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I don't know if this is ok to post here, but this is my take on "trading by price."
First I'll say I am sick and slept in until about 10:30, so I missed the open. Had I not missed it the trade of the day is obv off of 33 after which I'd most likely call it quits. Since I woke up late I just decided to try to go with what I had just to get some work in. Second I don't use the typical SLA entry. I "time" the entry based on a smaller interval (1range chart). I zoom this all the way out and put up a 1SMA of the median so it forms a line. This has gotten rid of the idea of bars closing and waiting for bars to close. It's opened my mind to a whole different world of viewing price. Of course a 1tick chart is even closer but it's more difficult for me to follow. It seems as if there has been some good discussion here and actual participation without nonsense so I figured I would post this.
So with what I had to work with....
Trade 1: Long off of 12 holding. I didn't really have much time to think here as I just pretty much work up. As we were returning back to 12 we had a bit of a rapid drop from 15 to 12 which quickly got checked and we had an impulse of buying off the level which broke the SL. This then quickly got checked ala TDTDB. We drop rapidly again into 12 which again gets checked. Now it looks as if price is putting in a RET to go short but shorting into 12 seemed risky. I got the impression buyers were holding 12 and with the sideways action that was noticed my anticipation was a trip at least back to 20.25. I waited for another attempt at 12 which was a minor pullback and also what would appear to be a "failed" RET. Long was taken at 14. The exit here was a difficult one as I am only trading one contract. I know this is going to sound bad regarding a trading plan but I do a lot "on the fly" based on what I see with the tools the SLA provides. It's been too difficult to try to be mechanical about this so I am trying to let myself go a bit more. So far it's been going really well. So here the exit was a SAR into a short. My idea was to give price room to RET 50% since I was in at the bottom essentially. The fact that we seemed to be moving sideways here makes me also think range. Once we stall at the top and break the DL I suppose I chickened out?
Trade 2: Continuing on. Given now my mind switched to a Range type trade I went short. This is where I can see SLA/ranges not jiving. SLA if giving price room keeps me in based on the halfway point of that up move and I supposed the mean of the sideways action. Now if really trading it as a Range I suppose I should be short sooner once we fail to BO. So the whole SLA/range thing makes sense. With that said I took a short. The price swings aren't very large so the losses here (if any) wouldn't be large at all. This trade was scratched. Price really wasn't moving and we were holding again above 50%. That and feeling like I should still be long had me scratch the trade.
Trade 3: Again the SLA/range thing. Got in long. Price is moving slow. Again just doesn't seem to want to BO. We do the whole poke out drop back thing. Trade was scratched as I wanted to see us really break out. Of course given the whole pace of all of the action I suppose an aggressive breakout is less likely? Still working on these scratches and expectations given market conditions. Trade 3 realistically doesn't have to be scratched or at the same time doesn't even have to be taken if still long from trade 1. Or even better maybe waiting for the breakout/ret would have made more sense overall if a long "had" to be taken.
Trade 4: Played the range and went short on what was appearing to be a failed RET. (still working on that as well). The play here is if we don't go I'd reverse into the attempted BO. Again price isn't falling so the BO is in play. SAR'd into the BO.
Trade 5: The BO. Play was to sit thru the pb which did take place however failed at 24 which was the bottom of the tighter range btw 33-24. That trade was scratched when the RET failed and we dropped quickly back below 23 the high point from the BO. Again trades 2-4 are all iffy to begin with and at the minimum trade 4 was a bit silly. Of course the only true loser on the day.
Trade 6: Given that we did not want to enter back into the range btw 24-33 I was looking for a short attempt to head back to 12 but keeping an eye on the area of 15-17 which may cause some turbulence. I didn't take what appears to be the initial signal at 11:31 I was waiting to see what happened at the TL that could be drawn and how price would react at 20.25. Initially we had a "decent" bounce off the TL/20 junction which starts to fizzle out at the 21 area. I don't know how relevant the RET high at 9:44 is but that's where we were currently stalling. Short trade was initiated and it did take a little bit of time to go. I knew if we popped up I'd scratch the trade and re-evaluate. The scratch would have been for -1.5pts. Again nothing. Price instead begins its trip lower. Once we break 20.25 of course I'm thinking this is a good thing and now we have a supply line to go off of as well. We do this drop stall, drop stall kind of thing before we rapidly dip right thru were I expect some back and forth action. Go straight thru 15 and then pull back to 15. This area as far as an exit goes starts to get interesting. We pop off 12 which has me a alert but at the same time we are looking like another RET. We poo poo out of the RET and we are at 12. This action is starting to look almost "climactic" with the rapid drop into "S", technically rally/retest. Now mind you this is all very micro but is it? Given the extent and pace of all the action thus far? My stop was trailed to 16.50. We pop out of the retest and I was thinking stop out here and almost considered a long but at the same time if 12 breaks......... 12 does break and for a minute I'm thinking here we go but that quickly gets wiped away by the aggressive bounce up back above 12, then we stall and pop again which caused my exit. This also broke the supply line. Give the character of what was going I was done for the day. Price does end up trading a bit lower but did not continue the down move on the day.
I have attached the 1range, 1 min and the results on the day. Any and all comments are welcome. I considered today more practice than anything else. It's hard for me to have such a tight, statistic based trading plan. It's never worked out for me for whatever reason. Are there mistakes here, yes, but I knew what I wanted to do, when, and how I was going to do it and I just lived with the result. Can you really test a hard "scratch" rule or SAR rule when each moment is pretty unique? I know this all may seem like micro trading but I just want to "stay on top of" price at all times. Again not the best area to trade. I could say more but I don't want to ramble. Thanks for reading.
Speaking of which, I was crawling through the attic, stumbled across a cob-webby copy of Livermore's How To Trade In Stocks and discovered what I probably knew at one time (many, many years ago) but had forgotten, or so I thought, that Livermore went through the exact same process that you two are going through, and that I have gone through, in order to determine arithmetically the integrity of a given directional move and at what point the probability of a continuation flips to a reversal.
You'll never guess how many points he came up with. (This creeps me out)
And this was a hundred years ago. (Which creeps me out even further)
Unfortunately, little if any of this has anything to do with the SLA/AMT, and I can't comment on it without knowing your particular trading plan (to do so would involve assuming what your trading plan ought to be, and I can't do even that because I don't know what your objectives and goals are). There is also the problem of not including commissions and fees in your P&L, which you'd have to do in order to determine whether or not in "real trading" any of this would have been worth the trouble. For me, there was only one trade, which was a loss of 2t. But that's my particular plan. Some might have shorted the upper limit of the range, if they could tolerate the width of the stop. Others might have done nothing and quit early (I quit around 1030). But there are no range bars or indicators, as you know.
Your approach appears to be what one might call "soft". And that may work for you. But it's not what's advocated here. If you change your mind about having a "tight, statistics-based trading plan", Gozilla and lajax are doing interesting work. You may want to take a look at it.
I'm going to go ahead and guess that Livermore come up with a number for a trend break reversal of around 3-4 points, if that is the case then you are right, its a little creepy .
This provides an example of what I've been saying about trading "against" different groups or levels or classes of traders:
So one question you have to consider is whether or not these people are going to help or hinder you, plus of course what you're going to do about it in either case. If you've planned for these contingencies in advance and you're prepared to assume the price risk, then . . .
Therefore, when you're ready or near ready to enter a trade, ask yourself "who sees this? who might be out there to help me?"
I have been asked more than once the reason for including the weekly and daily charts if one is trading intraday, much less a 1m bar. The reason is that the upcoming session doesn't appear out of nowhere. It must be approached, not just jumped in to, if one is going to take full advantage of it. I pointed out Thursday morning, for example, that AMT gave us a target of 4544 on the daily chart. This may not have seemed realistic to those who haven't studied the SLAB as we had only just lifted off 4475, but we topped out yesterday morning at 4540 for a run of 65pts. Would an understanding of AMT have aided one in playing all this? Maybe so, maybe not. For me, yes.
I drew in the "weaknesses" in the daily highs during the last two waves in order to show that just because we've had trouble making a new high, that doesn't mean that the bull market is over and prices are going to plunge and that darkness will cover the earth and that it will rain frogs. However, the median of this channel continues to rise and traders are soon going to have to make up their minds what they want to do (we're beginning a series of earnings reports AGAIN).
I don't know that it's that so much as believing or beginning to believe that we're smarter than our own plans. And this step onto the wild side is common. Some of us have done insufficient testing. Or we don't trust our own competence to conduct the testing in the first place. Or we don't trust numbers. Or we read one of those Schwager books and believe at some level -- probably unexamined -- that if we were really good we ought to be able to "sense" the market and "feel" our way through the day, that we ought to be able to get "in synch" with the market just because, that following a plan isn't "manly".
But there is also the problem of those new or relatively new to this of not understanding exactly what the lines are, or are for. There are all sorts of lines one can plot on a chart: Fib lines, Pivot Points, software-generated S&R lines, not to mention regression lines and envelopes and "trend" lines and who knows what all.
The "SLA" line, though, is simply a means of tracking the balance between supply and demand. Nothing more. Nothing cosmic. And when the line is broken, that balance has changed. And the trader is called upon to do something about it (if he doesn't know what, he ought to do nothing). Breaking these other lines generally doesn't mean anything at all. Which is why so many people think that "TA" is a big joke.
If I could get people to see behind the lines, see what creates the lines in the first place, I would consider it a major achievement, but people's brains get so scrambled so fast. It's as if every new trader has a big SUCKER printed across his chest and the typical trading forum is a perpetual timeshare sales pitch.
For example, the ubiquitous weekly trend channel. I read post after post in thread after thread about how it's all over every time price fails to make a higher high. But while everybody looks at this sort of thing, does anybody really see it?
Using the chart I posted above, note that for the past year+ the swing highs and swing lows have corresponded to earnings seasons, the swing highs being three months apart and the swing lows being three months apart. Whether earnings are as expected or not seems to have little to do with it. Anticipation? Rise. Result? Decline. Or, another way of putting it, buy the rumor and sell the fact, but on a market-wide basis. Why has this phenomenon occurred primarily during this period? Because the bull is getting long in the tooth? Because Big Money is eyeing the exits? Would making a new high in the next week or so come as such a big surprise? To a great many people, yes. But to someone who can get behind the lines, not so much. And if we don't make a higher high, that's okay too. It has to happen eventually.