I watched the markets for the first 2 hours and made one trade today. A 1pt per contract win in ES. The video shows that there were two valid setups for me later in the day, both of which would have been easy winners as well. Not bad!
I was happy to see that volume was a little better today than yesterday. Maybe if we have a strong start tomorrow, I’ll stick around for longer. Incidentally, tomorrow is eotpro.com’s open house for their live room. If you are curious, go check them out!
Here is the way my charts look lately, with the one trade I took this morning. +2.75 pts. This chart is built around a primary setup, and the rules for this setup are pretty simple. First, price needs to be near (1) the yellow dots (2) the dashed yellow line and (3) the CMA. Second, the beads and paintbars need to agree with the price. Third, there needs to be a current or very recent PattyB entry signal. Looking over some recent data makes this setup look promising, and whenever I get a chance I will backtest over months of data to be more sure that it “works.”
Exits are managed like I’ve been managing all my trades lately. Combination of trailing stops and “magenta” fib extensions (you can see the fib extensions getting me out of this trade, as they are the red clover-shaped dots in the panel just under price action).
Notice that I’ve modified and cut down on the number of beads I’m looking at. I had mentioned in a recent video that I was planning on evaluating everything and getting down to just the essentials. I think I’m closer now. Although the top line of beads represents the eotpro GVolume Oscillator, I have added the actual oscillator back on top of the PattyB as well. It’s such an important indicator that I’ve decided I want all the nuances of it available to me, should I want it.
Sorry, no video today… I’m out of town and without my headset (again!).
I’m not sure I’ll be able to trade Wednesday, but I’ll definitely be around Thursday and Friday.
I’m taking a half-day today, since I have errands to run. I finished the morning up 2.75 pts after 2 wins. Not bad considering we were in a 4 pt range for almost all that time. In this video, I talk about trying to keep things simple and focused on the local action, rather than getting too wrapped up in the larger-view. For stocks, the long view was essential, in my opinion. For the index futures, it doesn’t seem to be as big a deal.
Here are the screenshots, since I know the bar colors don’t come out very clearly in the videos:
Not sure if I’ll be posting anything else until late next week. We’ll see!
So-so day for me. 4 wins and 1 loss, so I’m pretty happy, but I missed the one good chance I had to make a lot of money.
Nice and easy, 3 trades for 3 wins in the first hour. Then quit early to head out for a swedish massage.
Life is good.
I was at my desk the full day today, unlike most Thursdays. Tomorrow I will be gone for most of the session, though.
Not a bad day, though I got chopped up and gave up a lot of my early profits. Had a strong close for the day, though. I think I will keep my hair for now :-)
I made money today, but the markets didn’t make it easy on me. I usually got into moves as they were ending, I’m sad to say. Looking at the overview PnF chart (which I didn’t remember to feature in the video, sorry!) you can see that your best bet today was to hop on the initial run up as the markets opened. I missed that move, so I had to fight it out in the chop that followed!
Still, using the synthetic bars and the pattyB + beads, I had something like 5 wins and 1 loss. Even better, the loss was only for 1pt. Even better, if I had stuck with the losing trade, I would have made money on it without getting stopped out. So, even the trade that scared me out turned out to be an okay entry. Hard to complain about that.
Quitting early today… markets will probably move like crazy now that I’m gone… but whatever.
Anyway, last two days I’m undefeated, though the wins were small. I think I have adjusted now to the choppy recent action. Probably just in time for it to switch on me again :-)
I made a video showing how you can possibly filter down the PattyB signals via the bead reader on a very fast @ES chart. I only looked at today’s data, so more research is needed.
Also, I thought I was going to capture a “live” trade on ZG tonight, but a surge of volume drove gold crazy, and ruined the opportunity. Still, I’m not going to go to the trouble to put my headset on, and then not post the video! Quantity over quality every time.
Making money, at least, today. I made a brain-dead decision to try a short play a second time, after getting stopped out once. So, two stops in a row cut way into my profits. Oh well. If the second try had worked I’d be writing about how I’m a genius so I guess I can’t complain.
Stopped the bleeding and at least won a little today.
… and I do mean a little!
The eotpro.com folks have been investigating the strengths and weaknesses of range bar charts. Tradestation doesn’t have range bars, but it does have PnF charts. And, you may or may not know that PnF charts are an extremely close cousin of range bars. The only difference is that a range bar chart will split up a long directional move into multiple bars. This means that most indicators will move over to range bar charts pretty smoothly, while indicators are usually pretty hit-and-miss on PnF charts.
Still, I applied the various eotpro indicators to some PnF charts tonight, and about half of them seem to do really well! And, importantly, the GCycle_Stochastic and GVol_Oscillator seem to be useful. Those are the two main indicators I use in my recent trading.
So, I may investigate that further, since as many of you know I am a big fan of PnF charts. They were a big part of my stock trading setup. For futures, I haven’t been using them as much, except for reference. Maybe that will change…
Markets not obeying me, two days in a row. I’m going to have to put on my stern warning face.
I’m noting that we did over 2.5million contracts in ES today… and I’ve just checked the 6765 share bar chart, and seen that the bead signals were much cleaner on it. You may have heard me say before that the bead signals on 2584 are harder for me to read… so maybe I need to shift up to 6765 on high-volume days (or get my act together and learn how to read the beads on faster days).
