Yes, it's true: YASPEM - Yet Another S&P E-Mini Journal
... considered YAFSPEM, but... naaaahhh.
I'm just starting out - although I've been paper trading and simulating a good bit, I'm just starting to trade real money - although just one contract until I'm sure that the "real" trades are doing what I want.
My goal here is fairly conservative - I'd like to average 1.5 or 2 points per day, which I will try to do by being right at least half the time and making more when I'm right than I lose when I'm wrong, and I'd like to hold the trades down to somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five a day.
Anyway... putting it out in public like this beats hell outta scribbling notes to myself in my little red book, even if no one reads this and/or no one has any advice or constructive criticisms.
It's all well and good to play what-if and look at what might have been, but one night more years ago than I care to think about, in a locker room with more than a faint whiff of death and despair, when a reporter asked Saint Darrell Royal if he thought we would have won if a particular play had worked the way it should have, he said, "Don't talk to me about woulda shoulda coulda... what shoulda happened is what DID happen."
O' course, on another, happier, occasion in the very same locker room, another reporter asked him if he thought maybe we were pretty lucky to have recovered a fumble when our opponents were inside our five-yard line with first and goal, and Saint Darrell stared at him for about ten seconds before he drawled "Luck? I'll tell you about luck. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. You got to be ready if you're gonna get lucky. We were and we did, and that's all there is to it."
Now, I'm pretty sure Saint Darrell didn't think those spiffy little aphorisms up all on his own, but they hit home for me. So I'm lookin' to be prepared to get lucky.
Here's what I think is gonna happen tomorrow.
Like every other day, some people will buy and some people will sell.
The buyers will want to buy cheap and the sellers will want to sell dear.
The price will go up, down, or sideways.
If it's going up, it'll keep going up until enough buyers decide not to buy any higher, and then it'll go down or maybe sideways. That price is a resistance.
If it's going down, it'll keep going down until enough sellers decide not to sell any lower, and then it'll go up, or maybe sideways. That price is a support.
Regardless of the direction, the price will move in a herky-jerky way - that is, it'll go up a little and then down a little, up a little and then down a little.
The reason for that, I believe, is that there is a "magic" price that's the "right" price, and it's roughly halfway between those highs and lows.
When you keep track of the prices of trades for some period of time, you call the starting price the "open" and the ending price the "close".
These "open" and "close" prices are strictly an artifact of the period of time, and their only real use is to let you tell whether that "right" price is getting higher or lower, or staying the same.
By looking at the time period and the direction of the "right" price, and the difference between the highs and lows, you can get an idea of what price you'd like to buy or sell at, how much of a profit you expect to make, how much of a loss you're willing to accept, and how long you're willing to wait to see if you can sell or buy at a profit before you give in and look for another game.
-------------------
Now... it's well after midnight at my desk, and ES is trading right around 130200, right around where it "closed" back at 1515 yesterday afternoon. I'm in US Central time, so synchronize your watches accordingly.
Based on the Daily chart, the trend has been up for the past week or so (indeed, overall, for the last several weeks), but the last two days have shown "inside" bars, inside the range of last Friday, and decreasing in price, range, volume... pretty much everything.
Based on the 60-minute chart, it looks like the same thing - it's been down in the mornings and up in the afternoons, but flat overall, and with decreasing range and volume.
Taken together, this looks to me like the uptrend is petering out, so I'm kind of expecting the price to start dropping pretty significantly.
For myself, though, I've been setting up an "over/under" trading situation, in which I look at a pivot price (PP), two prices above (AI, Above Inside) and AO (Above, Outside), and two prices below (BI and BO). I call these five lines the BoB lines, for Bounce or Break. When the price hits a BoB, I look at the next move and trade accordingly, using the adjoining BoBs as initial Stop and Target. I also set a breakeven and a three-step trail, depending on how far apart the BoBs are... right now, with everything closing down, they're pretty close!
I usually stay out of the early craziness - I like to trade between about 0915 and 1100, watch during lunch (although with a wide over/under entry just in case), then set an over/under based on the min/max during 1100-1300 lunchtime.
Right now my BoBs are
AO 130650
AI 130400
PP 130200
BI 129925
BO 129700
These could change dramatically, depending on what happens with the Europeans overnight, and don't forget the Bond Market players have caused some havoc between 0720 and 0830 a few times lately... and, what the hell, they're way too close together to make much
My "oh, hell, it's only paper" play right this instant would be to short it - yeah, I know, the 60 and Daily trend is still up, and it's bad juju to go against the trend... but it sure looks like that uptrend has topped out... doesn't it???
Time for some shuteye - hasta manana.
... considered YAFSPEM, but... naaaahhh.
I'm just starting out - although I've been paper trading and simulating a good bit, I'm just starting to trade real money - although just one contract until I'm sure that the "real" trades are doing what I want.
My goal here is fairly conservative - I'd like to average 1.5 or 2 points per day, which I will try to do by being right at least half the time and making more when I'm right than I lose when I'm wrong, and I'd like to hold the trades down to somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five a day.
Anyway... putting it out in public like this beats hell outta scribbling notes to myself in my little red book, even if no one reads this and/or no one has any advice or constructive criticisms.
It's all well and good to play what-if and look at what might have been, but one night more years ago than I care to think about, in a locker room with more than a faint whiff of death and despair, when a reporter asked Saint Darrell Royal if he thought we would have won if a particular play had worked the way it should have, he said, "Don't talk to me about woulda shoulda coulda... what shoulda happened is what DID happen."
O' course, on another, happier, occasion in the very same locker room, another reporter asked him if he thought maybe we were pretty lucky to have recovered a fumble when our opponents were inside our five-yard line with first and goal, and Saint Darrell stared at him for about ten seconds before he drawled "Luck? I'll tell you about luck. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. You got to be ready if you're gonna get lucky. We were and we did, and that's all there is to it."
Now, I'm pretty sure Saint Darrell didn't think those spiffy little aphorisms up all on his own, but they hit home for me. So I'm lookin' to be prepared to get lucky.
Here's what I think is gonna happen tomorrow.
Like every other day, some people will buy and some people will sell.
The buyers will want to buy cheap and the sellers will want to sell dear.
The price will go up, down, or sideways.
If it's going up, it'll keep going up until enough buyers decide not to buy any higher, and then it'll go down or maybe sideways. That price is a resistance.
If it's going down, it'll keep going down until enough sellers decide not to sell any lower, and then it'll go up, or maybe sideways. That price is a support.
Regardless of the direction, the price will move in a herky-jerky way - that is, it'll go up a little and then down a little, up a little and then down a little.
The reason for that, I believe, is that there is a "magic" price that's the "right" price, and it's roughly halfway between those highs and lows.
When you keep track of the prices of trades for some period of time, you call the starting price the "open" and the ending price the "close".
These "open" and "close" prices are strictly an artifact of the period of time, and their only real use is to let you tell whether that "right" price is getting higher or lower, or staying the same.
By looking at the time period and the direction of the "right" price, and the difference between the highs and lows, you can get an idea of what price you'd like to buy or sell at, how much of a profit you expect to make, how much of a loss you're willing to accept, and how long you're willing to wait to see if you can sell or buy at a profit before you give in and look for another game.
-------------------
Now... it's well after midnight at my desk, and ES is trading right around 130200, right around where it "closed" back at 1515 yesterday afternoon. I'm in US Central time, so synchronize your watches accordingly.
Based on the Daily chart, the trend has been up for the past week or so (indeed, overall, for the last several weeks), but the last two days have shown "inside" bars, inside the range of last Friday, and decreasing in price, range, volume... pretty much everything.
Based on the 60-minute chart, it looks like the same thing - it's been down in the mornings and up in the afternoons, but flat overall, and with decreasing range and volume.
Taken together, this looks to me like the uptrend is petering out, so I'm kind of expecting the price to start dropping pretty significantly.
For myself, though, I've been setting up an "over/under" trading situation, in which I look at a pivot price (PP), two prices above (AI, Above Inside) and AO (Above, Outside), and two prices below (BI and BO). I call these five lines the BoB lines, for Bounce or Break. When the price hits a BoB, I look at the next move and trade accordingly, using the adjoining BoBs as initial Stop and Target. I also set a breakeven and a three-step trail, depending on how far apart the BoBs are... right now, with everything closing down, they're pretty close!
I usually stay out of the early craziness - I like to trade between about 0915 and 1100, watch during lunch (although with a wide over/under entry just in case), then set an over/under based on the min/max during 1100-1300 lunchtime.
Right now my BoBs are
AO 130650
AI 130400
PP 130200
BI 129925
BO 129700
These could change dramatically, depending on what happens with the Europeans overnight, and don't forget the Bond Market players have caused some havoc between 0720 and 0830 a few times lately... and, what the hell, they're way too close together to make much
My "oh, hell, it's only paper" play right this instant would be to short it - yeah, I know, the 60 and Daily trend is still up, and it's bad juju to go against the trend... but it sure looks like that uptrend has topped out... doesn't it???
Time for some shuteye - hasta manana.