Even though volume and the range were abysmal, I used my latest scalping method to make 7 trades this morning, for 6 wins and 1 loss.

I don’t remember if this is one of the ones I made or not (the bars go by really quickly on a 233 share bar chart!), but this is a good example of the setup. We tap the rolling vwap, then come down with red bonnie’s bars and red market sync. Then I take profits at the math line, skipping the line I’m right on top of on entry.

Yeah, it’s kinda fun to scalp… but also much more strenuous than what I’ve been doing… and the money you make is not proportional to the extra effort needed. I hope I don’t feel inclined to do this all summer! But, you gotta adapt, and if the market wants to chop, you gotta either have a method that works, or step aside.

Anyway, I’m done for the week. Have a good weekend, and I’ll see you next week.

I’ve been playing with a simple scalping method, based on the eotpro elite series indicators (which I authored, and so I obviously think they are the bee’s knees).

What I like about this chart, is that it’s all price action. No subgraphs. It is deceptively simple-looking, though… I would never take every trade that sets up this way. I use my other charts to decide when good scalping times are. Still, as an easy in-and-out method, I like it. In this morning’s trendless, oscillating market, I was able to find some little trades to make this way.

Basically, the entry is always just after price comes down and tags the rolling VWAP (that blue line). Then, for longs, entry when the paintbars (bonnie’s bars) turn green. Then exit at the math lines, and bail on any remaining contracts if bonnie’s bars turn against the trade.

Very easy to follow, but like I said, you still have to know when the right times to believe in this kind of setup are. That takes a bit more finesse and experience.

Here’s the one that got away….

Every day, there will be trades that don’t quite meet your criteria, that would make you a ton of money. You can’t dwell on that, or you will end up forming bad habits that drain your account. This was the only signal I had this morning, and as you can see, price was not really trending against Alla’s Average. So, I skipped it. It was the right thing to do.

Before I quit for the day, I made two small scalps on my faster chart. None of my main signals looked good enough to me today. Summer markets… getting slower and slower…

I still haven’t been able to make a video that youtube won’t mangle… so today we’ll go with a screenshot.

Three signals, two viable. This leads to two trades for two nice wins. A nice way to end the week! The entry points are at the vertical lines, and the profit taking areas are at the ellipses.

Why isn’t the middle one viable? As you know, my only criteria once I get a signal dot is “are we trending against Alla’s Average?” (the yellow line over price action). In that middle signal, you can see we were nowhere near Alla’s Average. I tell people that in a trend, we will pull away from Alla’s Average, then chop back towards it, then pull away again. That’s exactly what happened, and as you can see, it’s very stress-free to grab the two big pushes down if you are patient enough to wait for them.

Even if your judgment faltered, and you took the middle signal, note that bonnie’s bar color (in the first subgraph) turned green almost right away, which would be your signal to bail on the short trade with a tiny loss. Yeah, my charts are like a well-oiled machine! :-)

Have a good long weekend, everyone… I’ll see you Wednesday (even on long weekend weeks, I take Tuesdays off!).

Today was ok but not great. 3 trades for 2 wins and one loss. But, the second win was only 2 ticks, and only because an experimental eotpro.com indicator scared me out just in the nick of time.

My last few videos have been mangled by youtube. They must have “upgraded” their transcoding process. I hope this one plays correctly… I used a different codec this time. If it doesn’t work, then I apologize and I’ll try yet another codec tomorrow!

I quit around noon central time, ahead of the FOMC minutes chop and eventual madness. Good luck, if you continue to trade in it!

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I took the day off, as usual… but I glanced at my charts and they looked pretty good today, so I made a quick video about it.

I got a note in the mail from TD Ameritrade. Like most traders, I have left a trail of brokerage accounts in my wake. Anyway, this was snail mail, not e-mail. And, the mail says: “We are unable to reach you by mail.” I’m not kidding. So, they can’t reach me by mail, and apparently they decided to send me mail about it. But… the only way I would get the mail is if they are wrong. And, the only reason to send the mail is for me to get it. But, if they think they are wrong, why would they bother saying so? It was a truly zen USPS moment.

[edit: I see now that youtube has screwed up this video... this time by running the video part way faster than the audio part, and cutting the video off.... This is extremely frustrating. I will try using a different codec tomorrow, and see if that helps. I have been making videos for many months now, and am just now starting to have these problems. How strange.]

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I had to wait a long time, but eventually a signal got through all my filters, for nice profit!

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Finally, a decent day for my style! 3 signals leading to 2 trades, both of which were decent wins.

Still, the movement was slow enough that you needed patience to sit through it. That’s just part of how the game is played, lately. Adapt or die.

I have been getting a ton of stock trading questions lately, and am going to try to write a post covering the types of answers I’ve been giving to people individually. Stuff like which stocks to trade, and things like that. Not sure what’s causing the sudden stock interest out there. Strange…

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Not much going on. I tried to capture a live trade for you guys and gals, but it just wasn’t meant to be, today.

AND, now I see youtube has seen fit to truncate the movie I made. I’m uploading it again, and if the second one is full-length, I’ll replace the one above.

edit: nope, youtube just can’t handle my level of manliness today, and refuses to show more than the first 2:24 of my video. Enjoy!

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Uneventful trading day for me. Small, small profits. Yawn.

That’s what playing it safe is all about, though, sometimes. You gotta be able to stick to the sidelines when your criteria hasn’t been met. If you can’t, you will eventually bleed your account dry.

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Sorry it’s been a couple days since I’ve written a post. I went to visit my parents around Mother’s Day, and took Monday and Tuesday off. What can I say? I’m lazy! I should be trading tomorrow.

Looks to me like the action today really sucked, at least for my trading style. I would have taken a small loss, and then had a smaller gain, if I had traded today. So I guess it’s lucky that I didn’t!

Anyway, here’s an ad I posted on the tradestation forums today, for the eotpro elite series of functions I’m offering to the public. I point out the way we use Bonnie’s Bar colors to bail on failing trades early. In this example, I show a 1-tick loss followed by a much larger gain. Better than my actual trading chart did, today!

Low volume, choppy day again. But with a conservative methodology like mine, you can still find a couple good entry points. Just takes patience and will-power! :-) See you next week.

Today there was a rare, obvious ascending triangle play on ES. I don’t ever see those, it seems like! More often on ES are things like cup+handle, and Head&Shoulders. So that was kinda neat.

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A lot of people have been chopped up, or unable to find trades the last few days. I’m happy to say that I’ve had very few signals, but they’ve all been very good. I go over that in this video. So, if you are getting chopped up a bunch, you may want to consider techniques like I am using. These include, making sure price is trending against a good support/resistance like Alla’s Avg, only taking trades with a healthy estimated risk:reward, staying on the right side of a fresh VWAP, etc. If you’ve been watching my videos, you know the drill.

It takes patience to trade this way, for sure. If I felt pressure to pull the trigger every 30 minutes, I’d probably be hurting this week, too. When you think about it, though, the market’s not here to please you or entertain you. You need to trade on the market’s terms, which means you need to trade when it’s willing to give you easy money, and only then. Think about it.

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… or lack thereof. Pretty uneventful day for me. Not many signals got through my filters.

Anyway, I made good use of the time. Among other things, I’m converting/forwarding/reconfiguring all my various email accounts to get them hosted through gmail. And this time, I’m trying to keep the various personal/trading/business/etc streams of email segregated. This will make my life a bit easier, I hope.

Also, I am considering dropping my dotMac membership. Apple just didn’t deliver on this one, in my opinion. Year after year, I waited for them to add services to it that I would really want. Instead, I mainly just use their mail and AIM address, and–to some extent–their on-line storage. I can get that stuff free elsewhere.

As I mentioned in the video, I have been enjoying the new NiN release, which you can get for free in a variety of formats. Awesome. This is not ambient music like Ghosts was… it’s more like a typical nine inch nails release. And, if they provided a way to pay them anything, I didn’t notice. Hey Trent, give us a freaking paypal button, and at least some of us will use it.

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This is just one more example of how waiting for the best signals can make your trading a lot less stressful. It’s so funny, because not long ago I was taking a lot more trades. Maybe I will feel like that again one day. But for me, the name of the game in 2008 has been relaxation. I have multicharts filter out all but the most promising signals, and I know in advance where my profit targets are. Feels good.

Of course, I (or you!) could adjust the settings to make the signals much more aggressive, or you could run it on a faster chart, etc.

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