Looking at the big picture and focusing on smaller time frames we
may see some high probabilities for a future move and its direction.
Unfortunately...
...we do not know by WHEN.
With that knowledge and being alerted - our very next trade may
go to the other direction than expected!
For this I use my signals of the the beginning of a session to decide
to take the very next trade even if we see the big pictures elements.
Our final results are only a result of taking a trade and an exit + SL
included. As long as we do not want to trade overnight - the
day trade(s) result are the only one that count(s).
Even if other traders do not share the same opinion - the setup to take
a trade on some significant past movements on a weekday to decide when
to enter and when to go flat means a high probabilty to make some bucks.
That is - in my opinion - all it needs to
a) Get some extra dollars / euros / roubles
b) To stay alive in the market
c) To be enough motivated to take the very next trade
GFIs1
PS: I am a longtime follower of FT71 and I am very happy about his
indepth comments / explanations about trading - live and in webinars.
Although I see his points - I am still a fan of past movements gives us
the whole story of setting SL and of entry and exit times to survive in
a foggy market.
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
... I left some nice money on the table. BUT
to stop a wrong trade with a little loss instead
of seeing the stoploss being hit is the best I
can take out of yesterday.
Nothing to worry about though.
As there is one trade per day only I have
to look forward to TODAY's trade.
There are some very interesting discussions on futures.io (formerly BMT) board in non journal threads. Be it hard stops, mental stops or even NOstops.
My future trading reveals some essence I want to share here:
- Stops may be essential to prevent the account AND to calculate a maximum drawdown in advance
- A stop needs to be outside of the noise zone. That zone is statistical value that only can be found by looking at the normal movements of a specific instrument as well as the desired timeframe of the trade
- In my instrument DAX future traded only during the day, open to close within some hours I have two distances I use depending on the movement of the PAST day. (the settings are 30 respective 40 points depending on the situation.
Yesterday I proposed a 20 points stop because of a faint entry signal.
Some proposals were to move the stop at break-even after the first price-movement was fast in the right direction.
I do not move stops - after I started a trade.
Here is why - the example of yesterday would have been hit at the break-even stop and my daily result would be ZERO.
Letting playing out the trade and getting to where the original goal was set - my trade went to plus 27 points plus.
What does this mean?
There is a preparation of a trade before we trigger an entry.
The exit should be defined - either by a signal, a fixed take profit or a defined time.
When we enter a trade - any movement of above previewed goals / stops are not helpful.
So letting it play out and relaxing inbetween means over long term much better trades as well as protecting blood pressure :-)
Just a little example for stops.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Thursday trade started the first 30min outside of the wednesday range.
My ruleset takes in this case a counter trade for a short term morning trade
to close that gap in order to follow the downtrend then.
This didn't happen yesterday as we have seen. The normal stop was hit.
Now the question today: if for the quaterly close the price moves
up again into 7000. This would close that wednesday gap too.
Good trades today
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
Manta, Ecuador
Experience: Advanced
Platform: My own custom solution
Trading: Emini Futures
Posts: 49,339 since Jun 2009
Thanks: 32,016 given,
96,539
received
Congratulations on your journal!
In the spirit of our March Trading Journal contest, I am asking everyone to spend a few minutes and share their journaling experience.
A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?
D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?
E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate your posts, and I hope you have benefited from your journal. I also know that others will benefit as well, just by reading about your own experiences.
A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
• Discussion with the futures.io (formerly BMT) cracks/readers on the rule sets of my trading - have appreciated every input - many thanks to all contributors
to my thread as well to all followers reading every input on the thread
• Look-back and test of the sense of every rule and the stop settings
• Being aware that "many eyes are looking over my shoulder live"
• Best exercise for self-discipline
• Testing the grounds on consistency under more difficult situation - in a live situation
B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
• Had only some time restrictions with announcing / posting and reviewing the rules for a trade while taking
the trade / posting on futures.io (formerly BMT) and Twitter at the same time
C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?
• No
D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?
• As I am twittering my trades live already the journal was a surplus on discussion with many futures.io (formerly BMT) members
which gave chances to optimize my own trading style and to see how others would see it from a different angle.
E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?
• YES - I must recommend a trading journal from newby on sim to cracks - to test the own edge with supervision under live conditions
Many thanks to BigMike for this great platform and the possibility to get to so many great traders with a zillion of ideas.
GFIs1
The following 3 users say Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
I was very pleased to start this journal some weeks ago.
It gave me a lot of great input and motivation.
Plus a lot of thanks and replies on futures.io (formerly BMT).
As said - appreciated greatly!
Now...
I would be very thankful to get some feedback from followers concerning:
• what did GFIs1' input bring to your personal trading
• which thoughts influenced your trading plan
• is a futures.io (formerly BMT) / twitter input helpful for the future?
..will begin with a GFIs1 DAX long from 10:30 to 13:00.
Interestingly the DAX closed the quarter after a nice rally under 7000.
Today the DAX is back above 7000 again.
Good trades
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
A reminder to look at some old ideas again. I don't trade the Dax and I do not trade mechanically but using some probabilities might help.
Most I'm interested whether there is a relationship between day of the week and the day having its low first and then move to its high and vice versa. Or whether a certain number of up/down days implies a reversal.
Currently I have not collected enough data. Doing so manually is cumbersome and error prone. Have to - at least partially - automate it.
I'm also looking at the duration of the cycles from high to high and so on.
But all of this has a low priority. If Eastern is cold and rainy - I'll see.
Currently I use the simplest and most effective assumptions of all: just assume that the next day is of the same type as the current one. Or: the trend is your friend - until it changes.
There are many relationships of day of the week and similar movements as I could see from my statistics.
The most obvious is the wednesday where about 95% of the "second wave" are a short.
Can only encourage to find more of these patterns within the weekdays.
As I stated in earlier posts there are some special obvious patterns on the last of a week, month or triple
witch - which give normally some very good results.
Thanks for the input and the trend following trading idea
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
I used the listing from post #34, and a few posts that followed, to compile the list of eligible journals. I checked each link and eliminated the journals that were not active.
You may vote for as many journals as you want in …
This weeks trades:
Tomorrow wednesday will be the last trading day this week.
System will not allow a trade on thursday because of a very low volume - friday will be closed.
So looking for tomorrow to get some extra points ;-)
Good trades
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Heavy down-move in the DAX after a long holiday weekend.
Drive came later than foreseen in the morning and with the US numbers the DAX lost more than 3%
at the end of the day.
For Wednesday I expect some retracement in the morning.
So this trade should start long from 09:30 to around 13:30h.
Details will be clear tomorrow.
Entry time was 30 minutes early. Direction over all is ok.
Daily candles are in the red Kumo - so the exact time for entry
do differ from normal rule time. Need to review on this one.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Today's chop chop in the DAX does not really help to see the trend.
There is (see chart) this moment building up a nice Diamond..
which will be hopefully finished by tomorrow before US numbers.
At the end of a diamond the price is moving either up or down - outside
of this diamond level. This should happen in the pink oval...
In our case as daily price is in the red (short) Kumo - I expect
some down movement by tomorrow afternoon.
Only some view from another angle in the big picture.
Now that we have seen the movements in / out the diamond there is a nice pic (see attachment).
Price was dancing around our pink oval - and is still heading down as discussed above.
Will give a Elliott explanation from moves within the diamond to see where the next bars were
heading to... in the next post.
GFIs1
PS: Friday trade was positive - and exited before US numbers...
still expecting a down move til' end of week - but now on the secured side.
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Expectation from Thursday building first a triangle to get at last a full diamond
(blue lines in the chart) was fulfilled with a steep downmove on Friday to the lower
diamond line as support.
Very interesting chart pattern which underlined the short preview for Friday.
This gave some positive gains - if played into the end of day - a great trade.
Have noted in the chart my system entry and exit for Friday. The rules did not
allow to stay in the trade when US starts - so the exit was for that time ok.
Discretionary traders might have traded this one till the end of day. The result
for the discretionary trade is 218 points versus the 38 points the system trade
gave.
Of course the main problem is to "see" that pattern as it develops...
After everything is in place - the pattern is easy to extract from the chart.
Hope to have given some insight live this week.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Here I finish the examination of diamonds and put some short Elliott counting in effect
to profit from a chop chop day as Thursday looked on first sight plus a heavy push down
in one trade on Friday.
In the attached chart I marked at the high point of the diamond a
1 -> first trade short to
2 -> reverse to long to
3 -> reverse to short etc. to 5
At this point price is moving out the diamond shape to build a false long breakout.
From there price is coming back to the pink circle and heading down south as
shown in the last post.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
I thought it might be a good exercise if we could get some guys to share "tomorrow's chart", in other words a chart with their projections of what price may do (or multiple scenarios) and then how they might trade them.
Mike
discuss the probabilities
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
After two long days a wednesday short seems to likely to come and to be appropriate
following our weekday patterns plus following GFIs1 mechanical system.
Today the VPOC of 6699 had been reached again.
Daily price is still in the red Kumo - which underlines a overall
short movement which has not ended yet.
You may follow the daily preview in the thread: tomorrows chart
Tuesday ended with a rally up which gave more than 150 points range.
As GFIs1 Dax rule does not allow a system trade after such moves
there is NO trade proposition today.
Normally on wednesdays we can see a retracement from the beginning
of the week - so some short in the Dax is expected (but will not happen
in the fixed plan of the system here).
Good trades!
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Very happy with today's result.
With normal rule our SL would have been reached (by 3 points overshoot).
So 40 points minus would be the result
With today's no risk trade and no loss the system survived
again.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Hi ollivermilton
Rule restricts trades when the trading day before exceeded 150 points (Hi/Low) for one day
and with more than 250 points (Hi/Low) for 2 days.
In such moments normal "waves" after the first 30 minutes do not exist and the normal
rule will normally hit most of the SL then.
Avoiding "known holes" in the system - meaning abnormal price moves is a great optimization
to stay in the profitable zone.
This mechanical system works in over 90% of the Dax day ranges. Around 5% are filtered
out with these two special rules. The rest of up to 5% are SL hits due to abnormal market events.
GFIs1
The following 4 users say Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
..to all followers and contributors. Every input makes this journal more lively.
For all who were not following from the first post - here one important distinction
about announcing and taking the daily GFIs1 DAX trade:
1) every trade is announced in advance as well as opening/closing the trade in real time on twitter
2) to get some discussion / in depth description and review/preview of the trade there is
one daily post on futures.io (formerly BMT) which is updated after announcing. So the post on futures.io (formerly BMT) may be later
than the twittered post as I have to take the trade and to post the action on different channels.
3) a weekly result is posted here to update the followers who read the journal for results only on
weekends.
4) a very interesting thread provides some preview on different instruments to see some
traders discussing moves for the next day: on traders hideout / tomorrow's trade.
Will contribute from time to time an outlook on the DAX for the next possible directions.
Any input always welcomed.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
That one was caused by the Spanish Bond Auction at 10:30. Results were better than feared. I stay out of the market around such events. Others are German ZEW, NFP etc.
1) This is very true. As this event was standalone it is not covered by my rules. (IFO / US # etc. are covered)
2) The spike was somehow unnatural - as more than 71 points for this auction seems not adequate. Thinking
more of collecting major stops / entry levels.
For tomorrow's IFO as announced - the rule means entry 30 minutes after IFO numbers are out. This way
the eventual spike does not effect our trade.
Your input is very welcome - in phases of incertainty it is best to stay at the sidelines.
The 1 DAX trade here however wants to bring up a signal for almost every trading day.
@ loeser
...discretionary trader's paradise?
Back to 6650 level seems very possible now.
Tomorrow may be a key day to see if price is breaking the upper resistance
or follows down south to much lower levels.
We have to watch this development closely after IFO numbers on Friday.
Support is now 1375.25 en 50ma runs also around the 1376.
Big Mike ask for a own tread journal, but i don't now how i have to start it.
GFI, in goona follow you in the next session. Today, i had a bid luck.
Similarly, if the username contains a space, then use it, such as @Big Mike - which is valid - where as @BigMike is not valid, because that is not my username.
Congratulations to all the competition winners of this journalling contest!
Reading in the journal thread how many posts were made in the competition month mars...
Amazing!
Very happy on my behalf to have got so many readers of my journal.
As above quote was my very first post here on futures.io (formerly BMT) I see that there is rising interest out there
to discuss price movements in my case the DAX every day.
Everyone not writing his own journal - publically or not - is invited to reread the best journals
of the contest - for each one's profit :-)
Looking back to the GFIs1 trades twittered this year and discussed here on futures.io (formerly BMT) since mid february
I like to show a plot of the total weekly trading results.
We arrived yesterday at 513 points net since january. This means around net 12500 EUR after deduction
of commission. For one DAX car paying around 6200 EUR this is a net gain of 200% in four months/car.*
Do you look for more percentage using discretionary trading?
Discussion:
The beginning weeks of 2012 contained everything from trend-up, confluence and trend-down.
Even there are some negative weeks we see a stable up-trend which gives a consistent gain (ROI).
Happy gains!
GFIs1
*past gains do not mean to be calculated for future gains
The following 6 users say Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
After writing more than 2 months a daily journal about my DAX trades I will end the
daily reporting on futures.io (formerly BMT) in this thread by end of this month.
Will concentrate more on the bigger picture and save some precious time as my system
works almost automated.
In the "Tomorrow's Trade" there will be some outlook on probable moves in the DAX
for the next day's - with charts. Texts to underline my thougts I can write in the evening.
In this journal I will post from time to time an update on the system's results if desired.
Hope the insight was helping in some points.
We have seen a high (slightly above resistance of 6652) @ 6656 which is the Low Volume Node (LVN)
of the profile.
Next down points on the down move is 6535 which was already reached Monday and yesterday.
So looking to see 6466 soon. (Second support)
don't you move your stops at least to break-even during a trade??
I don't!
There is noise...
there are imponderabilities...
THERE are RULES...
Rules let develop a trade - this means to avoid noise interfere with moving stops
set to Break-Even...
My stops are set to prevent loss from a false trade when the market is against me.
As long as entry time and exit time follow the rules and stops were not touched -
I expect a WINNING trade.
There is no need to really follow the trade when the rules were ignited - so
patience brings some winning points or at the max the stop was triggered.
Dax (see daily chart attached) price moved in March and April down along the spiral into the
red Kumo. That one works still as support for price as for now.
Price did not "cross" the Kumo to go to lower levels. Due to the form of the Kumo lower levels
are not at hand.
The red Tenkansen line is turning to higher levels and might eventually cross the blue Kijunsen
line within the Kumo - which gives a bullish signal.
Last high of the Dax was @ 7210 in march - next high level (blue arrow / red spiral) stops @ near 8000 level.
Seems like a lot of ugly lines now - I will keep an eye on them and update this bigger picture.
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
To answer the incoming questions about how the spirals work / are drawn in a chart:
1) The spirals are Fibonacci spirals
They show in bigger pictures (daily / weekly / monthly) quite accurate turning points.
2) I am drawing the fib spiral from a recent high to the price which is in the middle of the Kumo - yes -
here Ichimoku is of interest. In this case the spiral is turning counterclockwise.
3) The opposite is to draw the spiral from a recent low into the middle of the Kumo - in this
case the spiral is turning clockwise.
4) What is the meaning of the colors?
blue and black are guidelines and work like boundaries... price should move along the curve for a certain
period - red and green are passing lines - let price get through
The spirals work fine for any instrument - you will find more documentation on fibonacci spirals on the net.
Most likely a short in the morning on WEDNESDAYs... (over 90%)
So if you are not sure - bet on a short after the opening range
except when Monday AND Tuesday were already short.
Happy trades!
GFIs1
The following 2 users say Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
As I have a rule set to make ONE trade on the DAX per day I have found
out - using some statistics - that after a move greater than 150 points the
previous day normal initial balance is not seen. So my rule set brings
negative results on such days which I am avoiding.
Does not apply for discretionary traders though.
One could take the opposite of that particular signal to perhaps get some
positive results.
GFIs1
PS: today's signal would have brought a 30 point SL...
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
Tonight the result in EU elections will be at hand - looking to the french and greek
results - tomorrow the risks will hopefully calm the volatilty in the indizes a bit.
For the Dax - as the Friday move pushed the daily price out of the Kumo - it will
be very interesting to see if it moves back into it.
I see some high probability that we may see a nice move up in the Dax on Monday
and Tuesday due to this special constellation.
Have a great trading week -
GFIs1
The following user says Thank You to GFIs1 for this post:
I like the way you trade, but consider this
if you would buy the dax when it opens (at 3 am new york time) if it is at or below prior days low
and hold the position till the dax index closes till (11.30 am new york time)
vice versa for shorts (selling above or at prior days high)
then your profits would be much higher as the US market usually continues the move that the dax made in the morning.
this method also would filter out the days that are usually less profitable (sideways) thats because if the dax
can not make new highs or lows on the daily chart chances are high that it will continue trading sideways till it either bounces of prior support / resistance or continues going through prior high or low levels :-)
hope it helps
The following 2 users say Thank You to tradereight for this post:
is pretty easy, the key is to trade after 3 am (cash hours) and to identify reversals and breakouts
for this i use 10 min bars (if price breaks above the high of the prior two 10 min bars I consider trading long (green bar appears on my chart see screenshot)
img837
on
.imageshack.us
on
/img837/2513/fdax061210min572012.jpg
sorry can not attach links as i am not an elite member
Thanks for your inputs.
You may attach pictures in your next post.
There is no need to be futures.io (formerly BMT) elite member (I am not yet too) - but you need
a minimum of 5 postings - which you have reached now.
thank you, see the only reason why we are all here
is we want to gain and to share knowledge, so I really dont understand
why I have to register at paypal, give out my creditcard information to pay 50$
and then I am able to full use this forum, as I have plenty of indicators and valid
trading methods to share, it would be nice to get access for free :-)
In my system I am using only cash hours of the DAX - means 09:00 to 17:30 CET.
The rules for volatilty, gaps etc. are only looking for movements during these trading hours.
Your input rule is very helpful for trending days as you mention it. In fact, trading today as
a discretionary trader seeing that no US numbers are announced - the DAX trade would have
lasted longer with a much better result. :-)
As I am applying the rule set for all weekdays during a full year - I found out that there
are only some trading windows in the timeline that are with high probability giving you some points. Therefore I am not optimizing the trade within the daily context but more to have a trading
time for a weekday with respective special situations that give the most points over 50 weeks in a year.
With that I do not need to have a long list of settings eg. Stoploss etc.
The result of steadily growing the account with less risk (means being less hours in the market)
tolerates a slightly higher invested capital on a single trade.
Appreciate the discussion.
GFIs1
PS: to be more precise I
1) do not "manage" a trade - after announcing the trade I let it playing out as previewed
2) do not scale in or scale out in a trade
3) need not to invest in screen time as I do not manually change a started trade
The Monday move was starting very low - but came up steadily. That preview was helpful.
With a move of more than 150 points on Monday - there will be NO GFIs1 Tuesday trade
(as result of the ruleset).
Still interesting if the price will move above 6666 again this week.
