Bad Day, and Tick vs. Time Charts

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I traded three times today, one loss, one scratch and one more loss. Down -2R for the day, so I quit, like I was supposed to. My trades were seat-of-the-pants, and not from good setups. Bad form. I would have been better off trying to trade Renko trends or working on my automated front end to Remata’s web servers.

Anyway, one thought I’ve had lately about tick charts is this: My TD feed sends roughly one “tick” per second. So if I watch a 120 tick chart, it will serve as a 2 minute chart during the fastest trading times, but during slow times there will be considerably less printed to the chart. Here’s a comparison in RIMM from today, first, 2 min and then 120 tick:

As I stare at those, I get the following observations:

1. Either my charts are too big, or Richard’s web page is too small.

2. The tick chart also condenses the lunchtime chop into fewer candles, as I wanted.

3. It’s easier to see the bull / bear battles on the tick chart. There are huge candles with wide swings on high volume, where the markets are out of balance. When things calm down, and a trend emerges, that seems to be a safer time to get involved.

Anyway, those are my simple thoughts. If you have any, simple or otherwise, leave a comment.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com