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Wednesday, August 25th - I took a gap fade in the D-L zone. The market began to fill the gap then rolled over. As we approached the new housing report I was 1-2pts in front of my stop and I knew I was going to get "flashed" out because this was a big news release and there would be a lot of volatility at the release. I thought about temporarily widening my stop to avoid getting flashed out but decided to keep things mechanical and just stick to the plan. Sure enough, the market immediately dropped 4pts, 2pts past my original stop, then recovered.
So when the crude inventories were coming out I thought I'd put the flash in my favor. Oil has been incredibly week for the past couple of weeks so I thought we'd see a flash to the downside once the news came out. Price was hovering around 74.60 before the open, so I put a buy limit order about 50 ticks below at 74.10. Sure enough, once the news came out I was quickly filled. I targeted 40 ticks with a 30 ticks stop, below S1, with the hopes that a large extreme, quick move like that would quickly mean-revert like they usually do. After getting filled price did just that, and reversed 30+ ticks above my fill then turned around and stopped me out. I later looked at the chart and saw that it went +39, just 1 tick in front of my target. At that point I should have reduced my stop or set to break-even but my greed and sense of entitlement to be right kept me in the trade. Of course my stop was right near the lows of the day and the market slowly churned higher back toward my target.
The first hour numbers weren't that compelling, and I didn't want to end up over-trading, so I avoided any 1st hour trade.
ES: 1 loss: -20 ticks
CL: 1 loss: -30 ticks
PS - The gap did end up filling later in the day, without ever revisiting my stop, so a stop adjustment ahead of news would have worked, at least in this instance.
Thursday, August 26th - The odds in the ES looked decent but I traded the YM because the odds there were significantly better. The market opened up 30 ticks above yesterday's close and I went short, but got 13 ticks of slippage, worse slippage ever. It touched the extended target, turned around and eventually hit that too. If I knew I was going to get so much slippage and fade such a short target I would have gone for the ext target, but you never know how much slippage you're going to get.
I got a winning first hour trade in ES fading the highs. I haven't had a losing trade in these setups yet! Unfortunately, I was trying to adjust my target on chart trader and I accidentally moved my target above my entry, which caused it to immediately close the position with a 7tick profit. Luckily, I got filled short 2ticks higher than if I had followed the entry rules of the system but I thought I could get a better fill. However, it did hit my 4.5pt target so I left 2.75pts of profit on he table.
I watched NG at the news release and it acted very similarly to CL yesterday: big flash multiple standard-deviation move to the downside, and a slow crawl back up, reverting back to where it started.
After yesterday's losses in the face of being right, I was hoping to get some better luck and improved execution today. However, huge slippage on the YM and fumbling my trade on ES cost me approximately an additional $300 of profit.
Friday, August 27th - I liked gap guides in various zones but picked the instruments that expressed the best setups for those zones. I triggered a short trade at the open in the NQ and picked up 14pts.
The first hour numbers weren't that compelling so I didn't execute anything there.
I saw several markets for nice hammers after 7:15 and wanted to go long but I wasn't mentally prepared to take such an entry. The market made a V reversal and took off after that candle both in ES and CL.
Tuesday, August 31st - I set up some gap zones to fade on ES and NQ but price didn't enter in any of them. The only first hour numbers were interesting to me were for a breakdown below the lows, but the low was 1039.25 and it would have to break through some major support levels to be a winning trade so I avoided it.
Pursuant to yesterday's botched SIM trade I took a SIM trade on a with-trend hammer reversal that had the volume profile I was looking for. 2pt stop, 4pt target. It touched my target, moved my stop to B/E +1tick and turned around for a +1 non-loser. In retrospect I should have considered I was targeting beyond the daily pivot. Regardless, after getting stopped out price went down just a little further and did revisit and penetrate my original target. I have no regrets, though, moving my stop when price touches my target, it would be devastating for that to happen and then take a full loss.
Wednesday, September 1st - There were some decent setups for fading gaps, but the daily gap wrap video revealed that fading gaps up historically is a horrible trade on Sept 1st so I only looked to fade gaps down. Sure enough, the market opened up and never looked back. Still, it opened so far up into the U-H zone that would not have been a gap zone I would have looked to fade anyways.
I did, however, take a 1st trade on a breakout of the highs of the first hour that took all day to fulfill for another 4pts. I have to admit that it was hard to get long at that point after having gone up so far so fast, and thought maybe I should look to buy a pullback, but I just stuck to my rules. Buying a pullback would have worked well, and reduced my risk/reward, but then you take the chance of missing the winners that breakout and run away from you and you catch every loser. Plus, the market was so strong I felt expecting a pullback might not have been the best idea. I still have a 100% win rate with these trades.
Scott at MTG called out before leaving the chat room in the morning that if the gap was still not filled 15-30mins ahead of the close and price was not trading at its highs that that the market would rally higher and it did just that, which is when my target was finally hit.
I took a CL SIM trade on a with-trend reversal signal. It didn't reach my target but I closed it out on market close for +10 ticks.
Reviewing my Mirus statement for August revealed that this was my best trading month ever, and September is off to a good start too!