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What time period strategy works best for futures trading? W/D or H/15M
Thank you everyone for the candid and honest input and direction; it is greatly appreciated.
The following is for clarification and not to challenge your responses.
My intent in using these set of indicators against a specific time frame is not to find some "magical" set of patterns that will just work as I know this doesn't exist. In viewing the wikis that were linked here, I think what I'm trying to achieve with my strategy is to build a context that allows me to understand what the charts are trying to tell me. My thoughts were that the indicators would help me gain insight into what OHLC and price action is telling me during a period of time. At least that's what I wanted to used them for (and as was pointed out to quickly scan many markets in order to pick ones to drill further into). One of the key pieces that I'm missing is volume.
The thesis part is something I will need help with as I don't incorporate this into my trades today.
On an intraday chart, the OHLC of any bar of any timeframe is meaningless as the markets are dynamic. That is what indicators are based upon and it's already on your chart. I promise you that the $100 Elite membership is invaluable. You will get it back in 4 ticks- pony up and we are all here to help
The proper way to trade the market is to work from the largest time frame to the smaller time frames.
Monthly, weekly, daily, 4h , 1 hr ,15 min is a nice progression to get the full picture. Changes in trend move from the smaller time frame(period) to the larger time frame keeping in mind the larger retains control until it is changed on its own (from smallest up)
The correct answer to your question is a bit complex. But, first let us consider if we should view market data through time or through price and volume. Is there a reason that the market should move in fixed time? My study of market suggest it does when enough market participants value the use of time or when it aligns with some predominate or underlying information frequency. Time does get incorporated into various calculations of averages. Time is also the easiest/most reliable way to backtest. On the other hand, we often see gaming behavior around market closes or around times when leverage ratios are forced to change in general.
The longer time frequencies tend to carry the more information: up to a point and beyond that point the information probably becomes discounted. Also, I hypothesize that the best short term traders use specific learning processes that require massive amounts of data and rely on intuitive pattern recognition.
So, you have basically 3 to 4 competing forces:
1. You need to see as many patterns as possible in the shortest time period to get good. As you place more trades though, your trading cost will become a significant factor in your ability to profit.
2. Longer time periods, up to a day or a few days, will tend to align more accurately with dominant information cycles.
3. Futures markets are largely information discounting mechanism, i.e. any predictive information in the price should decay rapidly.
As a secondary aspect to keep in mind, as a counter argument when I looked at whether a strategy was likely to be successful, longer holding times were strongly correlated with higher probability of strategy being profitable.
Based on all the available information, the picture that is painted looks something as follows:
1. As you increase your holding time, you have capability to integrate more types of data and you should also probably lean toward being more quantitative, i.e. strategy driven.
2. As you shorten your holding time, you have capacity to be more pattern driven and capability to use more intuition. However, this must be tempered with realization that non stationary jumps will dictate even high performing strategies be traded with lower leverage.
Also, if you are using indicators in the way you state, you may be better off developing a system. Most indicators typically do not perform as well when using time frames shorter then the daily. More over, even when they do, they may not be "time based" in a way that you can profit from them in the way you'd anticipate. For example, your indicator even on a 15 minute chart might indicate you should go long on a Friday evening. So, you'd need to hold the entire weekend to capture that move even though the indicator was set to a short periodicity.
At any rate, the final answer is:
1. You may want to consider possibilities where time-based market analysis might be insufficient.
2. If you use time based analysis, the dominant frequencies are more likely to carry information.
3. Longer periodicity will likely be more useful up to probably the daily time frame, possibly out to a few days.
4. It goes without saying, the longer the periodicity you use then the greater your holding period will be necessitated and the greater risk.
5. You must factor in your trading costs when you go with a shorter time period. On the other hand, you must account for greater risk with longer holding period.
6. Volatility is going to be relevant too. If the market is moving well, you can hold for less time.
All that said, if you are an analytical type, if you are synthesizing lots of data or working in a rule-based way, you will probably want to focus on HOLDING times of a day to a few days. Based on that the sub frequency periodicity of 60 minutes is most likely to do best for you. If you are mostly intuitive you may want to look at holding times of 10 to 15 minutes and even less. In which case, regardless of whether you use time based charts, you may want to view the market more in terms of price/value and volume.
2. The higher time frames overrule the lower time frames.
3. Prices in the lower time frame structure tend to respect the energy points of the higher time frame structure.
4. The energy points of support/resistance created by the higher time frame's vibration (prices) can be validated by the action of lower time periods.
5. The trend created by the next time period enables us to define the tradable trend.
6. What appears to be chaos in one time period can be order in another time period.
I trade using indicators and they are very useful . They should represent some tangible form of price action though , not just over sold/bought . They should filter market conditions in a decision tree way to give a binary output
I measure/filter trend , volatility , range , momentum , reversals , distance from mean . Rules from these are a systematic approach that can be quantified , measured , improved . Expectancy is measurable , this is your edge , if you can measure it you can improve it ..