I've decided to continue my journal here from the "upwind trading journal" in the regular journal thread. I am attempting to change a lot of my approach.
Goals:
1) improve my swing trading primarily on the ES (and eventually the CL and maybe others) and to resist the urge to only take scalp trades out of fear.
2) learn and practice more about vwap and mp trading, and to try to implement ideas from futurestrader71 in my trading, primarily the ES.
3) continue options spread practice and bread and butter nibble and byte scalping on more volatile instruments such as CL and 6E(when it moves).
Some notes about Brook's price action(bpa). I feel that the effectiveness of bpa has been dulled by public overexposure since the original book in 2009 and the "quants" awareness of it and HFT in general. The quants are probably now frontrunning most clean price action patterns to spiked barbwire and other untradeable mess. On the Brook's website forum, many have expressed frustration in not being able to swing trade successfully despite the book(s) material on many swing trading patterns and multiple legs. Only a rare few claim to be able to bpa trade as well as the book(s) claim it can be done and those are only unproven claims as there is not much posting otherwise and most journals on the website are abandoned quick.
Brooks Price Action - Log in (
Brooks Price Action - Log in (
That said, the BPA books are wonderful detailed books, and imo required pa reading as a 101 course in pa and chart analysis. Going through them can substitute for some after hours screen time and will help develop the intuitive feel for price action behavior. Better to have read them than not at all. So when a good pa pattern shows up, its that much more recognizable.
I will be primarily be using and trying out Perry's Continuation Method and indicators for entry timing, and FatTails' indicators such as vwap for market structure analysis to help gauge probable trading areas and anticipation of entries and exits. I may also use bpa if or when I happen to catch something that stands out. And Cory's and Big Mike's volume indicators to help with confirmations. Thanks to all of them for their generosity and downloads. Perry's new indicators with their combined time frame features was impressive to me in his webinar. I admire his commitment to further improve his method and indicators and then to continue sharing it here.
Now on to the "crosswind" leg. To make an analogy with an airplane after takeoff in the upwind. Now trying to keep a steady climb rate and not have a disastrous stall while banking to the next leg in the course.
update: 3-12-12: It seems I have not traded much on the ES. Instead I've stuck to CL and am branching out to 6E, TF, or ZW.
Maybe I'll get back to ES oneday. It has the best liquidity, but it's 4 tick/1point structure seems to be more suited to institutions and those retail traders with bigger accounts and who are trading larger contract amount size. I had the impression from Brook's live webinars that he trades at least 10 car if not much more on the ES.
update 4-10-13: Continuing on another phase of this journal. Journaling primarily directional option spreads.