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Thursday, September 2nd - I set up a few gap trades over night but somehow my computer froze over night and the strategies stopped running. Looking at the open it looks like there wasn't really any gap to speak of and if there was it would have been too small to trade so no opportunity was lost.
Last night we had our Meetup, our largest attendance yet, with a group of day traders that trade together. Each guy has a different style but they work together and give each other ideas as to what they are seeing. It was pretty interesting. They are transplants from New York and had some pretty interesting stories about their days working in Wall St. firms, or stories from their friends that still work there.
Friday, September 3rd - We had large gaps up due to positive jobs report. The U-H gap zone was favorable but I generally don't fade gaps higher than 40-50% beyond the 5-day ATR so I did not fade the gap. However, I watched the pre-market news release and saw a confluence of resistance around the 1103.50-1104.75 area hold (weekly R2, monthly R1 and daily R3) after the initial run from the news and it re-visited the area so I got short there, going for about 1/2 gap fill (8pts). Price moved towards my target then paused for Obama's news conference, where he didn't say anything meaningful, and price continued it's downward move to my target.
ES: 1 win: +32 ticks - my biggest ES winner to-date
One of the traders we met used to day trade Level II, and did well at it, but once the high-frequency computers took over he couldn't make money anymore because there were so many false bids/asks so he wasn't trading with facts, just illusions. So he had to leave Level II and started trading charts. Great example of the need to adapt when the markets change.
Also, the same trader said that back in the day before market-making was automated, he would make the most money in the last 2 weeks of August. Why? The top market makers would usually go on vacation then and the firms would put in their 2nd and 3rd string guys to make markets and he would exploit their inexperience and destroy them.
I also thought his scale-in/out approach was interesting. He would look at a 1min chart and if he saw a setup would take it. Then, later, if he got a similar setup on the 5min chart he'd add to his position. Then if the 15min chart looked good too he'd add more. Scales out in a similar way. So basically he's trading 3 positions on 3 time frames within the same measured move.
I have a friend who is doing something similar, but in his case the trades can be in both side. For example, for the same underlying, he can be short 5 cars on the a chart, and long 2 cars on the 60 minutes, and sclaping 3 others cars short on the 1 minute chart. In real he is short 3 cars, but in his mind he is not, he have 3 different positions on 3 different timeframes, that's all.
Quite strange, I've named him the "schizophrenic" , but why not...
Tuesday, September 7th - I just set up fading gaps in ES, pretty much all zones. I increased my stop to 6pts as I expected some volatility after the 3-day weekend but it didn't help as I got stopped out pretty quickly. It was interesting to note that while the YM also failed, the NQ gap did fill and was a winning setup, though the gap was small and I probably would have also gone for the extended target, which did fail.
Wednesday, September 8th - Good gap guide odds, bad results. High probability is not certainty.
Got a nice ambush trade on CL after the open on SIM. I've noticed that the market seems to respect fib retracements during RTH anchored from the overnight meaningful move. Determining what the Globex meaningful move to anchor to is the tricky part. I targeted the 0% line to be safe but the market extended quite a bit more after that.
Friday, September 10th - Good setups across various indexes, got quick yet small winners in YM and NQ. ES came within 3 ticks of profit then turned around, chopping around most of the day, until I got stopped out on the top tick of the day with an overall small loss for the day.
It is incredibly odd that the ES has not filled it's gap intra-day since September 2nd, 6 days of consecutive days of unfilled gaps! It is especially rare considering that gaps fill 70% of the time. The good news is that the more days the gap goes unfilled the more likely it is to fill the gap the next day, but how many more days of unfilled-ness is your account able to endure until then?