Today for a daily trade I went long at 155'02. I could have made 6 ticks, and it ended up going against me 8 ticks. I traded this one and held it a bit too long, and only took 3 ticks out of it. I should have known better, and taken a profit earlier.

There was some good opportunities today. A lot of the signals I was trading before were working out today. Particularly watching price come down to those big limit orders that pulled as soon as they touched. I'm getting an idea of more filters to use. For instance it had come away from the popular prices before it made the flush, and it traded through 3 levels with almost no trades going the other way. We're also seeing a lot of big orders that act as magnets. I'm going to start forward testing these to see the probabilities.

Today I had another one of those "looks like I should just buy on the open". So I bought 154'28. I could have made 6 ticks on it. I did take the trade in sim, and got out at +4 ticks. If I had held it all session it would have gone 6 ticks against me, and then ended about 1-2 ticks in profit. I think this was good proof of where this exercise has helped me. I knew that the overnight range was small, and that there was no significant news today. My analysis the past few weeks helped me know how much I should be looking for. That said after it hit the range both ways a few times we ultimately went lower so I consider myself wrong on what I thought the day trend would be.

I also had a few more successful tests of my scalp setups. I'm running into a bit of an issue because I'm finding sometimes Rithmic claims I would have been filled, and I just don't believe it. When my position in the queue is estimated by jigsaw to be 200, and then Rithmic says I'm filled when only 9 orders traded there? So far I just wait and see if the price still gets cleared, and so far it has every time. So I still feel confident that this can work in live trading, but the only way to prove it is to do it live.

I've set up a performance coach call with TopStepTrader to see what they think, and depending on how that goes I might reset my combine to try again next week.

Today's trade was short 154'17. I was actually really mad because I was basing that trade on the idea that 19 was rejected, but then it blew right through that. Still if I had kept it I could have made 20 ticks with 5 ticks against me. I didn't have too many scalp trades, but I caught the reload several times. Still some questionable fills in places. Really making me itch to try the combine again so I can get live asap.

I'm noticing that I'm starting to talk like I know what I'm doing again. Definitely think I might be getting overconfident here. Some of these trades look good on paper, but it's only been a week. I need to keep in mind that the win percentages probably won't stay this high.

TWDsje 

. I'm noticing that I'm starting to talk like I know what I'm doing again. Definitely think I might be getting overconfident here.

This made me chuckle. I am guilty of this as well. Good self-monitoring.

For the daily trade I went long at 154'30. Super slow moving day, lots of absorption. Ended up being a loser for 10 ticks against me. I had some good two tick scalps that helped me stay marginally profitable for the day. Very interesting market action, but I'm more interested in seeing how people position Monday and Tuesday before the FOMC.

Went long at 154'28. Could have gotten 8 ticks out of it, with none against me. It took longer than usual for me to make a decision however. Slow action. The combination of auctions and FOMC is leading to some really bizarre action.

My scalp setups worked really well today, and I was able to get more ticks out of them than usual. It also kept me out of the action until things picked up after fail 153'26. I'm really starting to become a believer in my new way of looking at order flow.

I went long at 153'23. It went against me 5 ticks, and I could have made 13 ticks. My scalps are doing well and are turning into 2-4 tick winners.

But the most interesting thing was that the spread trade I've been waiting for showed up. Basically you'll see unusual order flow with iceberg orders on different sides of the market. Basically indications of a big spread trade happening. My theory is you take the side of the iceberg orders. So I have a NOB spread cumulative delta indicator that I wrote, and you can see the dip in delta on the lowest plot on the chart below. So I went long here, and caught a few ticks. Of course afterwards we came off those highs and then we had a situation where ZB went lower and ZN traded in a range. So there's obviously still a lot for me to understand about this complicated market action.

I've been doing well today, and at one point today I would have hit the TST combine profit target. So starting next week I will reset my combine and start posting daily recordings again.

With my wive's family up in the mountains for the rest of this week, but I was able to bring my laptop to trade in the morning. What? You thought I'd miss FOMC day?



I've been preparing for this day for a while now. I'm building a house that will be finished in October, so the interest rates make a big difference for me. Watching the order flow for the past three days showed heavy buying when we were going up, and so I was preparing to go long into today.

When the CPI news hit I knew exactly how to play it, and was able to catch the edge of a pullback at 155'18. I could have made 40 ticks, which is by far the best trade I've ever made.

I'd like to sit and let it run, but I got out at 155'26 as that's my time window. I'm still predicting you should go long into FOMC. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with myself right now. I think I'll just take the next two days off so that my ego doesn't get the best of me.

Made a few mistakes today, but made 5 ticks overall.

Super choppy and frustrating day. My daily trade was going to be long at 02, and while it looks like that was ultimately the right choice it didn't break out of the range before my trading time ended. I took a big hit when it failed to break out to the upside the first time, and the rest of trading was a wash.