Intraday Trading the US Index Futures

Looking to short a LH on the 1M YM chart.

Didn't give me anything before continuing down. I do see a L1 and would take a L2 on the 5m.

Long instead after that bullish 5m. Pullback after the the trendline break, expecting another leg up.

Target reached +58 (just inside yesterday's pullback high after FOMC.

Obviously could have held more, and would have with a second position. Need to get my new account set back up with the correct broker. TDs commission on the micro doesn't make sense.

Looking pretty climactic here. Would potentially take a micro 2 bar reversal short, although any pullback from that move should result in a retest of the high so wouldn't strike me as a good swing trade. We'll see what happens.

Man, ES has not had 1 5minute bar tick below the prior all session. At some point this will exhaust, but the swing for the afternoon might come from a 2 leg pullback long. I thought that we would test all the short covering somewhere near the low of the FOMC mess, but nobody else did apparently.

Two legs up now from the FOMC low with a big wedge top on the 1m.

Glad to see a couple of traders here had a much better day than I did. Today was rough for me. "The night is full of terrors" and today's market was dark as night.

Actually, today is only truly negative if NO lessons are learned from it............

Journal entry:

Synopsis: After two (2) straight losses LIVE, I switched to SIM (note that AT DOM for SIM is light blue). I immediately got whacked again. Then I took a trade that clawed me back into profit. The next trade put me back in the red.



Trade 1 (LIVE):



1: Wide spread UP interval on Ultra High Volume that closed well off its high. This is a weak interval. BUT the next interval is UP which doesn't confirm the weakness of this interval (more on this to come-this is lesson #1 learned).

Obviously, this sign of weakness (Selling) is occurring where I want to see it: in a Supply/Demand Delta Zone. I'm ready to look for Shorts (This is despite the fact the NQ is rocketing higher off a Fading Volatility BreakOut Basic signal that was missed).

2: Although the volume is decreasing on this candle line, it is still very high. The fact that the volume is high and the next candle line is DOWN, this candle line must have some Selling in it. It is Supply.

3: An "Up Thrust" type interval that closes UP on volume less than the previous two intervals. Looks like an Up Thrust in the form of No Demand. Went Short at the open of next interval. Note Short 1 points to the interval that signaled the trade, not the entry candle.

Before I could even start to dream about my place in the Trading Hall of Fame, I get stopped out.

Trade 2 (Live):

1a: After being stopped out of trade 1, I immediately see another Ultra High Volume candle closing Up and well of its high. This is the candle that took me out of the trade, but it appears to be a serious sign of weakness in its own right. Although the next bar is UP (see next trade photo), it has volume less than the previous two bars and is No Demand. I entered on the close of this interval.

The NO Demand does not confirm and I get whacked by a wide spread UP candle on increasing volume (again, see next screenshot).

Tade 3 (Sim):



Two straight losses. Today's is not my day, time to switch to Sim.

1: Wide spread UP candle on Very High Volume (not Ultra High) that closes off its high and with the next bar DOWN. This is Supply.
On the first two trades, maybe I was a bit premature (that's not the first time I've heard that ). We are in a Supply/Demand Delta Zone and Supply has appeared.

2: DOWN interval closing in the upper 75% of its range on volume less than the previous two intervals and a lower low. This is a Test. We look for Test when we want to get Long, not Short. This Test does pass with the next bar UP (Warning).

3: While confirming the Test, this bar closes UP on volume less than the previous two intervals. This is No Demand. Note that the volume had dropped well below average. No Demands are most powerful when volume (activity) is below average.

I want to get Short because of where we are and the apparent background weakness. So I short on the close of this No Demand interval. So I take a trade only to get stopped out with another loss.

Trade 4:



I want to get Short because of where we are and the apparent background weakness. So I short on the close of this No Demand interval. So I take a trade only to get stopped out with another loss.

As this post is already very long, I will keep this short. I accepted the direction the market wanted to go in was UP. I reverted back to traditional WRB Zone theory, where a Zone is used to take trades in either direction and started looking for a Long, despite being in a Supply Zone.

There are two continuation signals present. I need to do more research on them, but I may incorporate them into the plan. I saw a valid Go With Volatility Break Out Pro (GVB Pro) signal and got Long.

I made the entire loss back and got into the black. I then saw a Fading Volatility BreakOut (FVB) Basic and got short. I was pretty confident this would work because the Supply/Demand Delta Zone is the Zone created by yesterday's FOMC announcement. It made sense that price would at least retrace a bit from this Zone................It did but not with me in it.

Thank you for sharing all this! I got on the right side, but cut it so short. I also ended up taking a short at the top for another +40 so had a fantastic day at over 100 on the YM, but there was much more to be had. I did get a nice short on the 2nd entry reversal (in the orange box) what I would label a Higher High Major Trend Reversal (HH MTR), but got out after the 2 legs into the EMA/exhaustive bar followed by up bar. Its a low probability trade after so much strength but good R:R so positive expectancy. If only that crash happened after that exhaustive bar! That drop was out of nowhere, so no reason to expect I would be in it, just wishful thinking.

My initial idea for the day was correct, but I was unwilling to accept the market wanted to go UP first as much as it did. I ended up being 'right enough' I guess, but it played out much differently than I expected with that incessant climb up. Continuation has always been harder as with trend entries always tend to look much worse to me than counter-trend. Fortunately most days are range days and these 'bulldozer trends' don't really occur all that much.

Excited to get back to Ninja once the new broker is setup so I can use a more friendly and familiar charting/trading software. TD is great for buy and hold, but the lack of chart trading (and trade markers, and other chart drawing) is much less friendly for active trading than Ninja.

Short - already BE. From the low of the red 1m bar after the big bull bar. this is the 1a2, a second attempt to go down.

And out already while i type... +61

It is an ETH chart, but the setup for me was an RTH setup. However, on the ETH chart, it was simply a breakout pullback. So setups on both charts. I guess the exit was a ETH level that I would not have had without the ETH chart.

Figured out how to turn trade markers on,although they are a bit obnoxious to look at.

Tried to get short again, but had to take a BE on the trade. And then of course it went. This does look like its wedging a bit into a low, which could lead to a more tradeable pullback on the 5M.

Absent some sort of major strength in a pullback, the first pullback on the 5M should provide a nice short in this soft trend so far.

Anybody else looking at anything?

Lesson learned from yesterday - make a Twitter account and have it tell me whenever Trump tweets...

Done for the day, its been a pretty good one. Caught massive bearish momentum in trade 2.

Once that trendline broke I decided to buy (bad idea to fight downwards pressure). Closed that trade for a loss and followed the trend down south once again. Pretty cookie cutter trendline breaks today.

Very nice. Are those 1 minute charts? I didn't realize you could get actual futures on MT4, I always see CFDs on MT4.

5 minute charts. I opened an account with AMP Futures, since they let you use MT5 for futures trading. I know most futures traders prefer NT/Sierra/MultiCharts, but MT5 despite the drawbacks is still the most user friendly IMO and that's good enough for me (for now)

I'm a big fan of ninja and bought it back when i first started and thought I would get rich quick. Then I blew up the account of course, but still had the lifetime license. So have stuck with it since.

So you basically look for a trendline to break and then trade in the breakout direction? Do you use the bar close or just place a pending order?

Finally getting some actual pullback on the 5M. Would love a 2 leg on the ES to short if this pullback behaves itself.

It has now poked into the trendline starting at yesterday's drop on the RTH chart, plus broken today's trendline with lots of strength. Could end up providing a MTR 2 leg long as it retests the low. That seems lower probability given the bigger picture, but who knows.

I tried out Ninja years ago and couldn't make heads or tails of it lol, but I've been meaning to get back to it. It was part of an "order flow trading course" from Darkstar, a former member here. Coincidentally we traded YM too, but we essentially just traded S/R breaks in the direction of market sentiment (gathered from the day's news releases).

And yep, I am just trading 5m chart trendline breaks on bar closes, sometimes using heiken ashi to exit. Nothing fancy or exciting, but reliable. The biggest rule for me is to stop trading for the day if I have 3 losses in a row...there's always tomorrow and revenge trading is a bitch.

I've heard of Brooks' price action courses, but also that his books are pretty difficult. Did you find that to be the case? Are you familiar with Bob Volman's work? He also does pure PA scalping, but with 70 tick charts.

Brooks' books are very difficult to read, but I find his end of day blog entries fairly helpful. He marks a whole lot of potential entries for the non-paying general public, but I try to review my session compared to that chart.

There was a blog of a trader that utilized his teachings, but distilled into useful information that was much digestible than the Brooks' books. (http://ninetrans.blogspot.com/2017/0...ions-book.html). It's all free and I think has had the most influence.

When I first started I was being mentored by a guy that scalped single tick line charts, but could never figure it out myself. I did okay, but then would have massive loss days (revenge trading like you said).

Then have studied everything known to man as I think much of us do, including Volman.

The reality of it all is that I think most of it all works, but for me, I needed to just realize that I would probably be a 50% win rate trader and would therefore need to manage to larger wins than risk, preferably 2x, but preferably more. I still have trouble sometimes when I see the dollars and just want to take them, but have to remind myself of the bigger picture. This trade doesn't need to be a win, not even this day needs to be a win, and focus on weekly or monthly profits secondarily, and primarily on just managing trades per my plan.

Perfect two leg correction on ES at the 100% projection of the first leg. We'll see if this sets up an entry bar or not. Maybe it keeps going. There was a two-leg correction down after the first leg up which could have been the start of the MTR. I have to leave pretty soon so maybe no entry, but we'll see what happens here.

Not super into fibs, but this is also the 61.8% retracement from the RTH leg down today and the 38.2 from the last swing high at the end of yesterday RTH.