Posts Tagged ‘daily charts’

Tick Chart Trading the S&P Emini Futures

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Today is Wednesday and the market took off higher to close up +275 on the Dow and +35 on the S&P futures.

We saw a very nice day today to the upside. I said yesterday that I was a bit undecided but wanted to see a break of two numbers, one down or one up. Which ever one breaks, that is where the move is going to come in at. We got the up move and the number I gave yesterday was 1030. That was right in line with a nice break to the upside at 6:55 am West Coast. There was only one other trade after the open before this main break out that could have been traded, so you did not miss much of the move after the market opened.  The market did not look back and we moved up +29 points after that 1030 number to close at 1059.25.  A nice call.

I did not come into today’s market until later on in the session and did pick up my daily goal. I had two 1 point losses and 1 tick loss with 8 gains that were scaled out of. Today was not a big day but still a nice daily goal. My losses were 100% my fault and could have had all winners again today. Bad timing and not doing things right will most often not give you the results you want. Just the opposite is true. If you do the right things at the right time, you will be rewarded, plain and simple.

There were so many good trading signals today and yesterday, it is not even funny. I love my trading method because it will work in any market condition. I can always scalp a point or two out of the market even in low volatility days. A few points and I am done. When the markets are moving, you have the benefit of catching a lot more if you want to. I have two main models to trade out of ,my T-1 screen (scalp screen setup)  and T-2 screen. I mainly use tick chart in my trading, but time, volume or range charts can be used just the same.

The second screen, of which only a fraction of the whole screen is shown, is my T-2 screen and is mainly for trending markets. I have other things built into the all the screens, but can only show you a limited amount. (Something is better than nothing). You certainly can scalp a point or two out of this as well and I often do just that. I have become a bit partial these days to the T-2 screen, as I am trying not to take counter trend trades and this screen does help me see that better.

We look at different time frames as well, with the one I most often show, being the smallest tick chart of the three. Two charts are internally designed to work together on the front screen and gives you the zoomed in view for best entries (as shown) and a zoomed out view for the bigger picture. My custom trading indicators are intertwined together inside these two charts which gives the same signals on both screens, creating a synergistic effect.

I have a U-Tube Video of today’s trades, showing the smallest tick charts of the three and yesterdays trades, as well as all the trading signals generated by my indicators. Just following the indicators will generate consistent profits, but we teach how to read and trade the price by itself. The two are a powerful combination. Take a look in the video and see what you think. A trader only needs a couple of these trades to do very well each day.

Enough said about that. The sentiment numbers came out today and it was down 4% to 37% bullish. Very close to a big buy signal, but no cigar. We needed to see that 35% to get confirmation that this move will have legs.

Right now, the market looks good and there is likely more to go. I do see likely initial resistance at 1066 S&P futures, but may likely trade to 1080 after. The daily charts are still pointing down as are the weekly even with today’s move. We would need to finish this move up, then retest somewhere in the middle of this range to see if it is going to hold. So more work to be done by the markets to see if we can turn the corner in the daily charts. In the retesting between now and next week it could be enough to get the market to bit on the last 2 % needed in the sentiment index to give this market a real boost, we shall see?

If you have questions or want more information, drop me a line at vinnie@sniperdaytrading.com

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Face Your Day Trading Weaknesses with Change !

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Today is Monday February 1st and what a good way to start the first trading day of the month, +15 on the S&P and +118 on the Dow, but will it last?

Currently, the momentum on the daily charts is down and the 120 minute chart (2 hour) has just turned up today. The weekly chart is flirting with a turn in the momentum, but it has not happened yet. A lower weekly close and I am sure it will turn down. So, a pull back up for now, will bring a moment of pause to the market from this recent sell off. We could see a sizable move, if the market can get up over todays high with any conviction.

I do see some pretty strong over-head resistance just a couple of points higher from todays close. We very well may see a slight rise on the open, followed by a pull back down inside the range one more time, before we make another attempt to break out of the downtrend. We will see what tomorrow brings, it should be good. I think the price action is going to get better, with good swings in both directions.

I did not post anything for Fridays session, I had company over the weekend, but I will post a video managing Fridays last trade + 5 S&P points and show my results for the rest of that day.

In todays trading, I did pretty good. I could have had all winners, but I did not take enough time after a break I took, to better accurately see where we were and likely to go, resulting in a loose of one point. Other than that, I had several trades that I scaled out of the positions for multiple point gains and a few 1 pointers or so. It’s in the video below if you care to take a look.

I was going to stop after my first three trades, which was plenty for my daily goal, enough for even the high side. After taking a break for about an hour, I thought to come back for another session. I don’t always do this and I don’t always recommend traders trade all day or even most of the day, because fatigue can set in and the likelihood for making mistakes goes up.

If I do come back, I almost always cut my size down. That way, if I have losses, it is not going to impact my gains as big a degree. If I have additional gains, it only gets added on for nice day. This is a conservative approach and is recommended if you already have made your daily goal.  

We have all heard of “Money Management” and how important it is. It is true. If you increase your size when you are not trading well, you make everything harder, not easier. Traders often try to get back what they lost by doing so, which is one reason of many, that most don’t make it. I hope that is not the case for those who take the time to read my trading blog. I try to give a mix of different idea’s, thoughts and insight into a day traders world.

Most of us pursue this business because we love it. We love it for the opportunities that it can bring as well as many other reasons.  Some traders want to make it ($) fast and lots of it. I don’t recommend that either. If you go to fast, you only speed the process up to the point where you will again make mistakes, loosing the hope you had when you first started out. You can’t change past trading mistakes that we all make, but we can try to uncover what it is we just did, why we did it and what are we going to do to change. If we don’t take all three of those seriously, we will only come back another day and repeat the same trading mistakes all over again.

I was watching a movie recently where a patient was seeing a doctor. He told him, it hurts when I do this. The Doctor then said, if it hurts when you do that, then don’t do it. We don’t like it when we take losses that are not apart of our plan, strategy or method, but your first loss is best. Why is it that we to often take trades that don’t fit our model. Lack of patients is one of them. I admit, I don’t have all the patients I could use sometimes while trading. That is why I trade small time frames. I don’t have to wait to long for another trade to come my way. If you are trading 15 minute  bars or even 5 price bars, you may have to wait for some time.

The point is, everyone is different and we all need to find our strengths and weaknesses. If you know what your are strong in, work on making it better. The area’s of weakness, take extra time and reflect what is holding you back. To often, it is in our minds. I am serious. There are a lot of good traders out there that are just an inch away from bringing it all together. They just need a little help, guidance and support.

Let me give you two things that can really help those who feel that you are so close to bringing consistent profitability to light. I know of and have heard of traders who have done this and they say, it is the best thing they could have done. I have talked before about how important the mind is and to often, how we see ourselves inside, gets transferred outside. If you don’t have the inside part right we only work against every good thing we try to bring to the trading screen.

There are many ways to go about thinking the right way, not only when we trade but throughout the day. I can see that I am close to my typing limit and I will probably just wait until tomorrow to better give you the right background on this. If traders take this seriously, I truly believe it will help some if not many bring up there, BOTTOM LINE. 

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Big announcement at the bottom of todays blog

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Today is Thursday September 17th and the markets had a bit of a pull back today. The weekly chart is up, the daily charts are up, but the hourly chart has just turned down, resting  on support currently and has not technically broken down, but the momentum has slowed. Any break of todays lows will more than likely pull it down at least a little.  On the same token, if it is able to take out the last pivot high, it could easily continue with the uptrend on its way to 1100 plus. It appears to have momentun on  its side right now and having that round number so close, it may just try and make a run for it. Lets see what happens.

I have a chart of the S&P in short video showing the weekly and how close it is to a 50% retracement from it’s all time high of 1573. The low came in at 666 and the exact middle of the range is 1120. The momentum should carry it up there sooner or later. If it pulls back a little, that would in my opinion be a little bit better, giving it time to fill in the gaps and settle into its high ground. The faster it moves up without a rest, the more dangerous it is later on down the road. The same is true for the bottom that it put in. Take a look in the video what kind of bottom was put in back in 2001 before it took off. That was a solid base to build off of.

This bottom, is more of a V bottom and typically they are more susceptible to a re-test or at best another big pull back of 62% of this current move, when ever it ends. That to me would be the best case scenario. But long term, I am a bear. I will not let that opinion effect what I do in the trading arena, because I really only look too much smaller time frames. It is still good to be aware of your surroundings though.

I have not been trading lately, but have been working on getting my website up dated and my training material more complete.  This is going to take still just a couple more weeks until I complete what I want to accomplish. When I start up again, I will be preparing to follow the program I have designed by capturing at least 2 points a day and after 5 days of profit, moving my contract size up by one. So if I am on track I will be increasing one contract per week. At a rate like that, in 40 weeks I or anyone who follows me, will be trading 40 contracts for at least 2 points per day. On the days that I hit more, than two points, my hope is that it will make up for any day I run into my daily loss limit of 4 points for the day. So I have some room for error in getting to 40 contracts with the next 50 weeks with two weeks for solid vacation. If I or anyone is able to do that, they will be bringing in $ 1,000,000 million dollars a year. If you do the math you will see this is correct.

Let me just spell it out quickly here, 40 contracts x 2 points (50 dollars each point) = $100 x 40= $ 4,000 for the day x that by 5 = $20,000 for the week x 50 weeks = $ 1,000,000 for the year and that is if you stay at 40 during the whole year and not move it up.  Just getting to the 12 week in the process, trading 12 contracts takes you to $ 6,000 per week or $ 24,000 on a monthly basis, just trading for 2 points per day. Not to many people could do this, but I am preparing to be one of them. I say that humbly, because that is the only way I will be able to make it happen. I have a lot to work on and most of it is on me, myself and I.

My trading method works great and I have 100 % confidence in it. Again, the part that needs the most work, are all of the other area’s of a person’s life. Once you start trading with larger contract size, things start to happen, in your head. It is like that for most people, but it does not mean that it can not be overcome. You just have to identify the blockage and address it, head on, being willing to change to make it work. How committed are you? I know how committed I am and plan on using that and all my skills to take me on my journey.

Look for some changes on my site and that would include pricing. I will be making my trading program more affordable so that more traders will be able to take advantage of a low start up cost. I will have a back end fee tied to it, but that will be only if you are able to make your points and go forward. It will all be spelled out, so be on the look out for it in a couple of weeks.

http://www.screencast.com/t/n4SEGVZuf       Turning points for 9-17-09 / 5 minute video showing

http://www.screencast.com/t/dPsStSNIs         Weekly, daily and hourly charts / 5 minute video explaining

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Trading Lesson: Part Three

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Today is Friday June 27th and we got that day like I suspected we would, consolidation.

Yesterday’s blog pointed out the fact that after a day like we had the previously, we often get a consolidation day. The downtrend has been confined to a new parallel channel which broke out yesterday, now we have been making a move back up to the middle of the range. A late rally brought us very close to a 50% retracement, but no staying power and it fell back.

One very interesting observation I saw today was that the S&P was making one move ahead of the Dow. After the S&P made a move, the Dow would come up behind it and duplicate the move the S&P just put in. The market since yesterday midday has been just moving sideways consolidating the earlier gains. It has formed a new parallel channel of which the S&P broke out of first late in the session, while the Dow just moved up to the top of the channel, but no break out like the S&P. From there it was one move behind.

When you see things like that it can help you get a glimpse into what is coming next. Next week is going to tell us a lot as far as which way the continued trend is likely to go. The support came in exactly where I thought it would on a parallel channel support from the dailies and has moved up 32 S&P points since then during the last 4 days as I originally called.

What to look for this week. It would appear the the move back to the middle is not yet complete, so I would first look for some follow through to the upside of 5 to 10 S&P points on the cash market. Once that is completed, that is where you are going to have to keep your eyes open. If the market stalls, what we have in place is a real nice pivot point for a continued move down. If that pivot point gets broken to the downside, you are going to see a lot more selling come in and lower prices.

On the other hand, if the market acts strong and can move past its mid level retracement point and push up close to the old highs, it will start to challenge and possibly break out over it. That is what we don’t know. We still have what looks like a “Head & Shoulders” formation brewing, but that can all be washed away by renewed strength back to top of the range.

The market sentiment numbers are not giving any real clues as they are currently in the neutral range. We have to remain open minded as far as direction is concerned. So keep what I said fresh if you are trying to figure out short term direction on the daily charts.

I will pick up where I left off on the training. These were the three things I was talking about and discussed the first two already. These are some of the biggest reasons traders fail to become profitable.

1)  Place trades out of fear of missing a large move

2) Reaching for trades, trying to make up previous losses

3) Create a mental directional position that makes it impossible to trade against when the market turns against you.

If you tell yourself that the market is going to go up, based on whatever it is that helps you determine that and you are strongly convinced, you will blind yourself to any future price action that says differently. Not a good idea. You will repeatedly get stopped out of your positions, because you will not allow yourself to see both sides of the market.

This is a real big one and not to be taken lightly, as are the other two. Your subconscious mind will not allow you to take a trade in the opposite direction because it will go against everything that you hold to be true, so you become blind to the real price action before you and repeatedly get stopped out, wondering what just happened. Only after the markets have closed and you look back, will you see what was happening and tell yourself, “I can’t believe that I did not see that”. It happens to traders all over the globe every day.

How do you avoid such foolishness. Answer:  Keep an open mind to direction and always tell yourself to look at both sides of the market. If the move is up and you are in it, fine. Look at the next two higher time frames (separated by a multiple of 4 or 5 – I use 4) and identify the status of their trends. If it is unclear, you can always trade out of the middle time frame and let the other two stand idle for a while until it becomes more clear.

At this point you need to trade the price action alone, not what you think is going to happen or what should happen. Forget about it. Trade what you see and not what you think. What until you see a solid base trade setup and move on it.

The other point is, if it is not clear, again, forget about it. Leave it alone, take a break, walk away, give it some time. Don’t allow yourself to take more than two stop outs on any one move, it is just not worth it. Let the action finish up and then you will see where it wanted to go after all, but you can learn from the price action and be better prepared upon the next directional move.

Now doesn’t all of that make sense?  Sure it does. The next question is going to be, do you have the self discipline to do just exactly that? Only you can answer that, but if you are not sure, you need to get sure, FOR SURE. You need to know yourself pretty well to answer these questions. If you have doubts, you need to start going over it in your head ahead of time. What are you going to do if you find yourself in this situation? Force yourself to answer the question and don’t leave the table until you at least have the answers.

Next, you need to find the will to follow through with your conclusions. One way is to play out the script in your head over and over. Repetition has a way of cementing the ideas into you, so that when you need  ”memory recall”, you access  the hard drive of your mind and bring it up. If you write out the process even better. That is like adding 4 gigs of ram to your system.

So much more to say, again not enough room here. I will recap these 3 training points, maybe over the weekend if I can slip it in, ready for Monday trading.

Have a great weekend !

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Video of Today’s Results with 9 to 1 profit/loss Ratio

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

Today is Wednesday, May 13th and I decided to do something a little different from the start.

Today’s session was a little different in that I traded my bread and butter scalp trade setups – mostly. I took only a few trades for more, one I remember was for 3 1/2 points and a couple others were for two points or so. But the bulk of my trades were for only 1/2 point. I only had that mind set from the start. I wanted to show how I can scalp trade and only run a 2-3 tick stop for most trades.

In fact, since I am having a problem getting my equity chart to come up on Tradestation  (just not working?), I have a 5 minute video of the trades that I took below. Most all of the trades go past my target and that is fine, I was not worried about leaving points on the table, that was not what I was there for. There were some trades that I could not get filled in time at my price and that was ok as well. I show a few of them in the video. I have some of the trades identified as potential trades and that is all that they are, potential trades that I could have taken, but some of them are the ones that I could not get filled at my price.

Keep in mind, to get to my basic daily goal of 2 points, I only need 3 or 4 of those little trades to get it. That being said, my stats for this type of trading this morning is 24 gains and only 4 losses with a few even trades. The stops that I took were -2 ticks, -2 ticks, -1 tick, and -4 ticks but this one was only on 1 contract, the other half of the trade was a gain.

This did not happen by accident and it is repeatable. So many people cannot bring themselves to only trade for such a small amount, that they miss the possibilities. I am not saying that this type of trading is what everyone should do and not even myself for that matter. You need to be able to pull out different tools in order to build a house. If you only have a hammer and nails, that’s good, but you may not get the house you are looking for if you only have those tools in your bag. There is more that may be needed. Anyway, this is part of the method that got me out of trouble yesterday and I am giving you a glimpse of that type of market action today.

There is a set of conditions that are met every time to get these results and it most certainly is repeatable. If done right, you should be able to hit 80+ percent of your trades and still run a very small stop. Those are good odds, how ever you look at it. Now, as far as size is concerned, I dropped it down to only 3 contracts. I did not have to, but I did. With this high percentage trade, I could have been trading 10 contracts, easily.

Today’s results produced about $ 600 dollars profit per contract traded, in 3 hours and that is after commissions. So, since I was only running 3 small contracts, I added $1,800 with today’s results. If I had been trading the 5 contracts that I usually trade everyday, that would be 5 contracts x $ 600 per contract net  $ 3,000.  Ten contracts would be, $6,000 and 20 contracts brings it to $ 12,000 for the day. A few weeks ago I was trading at 10, but I brought it down to mostly 5 lately.

Anyway, that is pretty darn good. I was getting tired after 3 hours of this and that is why I stopped. It is a lot more than I usually do, but I was on a roll. I could feel that my concentration was slipping, so I took that clue as my sign to stop. I could come back after lunch and do it again, or trade sparingly for higher point returns, if the market is rolling, but either way, to be able to trade profitably at will is a great feeling and a nice boost of trading confidence.

We all need to remember to stay humble and I am speaking to myself right here. If I, or anyone else gets sloppy or trades without discipline, the market will bring you back in line or take you out. The second part is what usually happens. If anyone trades without a plan or method, you will most certainly be one of the ones that gets taken out, that is for sure.

You cannot think that you have greater trading knowledge than the traders on Wall Street, who do this for a living, and still come out ahead of them without a trading plan and or method. That is the problem with the small independent trader who thinks he has a handle on it. It takes time and without help, it could take years and a lot of money and you may still never get it. There are very few services out there that are of any real benefit to the small would be trader. Most never show you actually how the markets work and it can be confusing and frustrating for many. I never learned from anyone but myself and it took me a long time, but I am happy to say that this is a compilation of years of experience that has been tested over time. It works.

The great thing as I have said before is that this method can be traded on any instrument on any time frame. Mutual Funds, Stocks, Commodities, Forex, Futures, all of them work the same. In fact it is easier to trade higher time frames because it is very slow to develop and you have a lot of time to see things take shape. The downside of that is, you need a much bigger stop.  If daily charts are your thing, then by learning how to trade small time frames, you are exposing yourself to so many screen shots, over and over again. As time passes, you will get very familiar to what a good set-up is supposed to look like and then apply that knowledge to the daily’s.

Consider trading for income and a modest daily goal. It just could be what the Doctor ordered !

http://www.screencast.com/t/xMmWZHiAmI 5 minute video, to replace today’s equity chart

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