Today was a short morning for me but the volatility in the market allowed for multiple trade opportunities in the hour or so I had to watch the markets.

Unfortunately, the volatility also means I get a small scalp with no runner in many cases. I currently use an ATM that enters with two contracts with an 8 tick (MES) stop on each. It then takes profit on the first (T1) usually at 4 ticks, then moves my stop on the second contract to BE. The idea being that if my entry is correct, price should move in my direction and if it doesn't then I want out. If I am completely wrong on my entry, I take a 16 tick loss. If price does move in my direction for 4 ticks and then reverses, I take a 4 tick profit. If, as I always plan, the price moves in my direction and maintains that direction, then I take the 4 ticks on the first contract and place the second target at the next S/R area or measured move. It usually works pretty well over the long haul, but in high volatility markets like this it means my second contract is often stopped out. This is also the reason I have found MES (ES) better for my trading style than MNQ (NQ) because NQ tends to be more volatile even when other markets are not having fits over Coronavirus, Trump, the Fed or whatever. At this time I don't see any reason to change my ATM, but as with everything else, it is always subject to review if I think I can improve.

My first two trades this morning were prior to the open when price was moving in a channel. I took the first trade long from the bottom of the channel, made my T1 for 4 and but hit S2 at BE. I hesitated to re-renter thinking I might wait for a mini-pullback for the second leg. However, I have found that in narrow channels there is often no visible 2nd leg. I'm sure there probably is on a shorter time frame, but in this case I went ahead and re-entered on the next move up, again hit T1 for 4 and S2 was hit for BE. Total for both trades +8 ticks.


Shortly after that I had a computer issue that caused me to stop and reboot the machine. By the time I got back in, the open had occurred and I had missed the drop out of the OR. I did take 4 trades:
1. I took a pullback too early and was immediately stopped out for -16. I still make this error but not as often as I used to. I still have to remind myself when I do this that it is not necessary to capture ALL of a run to be profitable. In fact, if I can capture MOST of MOST runs, I can be wildly successful! There is always that sense of urgency that I have to fight when price is ALMOST to the correct entry and there arises the impulse to enter right away (FOMO). And, yes, there are times when prices just gallops away and I did "miss out". I am getting better about all this, but as this trade proves, I haven't exactly reached perfection yet!
2. Entered a pullback, hit T1 for 4, S2 at BE for a total of 4 ticks
3. 2nd entry into the same pullback, hit T1 for 4, S2 BE-1 due to slippage, total of 3 ticks
4. 3rd entry into same pullback, hit T1 for 4, S2 BE-1 due to slippage, total of 3 ticks. Slippage is another issue with volatile markets. Regardless of where you have your stop, that may not be where you actually can get out.


So, for all that, I was up 2 ticks. That's one thing about the micros that can drive you crazy. Doing a lot of trading and, even if you're knocking 'em dead you end up with $30 or so. It is the process of learning and once in a while I do get frustrated and venture back to the minis. All it takes though is one $200 or $300 "donation" to the market to remind me of why I am trading the micros!

Happy trading everyone!

fwiw, am experimenting with something similar and at the moment I enter the live MES trade I also enter a sim trade with a wider trailing stop, ie a different ATM, to see how they compare at end of day. Seems a way to take at least a small rough step toward optimizing....
Have appreciated your many posts.

casey44 

fwiw, am experimenting with something similar and at the moment I enter the live MES trade I also enter a sim trade with a wider trailing stop, ie a different ATM, to see how they compare at end of day. Seems a way to take at least a small rough step toward optimizing.... Have appreciated your many posts.

You can shadow your trades in ninjatrader so it’s done automatically

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/?shadow_strategy.htm

I have intentionally been off social media this week and out of trade rooms as well. I needed some time without other input to trade and reflect on what I've learned, what I've gained, what I've lost , and what I think my future as a trader looks like. I won't bother you with the details of all those ruminations at the moment, hopefully they will come out as we go along. And, I do plan to continue moving ahead as a trader unless I reach the point where I feel like I've hit a wall. I enjoy trading, enjoy the camaraderie of other traders and continue to be amazed by the endless generosity of successful veterans. All that said, I have decided that I will plunge ahead with full realization that it may all blow up on me and I'll decide to ditch trading for something like knitting sweaters for homeless cats.

As I started the week I dropped a significant amount of cash, made some changes mid-week and by the time the market exploded I was doing better. Traded about an hour yesterday morning, some more in last night's Asia session, and for a few hours this morning and managed to book over $1500 in gross profits for the two days. Of course, given the market, it took 50 trades to do that so I racked up a couple hundred dollars in fees and commissions, but my win percentage was 66%. That was great because I had dug such a deep hole early in the week that even with the nice two days I ended the week just $475.50 to the good. And before that, my month had been pretty dismal, so I actually booked a profit of just $73.75. Still, I was happy with that because January had been disastrous and it will take a decent month or two to get back on track for the year. Here are my stats for the month:



What I did change mid-week was to expand my use of Market Depth including the historical DOM.



I've had MD and VP on my screens for some time, trying to learn how to use them. I added the historical DOM and it seemed to help me ride the moves of the big traders. Still tricky, especially given market conditions. Mainly I tried to stay with the trend, then enter ahead of the big trader orders and exit just before the next big batch. I also combine all that with the swing & momentum indicators that I use from TopDog Trading and a CCI. We will see if this works as well when the market simmer down. Who knows.

In any case I am happy to close the week on a positive note. If I can get back into my groove, I plan to start posting my daily journals once again. It keeps me honest and I appreciate whatever feedback comes my way.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

fwiw - I have 2 ATM templates -

1) all- in 2 contracts 10tic profit, 20 tic stop loss - move to BE if mkt touches 10tics.
2) all- in 2 contracts 10tic profit + 20tic profit , 20 tic stop loss - move to BE if mkt touches 10tics.

Template 2 is not working in the current volatile environment (which is kind of counter-intuitive) - so switched back to Template 1 for now.....the intra bar volatility is insane at the moment....well certainly on the Asian ES - which is the Hang Seng contract.

I know I say this a lot, but this was another fascinating day in the world of trading! I never thought there would come a day when I would retreat from the equities and flee to crude oil for some stability! Weird. A year or so ago, CL and YM were my "go-to" markets. Over time I have been trading ES more than YM, and I've pretty much stayed away from NQ and CL due to the volatility. But then came corona virus and suddenly all equities were wild and oil was slightly less so. Anyway, here's the summary for the day.

Last night I traded ES in the Asia session. It was not quite as volatile as during RTH, but was still challenging. By the end of the night I had placed more trades than I should have and was down 28 ticks. So when I logged in this morning, I decided I would trade CL at least until breakfast to see how it went.


It's hard to tell from the screen shot, but by breakfast I had placed 7 trades with 6 winners and 1 scratch and was up 83 ticks. I was a happy camper!

By the time I got back to the computer, we were 1/2 hour or so into RTH so I decided to take a swing at ES. Five trades later I had 3 winners and 2 losers but was down 15 ticks. This sort of volatility plays hell with the close-stop strategy that I currently use. In volatile conditions it's easy to say "Well heck, just widen the stop!", but all it takes is a couple losses on those wide stops and I'm done for the day. So, I decided CL was where I would spend the rest of the day.

I don't have screen shots for the ES and the remaining CL trades, there were quite a few. Too many, in fact. I was looking pretty good to increase my morning's results by a little bit until I had a minor problem.

When I am waiting for an entry, I normally will select my trade (buy or sell) in NT8, and place the order well above or below my intended entry. Tha way I can click on the entry, then hover over my chart until I get the entry I am looking for and with one click I am in exactly where I want to be. The obvious potential problem is that if there is a jump in the market, my order could be hit at the wrong place. I had this happen once before when my order was too close to the action and I have since been very careful to keep the order well away from current price. Today, as I got toward the end of my time trading, I was waiting for a buy signal in CL. Price had been wandering, was starting to inch upward, but what I wanted to see was a big trade to appear on my trade detector. That, along with the lack of substantial orders above me on Market Depth, usually means I've got a pretty clear run. So, as I sat there with my order hovering over price, my trade detector lit up with a huge green ball and simultaneously price jumped 50 ticks in just seconds. Someone had dumped a buy order for over 1000 contracts and I scrambled to cancel the order while price shot up toward it. Unfortunately price was faster than my fingers and while price shot up 50 ticks, my order was sitting just 46 ticks up. Just enough to get hit and stopped for a 20 tick loss! Sort of a funny story in a way, if you don't think about the money!

So, with that, I still ended up on CL by 71 ticks and down on ES by 15 ticks, so overall a profitable day and enough to more than take care of my Sunday night losses. So I am up just a little going into tonight and tomorrow and we will see where that takes us.

Happy trading, y'all!

I traded ES on the Asia session for awhile tonight and had some modest success.

No real detail is needed on these as I was just trying to buy and sell dips and rallies. I took 6 trades and all were positive except the second trade. I entered too early on that one and took a maximum loss of 16 ticks. All the other trades netted from 2 to 20 ticks.


After that I was at +25 ticks and felt that was good enough for an evening session.

I'll see you all back here after the RTH session tomorrow.

Happy trading!!

Traded both CL and ES today in RTH. Had some ups and some downs, finished up 1 tick in ES and 7 ticks in CL, but when you figure transaction costs I am actually down just a few bucks on the day. (This active market is giving me more trades than I care to take the time to make screen shots of but as the market calms down, and I'm sure it will, I definitely will be posting my screen shots as often as I can.)

Part way through my session I noticed that when switching screens I had somehow managed to switch from my live account to the sim account, which was good and bad. It was bad because one of my best trades was in sim and it was good because two of my worst trades were in sim. It all worked out beautifully but it's not the sort of thing I would want to repeat!

In any case, I had a really nice day yesterday, so a basically break even day for today is okay, definitely far better than a giant loss!

Happy trading, y'all!

This past Sunday and Monday I had some computer issues that ended up with me reinstalling NT8 with a clean install, which means I had to re-do my screens and workspaces. So, been doing that and trading in sim in the interim.

This volatility is such that I cannot trade my normal stops and I am not willing to open them up. So, I have to look for markets I can trade. This morning I found I could trade 6E and CL within my risk limit. Odd that I would find CL to be less volatile than the equities, but that's just the way things are at the moment.

My first trade was in 6E, took 8 ticks on the first contract and 5 on the second for +13 total.


Second trade was a short in CL for +5 on the first contract and 29 on the second for +34 total.


Next I took a long in CL for +5 on the first contract and BE on the second, +5 total.


Last trade was in CL, gaining +5 on the first contract and +2 on the second for +7 total.


In dollars (sim), total for the morning came in at $541.25 and I was pleased with that especially given the conditions. I know there are some traders making thousands right now in the equities as the markets dive for the basement, but I don't have the account size or, frankly, the nerves for that kind of trading.

On these trades I was trying out Trish Ogilvie's Slinky setup (EasyEminiTrade.com) and found it pretty easy to work with. One day does not make a complete review but I am happy with how it worked today.

Here's hoping that everyone in the community, and all of your families and friends, avoid the Corona virus and that all of us traders survive the financial meltdown. The great thing about being a trader is that we can make money whether the market is going up or down, it just has to go somewhere!

Happy trading, y'all!

I am still trying out the Slinky setup I mentioned yesterday. Today I tried to use it for pullbacks and lost both times. The strategy is not really designed for that and I was trying to be smarter than the market -- and we know how that usually works out! Anyway, I did take two other small trades using the strategy the way it is designed and both of those were winners. So, I plan to stick to the rules next week and see how it works out.

My first trade was CL, trying to outsmart a pullback, -10 ticks on each contract, total -20.


Second trade was in 6J, used the strategy properly, got +8 and +10, total +18 ticks.


Next trade was in Euro (6E), once again stuck to the rules, got +8 and BE for +8 total.


Last trade I took another crack at outsmarting the strategy, lost 10 ticks on each contract, -20 total.


So in sim dollars, I ended at ($237.50) and hopefully learned a lesson about following the rules of the strategy. Actually there is a way to play a pullback with the Slinky setup but the way I did it is obviously not the correct way!

I still stayed away from the equities today, way too much volatility for my style of trading. Hopefully it will simmer down eventually.

Have a great weekend everyone!