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The recent offer has convinced me to finally give this a go. I've been away from trading for quite a while so going to need to shake some rust off pretty quickly :-)
My first day of the combine today, and actually first day trading (in any form) in over a year. All in all I have to be pleased with the day although things could have been improved e.g. I missed the Euro and the Crude open and only just had time for the ES open. I was a bit rushed in my prep and as a result hesitated on my first opportunity and didn't pull the trigger.
As luck would have it I did get an opportunity later on, although I only traded 6 contracts (max position size = 15). In hindsight, and that late in the day where this was going to be my only trade, I should have been at max size as even a full diaster stop out would have kept me within my daily loss limit.
However, I'll post my 'in running' log below, warts and all. Times are UK time so take 5 hours off for est. Depending on the time I have I'll probably post a different take on the day every day. Perhaps tomorrow I will add some more context around the prep or the trades. Any thoughts welcome.
I believe I am $900 up for the day less commissions, so I am short of the avg daily profit target I need to hit but a reasonable first day.
ES
Narrative complete
14:49 ES has opened in an area that has stopped one timeframing on a weekly basis. However, we had a short test and reject below last week's low and we are trading back in Friday and last week's range. The overnight inventory was short and we could be correcting that to some extent. Both overnight high and low are still intact.
14:51 I have a resting buy limit order in place at 1681.75 with a stop below the low. We're trading close to the overnight high but so far have been unable to get within a point of it.
15:03 Still not taken out the overnight high, not retraced much either. 1/2 back is at 1682.5, have moved my resting entry to there with a stop below 1680.5, would not want it back out that range although of course would be looking to exit on my own accord rather than from a stop. B has taken out A period high.
15:07 1/2 back is also Friday's low. I'm thinking if I was already long I would not want it back outside Friday's range so moving entry up to 1683.5. Friday's low is probably a more immediate reference than the weekly low.
15:10 A seemingly high confidence move back into previous week's range, but now nothing much is happening and so far unable to take out overnight high
15:18 Traded at the ON high but not taken it out, I find I really want to look at the volume but so far can't find a good way of charting it
15:19 Some excess now on the highs. 5 ticks of singles. Starting to wonder if we might see a balancing day around the current highs/lows
15:25 5 mins till next period. Unless I get filled in next 5 mins then it will take an end of 1XF on a daily basis in order to get filled.
15:30 Now I have some indecision. I think the odds favour taking out the overnight high to the upside, and there is a prominent POC above. Also just realised we have filled the gap from Friday so I guess we will have had some sellers at that point. I wonder if I have missed the boat on the ES for this long trade
15:41 C period has taken out B and the overnight high. Canceled my resting order. The train has sailed.
19:22 I've had other things to do and just come back. Looks like the market came back in I period to within one tick of Friday's low, and my order would have been filled, but I would have had to have been present to take it. This precision suggests low confidence and balance. The profile looks reasonably complete to the downside and incomplete to the upside. I think the odds are high that we rotate higher another 4 handles or so and test the high, which is incomplete above. Notice it also came back to roughly 1/2 back.
19:42 Put in a resting order for 1683.5. Filled. Stop is 3pts away but if it drops more than a point I will be looking to exit. Target 1 is POC at 1685.75, target 2 is HOD 1688.25. Six cars, taking off 1/2 and 1/2 or exiting all at once.
19:53 Got to ;eave the room, movng stop to 1682.25, 2 ticks below I
20:00 New period, L. Need it to take out K period, so far we've matched it. Just tweaked target 1 to 1686.5 as a bit of an anomaly that doesn't look complete there, thinking it might at least trade through it by a tick or two. However, needs to take out K period high! Can feel myself getting anxious, 2nd guessing etc, esp as L comes down to within .5 of my entry.
20:04 POC has migrated lower. Value is also going to be lower for the day.
20:08 Profile is now looking more complete and trade is not working quickly. I am now wondering whether to exit ... just as we break through K period high.
20:18 Second guessing myself a lot. Moved stop to BE+1, no logic to this at all, bit annoyed at myself for doing it but there you go. Price got to 1 tick of my 1st target at 1686.50 and debated a lot with myself whether to try and take it a tick less. Silly, should prob just have taken it. Profile still looks incomplete to the upside, but if it traded below I, J, K period for the rest of the day that might balance it out without going higher. Pushing higher again.
20:22 Did move my target down a tick and was filled. First TopSetpTrader trade will be +ve :-). Stop is now 1 tick below L period and a change in 5. It's a more logical place as I wouldn't want to be still in the trade if L low is taken out. The question is whether we can push and take out the high by at least a tick. Got to figure that there are quite a few shorts since D period high so if we do get up there we might run a few stops .... if....
20:31 Interesting dissonance. I'm very nervous of it not going higher and at the same time I feel the profile looks really incomplete to the upside and expect it to fill in a bit. M period needs to take out L
20:44 This is now the 5th period of 1XF up, M has taken out L. Managed to get vol at price using Sierra. Some good vol come in starting at 1685.75. I want to keep it above that. Moved target up, just going to see what happens around the high if we get there. Seems like good volume if we can stay above it
20:51 This is make or break time, leaning on the high vol @ 1686, if it gets below 1685 I will be looking to exit, 10 mins to cash close, probably look to exit actually. Out at 1686.75
Today was a very disappointing day, which I’ve also learned a few things from.
Short version is I entered two marginal trades today, I won’t list my excuses here but of course I have plenty. The first was a long euro trade which I didn’t allow to set up properly and the second was a short Crude trade which I tried to fade an extreme, thinking we would likely get pulled back to the poc but in hindsight it was probably caused by short covering rather then new buying.
The positive is that I’ve spent some time looking over charts and notes and there are some clear nuances I missed due to anxiety to trade and get another winner under the belt. I was focussing only on simple things and not the bigger picture. Hopefully tomorrow should give me more time to prep and more time to watch the opens and let things shake out.
Today’s adventures have eliminated yesterday’s +ve day so I need to progress a bit better tomorrow. Both of the trades today were scoped and considered…. But with the benefit of hindsight (and hopefully not bias) they could have been considered better e.g. look for confirmation and/or look for additional context supporting the idea.
Post a bit rushed tonight, I will look to post some analysis and charts tomorrow
So unfortunately I have been really busy with other things and until yesterday hadn't had much of a chance to do any trading. Yesterday I only had some brief time and was just planning on watching the market....spolier - idiot alert coming ... I decided to explore the functionality of my trading DOM and put in a resting order at a breakout point in Crude and instead of placing a placing a buy stop it just placed me in the market :-)
I flattened immediately but it uses up another day in the combine ...although at this rate I'm not sure if I'll have enough days to actually complete it!
Anyway I did do some analysis of my previous losing day and in hindsight I was placing too much emphasis on the basic structure without incorporating the wider context. I plan on posting some more details in the coming days regarding markets, if I can find time to do some trading. In the meantime here’s some marked up perspective on the Euro, showing the monthly, weekly, daily, daily split into Europe morning and US morning, and market profile. I’ll even throw in a merged profile for good measure. Basically we are reaching the top of a recent trading range and an interesting area to monitor. I don’t think I will have any time to look at this live tomorrow but we will see.
Here’s a good example of why it’s useful to journal a combine, so you can write about poor decisions you make.
Today I have had no time until now (last 30-60mins) of the day. I’m watching the ES and thinking I am going to have to make a trade almost every day in order to actually fit my trading days in…I’ll just see if I can make a small trade in the ES to test my new scaling/OCO setup on SierraChart.
A good example of conflicting information. On the long side we have a significant buying tail and a poor high, we’re approaching the midpoint and all the morning singles, and developing value is going to be higher.
On the short side, we have been slowly moving lower for the rest of the day (i.e. the tone is down), the profile looks like it could just be short covering i.e. no new money buying, and K period poked out of J and was quickly rejected back down.
The ruling reason (always easy in hindsight) was we are reaching the end of the day, the tone is down, and the upside has already been rejected in K period.
I tried a long trade as we were almost at the midpoint and wanted to see it move up quickly …it didn’t happen and I was out for a loss. In hindsight (always easy) I should have been short at a similar point
On the positive side it’s my first actual trade in well over a week so at least I’ve managed to do something and I think I have all my charts and OCO orders set up now.
Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
As might be obvious from the infrequent posts I am struggling for timeto get any trades in at the moment. However ... I managed to catch the end of the ES last night. The theory being that we one timeframed up in the first few hours, and then everyone that was getting long from that point on was really getting nothing for it.
I figured that at least some of those would be day traders that would be liquidating their long positions as we got closer to the end of the day. It worked average and I got 2-3 points out of it.
Importantly it was the first trade and first +ve trade for a while
This morning I was watching 6E at the start of the European session, when we went down in D period and failed to take out the previous day's low, and broke out of the day's range I figured that was a good long opportunity targeting the previous day's high. It worked pretty well and I scaled out all the way up to the PD high.
I had to step out for a while so I left before my last scale was hit so I missed the almost immediate and what looks to have been very sharp liquidation and new lows in the US session. I'm not sure if this was on news or just the failure above yesterday's high. It would have been interesting to see if I had the mental agility to recognise that was happening or whether I would have just been staring at it :-)
Either way it was an improved day today and hopefully I can find some more time going forward to complete this.
