Flag trading the trend

been there done that. There comes a crossroad where you must decide is my trading plan a winning one? If it is you must allow yourself to be successful and put every trade on.

I'm still tinkering regarding the final criteria. I'm aiming for something mechanical for entry/exit, hence introducing the parabolic entry when trend appears strong enough, however, i think it is proving too hit and miss to be a really reliable method over time.

I still prefer 123's as an entry method and i think i will be concentrating on when to expect them. Therefore, they will almost be an excuse to take the trade rather than a possibility. Hidden Divergence set-ups are an obvious one. The only problem i find with them in particular is the usual lack of such 123, but i have to weigh this up against the para entry/failure rate.

Other commitments are also not helping. Trading is a mindset and best if applied everyday, to maintain one's sharpness. At this moment in time it is simply not possible for me to do so.

Once my final criteria is set, it will not be such a problem. They can be set in stone so to speak and thus, opening up a chart and looking for such precise criteria, will not require such thought. The mechanical entry will also take care of the emotional side of things.

I have not been trading today, as again, i have been away from screens, however, here is a typical set-up that i will be looking for and even though this is a hindsight trade, i think it is easy to see how confident one could be of this set-up. There were actually identical trades on both the 1min EurJpy & EurUsd charts approx 2 hours ago;



and



so, this does combine a little bit of EW, within the flag there are clearly 3w (corrective), trend is down and the angle of the pullback simply looks corrective!
Wave 'C' is 100% of wave 'A' in both instances and is basically within a channel. Now we need any excuse to get short, after the 100% level; has been reached. of course, a parabolic entry would have got us into the trade sooner, but that is hindsight talking, we barely even have a macd cross at that stage!

My only dilemma is how to apply the target in this instance. I have talked about using the lower/higher of either the 20sma or the parabolic dots, but although that works a treat in these examples, it does not always. This is where i need more time to experiment. My risk is always determined by the distance between points 2&3 (of the 123), thus points risk will vary. Thus i need to aim for a % target as opposed to a fixed points target. We shall see!

High of day pb long 64 stop +1

slow day so far

+1 and yes very slow

didn't take that one my macd was crossed to downside

nothing for me today

slow and choppy day.

Thank you, Jtrade, and ddaytrade for your answers - I appreciate it! And yes, my backtesting was binary - either win or no win basically. In reality, I'm not going to let a trade go to less than 1 from target and then take a full loss on it. I wanted to go through and see if I had something and then intended to fine tune from there.

Thank you again for your responses.

I had one trade today that got me +5points on the ES. Basically a double bottom long similar to a set up I posted last week. The rest of the day gave me nothing to jump on. It is disheartening to see overnight +30 point rallies turn into 6 to 8 point trading range days. I would like to see the US futures trade similar hours to the cash markets instead of this 24 hour stuff.

But that ain't going to happen, so some days will offer us very little. So we need to capitalize on those days that offer us a lot.

Copy that, dd : look at the fun morning I just had with the Bund :



Might have to join the YM in the AM boys to make my Daily Bread ...

Ending the morning session with a very small profit... time to walk that doodle....



Nice, minimalist bar chart, don't you think ? Just OHLC bars, plus Day Open High Low.

Just scan through the five-minute candlestick chart of YM yesterday. The best setups seem to be a double bottom and a double top in the afternoon session. Maybe we need to pay attention to some basic patterns as well.

I agree.

well the beginning of another low volume day trade safely. we are in a tough market now if we can hold our own and still make money well you know the rest

Stock market will open in five minutes

hopefully get some movement today

Looks like trading range waiting for 10AM news/data to get things going.

On my 999-tick chart, MACD and the MA are flat and stay together. That is not good.

and the price shows that just flatline