Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I decided to start a journal at "Big Mike's" mainly as a way to keep me on the straight and narrow. I have been trading futures on an off for several years though never successful for any extended period. I turned to this forum and quite frankly, through the interaction with others found what I hope to be a successful scalping system for me.
I am not looking to make a living at this as I have a very nice position at a company that I have been with for many years and thoroughly enjoy. I am limited to trade either in the early, early morning or late evening (thus the reason for trading the FDAX and 6E). I am only looking to supplement my family's income, thus the goal of "$100 a Day". I have been at this long enough to know that my goal will not be met each and every day, some times more, some time less, some time a lot less. The plan is that over time I will be able to average out to this number. Please don't mistake my limited/restricted trading hours as me being less than committed. I have put in, and continue to put in more late hours than I care to think of in this endeavor.
My setup incorporates very few indicators all of which are derived from ideas that have been discussed in this forum. I think the light for me came on when I started interacting with websouth and all of his wild and crazy wave templates. As I discussed with him I never felt comfortable without bars to make my ultimate entry/exit decision. So I took one of the templates he posted and made a hybrid out of it. That is the view you will see in my screen shots. Is this the last one I will ever use?.. hmm, lets just say I am going to reserve the right to tweek it.
As you know websouth likes to look at very short time frames (1-2) Range. This appealed to me as well though I had focused on Tick charts. For my view I use a "2 RangeNoGap" with Big Mike's TrendBars2. I really like the way these bars show the change in trend. As you will see these bars are the basis for my entries and exits.
I know Mike is not going to like this but I trade off of one chart. I am only looking for a few points at a time and feel like the other indicators on my screen tell me the short term trend and that is all I care about. The trend for me is primarily determined by a 160 period WMAColored Line. while this was included in websouth's template to me it was an extension of what Jeff was providing in his "All you need" thread. All trend views begin with this and require I stay on the right side. I am looking at the color and the slope to determine the trend. As a secondary level of trend I have the SlingShot set at 48/68. Price will often retrace back to the sling shot area so I like to see that. Lastly, to spice things up a bit I added a little "TRO" by including the CurrentDayOHL to give me some barrings on what price is ultimatly doing on the day.
So now that you know what I am looking at, how do I decide my entries? First of all it needed it to be very simple and something that repeated over and over again through out the trading day. Due to my time restrictions it is not possible to sit and watch for the one "mother of all trades" set up. It all starts with the change in color of the 160 period WMA line. A common pattern we are all familiar with is retracements back toward the WMA line that fail. I felt this was a good set up to base my entries. Well as they say a picture is worth 1000 words (in this case I hope $100.00), so lets go to the illustration for details.
What is not mentioned is that I also have a catastrophic stop set at 10 ticks in the event something unexpected takes place in the market. Typically though with this system the bars will change colors well before the stop out and it is there that I will exit the play. One of the nice things about not having a set Profit Target is that every play I enter has the potential to be a home run. By waiting until the immediate trend completes (signified by the changing of bar colors) it is very possible that I could meet my daily quota on the 1st play. There will be stop outs with this system, no doubt about it. However, if I follow the rules, they will be small and manageable.
Disclaimer: All trading activity will be on a SIMULATOR only until further notice
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Hmm, I'm not sure Hjay, but are FDAX/6E the best choices for your daily goals ?
FDAX: approx. 5600pts, 25€/pts, 1 contract=196k$, margin of approx 20k$...
Is it not too big for catching 100$/day ?
100$, it's 1.5 FDAX point, that means micro-scalping, and this is not an easy game...
1st Trade: Well off to a good start on the 1st day. It was not without feeling a little heat however. The FDAX can provide a wild ride and today was no exception. Just as I was looking for a quick stop out on my 1st entry (the bar was flashing blue) it continued its path down and I exited with a nice profit (my goal nearly met). Had I rode it out instead of exiting when it was pulling back I would have been done on the 1st trade. Again "flashing blue but did not close blue" means stay in the trade. Clearly something to work on.
2nd Trade: Not to be shown up by the 1st trade this one too put on the heat, flashed a little blue but did not close and eventually continued on its path. I exited at a hammer and as you can see it was the right thing to do. Sam mentions that FDAX or 6E may not be the best instruments and I agree they are not my first choice. However for the early morning action they seem to be the best. I have tried the YM but nothing compares to these 2 at that time. I looked at the 6B but never felt as comfortable with it. The good news is this set up with 2 Range seems to work on everything I looked at so far. The issue is volume/time of day.
HJay
I think you are very brave to post your trades so kudos to you there.
Something to think about - In one post you took 1.5pts of profit whilst taking something like 4 pts of heat (sic).
If you win 2.66x and lose once - you break even in the long run ( forgetting slippage and commissions- which with scalping are considerable).
I agree.
I'm sorry, I'll repeat what I've wrote previously, but FDAX is not compatible with your goal. You will play with a demo account, that's good, you'll see if it can works for you or not.
But I really don't think it's possible.
If you choose FDAX for "early morning action", why not have a look at FESX (10€/point, 28 K€/contract), or CAC40 ((10€/point, 38 K€/contract) ? The move of these contract are quite similar to FDAX move, and you'll have less heat with them than with FDAX (140 K€/contract).
I'm not selling anything, and you'll see what happens with your demo account, it's just an advice .