Was a little busy after last Thursday's trading, went away early for the holiday weekend, so I'm playing a little catch up.

Trade #1: Late swing cycle entry, was off a Higher Pivot High on the MRenko4 chart but a Lower Pivot High on the MRenko8 chart. MFE was $70 so I left some dough on the table on this one. I did wait for a break below the support level, however, however I notice this a lot with either SharkBand or KPPivot levels (inasmuch as my setup goes) that these type of entries are late in the swing cycle, so grade 'B' for entering after what I was typically waiting for (break of support/resistance), though I will be updating my rules on this. I am more concerned with a break below the yellow error band support/resistance levels (depending on timeliness in the cycle). Those error bands can be re-created exactly using the base NinjaTrader 'StdError' indicator (will display settings in another post). Grade 'B' (my new opinion says late entry but current rule set says otherwise).

Note: the d9 was not up when I was trading live, just doing a comparison of the d9PO overlayed with JeffsUniversalMovingAverage_v1 plotting an EMA(5) over the d9 'raw trend' VS. the KwikPop Medium indicator. Pretty similar indications, what do you think?

Trade #2: Fluke trade, very late cycle. Typically in the Simulator I use market orders, trading live I use limit orders for entry (I know I should do the same on Ninja sim!), so I was experimenting selling at the ask. Anyway, was a scratch trade (er, less commission -$10!), so the day overall was a scratch including commissions.

Overall weekly performance was not good, -$305 ($205 in losses/$100 in commissions). Just gotta keep on keepin' on!

Several long attempts to fill the gap from Friday's close.

Trade #1: Gap fill attempt. Indicators mosthly in alignment on both MRenko4 and 8, MRenko4 not quite past the Error Bands, but went long, took a small profit. Grade 'C' for not waiting for a better opportunity for a gap fill trade (why go for a gap fill when I always exit way before the fill?).

Trade #2: Feeling like the gap fill attempt stalled, went in way early; after red bar printed and above the middle of the error bands. Poor trade choice, Grade 'F', needed to sit on hands!

Trade #3: Almost immediately after looking to go back to gap fill possibility, MFE shows marginal potential, but now psychologically I think I was trying to force it, Grade 'D'.

Trade #4: Final gap fill attempt, so so entry, took some heat on the trade, setup was better than before, marginal profit. Grade 'B'.

Trade #5: Getting crazy with the # of trades now! Going short from a mid swing down off a Higher Pivot High. No business placing this trade! Grade 'F' with $10 net profit.

Trade #6: Finally a half-decent trade entry! From a Lower Pivot High on both MRenko4 and 8, although according to the setup the trade entry was a little early, so Grade 'C'.

Fought back to break even gross, -$30 net.

Okay, so in order to match the KwikPop 'EBands' take out 3 SMA indicators with a period of 20. Then use the 'Input Series' under the 'Data' tab and select 'StdError' each with a period of 30. For the first select the plot 'LinReg', for the second SMA select 'Upper', and the third SMA select 'Lower', when finished it should look like screen snapshot #2. That's it. It matches the KwikPop 'EBands' perfectly. The only thing you won't get is back filling color within the bands. I'm sure it would be easy to program for some, I'm just a hack with easylanguage, and not at all familiar
with C#!

So I have been very busy over the past week but I've taken some notes here and there and some snapshots of my trades, just haven't posted. I have looked at 'too many to count' chart variations during that time (chart types, indicator combinations, minimalist indicators, etc.) comparing to some of my trades as well. What I noticed by comparison was when I use the shorter Median Renko time frames I mostly overtrade as well as focus less on the price action (pivot highs/lows) getting lost in the speed of the market. I did this a long time ago trading the YM using 89 and 144 tick charts as well. My reasoning in zooming in like this is to produce a tighter stop. The only problem is the targets are shorter (and my intention is not specifically to scalp only 3-4 ticks), and the price action/pivot structure can become very sloppy. So slowing down the market seems to be a better fit for me, only I must either accept a specific stop level on every trade or choose and live with a logical stop 1-2 ticks above/below the pivot highs/lows.

So, I do like the price action flow on the MedianRenko8 chart (slowing the market down), it provides good pivot structure and signal generation. Getting in early in say a horizontal support bounce can provide a good place for a logical stop whereas if I am trying to capture some ticks after an indicator setup develops a stop at 2 ticks above entry bar will be acceptable, thereby on each trade the stop level will actually be similar.

I also like the 3 line break charts, especially the 89 tick 3LB wicked (on the NQ), however this can cause similar problems that I have using the MRenko3 chart. Also, I like to see at least 1/2 the day on the chart without it being too crowded. I haven't tried it yet, but I suppose it is possible to zoom in tight on a 3LB chart for entry only with no indicators using the support and resistance levels on the MRenko8 as a guide. May try that in replay.

In addition, I've used different instruments to gauge their price action flow and I like the DX. I believe I read somewhere that 'Sharky' likes the ZN because it moves slowly. Of course the DX has nowhere near the volume of the ZN and many other contracts but it does move slow for my comfort level and I have set up a chart on the DX with MRenko3 that gives very good (and slow) signal generation for picking up approximately 10 ticks per trade, with approximately 5-6 signals per day. Placed 1 cash trade on it and picked up 5 ticks (first and only time I've traded the dollar so far). I even tried using the d9PO strategy that Beth and The Wizard had put together; historically worked very well on the DX but I applied the automated strategy to see what would happen and got killed! Will post the results.

My trial with KwikPop has expired and I like their system. It seems that some of the indicators that I've utilized on futures.io (formerly BMT) generate similar signals, in fact, several different combinations of charts/indicators can generate similar signals accross the board, I just need effective execution, management, and psychology period! Anyway, during the trial I did some workups on indicator comparatives and may post some of these ideas in the '..Indicator Created for Free..' thread.

[Note: for those who may be interested, there is a KwikPop webinar today at 4:15 Eastern with which you get a free bundled trial demo of KwikPop for attending. I checked with one of the KP moderators and they gave me the okay to post the url address and password: Kwikpop Conference Portal - powered by omNovia -- password: kwikpop3 ].

Here are my results for last week. 21 total trades, and net after commission profit of -$60!

Regarding contract rollover, I thought I was fully prepared, as I had changed the contract information in thinkorswim, and most (but I guess not all) of the charts/workspaces I have been using in NinjaTrader. Everything turned out fine, however, it is a definite note to myself to assure that I have my charts configured correctly. Now I know it doesn't seem that big of a deal but I suppose it is possible that volume could have just dried up and I may have gotten stuck in a trade with no takers (for a minute or two). Anway some of the trades I placed were with the September, some with the December contract.

I have a new grading system by number so as to average out and quantify a setup's success/failure, along with journaling the feelings on the trade, was it impulsive, too early, chasing, etc.

Setup Score:

5 Target(s) hit
4 Profitable trade, but exited at different price than target
3 Breakeven trade
2 Losing trade, but exited at different price than stop
1 Stop loss hit

Had only one trade on Monday, very nice setup and good result using a 3 Line Break (89 tick) chart. Price had come into S1 support and began to bounce prior to open. I hopped in and the open carried me to a quick 18 tick run with 2 contracts, +$170 net. My target was actually the prior day low minus a couple ticks, which it eventually did make it to. Setup gets 4 points for profitable trade, but exited at different price than target.

As I mentioned in my post #23 I had done some fooling around with the DX and the D9PO Strategy that I'm pretty sure Beth(wgreenie) and The Wizard worked on. It generates buy/sell signals as the predict line crosses above/below the zero line. It generated some very good results in a one week period, so I decided to let it run overnight to see what the results were the next morning. They were horrible! (see snapshot #1, the first trade was actually a manual trade). However, I ran another historical for the month to date and the results were great (see snapshot #2). Results were $4,585 before commissions of $1,720 for 344 trades and a net net of $2,865. That is not considering slippage.

You can see some of the trades from the automation on snapshot #3.

So I ran another scenario to include 1 tick slippage per fill. The results were affected dramatically, $2,545 net, after commissions of $1,720, a tidy sum of $825 net net, not bad for only one contract. As Beth (wgreenie) had mentioned a bit of filtering would boost profits significantly I think. Of course, I have no idea how to tell NinjaTrader strategy to not take a short 9 bars from the most recent high. But it looks promising. (snapshot #4)

I have also been adding a 5 period SMA (SMA_Colors_V3_No_Repaint_Bars) to the d9PO raw trend line and backfilling the background using JeffsUniversalMovingAverage_v1. This also seems to generate some very good signals as well (see snapshot #5).

Using the shorter time frame MedianRenko charts leads me to overtrading! A total of 20 trades in two days with a net of -$175 nullifies the nice trade from Monday. I was also distracted as I was participating in the Felton Trading Room throwing up a 6E and 6C chart in addition to the NQ. Also notice trade #11 in the blotter was in the lunch time part of the session. I did take 3 trades outside of the regular session though, trade #1, #19, and #20.

Trade #1: Entered a little early as far as the indicators were concerned, but felt was getting a clean signal from the price movement bounce off yesterday's high area and a close below the brevious MRenko8 bar low. First target was 8 ticks, 2nd target was yesterday's close at 2245 (my trade entry was 2270.50). Ended up exiting at 2261.50 close to a mid pivot level and 'kind of' near a vertical support line. Also at the time of the exit, the bar was fluctuating quite a bit (just like early in the trade!), so I exited. Overall, I feel this was a very good trade, execution and management were very good with the exception of the early exit. There was no close above the bar I exited, nor the next, not until price reached another 5+ points at 2256.25. Also, in my mind I was thinking that a gap fill to 2245 was way more than I could hope for on this trade (even though I've seen it happen many times before!).

I also placed a cash trade in conjunction with this at a far more conservative level; waited for the 5 period SMA to signal short against the D9PO(34) raw trend line. Exited at almost identical level as the sim trade, ended up with 11 ticks.

Setup score total 4 points for exiting at a different target, but still profitable. May have jumped in a bit early but still acceptable for trading guidelines as was pullback off of a resistance line; followed part 1 of management to the letter by hitting my first target. So starting off the day on the plus side.

Trade #2: Entered on a similar setup (early) to the first trade, only this time entered at what appeared to be a top of the channel line rejection. Stayed with the trade for almost 10 minutes taking some heat finally exiting when it seemed to me that we were in the doldrums. Did not feel good about exiting the trade having been in it waiting for it to develop for so long (for me 10 minutes is a long, long time), but was pleased to only take a small loss considering the heat on the trade. Generally, I don't like to take a trades between 8:30-10:45 Pacific but this did seem like a good opportunity.

Setup score will be 2 points for exiting a different price from trade and a losing trade. Again, may have jumped in too early but was still following but disregarding best times of day to trade. Did feel a bit nervous about entering this trade as I had concern 'if' this was a losing trade cutting into the gains thus far.

Good day overall, I watched but didn't participate as the market was grinding higher the rest of the day. Well I'm positive for the week so far. Looking at the trade blotter I'm showing +$300 less commissions puts me at +$180. So, we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow!

Only 1 trade today. Did the KwikPop webinar yesterday and got another trial so I went ahead and used the setup using a 444 Volume 3LBWicked chart on the YM. Got in the trade after a Higher Pivot Low formed, hit first target of 10 ticks, then as the price action bounced around a couple of bars later I bailed, so... Grade 4 points for profitable trade, but exited before target. My secondary target was the red line on the chart at 11413, which it eventually made it to and beyond, however, a close below the red squigly line (the TriggerLineVMA indicator) would have been a signal to ext at 11399. So I exited before the potential of an additional 17 ticks on the trade. I really need to focus on trying to stay in that second leg when trading two or more contracts.

At any rate, I actually had a postive week even with all the overtrading on Tuesday and Wednesday. Total contracts 29 so it cost $145 and a cumulative profit of $405 netting $260. Definately a step in the right direction. So next week I will focus on fewer, quality setups with multiple contracts and concentrate on holding as long as I can on secondary targets.