I'll start off with a little bit about myself and then my strategy moving forward. I have been following various markets for the past 15 years. I started with Technical Analysis and haven't looked back. I've looked into everything from all the indicators, all the price action charts, min, p&f, range, etc.. I've looked into multi time frame analysis, all different time periods with all different range bars. Nothing truly ever fit my personality or the feeling that I really have an edge. I've decided to dumb it down an awful lot. No more looking at larger charts to find out where the market is going to only drill down to the smaller time frames to watch those levels not even hold. I gather 90% of my information from what's happening now and can I make anywhere from 5-30 ticks? (yes that's a big range but I will explain why in the attachments, or at least try to explain). I will still look at a larger range bar to see where some high or lows come into play. When you see white horizontal lines that is coming from a larger range bar chart which is a 15 tick range. Everything else is from a 6 tick range on the ES. However, it's not a candlestick chart, it's a footprint chart. The footprint tells me what's happening now and it gives me clues on which way the range is going to break. I try and get in before the break but that of course won't happen all the time. For now, I hesitate because I want to make sure the imbalance on the order flow stays. That's what I'm looking for on the footprint chart is the imbalance. Also, support and resistance comes from those larger imbalances. Oh, I do have an indicator at the bottom which is the Delta.
My plan:
The plan is quite simple. I have about 2 weeks of a demo account where I want to gain at least $1,500. My ideal goal is $3,000 but I find that hard since I will be starting with 2 lots. When I reach $1,500 I will increase to 3 lots. I'm using these numbers because I'm simulating the combine. Btw, I will focus everything on the ES. When I reach those #'s I will then trade for another 2 weeks on a demo with the combine and get accustomed to the platform. From there I will start the combine and have funded trader status within a month of starting the combine.
I hope the image came through correctly, this is my first time doing it.
You will see the left and right triangles in the chart, those are my exit and entries. The trend has been up for the day so my bias is to the long side. The previous bar of my entry showed 3 different imbalances and prior to that bar there were a lot of red imbalances and not really any green imbalances so I stayed out of the trade. I thought it would of broken the resistance so I entered after seeing 3 green imbalances. At the time I had higher highs on the delta chart on the bottom. I quickly closed my position for a 1 tick loss when I realized it was a fake breakout.
Here is my second and final trade for the day. I entered long at the green 313 imbalance at the bottom of the range. Delta reversed a bar or 2 prior and my stop loss was 3 ticks. I exited half my position at the top of the range because it was having difficulties pushing through. Yes I exited with 3 green imbalances. However the green's weren't there at the time, the market moved down some ticks and then created those imbalances. The second half of my exit came a few bars after that. I shouldn't of exited, I should of just kept bringing my sl up to the new levels that I created. If I did that I would of reached my final goal of 30 ticks. The 30 ticks though would of taken 2 hours and I would of just kept moving my sl up. I create levels at imbalances. I find this extremely important because I'm trying to trade the now, not the past.