer longer term trading as risk is much less than day trading, I know most will say opposite, we all have different ways to trade. I rather do 20-40 trades in a hour and walk away.

Like to thank those who still post charts, I will study them for hours and often they will trigger further ideas. Most of anything else does not show anything whether calling trades or tallies. I don't know what is in the mind of guy calling trades as I can't test it, show me something I can test that I might not seen before, anything else is fluff to me, useless.

Hey Handle! awhile back, I had a journal that I posted a few charts on. It was somewhat similar to the type of trading you are doing now. You said to me "Not good at all to be risking up to 8 ticks to get 4 ticks, even for scalpers don't do this. Cause if you have one loss, you going to need to do three trades to get to a little better than even when you throw in fees. If you doing breakouts, you can wait for confirmation of the breakout then retrace lower till you risking 4 ticks. If you going to risk 8 ticks, you should be targeting no less than 8 ticks, so your recovery is closer to 50%." Just curious - how much are you risking per trade with your current setup? by the way, thanks for your input. @Handle123

Handle123 · Nov 28, 2016

Crashed said:
Hey Handle! awhile back, I had a journal that I posted a few charts on. It was somewhat similar to the type of trading you are doing now. You said to me "Not good at all to be risking up to 8 ticks to get 4 ticks, even for scalpers don't do this. Cause if you have one loss, you going to need to do three trades to get to a little better than even when you throw in fees. If you doing breakouts, you can wait for confirmation of the breakout then retrace lower till you risking 4 ticks. If you going to risk 8 ticks, you should be targeting no less than 8 ticks, so your recovery is closer to 50%." Just curious - how much are you risking per trade with your current setup? by the way, thanks for your input. @Handle123

I read the Dome and 3 ticks on soft mental stop, I look at the volume on price levels on the Dome, so in ES, first 20 minutes of newest method am now manually trading/testing, risk 3 ticks and looking to target 8 ticks, but Scalping it is never in stone to get 8 ticks as I have to be able to get it in 3 minutes or less. I will normally have 10-20 trades in 30 minutes, all different signals, after twenty minutes targets get much smaller but if I target 2 ticks then stops have to be 2 ticks. When trading this way, I simple don't do breakouts at all with trend, uptrend but dropping, I will buy at some point and when counter trend I do breakouts, I have even less patience and must get my target in 2 minutes and less. and done in 40 minutes. Volume dries up, and boredom comes into play, getting too old for hard concentration.

Today only 2 signals and walked away after nineteen minutes, sooner you realize that market not acting normal, best for me to quit and stop. So you really have to know your method well as far as norm for number of signals, ticks/points of each bar, swings of price action, size of the bars, number of retracements within a swing, trendlines on hourly ES, volume on one minute bars, definitions of Triples, Doubles, Quad formations, Megaphone, have to quickly know what has recently happened to stop me from taking trends that are counter trend due to S/R, before just taking an otherwise good signal, i.e. have H&S formation at 4 points from Low of the day is not considered by me as if this H&S be 9 points from low of the day, now would stop me from taking trend trades as market ripe for reversal, so for me, have to first know what stops signals, then if ok, then is signal itself is good(not always cause bar lengths), then risk management of trade.

Gotcha · Nov 30, 2016

@Handle123

I read the Dome and 3 ticks on soft mental stop, I look at the volume on price levels on the Dome, so in ES, first 20 minutes of newest method am now manually trading/testing, risk 3 ticks and looking to target 8 ticks, but Scalping it is never in stone to get 8 ticks as I have to be able to get it in 3 minutes or less. I will normally have 10-20 trades in 30 minutes, all different signals, after twenty minutes targets get much smaller but if I target 2 ticks then stops have to be 2 ticks. When trading this way, I simple don't do breakouts at all with trend, uptrend but dropping, I will buy at some point and when counter trend I do breakouts, I have even less patience and must get my target in 2 minutes and less. and done in 40 minutes. Volume dries up, and boredom comes into play, getting too old for hard concentration.

Today only 2 signals and walked away after nineteen minutes, sooner you realize that market not acting normal, best for me to quit and stop. So you really have to know your method well as far as norm for number of signals, ticks/points of each bar, swings of price action, size of the bars, number of retracements within a swing, trendlines on hourly ES, volume on one minute bars, definitions of Triples, Doubles, Quad formations, Megaphone, have to quickly know what has recently happened to stop me from taking trends that are counter trend due to S/R, before just taking an otherwise good signal, i.e. have H&S formation at 4 points from Low of the day is not considered by me as if this H&S be 9 points from low of the day, now would stop me from taking trend trades as market ripe for reversal, so for me, have to first know what stops signals, then if ok, then is signal itself is good(not always cause bar lengths), then risk management of trade.

I know he won't see this cause I'm blocked, but I don't give a shit. You say you walked away after 19 minutes.. but why even walk away.. you're supposed to be all automated as you claim? Jesus, 10-20 trades in 30 minutes.. how does your crappy old platform even keep up? Volume dries up in 40 minutes? Really? We must not be looking at the same market.

And seriously, how after all these years are you manually testing your "newest method". You make it sound like with your 100 years of tick data you have in your head that you have exploited every single possible market move. How is it that now, in November of 2016 you're working on another system. Does this mean all your previous systems are no good any more? You had an over 90% win rate... is this new system any better? 2 ticks targets and 2 tick stops?? Come on... algos are doing this shit that are co-located at the exchange. You aren't manually trading like this from your charts in your trailer park... are you? Most of the shit in the DOM is fake, and by the time you see it, its over. Perhaps if you were gonna tell me you're looking at the T&S, that would be better, but still, you're not able to respond fast enough.

Why not just put up a chart with your 20 trades in the first 30 minutes and I will forever leave you alone.

Overnight · Dec 4, 2016

As an aside...Has anyone ever considered that the ES is the problem, and not the trader or their system? Seems to me there comes a point where the supposed holy grail of trading, because of it's liquidity/volume, becomes counter-productive. ES ranges seem to be very tight on many days. Why trade in that mess? Because of it's low day-trading margins? Really? Nobody has ever explained to me why the ES is THE superior market for day-trading. From what I see, it seems to cause folks more pain and anguish than pleasure.

So why trade it when there are so many other choices out there?

algofy · Dec 4, 2016

Overnight said:
As an aside...Has anyone ever considered that the ES is the problem, and not the trader or their system? Seems to me there comes a point where the supposed holy grail of trading, because of it's liquidity/volume, becomes counter-productive. ES ranges seem to be very tight on many days. Why trade in that mess? Because of it's low day-trading margins? Really? Nobody has ever explained to me why the ES is THE superior market for day-trading. From what I see, it seems to cause folks more pain and anguish than pleasure.

So why trade it when there are so many other choices out there?

Most retail traders don't need the liquidity of ES.