January 30th. S&P500.
It lost over 1% almost immediately, then gained about half of that back before noon, before losing it again by about 1pm. Then, rose to basically break even for the day.
Let's say this day trader is trading the e-mini futures contract.
Would this trader have gone in to the day with a definitive guess of either "up" or "down?" Would they be reacting throughout the day? Would they have limits in place?
Would they care about WHY the price was behaving as it was?
To answer your questions. I did trade the morning part of the RTH’s day session then stopped. I am a scalper (with 1 point being my min scalp size). In momentum moves I will scalp lock in profits over and over. I will also average down if the context is viable for doing that. I did both that morning. You can see my trades on the first chart which is RTH’s.
To answer question #2 Yes I would be reacting to price action and in fact was doing just that and any such reaction should be based upon the larger, intermediate, and immediate contexts. I would be using strategies and tactics that are sound (IMO) methodologies to extract profits from the ensuing PA.
Question 3 The limits would be based upon probabilities of PA reaching an initial reward before it would reach my SL. Limits for my SL would be based upon PA. That is, I don’t like monetary SL’s. I prefer PA SL’s.
To answer question #4 No, I would not care “why” price was doing what it was doing. I don’t care if it was a reaction to some news or anything else. I only care about reading correctly the PA in front of my eyes.
Question 1 will answer last. For question #1 look at the second chart. It is a 24 hour chart. Would I have started the day with a best guess or directional bias? Yes. When I look at the 24 hour chart I can see that for several hours there was a tight bear channel. That channel morphed into a trading range and for several hours we had TR activity up until the open of the RTH’s session. So, the larger context is a bear channel that has turned into a TR. On the open we had a gap down open on the RTH’s chart. This is a result of that bear channel going on for hours. However the Gap down open (see RTH’s chart) must be seen within the larger context from the 24 hour chart. So, what was that context? It is a bear channel that morphed into a range that had been going on for hours.
Now I view bear channels a bull flags on a larger TF. The likely BO direction of a bull flag is north. So I would be looking for a BO north as an likely event sometime during the day session. However, price had morphed into a TR several hours before the opening of the RTH’s. On the open of the RTH’s price was in the middle of that TR on the 24 hour chart. That was a broad TR. Now 80% of BO attempts (key word here is ATTEMPTS) of TR’s fail and price trades back into the TR. Eventually, one side will win and we will get a successful BO.We did get that successful BO between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. (see 24 chart). That was the eventual BO I mentioned earlier.
So, considering this, how would I have traded. Well like I did on the first 4 bars. Trading the immediate up momentum that was an attempt by bulls to close the gap. But also realizing it was in a TR on 24 chart. And since most BO’s of TR’s fail I would follow the momentum up but expect it to fail near the top of the range on the 24 chart. So I traded long on the first 4 bars over and over. So far good. Then I made two mistakes and ended up having to correct both. I ended up fine by my last trade and ended in a good profit by noon but those two tactical mistakes costs me some profits.