Call me Vidvad - I day trade futures

Not just that.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/wha...TsqAu1cflhDEJQ

One of my notifications this morning was that kthrapp350 ignored me. kthrapp and I have been FF friends for years. I can only guess that somehow his personal allegiance to Donald Trump is such that he feels the need to "cancel" and personal relationship he has with someone who doesn't agree with Trump's behavior and positions. Either that or he is so pro-Russian aggression that he can't stand the sight of my post supporting Ukraine.

Either way, this is a sad to me, that a fellow FF'er would put politics above personal relationships in such a way.

That is why the USA is in such a terrible spot right now. The MAGA movement has turned us from all being Americans to an "Us" versus "Them" mentality. And any difference of opinion is used to separate us into tribes. My pro-Ukrainian post specifically mentioning my feelings about Trump's behavior yesterday is the only thing that could have prompted him placing me into the tribe of those whom kthrapp hates.

He'll not see this, but I wish him well, and if ever he chooses to unignore me, I'd give him a follow.

Greetings from Nazi murderers do not belong on these pages.

I don't want this journal to get any more political thsn it is at present. I meant only to voice my own support for the Ukrainian people in their fight againt the Russian invasion.

To whom are you referring as "nazis?"

This is just brain washed russian propaganda
to justify their crimes.

I think I will be limiting my participation here at FF to the weekends. I had such a good week and I made such good progress that I don't see why I shouldn't keep at it.

Here is a post I just made responding to this thread here at FF:

Higher Edge within a Single Candlestick | Forex Factory

It is a ten year old thread and I'm not sure why it was revived (or maybe it has always been going steady, who knows?).

I had never seen this thread before, and I saw it on the FF main page, so I looked at the most recent discussion, and then went back to the original post. I responded because there are elements to the Gonzalo method that are 100% dependent on an edge that exists within a single candle.




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I appreciate your skepticism, but you seem quite closed off mentally to the possibility of value here and thus not looking at this clearly.

If you use the candle close and the next candle open as a marker, as a level(s) from which and by which you measure and judge price movement, then it is very nearly the holy grail. Not quite the holy grail, but satisfyingly close for those who do the work and the study to uncover the edge.



Trading is not at all about predicting whether price will go up or down. You don't need to know what's going to happen next in order to make money, as Mark Douglas always said, which is very good, because no one, no matter what method or system knows what is going to happen next with any certainty.

Once you accept that you don't need to know what's going to happen next to make money, "timing" matters significantly less than you think it does.

Replace "timing" with levels and money management, and timing takes care of itself.

I am not going to turn this into a systems thread (and I certainly don't want to turn it into a politics thread!).

However, I am going to share some charts simply to share what the market looks like to me as I trade. By "how the market looks to me" I mean simply what my charts look like, i.e. what the market looks like to me, quite literally.

I have four charts in my Ninjatrader workspace.

1) The first chart is my affirmation chart. When I close my workspace, this is the chart that is selected for view when I save my work for the day, and it is therefore the chart that opens on my screen when I open Ninjatrader the next morning. Why I refer to it as my "affirmation chart should be apparent.




2) My second chart is my current timeframe for trading the Gonzalo method.

3) My third chart is similar to the second chart in that the candles are the same timefram as I am using for the current volatility to trade the Gonzalo method, but it also has M1 or M5 bars super-imposed over the candles. In this case, it is M1 bars.

4) My fourth and final chart is the "Detrended Roadmap." I've worked with variations of LauraT's Roadmap for quite some time now. I feel the rocky renko-HA method was really just another version of LauraT's roadmap method for reading the markets. What is of interest to me is the frequency with which Detrended Roadmap signals correspond to Gonzalo Method signals. I never would have discovered this had I been spending time on social media this past week instead of hyper focusing on becoming the best trader I can become.


I'll not be explaining how I am using these charts to enter and manage trades. I've tried sharing enough of my methods with others to know that there is no way I can truly "teach" someone to trade a method as I do, even when that method is completely rule based, stripped of every last ounce of discretion, and completely mechanical from entry to exit. The reason is because it is my method and not your method, and you will not be able to eliminate your discretion from adversely affecting the performance of the method by deliberately self-sabotaging your trading by not following one or more of the rules. The first thing every individual with whom I have ever shared a trading plan does with that trading plan is he changes it. He doesn't like the stop loss, he hasn't truly accepted the risk and moves the stop the breakeven, the trade moves against him and he moves the stop, then adds to the loss, or the trade moves in his favor and he cuts the profit far short of the target. I don't know why this is how it is, but it is.

There are beautiful edges lying all around forexfactory. And yet the majority of almost every systems thread is either someone making changes to the original method or complaining about why the method doesn't "work."

There are three truths of trading I have finally come to accept:

You have to find your own edge. You can use a method designed by someone else, but unless you are willing to trade it and stick with it until it is no longer someone else's method, but has now become your method, you don't stand a chance.

Once your edge is yours, you must truly accept the losses that are a necessary part of any positive edge. If you don't, if you can't stick with your method through the inevitable and uncomfortable losing streaks until such losing streaks no longer cause you discomfort, you don't stand a chance.

And finally, you truly do not need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money. Every edge has losses. You simply cannot know before any particular trade of your edge if it is going to be one of the wins or one of the inevitable losses. And it doesn't matter. Just keep trading your edge. If you can do that, not only do you have a chance, but you will be unstoppable!

This is for Onra, who asked me a question in a PM in response to a post I made in a trading discussion thread here at FF. I'd rather keep my input here in my journal. Too many weirdos and big egos elsewhere on FF.

Here you go Onra. Instead of M1 bars I am showing M5 bars with M30 candles. The pink data numbers refer to the ohlc values of the M30 charts.

I use the close of previous bar and open of current bar as levels from which and by which to judge what price is doing. You have to find your own way, though. As I said in the other thread, there is a definite edge to be had from using any bar M15 and higher, e.g. M15, M30, M60, M240, M480, daily, weekly, monthly. But how the individual comes to define that edge, and then plan to trade that edge and manage his money around that edge is a very individual decision.

Everything I use as inputs for trade entry is visible on this chart. No hidden tricks, indicators, or calculations, other than my TP and SL. My SL is simply the most recent high or low, my TP is either a multiple of the risk or a fib retrace level of the previous M30 candle.

I don't want this journal to turn into a systems or methods thread, as I really am working on "next leveling" myself at this time.

I think I took my first day trade on the ES way back in 2005 or 2006. That was also the boom days of retail forex in the US and I traded with FXCM, FX Solutions, and others. I was reading through some old rocky thread posts from before my time and I saw someone mentioned having bought Peter Bain's forexmentor course. I rember doing that also. What a rabbit hole we go down when we put it in our head's to start day trading with the expectation (and we all have this expectation) that we wil soon be trading "full-time for a living" lol!

Here I am, 20 years later, and still working the day job and still trying to fulfil that initial expectation.

I've not traded the whole 19 or 20 years, mind you. The entire time I've had a day job. It has only been since covid that my day job evolved to a point that I now can trade most mornings. In the past, years would go by without me placing a single day trade, or even looking at a chart. So when I say I've been trading for nearly two decades, that just measures the time from first trade until present day. My actual experience is probably 25% of that, or about 5 years; and almost all of that 5 years of experience has been jammed into the last 5 years.

FF has been a nice resource for me. Some of my favorite threads are these:

Highest Open / Lowest Open Trade | Forex Factory

Trading is as simple as 1-2-3 | Forex Factory

Roadmap - A Way To Read Markets | Forex Factory

Just A Journal | Forex Factory

A great thread with various contributors each trading methods of their own choosing:

Flying Dutchman | Forex Factory

Then there is rocky's thread, especially the section where he was trading with the 8 ema bands using the Heiken Ashi candle formulae applied to renko bars, is what drew me into participating at FF. His first method is also of great interested to me, though as he himself discovered, trading retail forex is largely a sucker's game, at least for American traders. The costs are high, and the lack of a centralized exchange leaves the data feed (and thus your trade results) up to manipulation by the market maker, i.e. your broker. I don't use any of the stuff in rocky's thread any longer, but I do credit my working through his stuff for probably close to two years and having prepared me in no small measure to experience the roulette epiphany.

I would start at post 2236 of his thread where he first posted the LauraT channel with the renko-HA.
Williams%R, SAR X-over 15 minute candles | Page 112 | Forex Factory

I'm not suggesting anyone devote the next two years to rocky's method. By posting this here, my suggestion would be to look at my example of how I approached his thread. I started with what his then current version was, but then for the next two years I tried very hard and with great diligence to make his method my method. That is what each of us has to do: Find a method that moves you, that generates something of an "A-ha!" moment, even if the essence of that "A-ha!" eludes you as it did me. Then, practice, back test, sim trade, live trade, over and over, refining the method into something truly meaningful to you.

Though most of my experience as a day trader is relatively recent, I do have a history of experience that has been and remains meaningful to me. For example, I remember reading TheRumpledOne's posts with great interest. He is the one that probably first put the idea of trading off of important price levels, i.e. horizontal lines in my head. I have gone through stages where I use indicators, which TRO calls "squiggly lines," but my preferred methods (including my Gonzalo method" use nothing but price bars and price levels.

Soon after I started trading, I joined a trading room on a website called avidtraderDOTcom. I don't know why he closed his service, but at some point in the later 2000's Avidtrader shut down his trading room. There were many good traders there and hungry newbies like myself (Tom Hougaard, for example, was one those hungry newbs).

There was a member who went by the name mebob. He came up with a method that was called, fittingly, the "Mebob Method," and it was based on the use of what he called a reference bar. The reference bar was the M5 bar that opened at 10:05 Eastern and closed at 10:10 eastern on the ES. While I do not use his reference bar or time frame, the notion of having reference bars has remained a part of my own search for my own method, and it is indeed a part of the Gonzalo method. One of my discoveries upon moving to larger bar durations such as M15 to M60 is that almost every bar can serve as a "reference bar."

Put together concepts from TRO and Mebob and FF's own TooSlow, and you you willl see the intellectual precursors to my own method of using the close of one bar and open of the next as a level by which and from which to measure and judge price action.

I wish I were an original thinker, but I am not. I am hopelessly derivative. The only thing that makes me "special," if I can be said to be special at all is that I recognize ideas that spark some corner of my dark understanding and serve to light my path along the way.

My goal from the first day I traded an emini contract was to find a method that removed all, or at least nearly all discretion from my trading. I've been told by many, including some here at FF for whom I have great respect, that such a method isn't possible. Well, thankfully I didn't listen to them, because that is exactly what I believe I have finally distilled from the many posts, books, old TASC articles (who here remembers Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine), youtube videos, personal web blogs (many of which are sadly defunct and erased from the internet), etc.

Most of this post was prompted because I was "cleaning out" my gmail account (which is almost as old as my trading efforts) and I found an old email I sent myself of the Mebob trading method that I may have copied form an old web posting by Tom Hougaard for all I know (I seem to remember that I went looking for the mebob specific some number of years ago and I found them posted somewhere by Hougaard). I then went looking for information online about Mebob to see if he might be active somewhere, and sadly what I found was his obituary. He passed away in 2023 just a few months short of his 88th birthday.

I sat down last night to created a "mebob" template in Ninjatrader. Nostalgia set in, and here I am with this week's last post until next Friday.

I'm logging out of FF now.

I'll see you guys on March 7!

Thanks for sharing Vidvad ... I recall Mebob along with AvidTrader... Gems.. For those interested here's a pdf from Tom Hougaard with the Mebob mechanical method along with alot of other good stuff.
Hmmm cant upload the pdf too big... Just google Trader Tom & Mebob the pdf will pop up.

TASC !!!! YES !!! Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES ....Ive got boxes full of them!!!. All part of the journey. You can still get them online, at the store and download whole issues and also just articles (subscribers) Absolutely great education. I seem to recall AvidTrader magazine ? hmmm maybe 2005ish? Short lived ?

Anyhow have a great week Vidvad.

Cheers

Thanks man!

I just want to add some charts from this morning and the only way to do that is to sign in lol.

Continuing with the close/open thesis I made somewhat explicit this weekend. Keep in mind that when trading MNQ or NQ, especially at the NYSE open, there is going to be slippage, some positive (in your favor) and other negative (resulting in worse that desired entry/exit fills)

So this is from my prop account showing two trades. First a short stopped out on a trailing stop for about +5 points, and then the long right after that resulted in a full +50 point profit.


M30 candles with M5 bars and the close/open level (from which and by which I measure and judge price action).





Once I lock in +50 points or more on NQ, I am done with that one for the day in the prop account.

Today is one of those rare days where I am working from my office all day, so I will be monitoring both the NQ detrended roadmap template I Posted previously over the weekend,. I am especially looking forward to spending a week monitoring the mebob template that I resurrected over the weekend. If I do any mebob based trading, it will be my personal account, and I will trade MES instead of ES.

mebob template

I found that link. Thanks blue!

tradertom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Avid-Trader-Tribute.docx-1.pdf

Nothing wrong with systems as part of the thread. Without a good system you can not do much with the epiphany. It is not going to mean much. One thing that every system needs is price movement. Sounds so simple and it really is. Most people do not know enough about market structure that they trade the consolidation parts of the day like the market was still in a trend On the ES and NQ and Dow futures a trend can last maybe 10-30 minutes. That is why I watch multiple time frames. I use tick charts, but I also watch a 3-5 minute chart along with a one minute chart. Keeps things in perspective. How ever we chose measure all of this is up to us. I miss Stocks and Commodities. I used to go to the book store and sit down with a coffee and read the thing cover to cover. I have not done any thing like that in a really long time. Any way the ways to measure price action are endless. But the goal is the same. Get a good entry. Then when do I exit. Just to not trade the noise during consolidation and get in the trends. And do not get greedy. every time I get greedy I lose more often than I win. I just try to be simple. It has to be simple. Simple works. Every one have to great day.

Hi Vidvad,
Without digressing too much from your journal by posting my chart, my interest was piqued when I read your post about "Mebob."
Does my chart correspond ( I have used USA time)?
If so then it seems one could grab a few points and be happy with the rest of your day doing something else. Understandably a hundred or so trades going forward might show its viability?

Turnip, anything you want to share here in my journal is welcome. You and me are fellow travellers honing our craft!

Yes, you have it right. And I would agree with you: using mebob, whether the original rules or as a reference zone can offer a quick trade or two and then get on with your life. In the document blue found for us by Tom Hougaard, he mentions that the originator, i.e. "mebob" the trader himself used this as a "trend following" set up. If you are trading all day it can certainly help you catch a trend if one occurs.

For example, yesterday the 1:05 PM Eastern bar closed below mebob. A sell stop one tick below that bar got you short for a nice down swing. Today, a buy stop above the high of the 12:05 Eastern bar would have gotten you long for quite the rally.

Once the mebob is established, however, it may be better to scalp around it. I think that there is one keey thing missing on almost every system I see whether here at FF or elsewhere and that is a real dependece on the indicators and an almost blindness to price itself.

As an example, yesterday, using M5 candles and the mebob range as the refernce level to trade around, I came up with the following:


FWIW other than the current open, yesterday's high, low, and close, and last week's high and low, I have pretty much deleted all indi's and oscillators from charts. I do have a roadmap template I keep and eye on, and I tend to use the 21 ema bands rather than the 8 ema's. That is, of course, trader's choice. We each need to trade what is comfortable for our own particular eyes.

Yesterday and today, once I finished trading the NQ using my Gonzalo approach, I watched the ES mebob chart as much as I could. I am really drawn to it. I set the candles up the way I did because way back in the day we all were using eSignal. And anyone who used eSignal rembers those fat tails and thick candle bodies lol.

If you do anything with the mebob, turnip, please share it here with us!

Here are some thoughts from today, sort of a hybrid mebob &Al Brooks/Bob Volman PA approach. Notice how price stabbed nto the membo zone on that afternoon sell off but was bought again!

There is something to this, turnip, for sure there is!



Here are the mebob rules I copied from the document blue found for us:

MEBOB – TRADING RULES

Another poster was MEBOB. I have been informed his real name is Rob Falk.

Obituary information for Robert Harold Falk (added by vidvad)

He had a set of mechanical rules, which was often the topic of conversation on the Avid chat.

Here is the introduction to the rules:

1. You trade it on the SP500 Index.
2. You use a 5-min chart.
3. You only use it during Regular trading hours only (09:30am – 15:00pm Eastern Standard time).

A more detailed explanation follows below:

1. The US stock market index opens at 09:30am New York local time.
2. The 5-min reference bar to wait for is the 10:05am– 10:10am bar.
3. This is the 8th 5min bar into the regular trading session.
4. Observe the high and the low of the reference bar.
5. Draw a horizontal line through the high of the reference bar.
6. Draw a horizontal line through the low of the reference bar.
7. If the SP500 closes above the high of the reference bar “highest line”, it is a BUY signal.
8. If the SP500 closes below the low of the reference bar “lowest line”, it is a SELL SHORT signal.
9. The stop loss is placed either at the most recent swing or above/below the reference bar. It is a simple method.

Here is what Oleman thought of it: “The seemingly erratic performance of the "MeBob" (trading rule) is simply what one would expect from a trend following system. Bob, who has a lot of good stuff, was simply giving the newbies a "Trigger" to get them into day trades at good times.”

I have added a rule, which is also discussed in the Avid chats. Where my stop loss is, I will double up in the opposite direction. If I am long at 10, and I have a stop at 6, then I will also at 6 have a short position waiting, which is twice as big as the original long position.

I will now post the outcome of the MEBOB reference bar from the last 9 consecutive trading days. I am not hand-picking good days. I want you to see for yourself the value of the signal. Like all mechanical signals, it probably has a hit rate around 55-60. I think you will agree with me when I say that there are some good signals and there are some hit-and-miss signals.

What else can you expect from a mechanical system like a fixed time bar method?

Thank you, kthrapp!

What I meant to include in this is that we often forgte that our price bars and candlesticks are themselves indicators. And since they are not only indicators but are actually closer to the actual action of the market, we might want to focus more attention on them than we do.

Here is a good example, imo, from today:

In this chart, using the price bars, or even price behavior at the level of yesterday's settle price (red line) you could have gotten short as high as 5870, and as low as 5859.50 (one tick below the low of the red bear bar (I believe this candlestick patter is sometimes referred to as "railroad tracks, and is itself a recognized or defined reversal pattern).

Now, in this chart, using MACD and the ema bands, the signal to short would be a sell stop below the low of the large expansion bear bar. or maybe the close of that bar. Such a short entry would have been as high as 5832 and as low as 5824.50. Still a lot of opportunity for profit, but a difference of 30 to as much as 50 points from what a pure price action trader may have done for a short entry.


I did trade the ES late in the day. And I did start shorting before the indicators gave their signal, but my first entry was at 5847, or about 12 points worse than the worst entry a pure price action entry would have signaled.



In this case I was selling all the way down, and some trades were taken off with a preset target, others with market orders. My last profit target order was filled at 5771, which was 100 points below where a sharp price action trader could have sold short! FWIW, I am NOT what one would consider a sharp price action trader. I'm pretty sharp in hindsight, but as you can see, while I didn't need for price to fall below the indicators before I recognized what was going on, but I was still 12 to 23 points below what a sharp and practiced pure price action trader would have done in terms of short entry.



The mebob chart and the mebob reference bar is closer to pure price action than I have been able to accomplish, but I am attracted to this sort of approach. And I believe the closer one can get to a pure price action approach the better one's entries will be in terms of reducing potential risk as well as being offered larger potential rewards.

With out taking up to much of Vids space here. This my basic method. All the indicator setting are on the charts. It is not necessary to have the indicators on the bottom if you do not like them. But I am buying or selling the pull backs of the long term trend. So the 2000 tick chart sets the trend and any pullbacks on the 500 tick chart is when I pick my entry. Pretty simple. But I will not take up Vids page. But usually I am right 75-80% of the time. Just takes some practice to get in the flow of it. But I have been doing some version of this for 30 yrs. You can use time charts or tick or volume or Range charts. Any time frames. Mine are pretty fast so you have to be paying attention or you will be late on the entry. It all comes together with practice. Simple as it gets. Blessings to everyone.