I know you struggled with it in the past and I realize a steady TP is good for you now, but I wonder if you can identify a good entry, then why not an exit? If you are looking at multiple time frames, then your exits might be more evident and hence you can get longer runs maybe?

My other comment is that it seems are you doing quite well and changing it up might not be necessary at the moment and profitability is more important for a time being? Like Mike's signature, 'quit changing things' etc..

You seem to be doing quite well on your previous technique.

Great info!!

I, also, believe the key lies in the 5 min chart with entry in a smaller time frame....

We are both very close to this being second nature....

aztrader9 

Well what a day it has been. The market was moving pretty fast today and I think my computer was having trouble keeping up as the price action was real jerky. I had trouble trading it as well.....since I use stop orders to enter, I usually wait for price to form a pattern I like and then place my entry and wait for price to come to me. Today that strategy was just to slow....at least on T4. Ninja was no problem. I think I could have traded it on Ninja but my skill with T4 is not good enough to trade a really fast market. And I had another problem...wide spreads....I got stopped out on a couple of trades really early due to my stop being inside the spread but on the chart, the price never actually printed with a bar.....so down a couple hundred dollars due to that little bit of nastiness. So I waited around for a while trying to get in and just never really got in the groove with the market this morning. I could see the entries, but just could not react fast enough to take advantage of them...so I took them where I could and on a 6 range chart, price was pretty unstructured in my opinion.....at least my current skill level. So I took a small loss today....I traded one contract to keep the risk small after I saw how difficult it would be to trade and for the most part just watched today. There is no chart as I forgot to mark it in real time as I was concentrating on getting trades in T4 and not on marking my trades. Hopefully I'll have charts again tomorrow.

I am old and slow and have a problem entering stop orders before price passes me by. The problem you had today, I have every day.

Max helped me write a "push button" program that allows me to click on one button and it calculates the Stop Price and sends a stop order at the close+1 tick .

TMFT Requesting Advice for Custom indicator trs3042 It is a custom indicator written in C. There is a thread called , Making Screens Pretty... here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) that has several examples of how to do that. I just kept fooling around with it until I got it like I wanted …

Push the Buttons ! NT7 hi all, i am working on some different concepts to add more buttons to NT, as toolbars or whatever to use them for. one idea i like to throw in the ring today :) the others need some more time. i have all this in mind for some time yet and a helpful …

ThatManFromTexas 

I am old and slow and have a problem entering stop orders before price passes me by. The problem you had today, I have every day. Max helped me write a "push button" program that allows me to click on one button and it calculates the Stop Price and sends a stop order at the close+1 tick . TMFT Requesting Advice for Custom indicator trs3042 It is a custom indicator written in C. There is a thread called , Making Screens Pretty... here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) that has several examples of how to do that. I just kept fooling around with it until I got it like I wanted … Push the Buttons ! NT7 hi all, i am working on some different concepts to add more buttons to NT, as toolbars or whatever to use them for. one idea i like to throw in the ring today :) the others need some more time. i have all this in mind for some time yet and a helpful …

ooooo I like that!!

aztrader9 

Here is what I want from this post....I want my readers to tear this apart and tell me where I am wrong and point out the flaws in my thinking.......and tell me where I am right and how to capitalize on it.

I can't really tear this new method apart but have a few questions for you:

1. How big a departure is this from the method you've been using up to this point? In what way is it different?

2. What specifically do you see as deficient with your current method? Win rate, number of signals a day, ability to perform in different market conditions, etc.?

3. Have you reviewed past charts to see how this new method would have performed in different market conditions?

bluemele 

I know you struggled with it in the past and I realize a steady TP is good for you now, but I wonder if you can identify a good entry, then why not an exit? If you are looking at multiple time frames, then your exits might be more evident and hence you can get longer runs maybe?

When I get more familiar with the trading platform I am using, I will scale out instead of all in all out on these moves. For now though, T4 moves pretty fast on the DOM and there is no auto trade management strategies like in Ninja to do this for you.....its basically manual entry on a DOM that is jumping around so I just use all in all out for right now.

worldwary 

I can't really tear this new method apart but have a few questions for you: 1. How big a departure is this from the method you've been using up to this point? In what way is it different? 2. What specifically do you see as deficient with your current method? Win rate, number of signals a day, ability to perform in different market conditions, etc.? 3. Have you reviewed past charts to see how this new method would have performed in different market conditions?

1. The range chart with the 3 moving averages is no departure at all. I started with this method 2 years ago but abandoned it due to inability to grasp multiple time frames. It needs this to be really effective. What is really different about what I am proposing is this...the inclusion...finally of a higher time frame chart to filter the trades against....only entering when a trade sets up on THAT chart as opposed to on the range chart.

2. The current method....and all past versions of it....and there have been many.....were just darts thrown at the dart board in hopes something stuck....obviously not quite that simple but you get the point. With just a range chart, I got cut to pieces in the noise. That is its biggest deficiency. There will still be noise, but there will be less of it, thereby reducing the number of bad trades in the smaller time frame noise.

3. Over the last 24 months, I have always come back to this idea of three MA's but currently I have no concrete data to justify my thought process yet.....the one idea I think will help it adjust to different market conditions is this.....adjusting the range bar based on the ADR. The bigger the ADR, the larger the range bar should be to help quiet the noise. The smaller the ADR, the smaller the range bar to make sure you are in the trends with enough room to make your profit targets. And adjusting the target based on range bar size means on larger bar days, the profits will be larger and on smaller range days, the profits will be smaller....unless you size up due to the decreased risk....

This stuff makes sense to me...maybe not to anyone else but it does to me....so I'll be forward testing it beginning tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

ThatManFromTexas 

I am old and slow and have a problem entering stop orders before price passes me by. The problem you had today, I have every day. Max helped me write a "push button" program that allows me to click on one button and it calculates the Stop Price and sends a stop order at the close+1 tick . TMFT Requesting Advice for Custom indicator trs3042 It is a custom indicator written in C. There is a thread called , Making Screens Pretty... here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) that has several examples of how to do that. I just kept fooling around with it until I got it like I wanted … Push the Buttons ! NT7 hi all, i am working on some different concepts to add more buttons to NT, as toolbars or whatever to use them for. one idea i like to throw in the ring today :) the others need some more time. i have all this in mind for some time yet and a helpful …

I like this too, but I am just charting on NT and placing orders on T4.....so still have to do it the old fashioned way.

It occurred to me last night to make the trend definition on the 5M chart the same as on the range chart. So I did that today before trading. I like the results. The reason for this is simple.

Using the 8SMA from @MWinfrey 's thread, I noticed late last night that almost all the entries seemed to be counter trend to the prevailing trend. These are perfectly ok to take but not in line with the old adage, trade with the trend.

So I put a 50,15 and 5 SMA on the 5M chart and what I got was a chart that more accurately defined the larger trend. The 5SMA is not that different from the 8SMA and so I can see the counter trend trades just like before.

3 trades, all profitable. 60 ticks total + one I took on sim...it was a counter trend trade and I was nervous about it.

The opening range was 271 ticks, so the strat called for a 12 range bar, but that was too slow for this mornings very boring action so I cut it back to a 6 range just to see.....the resulting chart is what I used for the trades.

By rights, should be using a 12 tick target to stay in line with my "double the range bar size for a target" idea but I forgot and left it at 20. It worked out today but otherwise I made a mistake there.

So a good day overall.

What I did wrong today:

1. I forgot to change my targets to be in correct ratio to the range bar size. This is not yet a hard and fast rule.
2. I noticed that while set ups occur on the 5 min chart, my time was spent watching the range chart. This caused me to have a fair amount of hesitation/urgency to trade. I will now refer to this phenomenon as the range chart vortex. It sucks you in.....I may need to hide it until a set up appears and the open it up to find the trade.

What I did right today:

1. I was patient.
2. I struggled through the range chart vortex...AKA RCV and took the right trades.
3. I quit when I was ahead. 60 ticks is enough for me right now.

Tomorrow, I will try to watch just the 5 min chart and open the range chart when a set up is getting close.

Cheers.