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Except for one move in CL, one move in 6E and one move in GC, the markets were deadsville today. The moves in 6E and GC would have been dice rolls so I didn’t mark them in real time. The set up in CL is something I have seen many times before. Several attempts at a break down before the real thing finally takes place. I did not trade it because the day was generally so slow and it was getting late. Also the trigger bar was very long and I felt there was a good chance of a good sized retracement. As the move proceeded large orders on the bid began to show up and I knew at that moment it could go far. Unfortunately there were no real attractive places to jump on board.
ZN was down for most of the day on my data feed so nothing available there.
Since the day was so slow I won’t go into too much detail about my areas of focus. I wrote out my goals and affirmations before market open, and my discipline to stay out was good.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I feel stupid! Your post reminded me how valuable CD can be in fine tuning a trade. I have been so focused on price action that I have kind of neglected CD, even though its on all my charts!. I need to get back to being more in tune with what it is saying. CD definitely has different personalities on each instrument. It's particularly good for CL. I also think it can work on NQ, 6E and ZN. Not so sold on its value on NG or GC. I think it has to do with how the market movers enter and exit on each instrument. Are they primarily using market orders or limit orders or a combo?
Regarding chop, I do use larger charts that are three times my trading charts. In CL the larger chart is 2400 tick. Regarding a day like today tick charts are the best for recognizing chop. Attached are three charts: 1) what I saw when I opened the chart this morning. 2) An example of what I would wait for before taking a trade. 3) how the trade would have ended up.
I didn't take the trade because I'm a coward, LOL! But I think it illustrates how I stay out of chop.
-Still having trouble jumping on trends. I always feel it’s bound to be over just as I get in. Then it’s not.
-NQ didn’t really have a fake out at the open that looked tradable. It tried to go higher then reversed, but I was not going to trade short with the big prior move up.
-Getting more cognizant of TL BO failures and their implications for the opposite direction.
-Did a nice job of being mindful of touches of the opening swing in real time.
-Was a lot more mindful of what CD was doing today. Saw some nice “events”
Real time marker results were good with 7 trade areas getting to at least 2R and 4 trade areas hitting the stop at -1R.
Areas of focus recap:
-tried to jump on the NQ trend but got stopped at BE. Good try
-NQ action at open was sloppy and uncertain
-No real significant retests of any OS today
-getting good at recognizing TL BO failures. These are good set ups
-Paying a lot more attention to CD. Noting events with ovals on charts
-was very patient once again.
Goal was to take two trades today but only took one. I keep skipping the early action, then jump in later when things are not so fast. Need to change this tendency.
Trade 1, NQ: Total Reasonable Movement, -8t, +46t. Exit at -1t. The positive is that once again I picked a good trade area.
It was a TL BO failure trade that was riding the TL up. Moved against me -8t, then broke through entry to +8t where I moved to BE. Entering later in the morning tends to catch slow, choppy movers. These are not what I am comfortable with at this time.
Marker results were good: six 2R winners, five 1R losers, five BE.
Areas of focus recap:
-no trends to catch today. Thought NQ might continue up and it did.
-NQ did not have a tradable open for me
-Still getting keen to the TL BO failure trades
-No real retests of the OS today
-Paying more attention to CD. Had a nice event on Oil. I see these early morning swing touches often in oil. Need to take advantage.
-Patience good. Didn’t press. Just need to get a little bolder
Weekly Summary 4/20/15 to 4/24/15
Live Trades: 3, 3 losers
Week’s P/L: -$22.06
Starting balance for the week: $2722.33
Withdrawals for the week: $0
Deposits for the week: $0
Ending balance for the week: $2700.27
Beginning account balance from first live trade on 3/10/15: $3000.00
Total Withdrawals: $0
Total Deposits: $0
Total Gains/losses from 3/10/15: -$299.73
Stats on Maximum Reasonable Movement from entry on last 20 live trades:
-Getting better at identifying quality set ups with the real time markers. Generally I am about 1/1 potential winners to losers at an R/R of 2/1 with the markers, at around 10 areas or more per day identified.
-I have identified the TL BO failure as a particularly good set up as it seems to trap a lot of people.
-Back to paying attention to CD events. Got away from this while focusing on price action. It has value in confirming possible changes of direction and pauses.
-Still struggling with under trading and so have implement a two trade per day minimum goal to focus attention on taking more trades. I would like to take at least 10 live trades per week at this time.
-Have begun to write out goals and affirmations every morning before the open. I have done this in the past with good results. Got away from it while experimenting with different techniques.
-Generally pleased with my overall daily read of the markets and have a positive expectation for my future trading. Still waking up every day excited to trade.
The following are my daily objectives for the week of 4/27/15 to 5/1/15:
-Write out goals, objectives and affirmations prior to the market open
-Take a minimum of two live trades per day
-Identify trends early and make at least one attempt to jump on board
-Identify TL breakout failures
-Identify Opening Swing retests
-Identify significant CD events
No trades. Some good opportunities. Began logging all markers (thin colored arrows. Blue for long, red for short.), and giving reasons I was reluctant to take the trade. We’ll see if this yields any insights.
Real time marker results were good again. 12 markers, 5 got to at least 2R, 4 would have lost 1R, and 3 would have been BE.
Objectives recap:
-Wrote out goals, objectives, and affirmations.
-Did not take a trade in spite of some good set ups. Lack of belief in the positive expectancy of each particular set up was the main reason. Though my markers prove that I am identifying good enough areas to be positive, I am unwilling to take the requisite number of trades to ensure the winners can overtake the losers. It is the old problem of the possibility of losing several in a row before getting the winners.
-Identified many TL BO failures, a couple nice ones on CL. These are areas I might lose in one direction, then reverse and get it back and more in the other direction. That’s for the future.
-Identified some OS retests.
-saw a couple of CD events and missed a couple more.
A recent order flow webinar I watched (Pete Davies trading with order flow I believe) mentioned that CD works best in very liquid markets such as ES, ZB, etc., and not so much in much less liquid instruments like CL, YM, NQ, etc. I was very convinced I saw something worthwhile in CD while trading the YM that I tried building a strategy around it! But through back testing, my eyes seem to have failed me as I could find no repeatable patterns to trade from reliably over time.
I will one day check out CD on the ES and do some back/forward testing, cause it seems absolutely wonderful for helping pick trade location. Hope you can find something I missed! Cheers!