Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
The cyan colored bands or zones are created with an indicator called APA Zones, " apazones.com" they print out support/resistance or supply/demand .... whatever you want to call it. The zones once created actually keep track of how many times price has visited or hit that zone and will change colors each time that zone has been hit. This is by far my favorite indicator as it helps me identify these areas very quickly. It is so nice to not have to draw my zones every morning as well as having to keep track of how many times price has bounced there. Maybe not a big deal if trading one market, but if looking at multiple markets and multiple time frames .. wow, what a time saver :-)
Another thing that APAZones does is it will print out these arrows that show where these 3 Bar Engulfing Patterns occurred. Makes it easy to go back and see where they happened.
I will post some pics here soon of what the different colors represent and how they keep track of bounce counts. etc.
The jtrangemarker indy (can be found here within futures.io (formerly BMT) as well as Ninja Forums) is very helpful for me in seeing where price will close based on what the current hi and or low is of that current range bar. This helps me identify whether or not this pattern that I am looking for is going to happen so that I can either set my entry, or pull it, if the pattern does not show itself as an "Engulfing" type of pattern that I explained at the beginning of this thread. If you would like more clarification on that, let me know and I can try to explain that more.
Thank you and best of luck to you as well. Do you have a journal going here too? are you in a 10 or 20 day?
Let me know if you would like any more clarification
So I was finally able to start this TST Combine today!
However I did not start the way I had envisioned (green ) instead, I was in the red a bit........ As I am putting this post together, I prolly won't make any more trades, although I am watching for something that looks worthy of taking.
The breakdown looks something like this. Try and follow along with the pics below. (btw .. what is a good picture hosting site so that I can upload and insert pics into these posts and not have to have all the pics loaded down at the bottom of the post? thx. )
i passed on the 1st signal as it was a long right into the globex high. Usually not a good trade. I did take the 2nd signal which was a little above the globex hi and entered short with 2 cars. I ended up getting stopped out for -14 ticks. Actually had a 1 tick slip in my favor. Even though I got stopped out, price never would have hit my target of 15 ticks .... price came up short of my T1 target by one tick.
Passed on the 3rd signal as it was a short signal right into a trend line and the globex hi level and was perhaps a retest or bounce off that globex level. Was becoming obvious that we are in an uptrend and the risk/reward in a countertrend trade was just not good enough. I also was again trying to manage risk within this combine. A sketchy trade with an out balance R/R ratio did not feel good after already being red for the day.
I did take the 4th signal long, but ended up moving my stop to b/e after price was in my favor by 10 ticks. ( I wanted to be safe and protect the combine acct just in case this move was a head fake and just a retest of the recent high ) I got stopped out and slipped up 1 tick for a +1 tick profit. Of course price moved on to hit my target of 15 ticks and kept on going. Not a good way to recoup the earlier losses. I really should not have moved that stop!!
I decided to stay away from any other signals as it was very clear that we were in consolidation, not to mention we had hit the Avg daily range, we were also into a 4 hour dead zone (previous zone) and of course the time of day aaand I was noticing that the nearest zones from entry or signals were less than what my target of 15 ticks would have been. It also seems like that later we get the sketchy'er the signals get (is that a word?).
Tomorrow will provide plenty of opportunities to make up for today, and assuming my plan and testing of my plan holds like it did while testing ... I should have no problems on my way to getting funded.
You might want to try out the TST chat rooms that are inside the Squawk Radio area. Below is a pic with a description of the "Badge" colors and the people that are in that particular room. Seems to be quite a few "Funded" Traders. Maybe you can strike up a conversation with them?
I was able to get in 3 trades today ( 2wins and 1 scratch )
and ended up green for the day and was also able to pull
overall acct into the green after yesterday's red day.
I just set up a photobucket account .. so should be able to post pics a little better starting tomorrow .. as for today, try to follow along my comments with the pics below.
So the beginning of the day seemed a little slow to me but price finally hit Globex High and my pattern was setting up, so set my entry, but somehow did not get filled and then got an error message twice as I tried to go short. Finally gav up on the trade ... and lucky I did as price would have stopped me out!
My next short signal I passed on after putting a few things into context for me. First overall and bigger time frame seemed up to me and since we had blew up above GH price could easily bounce on the GH and continue up. Also, looking at my Ergodic and CCI indies .. they were in the middle of their windows. See pics for a closer look at what I was seeing.
Turns out that Short would have worked but would have been a grind getting there. I passed on a few other signals as well as we got closer to Oil Inventories. see Pics with descriptions). Once Inventories were released and price came down into a zone this pattern started setting up for Trade #1, so I set up and got filled. (See Pic) and had may Target hit.
Trade #2 showed it's face as price broke a flag pattern on 5 min chart and hit a supply zone. This pattern completed and I was triggered Short for Trade #2. I saw a double bottom print on a 1 min chart and ended up moving stop to b/e which got stopped out for a scratch trade.
Gotta get runnin here .. so for sake of time .... Took Trade # 3 ..... see pic for descriptions.
I like each of your trade entries, APA put you into some nice trades.
$10 per RT commission ?
The only comment on your trades is tightening up the stop as quickly as you did, it obviously got in the way of trade #2.
I went back and reviewed your trading plan and the initial stop is clearly specified, but what happens after that is not clear. During your testing phase prior to starting the combine, did you have a specific strategy you followed for handling the stop during the trade ?
Thanks for the comments! Regarding the stops .... yes, this is something I have wrestled with quite a bit and "IF" I were trading a normal personal account, I would not be moving those stops. However, within this combine, there is not much room for error when trading multiple contracts. Starting out with 2 cars, it only takes a couple of head fakes or flushes to get darn close to a Daily max loss. The way that these combines are structured, and the criteria they have for trailing draw downs and daily max losses and trade averages ...... I came up with a concept that did work in my backtesting. The plan (which was not listed in plan specifically, thx for pointing that out) is to go into "protect the account mode" after price moves in my favor by 10 ticks.
In the combine scratch trades do not count or are not added into the averages. Yes, we get hit for the comission/fees ($5/RT per contract). So I figure if price has gone in my favor for 10 ticks and having a target of 15..... I am darn close to hitting T1, and in testing it seemed 9/10 times price will hit T1. I don't have exact stats on that but on a conservative side, I am betting it is better than 70%. So if I move stop to b/e chances are it will continue to hit target. If it were to come back and take me out at b/e, or a scratch, ... that trade does not get added into the averages .. and if I were to get some slippage against me, it's actually ok as it would actually decrease my loss average. Where if I were to say .... do a b/e +1 tick, and take the win .. that actually drags my win averages down.
In my testing there are plenty of set ups or patterns that happen everyday. Some days more than others. so I am not so worried that I have a scratch or a loss here and there. I would rather get out of a trade and protect the account at this point and wish I were still in that trade .. than see it come back against me and wish I was not in that trade anymore. I can always jump back in if this pattern shows itself again.
While attempting to make sense of it all and actually pulling the trigger, I have and will continue to make mistakes or read the charts wrong .... this is a work in progress for me. And thanks to people like you asking questions such as these ... I will be able to reflect and clarify what it is I am actually trying to do here.
I will be chewing on this tonight ... and may add more to my answers in the next few days. Thanks again for asking the questions .. hope I made some sense out of it
Would a possibility be to take profit on 1 contract after a move of 10 ticks ? That profit could then be used as a 10 tick improvement in risk reward ratio on the next contracts. Perhaps using the breakeven setup on the next contracts ?
This is only an idea to ponder. It comes from observations trading crude.
You certainly have your ideas worked out with a lot of thought and I think you will do very well.
If you had a couple of 5-7 tick trades per day instead of scratches, it might make a difference. I am not sure though.