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)
Style Suggestions For Intraday Trading While Working?
I set up the brooks 5 min chart in NT7... I'm observing it to see if I can follow your trades and theory. Much Appreciated. Could you clarify for me "always-in leg"?
Nate
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Always-in is Brooks' fancy word for the market's current prevailing direction. The name comes from the notion of the direction a hypothetical trader would be trading if he or she had to *always be in* the market and was entering right now.
It's kind of an amorphous concept. One way to think of it is the direction the market looks like it would go forever after now. Another way to think of it is the direction you would trade if you had to place a long term order right now.
It's either long or short. It can't be sideways.
Occasionally, it can be hard to tell. Usually, though, the always/in direction is the direction in which the market has spent more time furthest away from the EMA.
It's timeframe specific. So, a trader looking to carry a trade for several hours will look at the always in direction of a similar time frame or the last few days, while an intraday trader like me will look at the last couple of hours.
The always-in leg is simply a leg of s channeling market that's going in the always-in direction.
"Can you lead Leviathan about with a hook? ... Will the traders bargain for him?" Job 40:25-30
While im personally not a fan of Brooks method, im glad to hear its working for you! Hopefully you can keep the figures green in the longer run as well. With good entries and a decent strategy that doesnt incur much losses when a trade goes against you, it sounds promising.
I've been in somewhat the same position as you, keeping my charting-laptop open at work and glancing at it any spare time i had- unfortunately it was too hectic and stressful a job to combine with trading for me.
As far as any advice the only thing i could perhaps suggest is trying to have a bigger timeframe up next to your 5min chart. I like the 30min and feel it somehow reveals more accurate support/resistance levels and setups with better R/R along with longer targets. Even on smaller 10tick scalps, demandig directional confirmation from a bigger timeframe has saved me from a lot of no-no trades i would have blindly taken looking merely at my shorter timeframes
Okay, nathanologist, first trade today hit my quota and I have some extra time with work. Thought I'd use the extra time to walk through the trade.
Here it is:
First, let me say that I generally set a quota for my trading. If I hit it (positive or negative), I stop trading. If I haven't hit by 2p, I usually tighten it up or just stop trading altogether. My quota is $350. Today, the first trade netted $392.76. So, I finished for the day after 6.6 minutes. Rest of day is all work-focused. This helps me keep profits in my pockets and time on my side. It's days like this that pay for (in money or time) days I lose trading or days I spend too much time trading instead of working.
Now, onto the trade.
First thing I saw when this chart opened this morning ways always-in down direction. That judgment was largely intuitive and difficult to describe, but I will try. When I opened the chart (about 8a CST), I saw a peak at bar 82 and a failed attempt to go higher at about bar 118. These failures continued through bar 169. I also saw new lows since that peak being established (for examble, bars 97-112, 127-148). Since that peak, the bars were mostly below the EMA.
Knowing the always-in direction, I began looking for always-in channels I could trade. There were several candidates, and I tried drawing many channel lines. For example, the lows of bar 82 and 112 were a very steep channel line. But when you copied and pasted it for the trend line, you saw no corresponding peaks obeying the parallel action. So, not a good candidate.
I moved onto draw a channel line to the lows of bars 112 and 130, which I noticed continued near bars 136, 142, and 149. This channel line is the bottom blue line you see in my trade. I copied and pasted it and looked for peaks that followed it. I found fuzzy adherence to it around bars 165-169. Leaving it there, the trend line was confirmed by bars 172 and 173. I put a sell limit order on the top line and moved it down as each bar completed. Eventually, order filled at around bar 189.
After 175, 181, and 187, I noticed that the lows of those bars were still obeying the parallel action of the channel, but at a higher level. So I copied and pasted my line again and put it at the lows of those bars. (That's the middle blue line you see in my trade.) I then moved my first target to that line. I kept my second target way low in case the market breaks out the bottom. Eventually, the market hit my first target. (Picture doesn't show this and everything after.)
Then the market through both my middle and bottom lines. At that point, I moved my remaining stop to the middle line and was stopped out. $395+ in 6.6 minutes without risking more than $150. Pretty good math.
Usually trade 3 contracts, but chose 2 this morning because yesterday I hit my negative quota on three and needed to check my tendency to makeup for bad days by overtrading the next day.
Anyway, hope this gives you a sense of what I'm finding somewhat successful.
Also, danielk's point about higher timeframe charts is good. Many times the better channels are confirmed or only visible on 15 minute, 30 minute, or even multi-hour or day charts. However, I find that entries have to be made on the 5 minute chart. I just don't get any fills when I leave my order at the extremes of channels on the 15 minute charts.
"Can you lead Leviathan about with a hook? ... Will the traders bargain for him?" Job 40:25-30
My pleasure, @nathanologist. A couple of other thoughts:
If you think of a perfect trend or channel line touch as a single-bar bounce right at it without much overlap with other bars, then you'll note a cycle with the channels where they begin kind of messy, get very clean and then either have an explosive breakout or get messy again before a lazy breakout. By messy, I mean that there are many bars with much overlap at or near the trend or channel line.
The explosive breakouts come when you expect the price to slowdown at or near the trend or channel line and it doesn't even blink. If the breakout is always-in and you're in a trade with a runner, cancel your target asap and see how far that runner will go.
If the break out is counter always-in, then you'll be stopped out. Time to see if always-in has flipped and whether there's a new channel you can trade.
If the channel starts to get messy, consider holding off an entry. The market may soon reverse or shift the channel up or down.
Trading in these channels can be very relaxing. Brooks says channels dominate the market and that at any given moment you can frame current price with a variety of channels at the same or different timeframes. Moreover, the channels can have different bullish or bearish directions depending on timeframe. That's why bulls and bears can both be profitably entering and exiting at the same time. I've studied charts enough to see this and am convinced channels are a fundamental structure of the market.
Brooks also says that 80% of breakouts fail. Either channels prove this or this is why channels exist. Imagine this very typical channel: /\/\/. This is nothing more than a failed bull breakout, followed by a failed bear breakout, followed by a failed bull breakout, followed by a failed bear breakout, followed by a successful bull breakout. That's four unsuccessful breakouts before a successful one, which is the same as saying breakouts fail 80% of the time.
So, if price is always moving in some channel, and if channels hold 80% of the time, there is some high probability trade at some time frame worth taking very soon.
Typically, high probability trades require high risk, but keeping your stop just 6 ticks away from a channel or trend line gives your stop all the support or resistance protection you need and doesn't require additional risk.
Furthermore, because there's a 50% chance that if the market breaks out, it will do so in the direction of your trade, you have a higher than usual reward if you trade with a runner.
This all sets up something very elusive: a trade that maximizes the three variables of the trader's equation in your favor.
Of course, all of this depends on how well you're seeing those channels. I've had very frustrating days where I only end up seeing the channels well after I am actually able to trade them profitably. I've also had days where it seems every trend line I draw begs to be broken as soon as I place an order at it.
No biggie, though. The math's in your favor with this strategy. So you just trade to your quota and do I again the next day.
One last thought: PATs and Brooks will talk about MTRs, second entries, high 2s, and low 2s as favorite setups. If you trade channels, though, you'll soon note that you are actually trading these other setups too. And if you put your targets at the channel line, you'll notice you are trading measured moves too.
I think that's pretty cool. You know you're on to something when you realize your speaking a different language but describing the same thing. That's what's happening here.
I personally found all the setups and measured moves etc. a bit too complicated to trade on while working. But synthesizing these ideas down into a simple channel approach greatly simplified these ideas for me and allowed me to capitalize on the very things they capitalize on.
"Can you lead Leviathan about with a hook? ... Will the traders bargain for him?" Job 40:25-30
Channels are a great way to structure a trading method. The best book I have read on the topic is:
"Channel Surfing, Riding the Waves of Channels to Profitable Trading" by Michael J. Parsons
Covers just about anything one would want to know about channel trading. Unfortunately unlike using canned indicators, channels require judgement, skill and experience to draw and use effectively. Too much work for a lot of people.
So there was a textbook double bottom confirmed at 10:30 CT on the ES today. Before it, there was pretty clear always-in bearish direction. But once it confirmed, you'd be justified in concluding that the market was ranging sideways. When that's the case, I say always-in is the direction of the current microtrend or micro channel. If it's ranging sideways, you can trade both directions. So, at 10:30, you could've traded that double bottom as a buy setup with the channel rules I use. That would've led to a trade for the full days range, some 20 points. A nice haul.
Alas, I missed it. Hazards of working while trading.
"Can you lead Leviathan about with a hook? ... Will the traders bargain for him?" Job 40:25-30
