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I didn't see what you tried to post from sentiment trader. Was it a chart? It was blank under where you said "Saw this today from..."
I think a rise in VIX calls is more a function of money managers wanting to hedge their profits in this run-up, not necessarily a bet that the VIX is going to rise. You can get more dollar-for-dollar hedging power with VIX options than with just, say, buying puts on the market, or hedging with pairs trades, etc., since they are 2nd derivative instruments.
From a statistical point of view though the VIX is very low on a relative short-term basis, but on a longer term basis it is at a more normal level.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
That's an interesting concept to hedge with vix calls instead of ES puts. I hadn't thought of that. But still that's an expensive hedge when vix calls are 10x the price of puts. Means a lot of people are hedging for a move up in the vix which means they're bearish on the stock market. Just a hedge yes but I believe the good fund managers hedge wisely.
I think it's quite interesting that one could believe in a correlation of the two based on a single incident.
Earlier in the thread I posted …
I'm not saying the market won't go down (actually I did just a day or two ago) but I'm saying that we can't make correlations with one occurrence.
I'll post my read of the S&P 500 later this weekend. We're approaching terriority where we may make a minor top, which of course will probably be retested. ALso those vix options should expire this month around the 19th and with max pain theory the market may stay high. I have to look at the S&P options.
I think that's wise. I try to remind people occasionally that if you are a directional trader, you are probably either a pullback, breakout, or reversal trader. There's not much else! People forget that because they bury it under so many tools and techniques. But at the end of the day what matters is whether they found the pullback in real-time... not which indicators or patterns they used in the process.
Because of this, I think a trader can change charts and methods fairly often and benefit from the breadth of experience, as long as they remember the methods are merely tools and not the goal. Finding the pullback is that deep well you want to dig, while various charts and indicators are just different brands of shovels.
We're about (relative to the monthly chart) to get a down cycle on the monthly chart and that should cap this rally. Retracements are still showing professional buying and that has me puzzled. The COT report says commercials are selling into the high prices, but they could also be buying into the retracements.
The key indicator I'm watching right now is the turning point oscillator which is very close to giving a signal. The last few signals have been very timely in pinpointing market turns. I'll be following this very closely as it will be a pre-requisite for any trades. Market still showing strength for now so I'm not going to be too quick to short. Yesterday there was a nice short setup on the longer term tick charts and it didn't work out (although it could move down on Monday) so there is still strength. Any long term shorting would best be done once we see some serious weakness. At the same time market is too far extended to go long. So just sitting tight for now.
Option pain is at 1170 which suggests market should not move up much more this week. option expiration is friday.
PS: The turning point oscillator is not a directional indicator, it only indicates professional activity which usually occurs at turning points. It's up to us to interpret the direction. See the discussion between Westbeach, Richard, & myself for more information.
I didn't get a chance to post yesterday, so here's my tradelog starting from Friday. Why Friday? Because Friday I made my scalping plan for CL & DAX and I also have a really simple setup I'm trading on ES. I keep the totals separate because they're separate methods. Actually all 3 are separate so that if I see that one is consistent I can trade it with real money while continuing on sim on the others. I'm not exactly sure what my criteria is for me to trade with real money. I think two weeks good performance but ultimately I think it'll be a feeling of being ready. In the past I've been too quick to go to real money so I must not be in a hurry.
So far my new plan is working better. I'm trading 1 contract with stop at 6 and target at 10 but I can move those as needed. I really like the almost 2:1 ratio and it makes me feel more comfortable. Since I move my stop to breakeven once it's in my favor (usually around 7 ticks) the ratio is even better.
So far I'm missing setups. On some of them I'm just not that confident in them, on others I'm not quick enough. So I am focusing on these two points.
I'm still debating on journaling. With CL it goes too fast and journaling is too time consuming (putting it into excel). So I'm marking my trades on my MD chart (Ninja marks them too in case there are any doubts) and I am just writing in an excel file my thoughts on each trade. Ninja keeps all the statistics. At the end of the session I review all my trades and update my notes. This is the most important part I think, reviewing the days trades.
Crude was profitable but what a battle! Very difficult for me today. I finished +19 ticks so I missed my goal by 1 tick but I was just happy to be positive.
ES trading was much better. Only 1 loss. Not a lot of money but the stats are much better so I feel more comfortable with it. I did miss one good trade while I was trading CL so I could have done better.
I'm going to keep simming both but if I continue doing better with ES then I'll consider trading only ES. I actually decided to focus on ES a few weeks ago but I continued with CL because that's what they trade in the L2ST trading room and it was too hard to listen to them trading CL while I traded ES. I hate to pay for a trading room and not use it. They have a new format where their head coach is trading CL and shows his DOM so that's been really interesting.
Also I trade DAX & CL the same so practicing CL is good for the dax. So far I find the dax easier to trade. I'm curious if anyone else feels the same way.
I was putting my stats in the spreadsheet but it got to be redundant really because I have all that in Ninjatrader. I take a screenshot each day so I can quickly see my stats for any day.
Before I was exporting that while trading and it go to be distracting. I suppose I could export it into my tradelog at the end of the day. but really I take it day by day. When I have a few weeks profit with decent stats (PF > 2) then I'll consider trading live.
commissions are really small now that I'm trading 1 contract. I'd like to get to 2 though so that I can better manage risk.
I think that in relation to my losses commissions aren't as much.
For example in ES I had only one loss but it was 1.5 pts which is $75. Commissions were $24. If I reduce the loss then commissions would have less of an impact.
But you're right, for ES it's less volatile so commissions are higher. For CL my losses had a bigger impact.
For DAX the commissions are very low compared to the leverage & volatility. I really like the DAX.