Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
It's become clear to me that whatever TA I knew from stocks does not transfer well to futures day trading. At least that's my experience.
Order Flow is something that I've been aware of for years but never really dug into. I've spent the last couple of days doing a deep dive into everything I can lay my hands on. Good information on this subject seems to be difficult to get, though I have found some Futures.IO/YouTube videos that have been helpful. I've also downloaded the mzPack add-on for NinjaTrader and have been impressed so far (they should do a webinar for Futures.IO). Still very much at the novice level with figuring it all out.
My current chart uses a large scale Renko (actually ninzaRenko with 32/16 blocks) with a mzFootprint overlay. I've also included 2 moving averages (actually Gaussian Filters) to make the trend clear.
Here is what my typical chart looks like:
I like how the Footprint chart helps you identify imbalances and areas of absorption, and watch how they interact with price movement.
I've also shifted from the NQ to ES. The NQ was giving me a headache with it's frenetic movement. The ES moves more like a battleship.
YouTube has some useful videos - [yt]https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=order+flow+footprint[/yt]
What I've surmised so far is that Delta (difference between ask and bid trades) and Imbalances between bid and ask (especially stacked imbalances of 3 or more), are the important things to watch.
Many claim the POC in the bar is also important, for me the jury is still out on whether it has much value. It may depend on the type of market (trending or range).
Absorption is something I've seen with my own eyes, though it can get overpowered in a strongly trending market.
Friday's Coronavirus fear induced sell-off was great for trading. I gained $733, mostly with one contract, stopping around 1pm to take a walk.
I decided to change from renko to range bars as they give a better representation of what's actually happening with price IMO. I'm sticking with 10 range for now, but plan to experiment with larger bars.
My observation was that tracking the Delta and Imbalances gave me a lot of insight into what was happening. More so than I've experienced before. Some bars become battlegrounds for epic fights between longs and shorts, with each side gaining and relinquishing control. Then one side wins and runs off with the prize for perhaps 2 or 3 bars, and then the battle starts all over again.