The Al Brooks method has really spoken to me over the past several months. I've been trading NQ since the fall and roughly breaking even - couple serious issues to deal with I will outline later. This is a new Journal for me to log some thoughts and trades.
Most nights I try to re-evaluate context for direction and levels across daily, 60m, 15m, and then trade what I see on the 5m each day. I particularly like trading pullbacks in strong moves that end with reversal bars. These tend to offer lower risk and I have more confidence in the market direction, especially if I can calculate that a measured move from the pullback still keeps price in an achievable place. I take around 2 trades per day, usually in the first 3 hours and try to keep the risk/reward ratio to 2R.
So, here's the first entry in preparation for tomorrow's session....
ATR14 is still quite high around 115 so lots of opportunity each day.
Daily
It’s still not obvious if the bull trend will continue after correcting the early February madness, or if we will be in some form of larger trading range for a bit. There was roughly a double top or lower high of prior extreme and ATH (~7030) that formed two days ago. This overshot a tight channel from the past week, so possible we will now shoot slightly below the channel as well or further for a test of the EMA (~6800). If EMA doesn’t hold then next major support area may be the channel begin (~6670).
Hourly
Breaking below 6900 today was a big deal. This level had lots of support in late January, was the bottom of a gap up one day last week and also a couple week old trend line (not shown). Price action on the 5min chart today around 6900 further showed that it was strongly protected by the bulls. Assuming this will act as fairly strong resistance now as well. On this chart we can get a better view of the trend line forming the bottom of the small channel on the dailies - it is showing support around 6830. Below that, 6745 was a fairly strong level last week. The final two bars today formed a bear spike that covered 110pts, and a measured move from there would also take us to around 6750.
15min
Tough to get a read on too much here. Lots of whitespace. If 6900 becomes top of a new range and 6750 is bottom, then we’ll see the middle (~6825) continue to be a magnet and the whitespace will fill in as we bounce around.
5 min
Choppy day for sure. Double tops with two prior swing highs (6960 & 6970) and generally lower lows achieved at an alarming rate.