» trending market

Scalp Trading a Slow Market – the way to go

sniperdaytrading — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:56:40 +0000

Today’s Trades;

Monday’s Trades;

Today is Tuesday March 22nd and we saw two days back to back that were the slowest days together that I can remember in a long, long time. There was just no movement and what there was didn’t go very far. This is when scalp trading can really come in handy. A person who does not know how or is not willing to take small gains in both directions will get eaten up alive. I can only imagine, that traders across the globe just got killed in this type of market.

This is only one of the benefits of being able and willing to take what the market gives. That is the key. You can not take blood from a turnip. I think we have all heard that before. You also cannot take a trade expecting a trending move when one does not exist.

Being able to read the market and scalp trade your way through it, when the conditions say too, is the way to have a profitable day. When the market is trending, great, we can do that. When the market is choppy and trend-less, that is OK too. I will admit, I did not like Monday’s or Tuesday’s session at all. It was difficult to sit through the session and wait it out, but I knew that is what had to be done or else, just don’t trade today. Well, I elected to exercise some extra discipline here and there to pick up back to back daily goals to start the week off. I have quiet a long streak going and will try and add to it going forward.

Today, I was a little concerned, with the first two losses in a row. They were not the worst entries, but they were not the best. I could have taken a little more time to get up to speed with what was going on. I rushed it today, for sure especially on my first trade. Well, I can go back over a bunch of what I did not like, but I can also say what I did like and there was plenty to be grateful for.

Last Friday’s post, I did say that we had a least 15 S&P points left in this move up, and we got about 20 and now two days of pause. For the market to move back and fill the large gap opening would be normal and somewhat expected, but you have to leave the door open for a continuation move up again to another level, it is possible and I will call out the upside numbers.

If we break S&P 1193 on the upside, we could quickly see 1307 or slightly more. (That is just my opinion and not investment advise). In the night trading we are off several points to the downside, but by tomorrow’s opening that could change. If the market has a chance to break out we should recover any night trading sell off by the open tomorrow and quickly be challenging the low 1190″s area to have a shot at the upside breakout.

Be ready for anything. With two days of very quiet trading, the market is just digesting its gains and will have mustered up another big appetite for more or will feel tired because he overate. Be ready for both, because we should see good moves coming out of these doldrums. Good trading to all.

Big Stock Market Move Coming !

sniperdaytrading — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:58:03 +0000

Today is Sunday, February 28th and this post is for Fridays market.

The market on Friday, I believe is marking a little time. There is a good chance that we will see the rally that I had talked about last week. We saw an inside day, from Wednesdays market, followed by the sell off I was looking for, but came up about 6 points short of reaching the target. The next part of that was the reversal I called for, and it did come, closing at the highs of the day, I am sure a complete surprise for many. That happened on Thursday and Friday we just saw some base building and ended the session up slightly near the highs of the day. Monday will have to be the day to rally if in fact it does. To me that is the on time day.

The market sentiment numbers came this week with some changes. On Tuesday, the new numbers came out after a large market drop and thought it might have an influence. It didn’t, in-fact, it went the other way with bullishness increasing by over 6 to around 42% and change.

I believe there is still room for a rally here, but it will probably be contained. The market is in a key spot right here. The volume and volatility is going to pick up for sure. I can see it in the daily charts. Be on the look out, I think we will see a trending day up, but anything can happen. The market is in tipping point position, a move big one way or another, which ever way it breaks, you will see high volume and a little conviction behind it. Well, that is what I see. Always keep an open mind and don’t hold onto any market direction opinion so strongly that it blinds your decision making ability to read the price action. I mention it, because it happens all the time to traders.

Trade what you see, not what you think. That will keep you out of trouble to some extent. One more thing, if we get a trending day, try and trade in the direction of the trend as best you can. Trying to go against a strong trending day, can wreck havoc with your account equity.

Find what you feel are safe entry area’s and enter as the trend continues. Playing a choppy market or trending market is different and you need to ready for both.

Fridays trades below, daily goal met. It is not perfect, but trading is not about being perfect, but doing enough right things to get your points for the day.

Good Trading to all.

Interesting Trading Lesson Today

sniperdaytrading — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:48:16 +0000

Today is Friday, April 3rd and I had a good day, but not without a few problems.

I started out just fine. I almost had my daily goal in just a few minutes. But then I was not patient enough to wait just a minute more for a clear signal and sure enough, I got stopped out. That trade was going to put me over the top and capture my daily goal, about 15 minutes worth.

What happened after that is, I found myself in an up-trending market and was looking for a counter trend trade setup. This was the trend starting about 8:30 am W.C. time. I doubled up on a trade short 5+5 for two positions short and got stopped out with a 4 tick stop. Why I fought that trend up, I don’t know. This goes back to what I was commenting on earlier in the week. If you get a picture or idea in your mind that the market is going to do something and it is not co-operating with you, the problem is not in the market action, but with you, or me in this case.

This is why we all need to be humble and respect the markets. Trading success can be a great thing to give you confidence in your ability to put together winning trades, but it can also be an Achilles heel. Each and every day, you really need to keep an open mind to direction. This is what can happen to a lot of traders if they think they know the next move of the market. Let the market tell you and don’t be impatient. If the whole series of moves looks a little confusing, just let a little time go by. That is what I did today, when I was up to almost daily goal and slipped back just a little in the red.

I took a break and came back a little later and started nailing it. I came right back like I have done in the past to post some real nice gains for the day. I ended up taking it to two times daily goal or around $2,500 in equity, but it took me some time. I just put on mostly small trades, 1 point, 3 ticks and so on. I was just focusing on market timing. I took my trade size down to average 5 contracts, some smaller, a few bigger, but averaged around 5. With a 5 contract average I probably picked up a net after commission 10 points of profit to get my totals.

If I am having trouble, for whatever reason, I almost always go back to my bread and butter trading. Sometimes when you are targeting 2 or 3 points in a trade and the market is not giving it to you, change and be satisfied with 1 point here and 1 point there. It adds up pretty fast, if you keep stringing them along one after another. It counts just the same as a 3 point trade. Trading is not always easy and there are many unseen factors you could be battling, but try and keep it simple. My method is simple, but not easy. And there is a difference.

I have a short video of some of the last trades I took today. It is on a clean chart and I will show you some of my timing techniques while using trendlines. I could have captured a lot more points on a lot of these trades, but that was not even in my mind for the most part. I was concentrating on market timing. If I just get that part right, I know I can pick up the profit, it all adds up the same at the end of the day.

Have a great weekend! Vince

http://www.screencast.com/t/QfwuvFFWzMc Today’s equity chart

http://www.screencast.com/t/e73y7VRj1 Trendline trading lesson, video 5 minutes

Today’s Profits: Finished in 7 Minutes !

sniperdaytrading — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:15:56 +0000

Today is Thursday March 26, and it was a quick day of trading.

Yesterday I had posted that I wanted to increase contract size and trade less. Well, I got my wish.

I was able to shift my thinking to attain my stated goal and it was nice. I had two trades, the first one for 1 point on 10 contracts, all in – all out. The second one was for 1 point on 5 contracts and 2 points on the other 5, and I was done.

This what I wanted to do as I wrote yesterday. $1,2oo profit after commission on two trades. Now I have the rest of the day to accomplish other things of interest. I would take every day in the same fashion, and will be working towards that end.

This was my original plan from the beginning and I will continue to work at it. Consistent daily profit is the objective, combined with the least amount of struggle to get there. Once you reach your daily goal, I will admit, it is and will be hard to stop trading. That is where you will also need a mentor, someone who is on the same desired path and can give you the support and discipline to stick to the plan.

Anyone who partners with me will have my full attention and support to help them see what I see and do what I do. It is hard to go it alone and you will most certainly pay your dues one way or another, but it would be my job to help make those dues as small as possible. There is usually no easy way around the fact that you will need help in trading consistently for daily profit. You will pay someone for the experience. Everyone does. You will pay the markets because of your losses and you may still not have learned how to trade consistently. Or you can pay someone who knows how to help you get there.

There are very few trading programs that are of any value and a lot of them are a waste of money. Many of them are focused only on indicators, or some other idea that puts you and your account at great risk before you are able to capture your occasional gain.

There are many ways to trade the markets and I believe that the way I approach day trading is one of the best available. When it comes to a choppy market, I love it. While others are just wishing for the day to be over. If we are seeing large swings up and down by several points, I love it. Because I can easily capture additional profits on extended moves. When the markets are showing long extended trending markets, no problem. We just look for low risk entry points along the way and pop in and out before anyone even spots us.

When you are able to trade the very small stuff, 3 or 4 ticks, you are able to take advantage of any kind of market, because you use the method to get you into a HIGH PERCENTAGE trade that gives you a pre-determined amount of profit. If you only need a couple of those trades for the day, it does not matter what kind of action the market is displaying.

In any of the three types of markets that I described above, you come out on top. There are many people out there that say scalping is the most difficult type of trading there is. In part, because they are not able to do it successfully, so they talk it down and people believe them. Then you look at the alternatives – trading a higher time frame chart, waiting hours for the right set up, risking 4 or 5 points on the trade, and then have it go against you for a loss. Now what do you do? You are running out of time before the day comes to a close and you want to be profitable for the day, so you take a less than desirable trade now for another loss and you are totally frustrated. Not a good day.

With my method, you will see plenty of trade possibilities in whatever type of action the market is displaying and have the ability to capture a nice trading profit each and every day the markets are open. That is the goal. Is it attainable? Yes.

If you have any questions, please email me and I will be glad to answer them for you. Have a great day.

http://www.screencast.com/t/gYuBtR2l Today’s trades

http://www.screencast.com/t/GP2oGYTi Today’s equity chart

Called Live, Short Term Top In Today’s market.

sniperdaytrading — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:54:22 +0000

Today is Monday March 16th and I posted another good day on the e-minis.

While Trading the S&P e-minis today, I called out the short term top in the market before it happened. You can hear me make the call before it happens exactly at the the high of the day. Then you can hear me make the call, on how we will be pulling back from that high point down to lower levels. At the close of the day, the S&P pulled back off of my short term target, by 20 points. That is a lot in two hours, with the Dow off 190 points.

This is going to lay the ground work for a continued pull back. I suspect that, at the open, we will get a small reactionary rally, but I would definitely be watching for short trades. We have had some technical damage and the path of least resistance should be to the downside.

With this being said, the market can do anything it wants at any time, there is no guarantees. All I can tell you is that when I see a pattern like the one I am looking at right now, a pull back is what usually follows. I will be watching for short trade setups and will stagger some of my exits. That does not mean all of them. I always watch price action to tell me what to do and that is what I will be doing.

I try to not have a strong bias for direction too far in advance, but it is something I will be looking at. It may be that the big sell off does not come until the afternoon session, or it could come early on. Price action is what will influence my decisions at that time. I only lay this out for you because I am looking at the daily chart, just like I am looking at a 5 minute chart or tick chart for that matter. The price action is the same and currently looks bearish.

The day was really pretty smooth. I had the time to trade, so I just kept at it. I started out with some nice gains and within a few minutes I had my daily goal. I cut my size back but kept on trading and added to earlier gains. I mostly traded small all day, 2’s and 3’s were the most common contract size. If I had some draw downs it was not going to eat into earlier gains with the small size. I did have some good runners today and captured some of them on video below, so be sure to take a look.

There are different ways to approach the trading market based on price action. If we are in a choppy market and you are trying to go for bigger moves, you are going to struggle. One way that I overcome some of that is to first identify what kind of market we are in. If its choppy, don’t even think about going for more than 4-6 ticks. You will have another trade in just a couple of minutes to capture additional profit. If in a trending market, you can set yourself up for a few more ticks, but you have to know how to play it and not get greedy.

Again, in today’s market, I had quit a few of these. If you have the time, take a look. If short on time, you can always come back later. The bottom line is that I try to get myself in a break even situation first, then a small gain, locked in. After that, if the market runs, it’s all gravy. By only trading small, I was still able to post some nice gains because of the runners.

I closed out a long position that I got stuck with over the week end for a profit of several points. That gain did not count towards today’s numbers below. Today, I took 32 trades, 25 gainers and 7 losers and my total scaled out percentage was 77%. The total equity gain for the day was just a little under $2,500 dollars on mostly small size.

During a couple of the videos I am calling the intermediate term direction and as the next video progresses you can see it come to pass. We hit the short term top in the market today and pulled back 20 points, take a look.

http://www.screencast.com/t/oPiqTiFG6 Today’s equity chart

http://www.screencast.com/t/P9iiuTUPd Some of Today’s Live Trades

http://www.screencast.com/t/Bna8H6Oe Some of Today’s Live Trades

http://www.screencast.com/t/NAik15UUR Some of Today’s Live Trades

http://www.screencast.com/t/y7YeoTIZC Some of Today’s Live Trades