What if a trade doesn't immediately move in your favor?

After seeing that clusterf***k of a trading screen, my advice to the OP is to totally ignore it. Indicatorology with its tired rules and required multiple confrmations required to pull the trigger can't compete with a naked 15 minute bar.

Jack, I know an expert trader who will give you an indicatorectomy and accept Medicare for payment. PM for his number.
 
Quote from jbob:

I like to trade intraday pullbacks when I think the main trend has resumed. Typically, the market either shoots off in my direction, hovers around my entry, goes slightly against me, or goes hard against me and hits my stop. Sometimes it seems like I would be better off immediately exiting a trade if it doesn't move in my favor ( after 1 minute for example) rather than waiting for my stop to get hit. What are people's thoughts on this issue. Thanks.
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Why should you take a loss just because the price hasn't moved in your favor after an arbitrary amount of time? Seems like an easy way to generate comms, lose your position and turn winners into losers...
 
When we initiate a position, we believe the odds are on our side.

Whatever the underlying reason for us to believe the odds are on our side, once we are in a trade we must monitor the market and determine whether the probabilities of success are increasing or decreasing.

As soon as we lose our edge, we must get out because it becomes a futile trade.

So let's say we go long because ES is holding its low of the day against all other eminis.

As soon as ES makes new lows, we should be out. That's our stop simply because the main reason behind our trade - our perceived edge - was ES holding its lows.

As long as ES holds its lows, then we have no reason to get out until we reach our minimum trade target.

A fixed time stop does not take into account current volatility.

27 minutes can be very costly during high volatility or could be too short during low volatility.
 
Quote from ehorn:

Thanks for posting a view of your display Jack.

I really like the way you have organized the course level layout. With the 15M on the far right and placing the MACD and stochs for the 2M and 5M on the right side of the chart (giving them an exploded view).

What do you find is a typical Y axis price range on your 2M, 5M and 15M chart for course level Monitoring. Do you leave this fixed or adjust based on volatility? I do not like to fiddle with the y axis much and am wondering what your settings and preferences are.

I keep myself and my mind calibrated by insisting on using a specific and constant scale on all price screens except the OTR and S/S.

The value of constant scales is that you can then see price movement in a very very standard manner. It makes it very clear what the money velocity is and what the magnitude of the volatility is.

Most platforms try to fill screen windows with the data. This is unfortunate and is more based on selling platforms than using them to make money.

I use 2 points on the ES five minute chart. There are large and small 2 point physical dimensions. It depends on how you get the two point range to appear. You can adjust in from 5 points or adjust in from 1 point labels on the scale. I always do it the same way: from 5 to get 2. What you see by doing this is a greater total scale range than by adjusting from the other direction and you are still assured of seeing each tick price differentiation. Same for YM where 20 points is the standard.

I like heavy or "bold" bars as well and I like separation between the bars, too.

The OTR bar height is fixed at one tick so volatility is off the table from a bar height perspective. What is there to see for volatility? As the time segments (2 or 5 min delineations as vertical dividers, the real vertical size of each bar and the number of bars is significant. I use five formations of OTR bars that follow a specific sequence to understand the MODE of the markets. what is especially important is the transition from Continue to Change. Continue is where a person HOLDS to keep making money in a profit segment. If and when Continue deteriorates, it is good to know and be aware of. This is a time when Change is potentially coming into view, as especially when the internal patterns of the dominant traverse have run their course. Dominant traverses are very rewarding segments, relatively speaking. Watching the OTR tick charts is done at that time.

The Sweep Chart has nine different colored tables that are used or not used according to this transition to an optimum action at the exact end of each profit segment.

On S/S there is a volatility compression during this ending of the transition from Continue and into Change. This is where premium, whether drifting or not, has completed its regression to balance (balnce occurs within drift). So the S/S is set up as a window with vertical scale gradations (relative to signal and noise) that are always fixed. Money is made by having this 20 to 30 second leading indicator or, in other ways, up to 2 or 3 minutes leading indicator of ES (there in the lower middle of the screen). The S/S sequences its patterns as do all other display elements. It is best to have a fixed window and associated scaling regardless of the magnitude of the ever converging premium (a quarterly roll over type convergence).

NB Recently, as the economy continues to deteriorate, many people noted the new orientation of the premium.


What are the 3 T/S you display (YM,ES,??).

I display the two long ones as a no filter (all trades) and a >49 contract T&S, both for ES. > than 999is a third one that is useful. As trading is monitored, it is good to keep in mind just who is playing. There are about four major games (meaning visible strategies) at play most of the time. By using .>49 you get to see how people communicate using the units position and you also see other games going on by people who have some significant margin in their accounts. On some days (news especially) it is good to segregate the cascading by player size also. As different size connects (sets of cars) begin to cascade the money velocity definitely goes to an odd harmonic situation. This means if you are having to do partial fills to reverse, you have to compress the span of this serial action. On normal days keeping separate T&S's allows you to, at a glance get aggod shot at the momentary capacity in a given sweep. This also tells you the impending volatility that is on the table.

I do not trade for low multiples of the ATR daily (like fractions of or one or two multiples) If you have glanced at the recent updates on the pace/ volatility matrix distributions (February) you can see that there is a lot of money to be made and the money velocity is very high. This runs up the ATR and, in the Power Law sense, the multiple yield in terms of the ATR. People who are running pace/volatility matrices are looking at levels of optimization of 6 and 7 times ATR. There is no kurtosis on the rows and columns distributions of any such matrix except when you get to truncation by market capacity that shows because of pace limitations on the columns distributions.

"Reading the tape" is T&S oriented; it is the noise of the pits. In this electronic era, we have an intellectual leveraging going on as well when the tape is allied with the market depth that is showing on Level II. Here is where the "netting" of Level II is done by using arithmetic apps on the combo. On some trader levels (See increasenow types) it apparently is scary. For others, they have never seen the market anyways. If a person emerges out of these tunnels into the light of tape reading, then it is possible to get past advanced beginner into intermediate trading. We didn't take SCT past advanced intermediate in the year we spent on it. At this level people were having 100,000 days on 25 cars. Informally, some people were keeping person counts.

At some point, a person gets to carving turns and doing each turn available. Reversals during a day rise as trading becomes more snsitive. you can just coarse trade or do coarse and medium trades. At some point you begin to do fine trades and within fine trading you come to nuances that are interesting and important. One classic example is where mistakes also make small profits. It is an anti whipsaw that is build into fine trading the SCT.

There is a topic called MIN/ MAX which refers to learning how to orient to trading by using limit theory. In it's limit every exit is mathematically identical to and entry. The identity of exit-entry puts the trader at the optimum of taking consecutive segments of profits. As Franklin said in his autobiography, a penny saved is a penny earned (meaning you have a two for one situation). extending a long and then reversing to short gives you both more long and more short range.

One shift when going from advanced beginner to intermediate, on 15 trades per day, also adds two ticks each end of a segment for a 15 point total addition per day. Some people, as I understand it, do not even make 15 points as SOP daily.

Or different order size filter(s) for ES?


See above

What is in the upper right of your fine level display (news service?) QT
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Thanks for the insightful Q's. A static pic is not too informative as we know but I am just programming the person who asked for the snagit (several have commented). I referenced a doc of 77 pages that did show some of the dynamic in illustrations. the present tack being used, however, is to not read the references and just dig up out of context stuff and spray it into other old stuck threads.

Again. thanks for the Q's; they are right on.

I attached the sweeps chart.
 

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Quote from allenhobbs:

After seeing that clusterf***k of a trading screen, my advice to the OP is to totally ignore it. Indicatorology with its tired rules and required multiple confrmations required to pull the trigger can't compete with a naked 15 minute bar.

Jack, I know an expert trader who will give you an indicatorectomy and accept Medicare for payment. PM for his number.
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I like that statement you make on what you think I said.

It is:

"required multiple confrmations required to pull the trigger"

Reversing is what is being done.

The best time to reverse is when the profit segment has expired and another is beginning.

Confirming a reversal is not done as trgger pulling. Trigger pulling is what you do to achieve and entry or an exit. naturally, you may consider holding and reversing as pulling triggers. One would be to hold and the other would be to reverse.

MADA is a routine that is repeated. It is repeated over and over as each 5 minute bar forms. The consequence of MADA each lap is called closure. I like to think of the value of closure in a repeated routine as a cleaning of the slate. At the time the slate is cleaned only one rule has been applied and the rule only provides one of two results.

You HOLD or you REVERSE. HOLD makes more money and REVERSE puts you on the other side of the market AND takes profits.

A HOLD is pulling the triggr to make more profits. On the Sweep Sheet this is the end of the path down the sheet from Coarse to, if necessary, Medium and, if necessary, to Fine and then, perhaps, a viewable BEHAVIORAL ACTION as the last step of the routine. To be clear, most sweeps just go as far as where the word Continue appears and the sweep is done. Continue means HOLD. Pull the hold trigger yet one more time to stay in the trade to make more profits after closure of MADA has just happened.

One rule from the template: Either HOLD or REVERSE. Both are 100% certainties and there is zero overlap in the possible results of a sweep. There is NO probability of any sort whatsoever.

It is required to do MADA over and over. Each lap involves a data set that could be small or large depending on a sufficiency test. If you have sufficient data to be certain you LOOK NO FURTHER FOR ANYTHING ELSE and you either HOLD or REVERSE as dicated by the MARKET. THEN YOU REPEAT MADA.

Look at your 15 minute naked bar. There are 26 a day more or less. If an expert trader is doing 20 to 40 trades a day to make 3 times ATR as a basic income, then a fifteen minute bar is calling it pretty close as a data set for decision making. Bar volatility is probably about 75 dollars per contract for each bar going from one extreme to another. I'm sure you pull the trigger more than once a bar on occasion. I do MADA over 15 times on a fifteen minute bar. I reach closure on Montioring, analysis, decision making and Action each time I do MADA; I am current all of the time and carving turns at the end of each possible profit segment. Price plays a relatively small roll in trading to make all the market offers. For me a 15 minute bar is like background music.

Your view of what I do and recommend is just about diametrically opposite of what you say.

"required multiple confirmations" is your way of putting that you feel I am uncertain all of the time. By just having one rule which only has one of two results; it is just the opposite of uncertainty.

For you pulling the trigger is an entry or an exit. I do neither; I am in the market all of the time. Anytime I change sides of he market, two things always happen for me: profits are taken and simultaneously, at the speed of light, I am on my way in another trde that is making money for me.

Imagine you are in the market all day long and making money each tick that the price changes. Imagine you are in the market half the time and alternatively losing and winning and having a net of one point per contract for the day. That is only 50 points net a day if you have some margin at play. 2500 bucks a day? I don't think so; that is not any performance at all.

A fifteen minute bar sitting there "naked" is what you look at? Good luck. Why even ask anyone to post their display? We know why and I appreciate the opportunity it has given me to lend a hand to others who are thinking about and are making money.

By what time of day do you rack up your first 50 points??

Are your stops inside the fifteen minute bars?? LOL.
 
I think its a numbers game and you need to watch carefully every day to determine if the numbers are in your favor or not.

So whatever the pattern you watch -- I believe you need to know what the odds are that the entry/exit will make you enough money in the aggregate to cover the amount of money you will lose when your stops get hit

Then you need to trade it mechanically and repeatedly.


If you are net negative after doing this - then its back to the drawing board to redo the math and the pattern


I also suspect that even if you find a 'successful' pattern it might not last forever

so make hay while you can
 
Quote from Pension_Admin:

If you know "for sure" that it's not gonna go back in your favour, then close it.

Otherwise, let it ride.
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The only way I ever know anything for sure, is after the fact. In trading you never know anything "for sure".
 
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