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'A'-bracket was only 9.5 points wide. 'B'-bracket was less than 5 points wide. We have a very narrow initial-balance. We saw some range-extension in the 'C'-bracket resulting in a single-print buying tail. Up through 'I'-bracket and until 'J'-bracket we had the most "Normal-Distribution" market-profile I've seen yet, it was almost a perfect bell-curve. Then starting with 'J'-bracket things started to skew towards the upper-half of the distribution, finishing with a bullish closing-range.
@7:30AM CST We never bothered to fill the gap last night, price rose steadily and then rotated. Today we get some retail sales figures as well as business inventories, construction-spending, etc. e-mini S&Ps currently up 19.00(!) and VIX at 13.87.
We are well above the value area of the market-profile from last Friday.
I did a lot of research over the weekend, but the main takeaway was I'm starting to build a punchlist of things I need to be aware of and ready for before I trade. This should help eliminate some of the foolish impulsive trades I've been making.
So based off the fact that we opened above Friday's close I'll be looking to see if we maintain that level and if there is any initiative activity upon the OB or if it is responsive activity to opportune prices.
@OB we see price test the 2860.75 level a couple times then explore downward a bit, I didn't jump in because I kind of wanted to watch today. I typically get over-excited to trade on Monday mornings so I made a mental trade and it was a good one, my market awareness seems to be spot-on. That is a good feeling.
I don't have much more time to trade so I will end here.
What i liked:
- Had a fairly good feel for what the market was doing.
- Worked very hard this weekend.
What I did poorly:
- Not much, I really worked hard over the weekend and I think it is paying off as I build market awareness.
- Got a friendly rejection email from an "other timeframe buyer/seller". Its ok, I didn't think that one was going to be the place I ultimately would fit in at anyway.
Goals for tomorrow:
- continue reading "Mind over Markets", finish "Competent" section, then review "Novice", "Advanced Beginner", and "Competent" sections
- meditate (I've been forgetting to do this)
- price-action/market-profile homework
- probability theory homework
- refine punch-list for steps to know I'm prepared, focused, and ready to start trading.
- Find next steps and how to drill/practice these next steps for the big picture and ultimate goal.
- write some code and track more stats.
- I just want to focus on futures trading full-time, so apply to another "other timeframe buyer/seller"...though i have my doubts this path will open up for me. I'm not sure why exactly.
progress towards challenge goal
$3000.00 profit goal.
$250.00 achieved.
$0.00 current drawdown
4 trades of 30 entered.
I need (2750.00/26) = $105.77 per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 4.9999 ticks
I need to keep getting these small opportunities, keep improving trade-management, and take advantage of sizing up when I hit my bonus.
@@@ Opening Bell @@@
Open type was "Open Auction Out of Range", and we saw a lot of choppy action from the start.
@@@@ Initial Balance @@@@
* 'A'-bracket only 4.75 points wide. Extremely narrow, the OB showed a lack of directional conviction. Price auctioned slightly higher to test the 2860.75 level before exploring lower to rotate around the midpoint between 2860.75 and 2853.00.
* 'B'-bracket - starting at 9:00AM CST we saw a push higher to 2863.50 before quickly retracing back to 2857.50. 'B' period was only 6.25 points wide. The IB finished only 7.5 points wide, so we would expect range-extension in later brackets.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
* 'C'-bracket was only 2.75 points wide, trading completely within the IB.
* 'D'-bracket contributed our first range-extension to the upside resulting in one point of range-extension. A normal distribution begins to form with the value area and POC around the 2860.25/2660.50 area.
* 'E'-bracket further refined the developing normal distribution as price-action continued to rotate.
* 'F'-bracket continued the rotation but contributed a slight skew to the upper range of the profile distribution.
* 'G'-bracket contributed more range-extension to the upside as price slowly continued to auction higher. The profile also begins to develop a slight double-distribution during 'G' period.
* 'H'-bracket was interesting in that it also contributed 3-ticks of range-extension to the upside as well as further refined the double-distribution profile pattern. The POC and value area have now clearly shifted up towards the upper range of the profile.
* 'I'-bracket was a mostly ascending period contributing 3 more ticks of range-extension to the upside.
* 'J'-bracket added significant range-extension to the upside as price continued to auction higher all the way till it bounced off the 2870.00 "big round number" before rotating back lower.
* 'K'-bracket rotated just below the 2868.50 level before pushing up to 2869.50 in a re-test of the high set in 'J'-bracket. Price begins to drop again after this push.
* 'L'-bracket price rotated down 4.5 points from the 'K' period high before rotating back up to match that same high of 2868.50.
@@@ Closing Range @@@
* 'M'-bracket set the closing tone in a bullish manner pushing up for a significant 5.5 point push with range-extension ending on a new high a full 3.5 points above the previous high set in 'J'-bracket. The full market-profile changed shape many times throughout the day as price steadily rose in a choppy fashion.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@7:12AM CST - We have tight rotation around YH. E-mini S&Ps up about 3.00 points. VIX dropped to 13.44. VIX futures slightly higher. Volume only at 119K so that is down from the overnight volume from the previous night.
@Opening Bell - Kind of a slight open drive downward for a few points. Very choppy after that.
I expected to enter short today, but I'm Running out of time to trade, just cannot commit to any of the current opportunities, price could go anywhere at this point. I think patient traders with time will find opportunities to go short in this market.
What i liked:
- Stayed out of ChopFest
What I did poorly:
- not much.
Goals for tomorrow:
- continue reading "Mind over Markets", finish "Competent" section, then review "Novice", "Advanced Beginner", and "Competent" sections
- meditate (I've been forgetting to do this)
- price-action/market-profile homework
- probability theory homework
- refine punch-list for steps to know I'm prepared, focused, and ready to start trading.
- Find next steps and how to drill/practice these next steps for the big picture and ultimate goal.
- write some code and track more stats.
progress towards challenge goal
$3000.00 profit goal.
$250.00 achieved.
$0.00 current drawdown
4 trades of 30 entered.
I need (2750.00/26) = $105.77 per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 4.9999 ticks
I don't use market profile in my trading at this time, although I have in the past, but there are a bunch of concepts in that book that have been entrenched in my trading. Steidlmayer has been on my reading list for a long time. But since I drifted from using market profile its been on the back burner. Still curious though...happy trading!
Day 35 - The opportunities are all around but I'm not able to take advantage of them.
@7:30AM CST - No gap to speak of last night, we caught a big tail-wind, I guess U.S.-China "trade-talk-related". In the moment We are getting a strong move upward, price-action seems to be opening up a bit after earlier "zipper"-rotation.
@7:49AM S&Ps up 18.75, VIX down to 12.99. Almost bit as we got up close to 2886.00.
Working order in, long at 2886.50. We are currently testing that 2885.25 mark again, if we hold with support I am looking for price to come back up and break away to the ~2889.50 level, maybe more. We are slowly losing momentum, I cancel @7:57AM. We slowly rotate down to the midpoint.
@OpeningBell was sort of what I expected would happen, but I would have been more comfortable had price opened up and scaled beyond that 2886.00 level. Clearly the right play was to short that <2885.00-ish level. I was ready to go long if the previous scenario had played out but I wasn't sure about my confidence going short there.
What i liked:
- Stuck with my plan.
What I didn't like:
- Not really anything I did poorly, but I'm just not comfortable yet this week with any trades in the current market environment. I was kind of feeling that 2886.50 long position but the market didn't see value in that so I cancelled.
- Wish I had more time to trade.
- I've been really exhausted at night so I haven't been doing as much research as I wanted to.
- Overall sense of urgency to push my progress forward is leaving me feeling a little helpless with so little time to trade.
Goals for tomorrow:
- I've been really time-constrained, I may look at the evening market tonight to see how the price-action is. /NQ tends to feel a little more active for this sort of trading but I'll have to stick with /ESM9 since that is the only instrument I'm trading for this cycle.
- price-action/market-profile homework
- probability theory homework
- refine punch-list for steps to know I'm prepared, focused, and ready to start trading each morning.
progress towards challenge goal
$3000.00 profit goal.
$250.00 achieved.
$0.00 current drawdown
4 trades of 30 entered.
I need (2750.00/26) = $105.77 per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 4.9999 ticks
@7:25AM CST - E-Mini S&Ps down just $0.50, almost converging on pClose.
I have a short-term trading plan for Opening Call, but nothing yet for Opening Bell/RTH/NYSE. We're looking at Open Auction In Range possibly.
At 7:35AM I open a stop-buy @2880.50 but I cancel soon after because I think we might just rotate around Yesterday's close for a while.
Just dancing around YC, what is the probability that we rotate back down towards VWAP at @2877.50 vs breaking out towards >=2883.50? vs just continuing to rotate around YC? I wish I had a real way to compute these events as probabilities. I think it would require taking a bunch of samples of similar states and running some stats on them but it would be highly subjective. But my whole trading-core is built around subjective price-action! I think the result of this mental-exercise is I need to start doing more data-science/probabilities/statistics on different price-action scenarios. I don't need to go back that far I can just start with the current environment and build a library over time.
@8:03AM looking for price to converge with VWAP, then I believe the next move would be long. We're looking at OAIR so I'm just thinking little piranha-bites this morning instead of shark feeding-frenzy!
Price reversed when it got to about 1-3 ticks above where I wanted to enter, that was a good read, oh well.
Opening-Bell approaching, @8:29AM I open up with a short @2879.00 and a long @2881.00. The short got hit first, price fought for a while before I got stopped-out. I thought that with this price-action, whichever way price decided to go would tip the odds in my favor but I was wrong, stopped-out for an 8-tick loss.
Right up to that 2883.50 mark too, I was close. In hind-sight the dual-open move was probably not the best strategy for a choppy Opening Bell, but I'm glad I got in the game today, too much sitting on hands of late
Final Result:
What i liked:
- Tried an interesting strategy that didn't go my way but my hypothesis about price running up to 2883.50 proved true, I was close today.
What I didn't like:
- A little impulsive trying out the "dual-open", its something I've wanted to try, and now I have.
Goals for tomorrow:
- start using python3/jupyter-notebooks for trading research
- track all the stats!
- watch the /es night-market
- read
progress towards challenge goal
$3000.00 profit goal.
$150.00 achieved.
-$100.00 current drawdown
5 trades of 30 entered.
I need (2850.00/25) = $114.00 per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 2.4000 ticks
Need to put together some good trades and get back on track.
p.s. the probability of a successful outcome on any individual trade is 0.50. but with time and stats i think i could develop an edge for some of these scenarios.
