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I'm just beginning, so its futures.io and google at this point. I haven't actually begun, it was on my radar to start today but then I got into numerous other rabbit-holes.
I will let you know when I find some good resources if you like!
I may not fit the bill as a 'more experienced price-action trader' but I love talking trading and I've never been one to shy away from a possible foot-to-mouth situation. ...
I think a lot of those trap entries you have labeled are avoidable if you can ID the day as a trading range. On trading range days I have found it helpful to abide by the Brooksian mantra: In trading ranges it is better to buy low, sell high, and scalp(to paraphrase).
Bar-37 might be a little tricky. In that situation I'm asking myself, can I get 1R here? My stop is below 32 and I'm thinking we will test the open, which is not enough meat for a 1R profit target. I like to say I'm passing on that trade, but who knows, I may be biting on that trap. . If you are one to use a tighter stop you could take that trade and attempt to get 1x risk with a profit target around the open. Or maybe there is another higher PT that I don't see?
The bar-71 trap is interesting too. It looks like we have a breakout from the triangle. I'm again abiding the Brooksian mantra: Most breakouts fail. I'm looking for a short up there with a profit target around the open or maybe some place back inside that triangle style trading range. Also, I'd have to place a really wide stop to take that bar-71 long. Maybe below bar-63 or 67. And I've been avoiding that type of thing!
Nice journal entry snax! It looks like all the hard work you've been doing has been worth it! Your consistency has been awesome lately. Hard work really does payoff?! Wow! Haha!
Ha! @Salao you always bring a ton of great info and its always a pleasure to read! You've definitely got a lot more price-action knowledge than me! Besides, I never quite phrase that right, what I mean to say is I welcome any and all commentatry since I know so little.
So...identifying the day is something I've been working on, my take this particular morning was that the first hour of trading left us with a pretty narrow base, which to me seems to leave the door open to bigger moves. Bars 17 & 18 formed a sort of double-top and it looked like price was about to extend the range downward for the first time that day.
Did you see any early indication of a ranged day by bar 21? By bar 31 I'm a little more convinced.
Totally agree with the sentiment of buying low and selling high on these ranged days, I've been trying to take advantage of them but I struggle identifying where the "brackets" are, I'm looking to tackle this as one of my next missions, since bracketed/ranged days are so common.
I was puzzled by your "Triangle" comment because there's a lot of technical analysis fundamentals I don't yet know about (I am always open to recommendation of excellent resources!)...but now I think I see what you are referring to. The base of the triangle is formed somewhere between points of bar 21 on the low end and either bar 18 or 25 on the high end? I included an image that shows what I'm referring to. Inside the triangle we have a ledge, which is finally broken when we attempt to break below the bull trend channel line and fail, then immediately after, price breaks out of the triangle and re-visits the upper-extreme of the channel? It looks like the close of bar 55/open of bar 56 is a good opportunity to go long? I wrote a bunch more but I think the picture is much clearer than my writing about it. This type of analysis is a little new to me so bear with me if I'm clueless!
That's some pretty cool market behavior!
So for bar 71, In reality I'm not taking trades this late in the day when its testing 2900.00. Well maybe it broke through 2900.00 convincingly but I'd be worried I was making a FOMO trade probably!
Bars 75 & 76 are too close to Friday's closing-bell for me to actually take either.
Also, Brooks mentions bars 54 & 56 as being "consecutive outside bars"...do you know the significance of this? He seems to take it as a bullish indicator here, maybe that price is about to move, and its already tested below the earlier ledge so the higher-probability trade is long? That's my 2c guess but I really want to know.
I am jumping around in "Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar", but as @mgcharl suggested, I may want to try one of his other books first, and I'm thinking I want to start with "Trading Ranges" because that is the environment I really want to get good at first, as they are so common and also because I think trending markets will be somewhat less error-prone if I can get the hang of bracketed/ranged markets.
Also re-evaluating the possibility of bringing /GC back into my repertoire, I always kind of liked the behavior and it is the only product I've been profitable in this year, though I only traded it before joining FIO and I am a "Fool of Randomness" for sure, as Taleb would put it!
Hello @windowhan. I sometimes put VWAP on my chart as a point-of-reference, but I don't think too much about it unless price is getting close to it and especially if it lines up with another interesting price-level like ONH/ONL etc, then it starts to become more and more interesting to me.
As for Volume-Profile, I think its a great tool, I don't currently have a platform with that feature, but I do think it is valuable especially for the "bigger picture" of where the market has been, where it might be going and how good of a job its doing getting there.
I use market-profile for homework and as a way of keeping a view on this "bigger picture" so I don't get lost in all the noise of the moment as much. I find it useful to "link days together" and sort of see how the profile evolves from one day to the next. One could argue that the chart tells you this information too and that is completely valid and true. I just like the market-profile for identifying "shapes" or "patterns" of day types, because they hold much information about market sentiment, at least that is how I feel about it at the moment and I could be a fool
Ideally, I would like to combine market-profile with volume-profile for my research and homework, and for identifying day-types early in the day for planning purposes, then with that plan in place, attempt to use price-action as the "execution trigger" but its an evolving strategy so it may change at any time. I also use static fibonacci retracements and extensions for market context and point-of-reference for dividing the chart into more or less meaningful regions.
This may sound like nonsense, ha! If so my apologies of course!
If you’re going to study Brooks it’s not a trivial undertaking, as I’m sure others will confirm. You need to be prepared to leave everything you think you know behind and start from scratch to get the most out of it.
The 3 newer books are a rewrite of the original and are really just one book split into 3 by the publisher so they’d neatly fit on a shelf. They should be read in order. Also I’d recommend the video course.
Our resident Brooks expert is @Pa Dax and he is very generous with his knowledge. I suggest you read everything he writes!
Also, I will rarely comment on non-elite journals, and I suspect many FIO members feel similarly, so I’d recommend you move yours if you want to receive the most help and feedback.
I do appreciate the chats snax! Always a pleasure and always enlightening! There are 4 things I want to share, 3 Brooksian, and 1 FIO related...
1. I think you caught on to the 'triangle'. It's when the bars are forming lower-highs and higher-lows. Brooks says it is a type of trading range and a setup for a breakout. (Like all trading ranges, haha!)
2. You are 100% correct that bar-55 was a long setup, I'm just not 100% sure why. There was two consecutive outside bars. Brooks calls outside bars 1-bar trading ranges. This is because at some point during the formation of the bar the bulls had control and at another point during bar formation bears had control. He says that outside bars lead to breakouts and it's important to pay careful attention to the price action that led to the outside bars. Because this is where you will find the context to make a high probability entry. In Friday's bar-55 setup, I'm not sure what the contextual clues were to get you on the right side of that trade. But I do know, that by bar-60 or 61 the breakout is not failing and the long is good. IMHO!
3. I think you could start making trades assuming trading range day rules by bar-22. Friday was bound within Thursday's range (increasing the likelihood of a TRD), bar-17 failed to breakout above bar-1, and bar-21 failed to breakout below bar-6.
The 4th FIO related item: @mgcharl makes a good point about elite journaling. You will get a lot more responses if you moved your journal over there. Especially because you're an interesting dude that posts a lot of interesting information. You would be having crazy good conversations with some very thoughtful traders. You will be wondering why you didn't move your journal over there sooner! There are benefits to elite membership and this is one of them. (I don't think I can get banned for solicitation by promoting membership to this website, can I? ) I think a lot of guys don't want to share their insights in the non-elite area because they want to support the strength of membership and the elite community. I don't know this for a fact, but this is what I've gleaned from my experience here. I'm sharing my 'insight' here because you're my homie. But maybe think about journaling elite style...no pressure, just sayin'.
On another note, my weekend is great @snax ! I hope you are enjoying yours as well. Today is a market replay and FIO day. There is a lot of good stuff to read today. In fact, @bobwest made a fantastic post that I need to finish reading over in the elite section...The benefits of membership. Haha!
Thank you for the very kind words! I am finishing a cycle of 60 trades, I will have a good stopping-point at that time, and its a good time to reflect since this is the first cycle that's been 100% live. That might be a good point to create another journal.
<stickies>
REMEMBER: The skewed nature of trading. Good habits incrementally build your account block by block. Recklessness and going in "Hold my beer"-style will only take a fraction of that work to wipe out all those gains. There is no time for recklessness. Stay patient and stick to your plan.
Two Keys:
1 - Have multiple reasons to take a trade.
2 - Once in a trade, let it run its course, appropriate for the current market conditions.
***
Opening-Bell: Open Auction In Range. Missed an opportunity right off the bat, but the mental trade was enough to validate my hypothesis for the future.
@9:06AM CST - I see a second test of 2899.50 is possible. The price-action here is a bit ambiguous. So what was this trade based on?
1) I don't think we have generated enough directional conviction yet to break through 2900.
2) We appear to be in a trading range and I feel we've reached the high-bracket.
3) We are in an Open Auction In Range
4) We are still dealing with contract rollover so I feel a bracketed market is in order, so outside-in trades are acceptable, and short is the higher-probability trade here.
So I place a limit-order to go short 1 /MESU9 contract @2899.50. This was a pleasant trade as price wasn't pressing toward my protective-stop like it does on many of my more questionable trades. I place my protective-stop @2901.50 and I attempt a profit-target stop at 2895.50.
@9:19AM - I have moved my stop down to 2897.50 to lock in 2 points. Price is meandering between my stop and my target. As price moves toward my target I push my stop down to 2897.00 to grab 2 extra ticks. 4 points would be nice here, but the problem with target stops is I always want to get them out of the way to the trade can run. It doesn't matter here however, we get as low as 2896.00 and then move back up. I am closed out @2897.00 for a +10-tick gain.
MFE: My goal is to grab at least 75% of the MFE. In this case, price drove down as far as 2896.00 which would be a 14-tick max. My trade netted +10-ticks so:
(10 / 14) * 100 = 71.43%
This is pretty good for me actually, I was very patient with my stop-management. Had I bumped my profit-target up 2 ticks from 2895.50 I would have grabbed 100%, but if price had continued moving down I would have been upset with myself for taking less so all in all pretty decent.
It turned out to be a good day to work on trade-management, because the price-action "tempo" felt a bit slow and methodical, so you had time to think and execute your moves a bit more strategically.
I want to give credit to @bobwest for being kind enough to share his thoughts over in his great journal post, I found it quite helpful just to read about his thoughts and to reinforce my feelings about the benefits of this type of trade-management. I found the post very enlightening about some tools I don't usually consider such as Bollinger-Bands. It made me think about how there are so many different approaches towards the end goal of being profitable, and that many are useful given they suit our particular style and approach to the markets.
What i liked:
- I have cautious optimism. I feel as long as I am:
1) patient
2) executing based on my keys
3) keeping the bigger picture in mind with market awareness
...that I have control of my account and I can manage to build it incrementally.
- Did not feel sharp this morning (see ECM journal) but executed pretty well regardless.
What I didn't like:
- Was too timid to take advantage of an early trade right off the OB that would have been profitable.
- Was also too timid to enter a trade in /GCQ9 that would have been really good, but I am just getting into this product and didn't want to ruin the good feeling of the earlier successful trade. The right time will come eventually.
Goals for Tomorrow:
- Keep going, focus on my couple of keys, be focused and make good trades.
- Read more.
progress towards challenge goal
$600.00 total profit goal. +16-tick Daily goal.
$130.25 achieved.
$0.00 current drawdown
47 trades of 60 entered.
I need (469.75/13) = $36.13 per trade ~ +29-ticks per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 1.7882 ticks
My Theoretical Average for MES is currently $2.24
Current weekly accumulation is +10-ticks.
=== Homework ===
sketched market-profile for June 17, 2019
2902.75 CD
2902.50 CD
2902.25 CD
2902.00 CDJ
2901.75 CDJ
2901.50 CDJ
2901.25 CDJ
2901.00 CDJ
2900.75 CDIJ
2900.50 CDIJ
2900.25 BCDIJ
2900.00 BCDIJ
2899.75 BCDIJK
2899.50 ABCDIJKL
2899.25 ABCDEHIJKL
2899.00 ABCDEHIJKLM
2898.75 ABCDEGHIJKLM
2898.50 ABCEFGHIJKLM
2898.25 ABEFGHIJKLM
2898.00 ABEFGHIKLM
2897.75 ABEFGHIKLM
2897.50 ABEFGHIKLM
2897.25 ABEFGILM
2897.00 ABEFGLM
2896.75 ABEFGLM
2896.50 ABFGLM
2896.25 ABFGLM
2896.00 ABFGM
2895.75 AFGM
2895.50 AGM
2895.25 AM
2895.00 AM
2894.75 AM
2894.50 AM
2894.25 AM
2894.00 AM
2893.75 AM
2893.50 AM
2893.25 AM
2893.00 AM
2892.75 AM
2892.50 AM
2892.25 AM
2892.00 A
"Barely a Normal-Variation of a Normal Day". Another tightly-bound Normal-Variation attempting to be a Non-Trend Normal Day. Just 2.25 points of range-extension in C period, retraced again in D period. Initial-Balance was only 8.25 points wide. Market appears to be waiting for new information. Still plenty of trading opportunities.
Pretty much the inverse of yesterday, today I barely found any of the the selling opportunities brooks annotated, but we matched on a lot of bars. My selections were mostly just a subset of his, though he didn't choose bar 60 as a signal bar to go short and I'm not sure why. Brooks also annotated quite a bit of doji bars today which I did not.
