blackgrey45 

I have seen it many times in the past several months. The MES will trend in one direction in premarket, then reverse at market open. Today was no different. This morning was a solid trend lower in premarket. The MES bottomed out about 9:35 then a steady trend higher. I went long about 5280 in the MES at about 9:35.

Good observation. The next logical step is 'how do I make money out of it?'. For that, we need the numbers. This is where it gets complicated and, to be frank, disappointing.

The questions I would ask myself are

1. How often it has happened in the last month, last year or even longer? (I have data for 20 years).
2. If I'm long @ the bottom, how high does MES go? If my trade works, wher do I take profits? Do I take my profits before I go to work, leave it on or take partial profits and leave the rest with trailing stop?
3. When it doesn't work, how much risk I'm taking? Do I add to my loser before I go to work and hope for a turnaround or take my loss?
4. Finally, crucially, the ratio between point 2 and point 3.

That's the only way that worked for me to tear apart the illusions created by my eyes and frontal brain.

Good luck.

HumbleTrader 

Good observation. The next logical step is 'how do I make money out of it?'. For that, we need the numbers. This is where it gets complicated and, to be frank, disappointing. The questions I would ask myself are 1. How often it has happened in the last month, last year or even longer? (I have data for 20 years). 2. If I'm long @ the bottom, how high does MES go? If my trade works, wher do I take profits? Do I take my profits before I go to work, leave it on or take partial profits and leave the rest with trailing stop? 3. When it doesn't work, how much risk I'm taking? Do I add to my loser before I go to work and hope for a turnaround or take my loss? 4. Finally, crucially, the ratio between point 2 and point 3. That's the only way that worked for me to tear apart the illusions created by my eyes and frontal brain. Good luck.

Where do you get data from? You said you had 20 years of it ?

HumbleTrader 

Good observation. The next logical step is 'how do I make money out of it?'. For that, we need the numbers. This is where it gets complicated and, to be frank, disappointing. The questions I would ask myself are 1. How often it has happened in the last month, last year or even longer? (I have data for 20 years). 2. If I'm long @ the bottom, how high does MES go? If my trade works, wher do I take profits? Do I take my profits before I go to work, leave it on or take partial profits and leave the rest with trailing stop? 3. When it doesn't work, how much risk I'm taking? Do I add to my loser before I go to work and hope for a turnaround or take my loss? 4. Finally, crucially, the ratio between point 2 and point 3. That's the only way that worked for me to tear apart the illusions created by my eyes and frontal brain. Good luck.

I would say I am working on question number 2 the most lately. I am pretty set on my ideas of your question 3. I am just going to take the manageable loss and walk away to survive another day. I always remember the day oil went negative and how a trader would have lost everything if adding to a loss that day. Not something I want to be part of.

With question 2, I want to let my profits run until either I have to leave my computer or the market closes. However, this will result in a stop out >90% of the time. The next question is, can the sum of those winning trades that happen less the 10% of the time be greater than the sum of the losing trades that get stopped out? This is something I have not tested with historical data and I should test my idea before I continue trading. Thank you for the time you spent writing your post.

It happened couple times yesterday around mid day. The MES made a new short term high (maybe a 30 minute high) and sold off to a short term low. Reminds me of when another trader said "the highs are usually close to the lows, like Mount Whitney is close to Death Valley". So interesting how the market often has to hit one extreme only to reverse in the opposite direction to hit another extreme.

I only had a few trades yesterday, 1 contract in the MES.

Loss for the day, -$11

Loss for the day -$68

I’m on a tough losing streak right now and am going to take some time off from trading. Maybe two weeks. I need to get my head straight and some time off will do me good.

Good luck everyone!