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Trading fast markets

  #961 (permalink)
 JohnS 
Bamberg, Germany
Market Wizard
 
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xelaar View Post
I wasn't referring to your comment or trading, sorry if it sounded like that. What I am talking about is a mouse-trap I had been forcing myself into on many occasions previously. I goes like that for example: yesterday we had a trend up and it is in line with a general trend up so I plan to trade longs today, there are level of support and resistance, I have a scenario for price to test them and reverse, in this case I trade like that, I will wait for initial balance to form and trade breaks of that keeping in mind a general trend.

Sometimes it works, but many times doesn't. You expect trend to continue, but you may catch a stop run for counter-trend traders and instead of continuation get a range play, you may want to trade a deep pullback and expect market to run stops first but instead if will drop like a rock without any attempts to move higher first and you miss a huge day. The variations are countless. And then it is all too easy to look at market in a hindsight glass and explain it like talking heads do. It's comfortable for anyone, as you still can be smart and be right, but unless someone pays you for it like CNBC does for talking heads, there is no point in doing it. I had been guilty of it way too often.

Structure based approach is very important for swing trading. In my opinion you only should consult much higher time frames for very strong levels of S/R that you will treat like zone on your trading time frame and this is it pretty much. If you operate small intra-day stops and targets, there is no point to take into account high time frame constructions. What can be a nice bread-and-butter trend on your trading time frame can be just a blip on a high time frame.

In my case, we have a consolidation on daily and range on 30 minutes, what many would regard as a complete chop. But this chop generates beautiful trading opportunities day in and day out.

Just my personal reflections.

@xelaar,
Thank you for your clarification. A little clarification from my side, I execute on a 30 minute chart and refer to 60 minute, and 120 or higher charts to get a picture of the market so my comments are based on these timeframes.

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  #962 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
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JohnS View Post
@xelaar,
Thank you for your clarification. A little clarification from my side, I execute on a 30 minute chart and refer to 60 minute, and 120 or higher charts to get a picture of the market so my comments are based on these timeframes.


Absolutely. No offence was meant from my side. But as a reminder this is a blog called Trading fast markets that deals with fast intraday moves and short time frames. So all my posts and replies are in line with that theme.

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  #963 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
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Strange days. Volume was 300% in pre-market. 90 pts gap. As often, a counter-trend gap doesn't get closed right away. High-volume move down continues. There was a trade opportunity for me on LTF in pre-market but it was in a deep regression of the down gap, so it wasn't a conventional situation and I let it go. Anyway, I better get used to a market that make eyebrows go high almost every day, to do some actual trading, not just commentary.



The trade missed was a little one, yes it developed into a monster run down but rule-wise profit should be taken very soon at lower bollinger so at best profit target was 5.5 points, not 80 it eventually did. There was a weak trend entry on HTF, it should not be taken. There was another momentum level entry that did very very well, but I am yet to continue observing and testing these entries, as I had changed the parameters to reduce number of weak trades and only keep it as an option to enter into no-pullback market that makes a quick stop with a relatively small stop.

Today we have one 2 hours left and the only opportunities I would be looking for will be on HTF.



After volatility jumped I have got only two half-trades, i.e. trades that should be exited as delta was borderline. Both even if kept and managed as normal would have been break-evens, even if second one was deep in profit at some point - about 35 points, risking 13. But there was no reasonable exit point for this trade. Anyway, that was not a proper entry.

I had realized that for me a great help would be to turn my indicator into a semi-automated strategy, that will just enter the trade and place a strategy, alerting me of it and letting me manage the trade afterwards. Few things need to be solved first, for example LL/HH rule must be added, and volatility flag must be added to prevent entering LTF trades after a significant increase in volatility (i.e. not allowing to go gear down again). But it can solve the entering hesitation problem and get me closer to my news-trading routines that were working so well. Back then entries were also automated and only trade management was manual.

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  #964 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

So, I have reviewed my trading structure and had decided to run two live combine-style trading plans for LTF and HTF trades.
In a nutshell, LTF will be run similar to 30k combine, with 500 eur/1500 eur risks, HTF will be run as 50k combine, with 1000 eur/2000 eur risks. Max conseq. loss number is 3 or 2 per direction. This makes max risk per day realistic and allows to throttle down trading if things start to get really wacky very fast, allowing to review and re-evaluate. I will prepare today my spreadsheet and will start working with it tomorrow. I will branch out my experiment into a separate thread, initially designed for 10 trading days. I will post a link here.

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  #965 (permalink)
xylem
LONDON UK
 
Posts: 60 since Nov 2014
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Hey,

Your patience is fantastic.
I dont know how you manage to skip so many trading days.
Do you ever feel you should be making more money faster or making money now fullstop.

This is something Im struggling with as I feel if I dont sort out my plan soon I just have to quit.
Am I insane for keeping on trying to beat the market after all this time with no success.

Today for instance I had the short bias in Oil but couldnt capitalise on the down move. My orderflow setups werent working and the charts were choppy. I feel like the conditions looked right for a good profitable day though which really dents my confidence.

Are you making money yet or struggling with these questions?

Cheers

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  #966 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568


xylem View Post
Hey,

Your patience is fantastic.
I dont know how you manage to skip so many trading days.
Do you ever feel you should be making more money faster or making money now fullstop.

This is something Im struggling with as I feel if I dont sort out my plan soon I just have to quit.
Am I insane for keeping on trying to beat the market after all this time with no success.

Today for instance I had the short bias in Oil but couldnt capitalise on the down move. My orderflow setups werent working and the charts were choppy. I feel like the conditions looked right for a good profitable day though which really dents my confidence.

Are you making money yet or struggling with these questions?

Cheers


Thanks man, patience was something I had been working on for a long long time. However, I doubt I can take a credit for what is happening now. It is rather the situation, where I put in an incredible amount of time, efforts on research, testing, investigating, programming for about 2.5 years now, and here I am, finally having something that looks incredibly solid, robust and profitable. And I am scared to plunge in it and start trading, not even fearing the money loss, but a huge disappointment that it can be a lost effort, time wasted. I know that it is not wasted even if system will not remain unbreakable over time as it happens, as principles I am using are not of any temporary inefficiency and parameters are not curve-fitted. So it should be easy to tweak if necessary in future and keep it working. But still this desire not to put it to real test persists.

It was much more easier for me to trade off some much less researched ideas, because I only risked money. Now I am risking a huge amount of my life put into it.

But a time has come to stand up and put a deed behind a word. Plus, I need to start making money as my other source of income is getting thin and sporadic. I do have some reserves so I don't need to live from withdrawal to withdrawal but these reserves need replenishing from time to time.

A decent way to kick off would be to trade 10 days in combine-style accountability.

I had been making money during last year, and losing money too. Overall slightly negative as I was stopping after a couple of days of losses, but the ways I was trading were lacking structural alignment with the market and volatility. I.e. I was trending trend when channel should be traded and traded channel when range should be traded, etc.

Before that I was very profitable trading ecostat release volatility. Then I switched to futures completely and completed a Combine 150k with TST and went live with them. But not for long. Then I spent whole year on learning markets better, investigating and developing. Now I am better prepared than I ever was. Scary.

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  #967 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
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Next week I am starting my live Combine, so today will be a last post here analysing system and its trades for a time being. Quite a difficult day today. How my system did? Check it out.



We started off with an easy low risk trade at 8-15 which could yield up to 80 points risking just 5. 16 to 1 But rules called to exit at +8.

Next entry at 8-45, risk 5 points, projected target +27.5 hit. Next trade around 8-55 at stopped out for -5.5.

There was a potential entry at about 9-05 but price did not hit new HH, so it should not be traded.

Then we have got volatility rising and there was a trade off HTF at 9-26 with 9 point stop. It made few attempts at going, eventually getting stopped at B/E as per rules. That turned out to be a reversal move that drawn today's range borders.

Around 11-06 we have got a weak signal on HTF but it should not be traded.

There were no trades on LTF until after 13-00, which is outside of our trading time, but it would be a winner of 36 points, BTW. Then another short but stopped out by -6.5 points loss. That would be pretty much it for analysis until 2 PM, which is a limit hour for any flow-based trading in DAX. Next window is starting at around 3-45 PM but I am not very interested to trade it hence no point in analyzing it.

I.e. today would bring 2 winners on LTF for +35.5 points, one loser for -5.5 points, and one break-even trade on HTF. Overall +30 less commissions and slippages on stop and break-even, but it's only a couple of points give or take so makes no sense to put too much attention to it, as the system does not produce many trades to make it a heavy toll.

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  #968 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568



This is why I don't trade it

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  #969 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

This is my temporary journal thread, feel free to follow up!


Trade to live. Not live to trade.
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  #970 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568


This is the funny market today in DAX. After a big run up yesterday, a big gap down on open today. Not a single trade possibility in pre-market. Price goes down but delta goes up. Let's see if it will reverse back up and give a nice entry, but situation is bit ugly for now.

Trade to live. Not live to trade.
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