Total for today: USD 157Just when you think that ES is getting choppier by the day, TF is both choppy and crazy. I really have nothing much to say about my trades. It's been difficult to find entries for ES coz the tape's simply not giving much signals. Looking for setups from charts means hours of sitting and watching. TF is totally impossible to trade based on tape. Charts are not looking pretty either. In fact, ES charts are really starting to look prettier.
TF has become a freaky stranger.
SIGH.
I'm calling it a day. My heart can use some rest. Don't wanna die in my sleep (Check out Sage's Matter of The Heart).
TF has become a freaky stranger.
SIGH.
I'm calling it a day. My heart can use some rest. Don't wanna die in my sleep (Check out Sage's Matter of The Heart).
6 comments:
Jules,
I hear ya. Sage's post is kinda freaking me out since I do play a lot of video games AND trade! Zoinks.
LT
Oh, yeah I just have to say that I am so impressed that you can tear out any points at all when markets aren't acting friendly.
LT
Hi Jules,
it looks like most of your scalps on ES are based on tape reading, and it seems you're pretty consistent with it.
Can you give an idea on how you read the tape (what you're mostly looking at - market depth, speed of T&S or monitoring big lots etc.)?
Did you learn it yourself or did anybody teach you? Can you recommend any book or website?
Thanks.
Was that the reason you were missing in action, LT? You've been hooked to video games??? LOL!
On tearing points - those were mere ticks! I wish I could tear points! I can't coz I don't trust chart setups anymore. Not in the foreseeable future....
Kos,
I use the tape but that's not the first thing I look at. On a daily basis, I start with charts - the daily, hourly, 10min, 3min and 1min.
I look for daily pivots, open and close, key support and resistance levels (usually the daily highs and lows) and I keep track of the time of the day to gauge what price is likely to do in relation to its proximity to them, in particular, the pivot and the open.
I use fib retracement and extension - I use the latter mainly to see if a support/resistance will hold. Let's say if fib ext 161.8 is at the day's high/low or very near pivot, and price is at wave 5 or c, I'll be more convinced of a price reversal.
I use candlestick pattern only for defence. Let's say that I'm short, and trade has gone too far against me for me to accept (yes, still working on that) and hence I sat on it - a piercing pattern on 10min will make me exit without hesitation. It actually happened just a few days ago. On the day that I lost nearly 400...
On my entries - my preference has been to trade the end of an upward/downward move. It's different from chasing. Chasing is when you have no idea at all where price is heading. I mentioned that I watch the key levels. For pre-market, I pay attention to the high/low of the range that ES has been trading. When ES is there for the first time, especially on a day that it's climbed/ plunged without a meaningful retracement, I would expect it to be stopped the first time.
That's when I would switch to the tape. I would look at it and nothing else. If I like what I'm seeing, I would take a trade. Once in trade, I would focus on how price reacts to the immediate support (which I keep in mind when my eyes are leave my charts). If I don't like what I see, I'm out (usually, but sometimes it's hard to tell, and those are times that I overstay).
You asked what I look out for on the tape. I look at what is being hit - bids or offers, and whether price moves accordingly. I pay attention to big lots, but I pay more to them when they "vanish" (NOT when they've been hit). It could either be someone playing the market, or someone who's truly lost confidence in the side that he's on. Either way, the side that he was originally on usually immediately lost at least momentarily - you see price drop a 2 to 3 ticks (if those were bid contracts). I don't quite care about the speed with which price goes up and down - I mean, DOWN is always faster.
Did someone teach me to read the tape? No.
Did I read a book? Yes, but the author trades treasuries which are much higher in volume, and the tape doesn't quite move. His strategies are mainly to follow the bigger players who are really playing the market - eg. putting on both bid and offers at the same time and sometimes on both 30-year and 10-year bonds. I haven't seen similar patterns on the ES. Coz the ES tape moves a lot faster than the treasuries - too fast for me to monitor the different plays the author has identified on the treasuries.
The way I learned to read the ES tape was based on just that - by reading it. If you do it for a week for the entire session, you'll "get it" too :-) Start with pre-market - it's much slower and hence a lot easier to see patterns.
There are a number of other things that the tape does that I notice but it's just too much to include in this section. I have yet to finish documenting my observations anyway. When I'm done, and I'm not lazy about it, I'll probably write about it in detail :-)
Thanks for detailed answer :)
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