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Daytrading the Emini S&P 500!


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Daytrading the Emini S&P 500!

  #21 (permalink)
 
tturner86's Avatar
 tturner86 
Portland, Oregon
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: F-16CM-40
Trading: GBU-39
Posts: 6,191 since Sep 2013
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RichardHK View Post
>>... if there is a successful trader out there willing to work with me<<

Have you tried Al Brooks' Trading Webinar Room? For learning about market structure and price action, you cannot really go wrong. He is not a scammer and is devoted to help traders learn. Priceless.

Another invaluable price action resource is Mack's PATS YouTube site.

And you also have Adam Grimes free online trading course that is well worth your time. Unlike most other courses, Adam's has a strong emphasis on practical psychology. The Art & Science of Trading. As Adam stresses, drop what you already know and start learning afresh. Seems to well fit your stated needs, right?

Ref Better Indicators, I have had full set for more than a year and found the Better Momentum and Better Sinewave to be too distracting. Helps sometimes, but often confused my price action reading. But the Better ProAm is very useful, in particular with order flow analysis, to support price action setups. I use a 2000 tick bar chart.

Good luck.

I came to post this and you already had it. Look into price action, get away from indicators, rooms, and gurus.

You talk about wanting to make $50/day. What is your loss limit for each day? Your stop per trade will be dependant on market context and therefore flux. Your stop will need to fall within your daily loss limit, if it doesn't then you don't have valid risk to take the trade.

Look into trading pyschology, risk management, and price action. Trade as small as possible until you figure it out and then work to scale your position up.

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  #22 (permalink)
cj060896
Hartford/Connecticut
 
Posts: 16 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 8
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Fadi View Post
With time you will learn that you cannot put a fixed target per day for yourself; you have to trade what the market gives you. For many days you will be constraint to just watch the price action all day, and on some others you would make $2,000+ in just few minutes.
If you come with this spirit of having to gain something each day, you will fall in the trap of overtrading, and sooner or later you will run your account to zero and below.

Moreover, there will be a 99% chance that your psychology takes over whenever you are near those 4 ticks of profit you are talking about, you will have the dilemma of taking the gain or just be patient and wait for more... It will play bad tricks to you!
On the opposite side, when you will be 4 ticks down, what will you do? close the trade and lose the work/money you did the previous day? Or wait for the price to regain your level and pray for an additional 4 tick move in your favour to reach your daily target?

The best is to forget your daily target thing all together, and just learn proper technical analysis and learn to buy at support and sell at resistance as much as possible... over and over again... and no matter the distance between those support and resistance areas you identify.

They could be 4 ticks apart, and they could be 10 points apart, this will depend on your strategy and time frame you define for yourself of course, but it won't matter as long as you execute properly!

Your current capital and net worth is absolutely irrelevant too, you could have 1 million to spare, it won't change the approach.
You start with 1x contract ONLY, and set a cumulative target for yourself, let's say $5,000 to start.
Then you would only increase position size to 2x contracts if you achieve those +$5k of profit on top of your million or whatever capital you have; and when you reach $15k for example of total profit you increase to 3x contracts, and so on...

If you reward yourself with an extra contract to trade after securing a certain amount of profit, you will train your subconscious mind to preserve capital, and that's the most important part of being a trader in my opinion.

Remember, trading is about generating capital, preserving capital, and repeating.

Most traders fail at the second step! You will see as you progress and get some more experience in this field, that it is relatively easy to generate money, and sometimes you even cash in a lot on a "lucky" day - but more often than not, you will give it back all on the second day if not before.

My advise to you is to start with learning proper technical analysis, in order to understand the price action, be able to spot the S/R levels, and so on... and this is available in books, ebooks, forums, webinars, websites, paid or free.

I often advice new traders to start with the free school at babypips: School of Pipsology | Learn Forex Trading.
It is targeting FOREX traders, but it won't matter at this stage, the information they share and the teaching they do on virtually every aspect of the trading business for retailers is worth gold and more!

Take and learn whatever they have to say, in the end, chart reading will be the same whether you trade currencies, stocks, futures, commodities, bonds, options, you name it...

The important is you really understand all what technical analysis is about, money management, position sizing, manipulations in the markets, correlations, news, etc... and then you apply to your ES trading, or I would personally recommend the NQ instead.

I hope I was a little bit more useful now; don't hesitate to revert back.

Cheers
Fadi

Guess I should have posted that better. Not $50 PER day. It's more of a cumulative goal. As I said, if I can break even overall I will be thrilled. I did say I would not stop for the day even if I made $50. The most I like to lose in a day is $1,000. I want to trade for 4-6 hours a day as long as I am not losing money with an ultimate goal of someday making at least $50 a day average.

  #23 (permalink)
 
tturner86's Avatar
 tturner86 
Portland, Oregon
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: F-16CM-40
Trading: GBU-39
Posts: 6,191 since Sep 2013
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cj060896 View Post
Guess I should have posted that better. Not $50 PER day. It's more of a cumulative goal. As I said, if I can break even overall I will be thrilled. I did say I would not stop for the day even if I made $50. The most I like to lose in a day is $1,000. I want to trade for 4-6 hours a day as long as I am not losing money with an ultimate goal of someday making at least $50 a day average.

How long could you afford to lose $1000/day?

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  #24 (permalink)
cj060896
Hartford/Connecticut
 
Posts: 16 since Feb 2014
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tturner86 View Post
How long could you afford to lose $1000/day?

30 times

  #25 (permalink)
 
patidar's Avatar
 patidar 
Pergatory
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Smoke signals
Broker: Two cans on a string
Trading: Drums
Posts: 116 since Jan 2014

My calculus is rusty,but the numbers are off somewhere or the drinks I had last night are still being processing and frontal cortex is not functioning well.

  #26 (permalink)
SpearPointTrader
Aurora IL
 
Posts: 5 since Oct 2011
Thanks Given: 1
Thanks Received: 7

I disagree at getting rid of indicators. I think you just have to know how to use them.

Sure, they have a lag, but a lag at the beginning of a move is inconsequential. As an example, the break out of a bollinger band squeeze may not show till after the move has started, HOWEVER, it still shows so near the beginning, and so far before the end, that you can capture a big chunk of the move anyway.

If your goal is to get every little bit of the price move, of course it won't work. However, if your goal is to catch a good sized slice from the middle of the move, it's works just fine. You'll miss the start, and you will miss the end, but everything in the middle is yours. This makes the lag irrelevant.




DarkPoolTrading View Post
Big Mike was likely hinting at the fact that you're looking in all the wrong places to try and be profitable. Most notably that you're looking externally for indicators and chat rooms to make you profitable instead of looking at yourself and what really needs to be done to become a trader.

A few points to consider:
  • Most indicators are a derivative of 3 things: price, time, volume. Most indicators, arguably all, are lagging which means they tell you what has already happened. Who cares what already happened. A suggestion is to spend some time learning to interpret market structure and figure out what the market is trying to do instead of relying on indicators to do it for you. A good starting point would be to spend some time (weeks-months) using nothing but a naked price chart and volume
  • Stop size - You're asking people to recommend a specific stop size. Given the information you've provided there is absolutely no way anyone can advise on that and would be dangerous to do so. Your stop should be based on market structure. First, determine where your stop SHOULD be based on market structure when planning a trade,...if that stop location is too big given your risk parameters, you skip the trade. You dont take the trade anyway and just hope that your stop wont get hit even though its slap bang in the middle of the action
  • Profit size - You talk about reducing your profit targets. Have you heard of the saying 'Cut your losers short and let your winners run'? That's not just some folk tale. Maintaining a high win percentage is near impossible,....what makes the vast majority of traders profitable is going for larger profits than what they risk
  • Chat rooms - Again, you're looking for someone or something else to make you profitable. Firstly, most rooms are scams, secondly if you do find a good room they will likely not be calling trades but will instead be talking about structure, psychology, risk etc

So basically, you're looking in all the wrong places. Get rid of the indicators, get rid of the search for absolutes, start learning to interpret what the market is actually trying to do and trade accordingly while keeping risk:reward front and center.

You can either completely ignore this post and continue on your hunt for the holy grail, or you can give some thought to the fact that you've been doing this for several years without success and therefore something is missing, perhaps a different path is needed.


  #27 (permalink)
 
Silvester17's Avatar
 Silvester17 
Columbus, OH
Market Wizard
 
Experience: None
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Trading: ES
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SpearPointTrader View Post
I disagree at getting rid of indicators. I think you just have to know how to use them.

Sure, they have a lag, but a lag at the beginning of a move is inconsequential. As an example, the break out of a bollinger band squeeze may not show till after the move has started, HOWEVER, it still shows so near the beginning, and so far before the end, that you can capture a big chunk of the move anyway.

If your goal is to get every little bit of the price move, of course it won't work. However, if your goal is to catch a good sized slice from the middle of the move, it's works just fine. You'll miss the start, and you will miss the end, but everything in the middle is yours. This makes the lag irrelevant.

exactly!! how to use them is essential.

in order to put the market in context, some indicators can be extremely helpful. I wouldn't use them for triggering a trade, but I get a lot of useful information


  #28 (permalink)
 
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 trendisyourfriend 
Quebec Canada
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Silvester17 View Post
exactly!! how to use them is essential.

in order to put the market in context, some indicators can be extremely helpful. I wouldn't use them for triggering a trade, but I get a lot of useful information


Cool your outer bands. What do they represent exactly?

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  #29 (permalink)
 
Silvester17's Avatar
 Silvester17 
Columbus, OH
Market Wizard
 
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trendisyourfriend View Post
Cool your outer bands. What do they represent exactly?

inner bands = noise bands and outer bands = target bands

one of the many great indicators by @Fat Tails

  #30 (permalink)
cj060896
Hartford/Connecticut
 
Posts: 16 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 8
Thanks Received: 2


I am finally moving in the right direction. THANK YOU Everyone!

Still would like advice from the profitable traders out there.

I am trading 1 contract. I try basically to find where the reversals are using various signals and try to scalp a little or jump on the trend once I have some confirmations that the S&P is reversing. I move my hard stop up if the trade goes my way. I usually try to stay about 6-8 ticks behind to give it room to move. I also set my limit to the resistance line if it's a consolidation time or I give it more room if the stock is trending until I feel the stock is reversing again.

Do you guys think this could work it long run (it has in short term)? First system I've ever had actually working!

For any newcomers; here is what I found my biggest mistakes were. Trendlines are virtually useless (I am sure they have there time and place, but using them to day trade did not work out AT ALL. I would have 1 monster trade, but all to often I was wrong footed when entering trades. Switching from candlesticks (even though they are so much prettier) to tick charts has also made all the difference. To think of all the time I wasted reading books on how to read candlestick charts! Now I focus more on the volume and type of trading going on. I WAS SHOCKED to find that I could pick out the turning point several times on stocks that showed no sign of breaking the "trend line" on a normal price candlestick chart. (I realize I will be wrong several times, but I can wait til things move my way...) Not saying any of these things are better, but for my trading syle; apparantly they are.


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