Plan the Trade

What minimum size account would you need to trade these contracts - Nas for example?

Could be a useful way to get one's feet wet in Futures ?

Any trades today for you?

Bulls werent messing around.

I think you are asking too much. If you are looking for a mechanical rule set, the only way I know to accomplsih what you are looking for is to do some sort of breakout system where the market buys the highest high of the last x number of bars, e.g. Richard Donchian's "Donchian Channel or the Turtle traders of the 80's. For me, if the market is making higher highs and higher lows, or vice versa, we have a trend. If price is moving more or less sideways with no appreciable net gain/loss and the price action is back and forth (viewed readily as overlapping bars" then the market is in a trading range.

Yes. I typically defer to the cash index on this. If the 9:30 AM open gaps open higher or lower than the prior day's 4 PM close, that is a gap. Also, I consider a gap fill when price trades back to the closing price. In other words, sometimes price might gap open above the prior day's high, pullback to and test that prior high as support, and then off to the races rally all day long. The gap did not fill.

You need to watch and learn from Mark Douglas's videos posted here in this thread. You are, in my opinion, looking for a level of certainty that I can tell you from experience will undermine your efforts to achieve consistent profitability.

Ding ding ding!

Indeed ... if you are a scalper, then scalp, and do not covet the addition favorable excursion price achieves after you take your scalper's profit. If you want to play for larger swings, then you must accept a lower winning percentage. Pick your lane, and groove it.

9:30 to 11:30 AM and 1:30 to 3:30 PM are the money hours. There are exceptions. Hundreds of trade opportunities everyday ... If I were you, I'd grab myself a couple of ema's and follow price along in a demo account for a couple of weeks. Then, remove the ema's, and follow price for another week or two. You will learn more than you can imagine. But do not try to trade in the demo - just watch price.

I believe I mentioned above that I know of a trader who trades only the ES, only the 5 minute chart, and only long. Yes, odds favor long trades. I have a much higher winning percentage across all set ups long than short.

Here is a picture. Always read charts from left to right. One mistake I made for much of my career was reading the chart backwards (right to left) and then I wondered why I could always identify these wonderful set ups after the fact but they never performed nearly as well when I traded them in real time.



The blue arrows clearly show where the market is trending, as price is making higher highs and higher lows as recorded by the candles.

The red lines demarcate trading ranges.

The small green arrows I consider long opportunities.

The small red arrow is a short opportunity. I can't fit it in but for someone who likes to take counter trend 2b's, another red down arrow would go above the fourth candle from the right.

Not all trading ranges are created equally. Notice how the first trading range simply seems to be a resting range. Three pushes to test support, eash a tick or two lower than the previous test - very common - you do not want to be the one selling a tick below "support" in a bull trend nor vice versa. That is a hard lesson for us to learn, I know. I clearly remember many years ago trading the old ER2 and selling the exact low tick of the day, freezing while the darn thing quickly raced 15 points UP from my short entry (a $quick -$1500 loss).

Now look at the range at the right side of the chart. Notice the tails and the overlapping price action, Tails are failed breakout attempts. When you start seeing opposing tails, you are seeing market uncertainty. Anything can happen - and the direction of breakout becomes a 50/50 proposition, and the success of the breakout is likewise 50/50. Most reversal attempts still fail, so higher prices eventually are more likely, but when you see those opposing tails, it is not a bad idea to expect another leg down in the pullback.

In the first range, the orderly price action would indicate a 60/40 chance the breakout will be in the direction of the trend immediately prior to the range forming. The success of the breakout in providing tradable follow through will be closer to 80% if price breaks in the direction of the prior trend, i.e. if the trading range turns out to be a continuation pattern.

While typing that post above, a second leg in the pullback with a retrace buy set up in the form of a 2B with trend long ...

Well Euro Micro is $230 maint and $100 day. I'm sure it'll be around the same. We'll have to wait and see what it turns out to be.

Its gonna be a lower barrier to entry. Only good for the prepared.

Thus far none of the e-micro experiments, to my knowledge, have resulted in a liquid market. Liquidity is vital for small trader profitability. I think that the best way for anyone to come to the NQ is to save up at least $500 - that will allow you to open a demo account with AMP - at least I think so. I used to have a paper trading account linked to my live account. I do not see it anymore, but that could be because I was inactive for so long. But call AMP - if they will give a demo account with a funded account, fund the account with $500. It will cost $5/month for the NQ data - all you need is CME emini.

Then I would not even suggest trading the paper account. I would suggest that the would-be trader devote sometime - a week? A month? to watching price action on a 1 minute chart and a 5 minute chart. Look for patterns. Get with the flow. Do not go into the day with a "bias" unless it is based on your observations of price alone,

FOR EXAMPLE: DO THINK "That big decline yesterday stopped at the prior high which acted as support. The market retraced that entire decline in the last few hours of trade and nearly closed positive on the day. If price breaks yesterday's high, I will be looking for a strong rally."

BUT DON'T THINK: "Well CPI is up so that means inflation so the Fed is going to start raising rates again sometime so there fore this market has no business doing anything but going down!"

The e-micro is likely a non-starter. The Money that moves the market has no interest in low tick size and higher transaction costs. The Money that makes YOU money will not trade the e-micro's. Save up $500 to open an account and start getting data and access to a trading platform.

Then observe price, note patters, and track buy points, max adverse excusions and max favorable excusions. From that data, write a trading plan that takes all the guess work and uncertainty out of what is or is not a trade and how you will manage that trade. Then test your plan and yourself under real market conditions using a demo paper trading account. During this time, you should be saving money and adding it to your trading account.

In my opinion, you should have $1500 in your account for each contract you trade with this exception: You should have a base of at least $3000 before you trade your first contract. Therefore, trade 1 contract with $3000. Once you increase the balance to $4500, and another contract. Add your third at $6000. Add your 4th at $7500 and so on. If ever your account balance slips beneath $4500, cut back to one contract.

2 nice set ups 9725 long 0425 short

Gonna take previous day high?

Example of Trading range with lots of over lapping price action finally yielding two back to back longs. EDIT: I see I did not snap the price scale in the first pi - this is a 5 minute chart and it was two separate trades.

super trading ras

I agree with Divergence - super trading, erasmus!

Hope that ink doesn't run off in the rain ( He does look constipated though)

Pretty good day today, how'd everyone else do?

i'm so fucking boooorrred.

can somebody share anything not boring?

how about this

what do you do for fun since you're retired and only trading 1 hour a day.