HumbleTrader's next chapter

March 4th, 2023, 02:12 AM

I'm going to start a new assignment in Canada for a couple of months and hence unable to post regular messages here in the forum. I will try to continue to post my weekly results. I will keep an eye on all the active journals.

March 4th, 2023, 05:19 AM

Narcissus

I'm going to start a new assignment in Canada for a couple of months and hence unable to post regular messages here in the forum. I will try to continue to post my weekly results. I will keep an eye on all the active journals.

Good luck and safe travels!

March 6th, 2023, 07:14 PM

My signals were mildly bullish today but I decided NOT to trade the long side. It's unusual for me to break the rules but it was a deliberate and calculated move due to 3 reasons.

1. Option data suggested strong resistance above 4050.
2. Recent price action suggests short covering rally rather than commited buyers.
3. We are testing 20 DMA from BELOW and this can be bearish.

I was actually planning to skip the day but after seeing the rejection above 4075, I was emboldened to try short 1/2 size and held till (almost) the end of the day for 25+ pts gain.

I had opportunities to scale up my size but I was mindful of trading against my signals AND the trend and hence exercised caution. Overall, a good day.

March 7th, 2023, 09:40 AM

Mixed signals for today. March 7, Tuesday 2023. Price opening @ Y-Close indicates that there is NOT much conviction from either side.

FED speak today. I'm in wait and watch mode.

If we take Y-low, then I will consider shorting the bounce to vwap.

March 8th, 2023, 12:54 AM

Did NOT trade yesterday.

I did place a limit order just above vwap @ 4043 which was NOT filled. Bounce was pretty close though and upto 4039. Perhaps I was greedy and expected price to bounce up a lot after the Powell triggered impulsive down move. Perhaps I was too cautious and didn't want to get caught up in FED whipsaw.

No regrets. OK. That's a lie. Minor regrets but market is still around today. So, No worries.

March 8th, 2023, 11:12 PM

Interesting day - Decent winner turned into a small loser. However, no execution errors and quite happy with the outcome.

I had a short bias, which was not strong as price opened @ where we closed the previous day. Hence I decided to wait till Powell's speech.

After the 1st impulsive down move, we had the expected bounce. Though my limit sell above 4000 was not filled, I later got myself into a decent location @ 3995. I scaled in @ 3992 after seeing more weakness. However, I scaled out @ breakeven after seeing new HOD above 4000. This was a good risk management behaviour on my part.

I scaled in again @ 3985 after seeing more weakness. It seemed like my trade was working with a good MFE. Instead of taking partial profits, I decided to let it run and expected a big ATR day like Tuesday. Instead we only had 30 pts and much lower than expected. To make things worse, we had a final push by buyers and my paper profit vanished.

Despite the disappointing outcome in terms of P&L, I was quite happy with the trade because of 3 behavioural changes.

1. I was able to scale out of my losing trade @ break even, using stop limit order, showed by yellow circle.
2. I was able to scale in again, even at a worse price, when my trade thesis was working again.
3. More aggressive attitude to maximise my profits instead of grabbing small gain and getting comfortable with losing paper profits.

March 9th, 2023, 10:06 AM

My signals are bullish today. I decided NOT to trade in the morning as I'm somewhat distracted by issues with plumbing in my new built house. Though I was expecting chop before NFP and a smallish range, currently the relative volume is quite high. Not sure whether I will dive in later today.

March 9th, 2023, 11:46 AM

Short 4010

(I trade SPY but use MES levels so it's easy to communicate with other traders who predominantly trade futures)

Despite my bullish signs, I am short. Purely price action trading with the theme of fading the extremes with the expectation of range day. I admit some fundamental bearishness with interest rate re-pricing is clouding my judgement. But, hey, my position is in green and that's all matters, right?

I admit it's a risky strategy to fade with elevated relative volume but once I saw 'distribution' above ONH 4008, I felt trend UP day likelihood was less. Gap closure is likely in play and it's working out so far.

The real question is whether Bears will be brave enough to hunt ONL stops which is still within the recent average ATR or the Bulls are ready for a new HOD? I'm betting on the former, even though it seems less likely. That's always a good indication.

March 9th, 2023, 09:52 PM

Ambush by sellers.

Though I was part of their team, I had no idea of what's coming. I got in @ 4010 and got out @ 3985 i.e ONL. Quite happy actually as I grabbed 25 pts or almost 70% of the recent ATR. However, the elevated Relative volume and the distribution above 4000 were the clues for a potential bigger move downside. Will remember that next time

The only way to grab these monstrous moves is by using my 'beloved' End of Day EOD order. My recency bias of giving up paper profits the previous day played a role in early exit and the small ATR made me conservative in profit targets. However, I have no regrets with my 'smallish' P&L because I'm constantly learning.

.

March 10th, 2023, 01:28 AM

200 DMA breach stats

After offering some support during the last few days, 200 DMA finally gave up (? for good) today. I wanted to see the how ES behaved the following day.

We had 70+ occurrences in the last 20 years and the overall outcome was bullish with profit factor close to 2.

More importantly, when I add specifiers like VIX, MA and ATR, this bullish bias tends to persist.

Now to the fascinating part. Out of those 70 days, 60 of them had a lower low during the following ETH session! You don't see that kind of strong correlation in datas. I used that piece of info in a way I always wanted to use. I had a multi-day swing MES SHORT position, as part of my other experiment, and yesterday was a good day to take profit (especially with a potential bounce today). However, instead of taking profit @ Y-Close 3920, I exited @ 3895 i.e below Y-L and banked extra 25 points. That's what I call dispassionate trading. Not Zen trading yet but not too far

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