Was a bit of a tussle down there, then suddenly 9,10s, & 11s had 1k on the bid, 11s traded & some orders pulled but went bid quite quick. difficult to know when these are spoofs and not - i guess thats the point.
To explain my 19 bounce theory ( I realised it was gibberish), i din't think it would bounce there as I felt that the original quick retrace to it would have hoovered up the buyers that would make it bounce higher. So the return to the 19s after the big rise higher would need secondary buying, and I don't like that after such an extended move.
R.e. eurostoxx, I like to mark out areas where HEAVY volume has traded (blue zone), and then look to see a reaction to this area if price has come away from it and then moves back in. You can see the pin bar that occurred this morning so that is enough for me. Was also a nice gap ion my volume profiles so confluence for a rejection.
Took profit at 04, entry at 88.
Should really have re-entered at the higher lows being printed at approx the 92 level on a retrace down with nice pinbars...
Bund doesn't tend to have these heavy volume areas so I look to large moves in the delta for my volume areas of interest...
Balls. Price has just popped on the eurostoxx-isn't hindsight a wonderful thing...
Was looking at the 21-23 area as well due to buyers being trapped and wanting to exit+nice gap on 3 day cumulative volume profile. Buuuut it's a bit dicey for me as trying to stay away from less clear trades (even though this one does look good).
agree re the extended move, it struggled to move above 25s & built some value just above this level so it def looked like another test on the downside.
you like your pin bars, i always think that on another timeframe they are not a pin bar, to make sure i dont add too much weight to them.
i wld have added to my position here - blue arrow, and additional confirmation that the retrace has lost momentum & stuck stops into scratch as soon as move away.
Yeah there's always something that looks different in a different timeframe! I look slightly longer term than you (I think), and a pinbar on the 15 min seems to work well as it shows that price (for me at least) is really reacting to an area-something that isn't so apparent on smaller timeframes. It's a visual clue to the speed of a reaction to a certain area-I find that looking at the DOM doesn't give me that visual aspect, hence the need for a chart!
Happy trading-am out of the office tomorrow and Monday and back Tuesday so may your levels be sound and may your profit taking be spectacular.
Bootsy
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A better day yesterday - all it took was a 40 tick move & PA became a lot clearer, flow was nice, & some gd opportunities. Hopefully today is more of the same, but it is friday in a holiday week. Failing to close above the all time highs indicates indecision & the selloff was TY driven, so dont have any view on the day, with a pin bar from yest but the range is still small i cant add too much weight to that. Support is still holding from wednesday.
This looked gd - there was just a lot of selling levels above it. However, the buying on way up seemed quite strong, so was still tempted to buy the 14s which was great flag on the 1min. Then rumour came over the squark saying possible ecb buying after it had held 20s level, so i wld have been extending my targets above 24.
Very light vol if ecb are buying bonds, cant imagine lasting as long as last time.
great area & setup, traded 09s i had my target in @ 07s with limit order as had to leave the office - that was realistic target but perhaps i shld have taken one off earlier, shame. i came back in when i was just getting stopped out - rumour was that a figure was leaked & the tnote & gilt rallied quick, & as has been the case this week the bund followed.
i will be glad when paper returns nxt week. the ecb is QE'ing, the US isnt, yet the yields are strongly correlated, the last hour its corr coef ~ 0.92 (~0.90 v the tnote). One to remember when its just algos.
Sold 71s paid 57s which puts me up for the day, had v tight stop as no LLs but was once it made new low was looking for early 50s....55 i think was best buy.
cheers dude, not traded really, was selling 35s & paid up cpl of ticks. dont like this correlation in the gilt at all, if gilt goes through 00s level then cld hit some stops, v dangerous around here.
thought i had scratched them, but orders got rejected....got out @ 08s, then it went 12 bid again?? when i put them on, gilt rallied - bund trades 14s, 4 ticks onside. gilt comes off a few ticks & bund follows but more aggressively. algo scalpers the only others playing - not sure why i am even bothering to trade today, 170k traded in 5 hours.
I sold 23s and paid 29s, 16 ticks down for the day. Not gd.
The bund, tnote, gilt charts all look similar for tòday. Dont step in front of correlated FI algos, esp on low vol. I really hope the bund starts doing its own thing again, the yield curves are completely different for starters.
Yeah saw similar here Human Bond Traders Barely Show Up To Work As Machines Take Control | Zero Hedge
Mainly talks about US Treasuries (zn) but who knows what happens with the Bund. Either way a flash crash in US Treasuries would most certainly ripple out into other asset classes, let alone other sovereign bond markets?
late start for me, just waiting at the moment, dont have any significant levels as per chart but am 42 bid at the moment. ecb have been buying today 7 years out on the curve which has ramped the bund to new contract highs. see the vols on the 5min chart attached.
been v tough market to trade imo, looking at other mkts, gilts PA looks awful. Its gd for v selective setups, wider stops. Its actually better to trade using tnote charts, they look good, v correlated I guess thats cos both uk and us economies are shite hence why rates are at all time lows, despite what the media tell you.
Down 8 ticks for day, doing some work now on other mkts. prob will be estoxx.
heres the 5min (with some intraday levels) & daily charts. will be looking for decent LL before looking for short setups, but the trend is still def up & will be looking for long entries on pullbacks.
5min chart attached with some intraday levels from yest highlighted, big retrace yest from the rally up to new highs (again), obv a lot of volatility possible due to greece exit/widening spreads in periphery yields vs german, & also aware of the overall context of the bund uptrend.
4 trades, 2 scratches and 2 losers, down 22 ticks, crap day, poor trading..the 2 scratches were winners and wld be well up if left them. Also I missed a decent setup, will post chart later.
Trading used to be fun, now I feel worn out. Tiredness is not an excuse, many experiences in my life i have been shattered, yet also happy at the same time. I need to keep working hard, practice well, and maintain discipline.
heres 15min chart with some levels of interest. just spent half an hour trying to draw trendlines on mkt delta charts but it keeps readjusting them.
maybe more volatility with greek issues still playing out. a pin bar on the daily & 7 up days on the trot now, so cld be trend continuation or some consolidation (ha, fence sitting) - lets see what happens.
long @ 29/30/31s, as per attached. upside return is hard to gauge though, & it was a gradual trickle into this zone & PA stil looks heavy, so am out of it for now awaiting for more confirmation.
a lot consolidation around early 30s, looks like @30s is support now & possible push back into the value area. there really isnt much to aim for though on the upside with such tight range traded today so it looks like a very quiet day in total.
paid 34s - +7ticks. bit hasty with my exit, but its 20odd tight range, so wasnt hoping too much. as it happens 28s traded soon after. oh well, its a winner & happy with the setup / execution. came into prev supply area & dtl on the hourly (red desc line) as per attached 5min.....
yest was inside day doji, narrow range, after a pin bar - indecision and a possible top in the mkt or just nothing much going on yest / overbought briefly the fri? i wld prob go with the latter.
attached hourly chart with some levels marked.
noticeable descending triangle.....will be looking for breakouts either way (it broke ou on open but failed to close above on 5min) & retest (& failure) on lower t/f chart for entry, see if any other setups come into play.
Have been doing some thinking over the last few days.
One thing that holds day traders like us back is that we trade every day, yet that automatically makes the assumption that every day is as good as any other for trading.
So the days that go well are then held back by handing back profits on days that are not so good for trading. My blog explains my reasoning behind my eurostoxx (and bund) set up this morning, and it's a good example of when it is good to trade (for me at least) . Bell curve days (narrow range) are one of the best as breakouts tend to occur with force the day after for the reasons that I go into. Treating every day like the day after a bell curve day (or whatever day is suited to your system) is most likely a mistake on our part?
What i mean by that is-I understand (I think) why the days after a bell curve day are good for trading for me. I can predict with greater certainty how prices will react, and why. Same with a few other volume profile set ups.
Should I/we just be trading one these days, and in greater size?
Improving as a trader then means getting to know more set ups, understanding how and why they work, and trading these in line with bell curve set ups/others. And just staying away if these conditions are not met.
Any thoughts?
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good post bootsyjam - agree with it all pretty much, its good to have hypotheses - ideally more than one (@futurestrader71 is very good at that!) but i think the key is to also be very flexible with it....which may mean dumping your view straight away & possible reversing posns if they fit your setup.
for instance - yesterday was hardly any economic data out & monday - so i traded half size. though it was an experienced trader who gave me the nod on this so its smthg i/we shld def be working on. seems like common sense but easy to lose sight of this.
as for trading greater size on other days - well i guess if it looks like up trend/trend day in the stoxx & you are alr long then getting long again is obv what a lot of the v best traders do, but all within decent MM parameters from the ones i know, & unlikely they are long initially full clip size.
Yeah that's my next step, learning more VP set ups. I have a few profiles that give me high next day probabilities. Combine that with 3-5 day profile composites for support/resistance, maybe that's enough. Well, for now...
perhaps be careful on those next day probabilities - have read somewhere that they are a bit dated. price action imo is the best 'indicator' to use for a feel for what the current/next 'session' will be, couple that with experience, screen time, knowledge of that mkt & thats where build hte context & from that you will be reversing/puking/adding to the posns (& varying these) depending on what is unfolding. the trend/trend today (which someone mentioned on a live feed) in the stoxx is gd for one pullback only & then it all changes - but the PA at the top today told you that first, no?
the stat i like is the approx 80% of the time its ranging, 20% trending.
The VP gives me the idea, then the price action gives me the signal. Eurostoxx worked well this morning as it opened outside of/above the range yesterday and went higher from there so those trapped sellers had no choice but to get out fast. So I have the idea that it's going to be a strong open, then see price move to confirm it and I'm in.
The eurostoxx short is where I need more work. Had the area laid out as one of resistance thanks to 5 day cumulative VP profile (see chart). However, once that price level is reached, I still don't know what (if anything) the Dom can tell me regarding price direction. Looking at the 15 min, the POC shifted to the top, so a short could have been entered with this as your ceiling. Seem to remember that it was v close to the big German news so hindsight in this case is a wonderful thing, as I was looking to go short, saw the time with 15 mins to go before the announcement so decided to stay out.
this guy used to trade at futex, not entirely sure how he is manipulating the market - algos fill the order book up all the time. his orders were there for the taking. surely its the algos which caused the flash crash not someone legitimately willing to do prices.
wow, so the bund traded >50 tick range and beyond by breaking the 1pt barrier, when i started looking at the bund a few mths back the atr was ~0.80pts so such moves were still fairly prevelant, being shocked by a day like yest reminds you of how much the mkt has changed since then.
why such a big move? well there were some key levels broken on the downside in a lot of FI markets (inc 'safe' bonds eg tnote, gilt, bund), cld be profit taking, cld be more speculating on the short side, cld be transferring to risk on assets/periphery bonds (which went up). the bill gross comment about the bund being the biggest short is another classic prediction without giving time horizons, though it did come out 2 days ago, was it a short term trade suggestion when you have the ecb buying til the yield gets to -0.2?.....
(some approximations)
curr yield: 0.158
yield at yest high 0.09
yield at yest low 0.168
so the 1.1pt move equated to a 0.078 increase in yield. the ecb said they wld continue buying up to -0.2 yield, (0.358 lower) which wld put the bund ~4.5pts higher than today using yests figs (though this looks erroneous it is prob more like 161.50 ish area using avge figs) so is there room for maneouvre on the upside? of course. but the short term trend is down for now.
yest trading - i didnt do much in the bund bar scratch a cpl of shorts (near the top ha), & ended up small down. i certainly wasnt tempted to step into a train by fading. there was one gd short opportunity @ 159.59 which i called but was too slow to get orders in & within seconds it was 10 ticks onside, 30 ticks onside minutes later. it was about the only bit of support turned res i cld see on the 5min after the fig & the stops through to 159.21.
am playing it easy this morning, but lets hope the volatility remains. heres the daily (notice the volume still not exactly large) & hourly for some levels:
did 2 trades as per first 2 arrows.....
bought 40s sold 35s -10 ticks
sold 47s bought 52s -10 ticks
-20 for the day. down to half size. 2 probs with these trades - it was shaping up to be ranging day after yest - and playing long trade not far off the top was stupid. also trading at lunch time - can move through prices with so little vol trading.
3rd arrow was missed trade which i bottled taking cos of my 1st 2 losing trades.
Was very busy with other stuff, the one trade i did today was selling 23s and paid 15s for +8ticks. it was on the durable goods figure & bund had a little spike up into ok res area & trendline on 5min after making a LL. target was 13s orig which was perhaps a little too optimistic so pushed it up a little, though 13s did trade eventually. there was no drawdown (i dont think- i didnt see it go bid but my platform is pretty slow so it may have).
