I have a question for you to answer for yourself as you are getting into intraday trading.

1) How does the Futures market operate and how do prices move up/down?
The market in general moves in a cyclical fashion, as life is, basically it's in the fabric of nature. Price moves up and down, because of demand and supply, I assume logically. I am trading in CfD's or what I call a derivative. I have never used a platform for futures before.

2) Regarding your answer to #1, how does charting Bollinger Bands represent that information?
The Bollinger Bands are depending on your MA, which is in my case 20 and 32, they represent the cyclicality of the market in a normal state, it shows how supply and demand is allowed to act under normal conditions. BB's with a MA of 20 and a deviation of 2 is what I accept to be 'normal', the BB's with a MA of 32 and a deviation of 3 is what I call abnormal. I haven't classified this yet so far, but I will do now and write it down in my next part.

my friend, due to the nature of your responses I wonder if scalping is the right outlet for your trading. you might have a better time using your analysis/interest of cycles for longer term or swing trades.
My idea is the shorter you are in the market the less risk you have. Unless of course you have an huge amount of liquidity. Scalping is the only strategy that applies to that.

scalping is the business of capturing fluctuations in prices. the answer to the first question might have gone along the lines of order types, liquidity and size that moves the market. how that relates to the second question about bollinger bands is basically nothing. i also dont think you can gain that kind of information with CFDs putting you at a bit of a disadvantage on intraday time frames.
Scalping is indeed trying to capture those fluctuations in price, my idea is to try and capture those fluctuations using the BB's. Like I said in Part 1, I use two different BB's, which together create a zone in which fluctuations may be spotted. (I will explain this again in the upcoming parts!)
I understand what you're saying about the non relationship between the two, but in my opinion there is one.
For example lots of fractals, shooting stars/hammers pullbacks etc. are supported by BB's touches.
I can't understand why I should be at a disadvantage trading CfD's, because representations of the market are in real time. A volume indicator is another discussion, which I have held here before, as is the orderbook, which I think is non-existent trading CfD's. That's why I try to avoid looking at volume as much as possible.

considering that you are trading CFDs, i know you can reduce your size quite a bit to be able to support longer term trades. so i wonder, why choose to scalp?

I choose to scalp, because time is something you can only buy, I need to buy time, hence I don't have lots of time to wait for my profits to ripe. I need to earn cash in a short time frame. When I am satisfied, I, like all can be a trader for a longer time period, but that is only the case if you have a considerable amount of money.

My idea is the shorter you are in the market the less risk you have.

Scalping is indeed trying to capture those fluctuations in price, my idea is to try and capture those fluctuations using the BB's. Like I said in Part 1, I use two different BB's, which together create a zone in which fluctuations may be spotted. (I will explain this again in the upcoming parts!)
I understand what you're saying about the non relationship between the two, but in my opinion there is one.
For example lots of fractals, shooting stars/hammers pullbacks etc. are supported by BB's touches.
I can't understand why I should be at a disadvantage trading CfD's, because representations of the market are in real time. A volume indicator is another discussion, which I have held here before, as is the orderbook, which I think is non-existent trading CfD's. That's why I try to avoid looking at volume as much as possible.

What do you mean by risk? If you mean dollar amount, your risk is proportional to your account size not your time frame. Now while being in the market longer does require you to give your trades more "room", you compliment that by trading smaller size.
By risk, I mean 'time', I can't know the future. The longer I have a trade the more it can be affected by news for example, or other external events, which means risk gets higher over time. While the market under normal conditions (nothing affects the market other than nature alone ) should be able to get to my target.
Yes, my account also represents risk like how much can be at risk, agreed. But that's not the risk on a trade, right?
Traders told me to never risk more than 2% of your account. While I understand the concept, I disagree firmly if you have a small account. I risk way more than 2% and I am momentarily doubling my accountsize, which would take forever if I use that 2% rule. Your account lets you risk more than 2% total, I use way bigger percentages and thus try not to look at that risk, but I try to look at the risk I have in my trade, which is different than the risk I have compared to my accountsize. The numbers may be the same, interpretation is different, right?
Giving it 'more room' is also against my strategy. I don't have time for a position to give it more room.


a couple things to note here you might want to think about. Volume moves the market. Period. And more specifically liquidity. Choosing to avoid volume isnt going to change that and you are putting yourself in a bad spot not trying to find a way to derive the information you need to be able to scalp effectively. Candlestick bar patterns have nothing to do with price fluctuations intraday, and then being that BBs are derived from your charts; BB have nothing to do with price fluctuations.

Going back to my first question I asked you about how price moves. If you are intent on scalping then I would hope that you would like to learn how that happens. Because the answers are not candlesticks and BBs (not that they cant be useful). Scalping is a method of trading that isnt just dictated by your chart time period.

To be honest, I don't understand volume as good as I understand the market's behaviour, I see volume as 'interest' in the market. Interest can be high or low, or non existent. I can't derive good entry points from that information. In my opinion if I see a hammer, there is a good chance of the market going up. But if I see a large green spike on the volume histogram that doesn't mean more green bars will follow. There's less direction to discover in volume. But that's maybe because I am limited on resources while I already know a ton.

There's less direction to discover in volume.

I see volume as 'interest' in the market. Interest can be high or low, or non existent.

'Interest' and the volume trading that interest directly results in the direction of prices.

Volume >> Direction

You seem to be content with only using the OHLC of a price bar to derive your trading ideas. Again perhaps I am assuming too much as you have still not written out your trading plan. Im sorry if I am hijacking your Journal I am just trying to help you think a bit more deeply about the subject of the market.

My worst trading periods when I started trading was when I was blindly scalping the YM/ES using MAs and BBs on tick charts, min charts, range charts, etc. If someone asked me then what was meant by "hitting the offer" and how that affected prices I'd have no idea how to answer.

What does that mean 'hitting the offer'?
I have explained more of my strategy in Part 4! And don't worry, I love Canuks or Canadians! And I am always open for feedback. I haven't told which market I operate on, although that may be obvious seeing my profile. I will mention it in the next part. Today for example we had good opportunity!