When I dropped from 2 contracts to 1 it was to test out some ideas and to lay the foundation for adding a second contract with a second target. I've been studying the question of scaling out and if it's better for me to go all-out or scale out (I've written about this on my blog and have even given some trade examples). So when I went from 2 to 1 I was thinking my performance would go down. It didn't, it went up. Part is due to some tweaking in the trading plan but also just getting the heck out when it doesn't feel right has been working well.

16.75 pts this week, no losers.



FESX was profitable too with 3/3 (I've been trading ES instead of FESX in the mornings).
Crude was breakeven.

Overall a great week. Looking forward to next week.

In my long journey to be a profitable trader, I am converging on to exactly your style which uses

Short Term: Intra day
(1) Volume Distributions (Price versus Volume)
(2) Volume Splits (Lot Size versus Time)
(3) Volume Speed (Total Volume versus Time)

Intermediate Term:
(1) Cycle Analysis (Daily cycles, intermediate cycles etc.)
(2) Market Breadth (A/Ds, Bullish Percentage, Percentage above SMAs which are available from StockCharts)

Here are some more resources:
(1) There is a trading group which has held some webinars on how to identify specific volume pattern based trade setups for ES.
Discovery Trading Group . They were hosted by MarketDelta and that is how I found them.

(2) Check out The Precision Report for pre-market analysis of the ES in terms of expectations.

(3) Simplicity in Trading. He has been helping a lot of traders use MP in their intra-day trading and also tweets his trades.
---------------

Checked out the twitter stream and your interaction with FT71. Funny thing is that NR5/inside day on Wednesday, is what had made me very conscious of a pending trend day. The problem is that I am on the West Coast (US) and can not trade overnight. You guys in Europe are located in the best location to catch big moves in all major markets.

Aviat72 - it's interesting how different traders can take different routes but end up at a similar place. I hope your trading is going well for you on your current route.

I looked at the two blogs you mentioned. I like the discovery trading group's worksheet. It's similar to what Pivot Farm was providing for free (I just found out they are now charging for theirs). What they do is similar to what I do. I'm not sure exactly how they come up with their levels but basically I do the same and then look for confirming & time the entry. I just haven't been making a formal worksheet but it's not a bad idea and then it can be be shared.

Thanks for sharing those links.

For FT71 - he has shared a lot of great info and I do use his composite volume profile as one of my inputs into determining levels. He is very generous to answer questions too.

You're right about Europe. I think we have the best timezone for trading. I trade eurostoxx & ES from 9-11, then take a break until 3 where I trade crude & ES until 5:30 and then I catch the last hour of the ES from 8:30-9:30. So a trading day is really 3 separate sessions for me. That splits it up and helps keep me fresh. And as you say sometimes I can participate in a big overnight move. But sometimes that happens during the asian session. I woke up this morning to see ES had broken the lows and then bounced back up. So we don't catch them all. I also think trading eurostoxx in the morning helps me to be prepared for the ES open at 3:30. I'd love to live in San Diego but the trading opportunities would be reduced.

So far it's looking like sellers are out of gas and bulls are taking over. Probably some short covering going on as well.

I'm long from 24 (from thursday):

I ended up stopping out of that swing trade at BE + 1. I then re-entered at 18.00. Stopped out at BE + 2. Then re-entered 18. Just closed at 36 for 18 pt gain.

Last week:

cunparis 

16.75 pts this week, no losers. Overall a great week. Looking forward to next week.

This week was almost as good: 15.25 pts. Only 1 loss on ES and that was when I forgot about a news release.

ES trades:



Crude trading was profitable too. Here's the total P/L in $ after commissions:



Commissions are expensive. I'm being pretty conservative and even cutting my winners a little short so my goal for next week is to try to get a few more ticks out of my trades and be more patient. That should fix the commission problem. I need to give trades more room and even take a few stop losses. The way I'm trading now I have no losers but I think that is not optimal. I could be making more even with some losers. In other words, if I'm not getting losers then I'm not going for enough ticks.

Overall a great week. I made videos of two of my trades today. Today was pretty challenging near the open. Very narrow trading range. I got 1 pt on both trades. I narrate the entire trade and explain what I'm thinking. I think you will find them useful. You can find them on my YouTube channel (uploading 2nd video now, the first trade is in 2 parts, it lasted 15 minutes):

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/user/tradewiththeflow[/yt]

Let me know what you think of the videos. It's a bit of work but if there is interest I will make more.

I wish you all a great weekend.

I thought I had posted this before but it search is not showing it so here I go again. This is an indicator similar to CP's PaceOfTape (POT) indicator. Instead of trying to accumulate volume over a fixed period of time and then checking it against a threshold, it looks at the number of ticks going by in a unit time. More precisely, the time taken for a tick bar to complete.

The indicator is adaptive; it can deal with instruments with different trading volume or difference in trading volumes during different times of the day. It has an alert which triggers when a certain speed threshold is crossed over a short look-back period.

The indicator plots the reciprocal of the time taken by a bar normalized against the average time of bars over a look back period. So the ratio move up when ticks are flowing quickly. It signals an alert when the ratio crosses a certain threshold over a smaller look back period. This allows it to catch the breakouts/breakdowns but prevents it from sending a volley of alerts as the tick-speed picks up.

POT has a lag since it triggers after a certain amount of volume has accumulated. The TickSpeed catches the first burst of the high-ticks and does not wait for the accumulation to happen.

POT is great for finding high activity churn zones which often precede reversals or breakdowns/breakouts. The TickSpeed indictor gives advance warning to an upcoming POT signal. TickSpeed also generates more triggers than POT. POT has the advantage in less noisy signals since it actually waits for the accumulation of volume to occur before triggering. Both complement each other well.

Last Thursday's ES chart showing POT vs TickSpeed. ES_F -

The indicator is best viewed on a log scale.

There is a new way to search using

NexusFi site changelog and issues/problem reporting Added an Economic Calendar to the site. Click Quick Links -> Economic Calendar. Mike

The new global downloads search would have found this:

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/pz4fcc.png[/img]

aviat72 

POT is great for finding high activity churn zones which often precede reversals or breakdowns/breakouts. The TickSpeed indictor gives advance warning to an upcoming POT signal. TickSpeed also generates more triggers than POT. POT has the advantage in less noisy signals since it actually waits for the accumulation of volume to occur before triggering. Both complement each other well.

Thanks for sharing this. It's a really interesting idea to measure intensity from a different angle.

I have it on my chart and will observe it for a few days. So far I like it.

I know it's earning season, that makes it a bit more complicated. but it seams we're at a pretty important area right now.