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I find it useful . Overall you are very frank and honest about what you see and dont pull punches . The order flow and ladder insights are what I find informative because I have very little understanding of them , thanks .
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Dax is really slow so I put the finishing touches on two projects.
Turning Point Oscillator v2. I simply applied a stochastic function to eliminate the need for a threshold that I had to select for each timeframe. This makes it much simpler, no parameters, nothing to configure or optimize. I am abandoning the dot idea as it's impossible to know where to put it. This is where discretion comes in. This indicator is just giving me information, it's up to me to use it. Having a small histogram on the chart is the same as having a dot, it's just the dots are in a lower panel.
Then I came up with a second algorithm for analyzing the order flow and I call this one "Professional Oscillator". The goal is simply to show professional activity (blue) and lack of professional activity (yellow).
I notice that they give similar signals. When they both are blue that means professionals are very active, and since the two use different algorithms for detecting professional activity, they confirm each other.
On the daily chart we see lots of professional activity. It's impossible to know from these indicators if the pros are selling or buying, so for that I look for trade location. Pro's don't chase moves (usually). For higher timeframes I also look at other data sources such as the breadth indicators, the COT, Volume Patterns, VSA, etc. I use all that to decide which side the professionals are on.
Then it goes like this:
- are the pro's active?
- if yes, which side?
- do we have a low risk setup with favorable Reward:Risk on the big picture?
- go to timing chart and look for a setup
Attached are the ES daily & the dax intraday charts. Keep in mind that the dax is very choppy today because of a suite of economic reports being released in europe today.
Dax had a huge move, let's look at it. I marked the periods of professional activity on the chart. The dax was rangebound all morning and not a lot of trade opportunities. Behind the scenes the pros were going short. Just as I lost interest there was a breakout to the downside. I'm not a breakout trader so i didn't catch it, and have no regrets as that's not my style. There were opportunities to get short along the way down but it moves so fast and violently that I just stayed out, not wanting to risk my early gains. I trade best when the market is cycling and trading these big trend moves is something I need to work on.
You see the professional activity in the 2nd block, my guess is they took profits and started accumulating. Also notice the low activity level in between the two peaks (there are some yellow bars). This is a time when it's best not to trade. The calm before the storm so to speak. Next time I see that i'll be better prepared for a big move.
Here's a ladder trade:
You can see sellers got trapped, buyers took over. It hesitated a little so I was quick to take off some profit and move my targets in a little. Once I get a little more comfortable with this I want to try going for a few more ticks on the 3rd target. But first things first. It may look stupid to get out so quickly but often these don't go more than 10 ticks which is why my plan is to scalp it and I'm sticking to my plan. Jeff Castille taught me something, he said you have to decide if you're a scalper or not and if you're a scalping you don't worry about the big move you missed. That's been a very valuable lesson for me and has served me well. I can honestly say I had no regrets about missing anything. Give me my 10 ticks and I'm happy. Thank you Jeff.
Then I attach the P/L. 200 euros. not great but my main focus was cutting losers short and that's exactly what I did.
I'm going for a run and will be back for the crude open. I wish you good luck with your trading today.
If I understand this correctly, then fewer than 125 contracts were trapped. Possibly much fewer. So, while I agree that sellers appear trapped, how do you decide what is enough to make it a tradeable condition? I guess that will depend on how thick the order book is on your market at the time, and where you think the trapped contracts' stops are?
I got a PM with some questions about the POT indicator. So I would like to clarify a few things, I do not want to mislead anyone.
There is not an indicator on my charts that will cause my to enter or exit a trade. I personally believe that such an indicator doesn't exist and even if it does it wouldn't be optimal*. So the way I use indicators is to give me information about the market. I then take this information and process it in my brain and decide what the market is telling me and how I can use this information to make a profitable trade. This is where one finds the edge in trading.
The POT chart is actually in the background and the only thing I can see is about 3 inches of the bottom right corner, just enough to show me the last few minutes of the POT indicator. I don't look at the price.
When I hear the alert, it just tells me "there could be a reversal". that's it. If I'm not paying attention then I start paying attention. I glance down to see what the POT reading is. I still don't look a the price on this chart until after a trade and I look to see how I did.
This is exactly how I use all the indicators, including the new ones in development the TPO & PO (Pro Oscillator), the sinewave, the volume breakdown, etc. I was briefly testing out trading the TPO as a mechanical entry signal (the red dots) but that was breakeven so I stopped. That was a just a separate test.
The reason I post my trades on a chart with POT isn't because I'm using the POT for them but just because it's the only ninjatrader chart I have open (besides the footprint) and it has my trade markers on it.
I hope that clears up some questions, if not just let me know.
*I do trade a basket of stocks mechanically using indicators. I'm quite confident I could do much better trading them manually but I'm willing to accept the tradeoff in exchange for having it automated. Since I can't pick the top I just enter on the open and often have it go 2-3% against me. If I were trading it manually I'm sure I could enter close to the top. So this is what I mean by "not optimal". I'm seriously considering pulling the plug.
Great questions. I'm still figuring this out really. I don't have any criteria for the # of trapped traders. I'm more interested in having buyers coming in and taking control. I'm trying to figure out how to use the DOM but so far I can say the DOM isn't a factor in my decisions. I don't worry about their stops cause I'm mainly going for 6-10 ticks.
Ended up ok on CL $350 but it was not an easy day.
I started out with a rough trade, got stopped out. I got positive slippage on sim and got -4 but I doubt I'd get that with real trading. If anyone has compared slippage between simulator and real money please let me know.
BTW I decided to change my stop from 7 to 6. I'm considering using 5 but I want to test 6 for a while first.
Then I had a couple good trades and got back position.
Then I had a few trades that weren't good but fortunately I was able to get out with a few ticks and avoid a loss. That messes up the avg win / avg loss ratio in the P/L because instead of taking a small loss which would make the ratio good I took a small win which makes the ratio bad. So I'm placing less importance on this ratio.
I then took a 6 tick stop and that hurt. It went too fast for me to get out. Then the rest were small wins. i took what I could get.
My goal was to control losses, I've made a lot of progress there. My next goal is to miss less trades. Some of these set up very quickly and by the time I decide to enter it's gone. i won't chase the market and I don't want it on a pullback because that's buying weakness. so if I miss the moment it's lost. I think I'm only taking about 25% of the potential trades. so I need to be more aggressive and try to take more and see what happens. That's my goal for the next few sessions.