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My ES Scalping Strategy, 2+ pts/day


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My ES Scalping Strategy, 2+ pts/day

  #161 (permalink)
 
jwdixon's Avatar
 jwdixon 
Denver Colorado
 
Experience: Intermediate
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Hello, hope all had a great Christmas break and a good new year....I enjoyed the time off. It sure looks like I missed some good trading even if on low volume.

I have had time to think about what I wanted to do this year as far as my trading goes, I have also been watching Fat Demons thread and I like how he is posting his results, I hope to head in that direction again soon as far as the videos go, for now I will have to just post charts.

Next I find posting my trades helps me to be more accountable, if even just to myself. I find myself thinking before almost every trade....Is this really a trade according to my current rules, and can I justify my reasons for early exits or extended profit targets....so with that in mind and with my goal of again trading enough size that I can once again be a full time trader only, I will do my best to be consistent in trading my charts and in my adding of contracts as the balance increases. In order to do that I have only put $1000 in an account and I hope to trade that money and show the balance good or bad every week. If I take a trade it will be live and I will try and post the charts on a daily basis. My goal will be to trade for only 4-6 ticks a day, if the day starts off bad I may decide to stop at BE if I can recover. At first I will only be trading 1 contract so I will only be able to have 1 PT, that will range from 2-6 ticks, until I get to at least 3 contracts, then I will try and come up with a new plan for the a second PT as I have never been great at that in the past.

At times I may have the auto entry get me into the trades when volatility picks up, I will for the most part try to place the trades myself with the chart trader buttons, I will probably also change the charts I trade from day to day but they are all using basically the same template so they will look the same but I will try and determine the chart to used based on the volatility of the market at that time. Also I don't want to trade 1 contract forever so I will use my spreadsheet to determine when to add a contract, at first it will be for every $650 in the account, I will change that as I get to more contracts, but if I start with $1000 I will need to have an ending balance of $1300 before I start trading 2. I will attempt to use the ending balance to determine how many contracts to trade, from past experience my hardest battle will be to break into 3 contracts.....we will see, worst case I lose a little money. I just hope having the low starting balance will force me to trade my plan and not trade just to trade. I also hope this does not put additional stress on my trading but I think this will be fine...

Next I wont be able to trade every day, I currently work in North Dakota on an oil rig and during my 2 weeks there trading could be a little spotty...also when I am home my trading could be spotty as I spend time with my family, so if you want to "tear me a new one" because the spreadsheet says on week 7 I should be trading 10 contracts and I don't make it....Oh well, that is in a perfect world and I know I wont hit that, it might be the goal but if I'm heading in that direction and I am consistent in my trades.... I'm happy. I am hoping this might even make me more accountable to myself and I might be able to start treating this as a business once again. I am feeling the need to start from scratch and prove to myself once again I can do it, so if I cant trade 1 contract, I can't and shouldn't trade 4-6 or even 10 contracts. I hope to become a more consistent trader again, one that can trade a plan (even if it changes as I go).

Good Luck in your trading this year!

Jeff

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  #162 (permalink)
 
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 josh 
Georgia, US
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Did we talk before jwdixon, or was it someone else? I lose track with so many people posting these types of spreadsheets. First of all, happy new year. Now, I will be Mr. Poo Poo Head and say the obvious, that your spreadsheet is insane (rather, you are insane, and the spreadsheet is the result of the insanity ). Trading 3 contracts with $2K and entering a trade with a 4 tick stop which is hit loses 7.5% of your account in 1 day trade (and will probably take about 30 seconds to do so). The best hedge funds don't lose that percentage of their account in a single year with thousands of trades. Mathematically and practically speaking, only a stroke of luck that keeps on streaking could make this even fathomable, and good traders are not gamblers who rely on luck. I do not get where these people say to risk 2% on every trade. Something like 0.3% to 0.5% is much more sensible, but you are risking about 5-10% at minimum. Have three losers and you have the equivalent of your own personal equity curve flash crash. The thing is this: even if you were to succeed in turning $1K into $50K in 6 months (which you can't), you would be trading with such ridiculous leverage and oversized risk that it would only take one bad day to wipe you out completely; the habits learned from such reckless risk-taking are not helpful habits to learn, they are harmful and poisonous. I'm sorry for being Mr. Poo Poo Head, but I just needed to say it so my conscience is clear, because I would want someone to tell me if my plan was so insane.

The essential problem is this: your chart does not contain the words "risk" or "loss," but it does contain these two words which are much more shiny and glittery: "gain" and "profit."

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  #163 (permalink)
 
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 jwdixon 
Denver Colorado
 
Experience: Intermediate
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Trading: ES
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I hear everything you are saying, I don't think anyone can trade for any length of time with those sort of numbers....also I did not say I was going to do what the spreadsheet shows....I just want to head in that direction.....The only line that really means anything to me is the first line that tells me where I am right now. I also said as I get to trading additional contracts I would change the leverage (closer to the $1000/1500 per contract that I normally trade at).

The point is I am going to force myself to start from 0 and build the account.....I might not be able to do it, so if for some reason my stop gets run over and I cant win a trade in the first 50 tries, I will just add another $1000....this is more for me than anything. I also said I don't want to trade 1 contract for months to years as you might suggest by risking only .3 percent of ones account, if I cant make 4 ticks at a time over time then I guess I wont be adding contracts..... believe me $50 a day is not going to get me excited either, its the exercise of building by being consistent in my trades, not with what my starting balance is....If I end up needing to add to the account I will, Im not going to stop trading just because I may lose a little money trying this out. So don't take this, my personal experiment in re-learning to follow my rules as the way anyone else should go about learning to trade, this is more to make me being accountable for my losses and winnings.....in the past I might trade 2 one day and 4 the next, I would pass on trades and and then take trades just because I could....I hope to put an end to some of those bad habits with this. I know 4 ticks is possible and I also know if I trade more than 6 contracts then fear sets in and I dont trade how I should, so I will see if if I can even get past one contract......

Thanks for the input, I just thought by putting this out there I might be able to follow my rules easier......

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  #164 (permalink)
 
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 trendisyourfriend 
Quebec Canada
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jwdixon View Post
I hear everything you are saying, .

josh has some good points. Like you i comtemplated this same idea of yours at one point (pun intended) in my trading quest, ie, making one point a day but scaling appropriately as my account would grow.

Here is a little system or idea you might want to explore a bit further on the ES. It seems to work better on the ES as it has a tendency to create a lot of overlapping bars or moving back and forth while discovering new territory.

Given this fact my idea was to exploit this behavior and enter a new position when price would move at least 7 ticks without retracing by more than 2 ticks. To this end, i used a point and figure bar type with a defined 2 tick reversal.

Here are some setups for Yesterday and Today:






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  #165 (permalink)
 
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 trendisyourfriend 
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Latest examples:


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  #166 (permalink)
 
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 trendwaves 
Florida
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Enjoyed reading your thread jwdixon. Thank you for taking time to continue updating it, I look forward to seeing how this new chapter unfolds for you.

It took me a little effort to decode your charts, but think I have done so to a point where I can see what your trading method is. I do have a couple of thoughts upon consideration of the basic strategy.

One thing I wonder, have you studied or researched the concept of perhaps a larger profit target combined with a trailing stop ? Perhaps a fixed 4 tick target for the first contract and then allowing a 2nd contract to run, either to a larger fixed target or to a natural reversal candle/signal. In studying the signals, I can certainly see why 4 ticks works, in counting the ticks after the prescribed entry price often the buying or selling wave runs at least 5 more ticks before stalling or reversing. But as you have noted, some of the basic entry signals initiate a significant price move of several points (of 8, 12 or more ticks). My thought is, by truncating all trades / contracts at the fixed 4 tick PT, the method is never open to the occasional windfall profit which the basic entry signals can produce.

My second thought, which dovetails into the first. In studying the method's entry signals, I notice often the entry signals are ideally positioned at the start of high quality price moves. The problem that jumps out at me is the discretionary exit's you have shown in this thread are essentially random and unfortunately often are not close to what one would consider good exit points in the price trend that forms. Thus, I am not clear on the choice to automate the entry but to leave the exit as discretionary. You did state in several posts, one issue you struggle with is staying in a trade, and having trouble leaving the original PT order alone until filled by the market. You mentioned your tendency to react to market noise and short circuit a trade prematurely. Given this weakness, clearly automation of the exit very well could be the most beneficial improvement to the integrity of the method's long term profitability. Ninja ATM Strategy handles this task quite nicely. The trick in this approach being to keep your hand off the mouse and allowing the market to fill your orders naturally. You are allowing the market to initiate the trade entry, why not give control of the trade outcome to the market as well ?

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  #167 (permalink)
 
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 jwdixon 
Denver Colorado
 
Experience: Intermediate
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Trading: ES
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Hello,

Wanted to thank trendisyourfriend and trendwaves for your posts.....I love P&F charts but hate looking at those X-O's...I need to get that bar type and that range indicator from you your chart is easy to look at and follow....that really looks like a great possibility to catch the extreme of a fast move in a direction. Also in regards to automating the exit strategies I have tried that in the past with no real good results, it seems there were to many things to take into account as far as programming goes, so I am trying to use the ATM templates as you suggest....its just I always seem to change things at the worst times, My bad habits showing up once again. I am trying to change that, by posting all my bad habits I am hoping it will reinforce it to me again and again as I look back at all my bad decisions....

I did not trade tuesday because we took the kids skiing at Copper Mt the last day before school started, we had great weather and a fun time as out first time out this year....

As you look at my posted charts you will see I turned on the auto entry, thinking it might get me back into the swing of trading again after what seemed like forever as a holiday break away from it. Im sure some of you can laugh at me for my idea of trading such a small account with the losses from today, thats fine, I will will just have to try and make it back over the next few days. I hope volatility and volume come back into the market soon, so until the vix comes up a little I will try and just trade the tick chart manually and pass on the auto entry (I guess I should have followed my own advice and just done that from the start).

If I had just manually entered the trades from the start off the 578t the day would have turned out much different, thats hindsight, I tried to stick to my plan until it was clear that chart was not working. I am trying to post the charts I was looking at so you can see the same trades on the different charts.....I hope I can get back into the swing of things again soon, funny I felt myself wanting to do all kinds of different things when things were going against me, when I noticed this I tried to just stick with the plan and it did not pay off today but in the long run I believe it will, just a hard/bad day for my chart with the low volatility and volume...

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  #168 (permalink)
 
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 trendisyourfriend 
Quebec Canada
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@jwdixon

If you ever want to test the PnF bar type as shown in my examples you'll need this file (see attachment)

Regarding the Range indicator to measure the range of a bar, it's already native in Ninja.

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Elite Membership required to download: PointNFigureNT7.zip
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  #169 (permalink)
 grimReaper 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Posts: 50 since Nov 2011


jwdixon View Post
I have had time to think about what I wanted to do this year as far as my trading goes, I have also been watching Fat Demons thread and I like how he is posting his results, I hope to head in that direction again soon as far as the videos go, for now I will have to just post charts.

Link?


jwdixon View Post
In order to do that I have only put $1000 in an account and I hope to trade that money and show the balance good or bad every week. If I take a trade it will be live and I will try and post the charts on a daily basis. My goal will be to trade for only 4-6 ticks a day, if the day starts off bad I may decide to stop at BE if I can recover. At first I will only be trading 1 contract so I will only be able to have 1 PT, that will range from 2-6 ticks, until I get to at least 3 contracts, then I will try and come up with a new plan for the a second PT as I have never been great at that in the past.

I didn't read the entire thread, but as I understood I thought you were trading this since May 2011.


jwdixon View Post
At times I may have the auto entry get me into the trades when volatility picks up,

If you have this automated, why not back test it?



grimReaper View Post
I'm assuming this strategy is working out. Has anyone automated it?

I automated a similar strategy, but didn't seem to profit:


His entry rules were that if in a downtrend (price below 21 DC) and it reverse (price travels 8 ticks above the DC mean), send a buy limit order 1 tick above the DC mean and wait for a fill. Update the limit order price as the DC mean changes, keeping it 1 tick above the DC mean. Vice versa for short entries.

Bump?

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  #170 (permalink)
 
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 jwdixon 
Denver Colorado
 
Experience: Intermediate
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Trading: ES
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here is the link to FatDemons stuff, not sure how to post any other way...



I have been trading much longer than that, prob 15 years, and in that time many bad habits formed, much money lost and made....I just need to get me right by force....hehe

Also with my auto entry using the ATM for the order placement ninja trader will not let you back test or show the trades on the chart the the strategy is running on, that is why you only only see the arrows on the bar that a trade was placed, and then I showe the boxes...the trades show up on all the other charts.

hope that answers some of the questions

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