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Monday, August 9th - Just as an FYI, I now only post trades to my journal now, not non-trades (days where I don't take a trade). My methods are pretty clearly described in previous posts. I may make other posts of whatever else I'm thinking about, but those are more random in nature.
Today I got a gap fade signal, first one in weeks that I took. There have been signals on other days, but I was either on vacation or there were errors in setting up my gap fading strategy.
Price opened up in the U-H zone. While the combined win rates weren't that great for that zone (I usually require 60% or greater), the win rate was close, and the profit factors were juicy enough for me to take the trade as long as it didn't open 40% higher than the 5-day ATR. The MTG moderator decided not to take the trade due to other risk factors. Today my divergence from the Master paid off
All futures contracts on Globex have a settlement period at the end of the day when trading is halted. For some instruments it may last for 15mins (indexes), other instruments last 1 hour, like the FX futures. Well, when they re-open at 6pm Eastern the 6's often gap from it's 5pm Eastern closing time, creating some interesting equilibrium plays. Since the market is very thin you'll want to use limit orders. I'm not sure what kind of stop loss strategy you'd want to use here but these can provide some easy gap fading opportunities. Has anybody ever looked at this?
Tuesday, August 17th - Set up to fade the YM because I didn't like the odds in the ES but I didn't get an open in the zones I was looking for as it opened in the U-H zone, above the highs of the last two days.
However, I did take an open-range breakout trade on a break to the upside for a 4pt win.
Still not sure how to play these. Like index futures gap trading, you often have to have stops larger than the gap, though you can sometimes make it up with hitting extended targets when the gaps are small. Each one of these blew through their gap fill targets, both longs and shorts.
Wednesday, August 18th - I set up to trade the 2 zones near the close for a gap fade. It opened in one but the gap was too small. I actually considered setting up an extended target trade for small gaps in that zone, which would have been a winner, but I did not.
I took a 1st hour trade to fade the highs of the first hour but I couldn't survive the 8+ points of heat. It eventually did turn around and hit my target just as the market closed.
Thursday, August 19th - The 2 zones surrounding the close looked pretty good, even for an extended target trade with small gaps, so I took a shot. The market opened with a 1 tick down gap, which triggered a long extended target trade, but I got filled 1 tick above the close. I hit the extended target just before the market turned down.
The 1st hour numbers were published at 7:30 but I didn't get to look at them until 7:40-ish because I was caught up cleaning up a rat infestation in our garage. There were good odds to go with a break-down below the 1st hour lows but when I saw it price had already broken down, then retraced back into the 1st hour zone. The ES was on sale! So instead of going in with a 4pt stop and a 4pt target, I put a limit order to sell 1pt above the first hour lows with a 3pt stop and a 5pt target. I got filled and the market turned around hitting my target without much heat.
