today..

nq was in a good setup for buying.

at first i tried with two contracts i but i hit only one target and the second one ended up on stoploss - very precise.. after i was stopped out, the price went up.

the second trade was a mistake, i was able to open only 1 contract so i closed it on be. 

the last trade was a good one. long after the sellers' exhaustion. a good timing entry.. 

result 500 usd

and yeah, it still moves up. today it was quite observable that nq will rise.

also on depth of market we could see bigger quotting limits on sell side being eaten by agressive market orders. this is a good environment for a bigger player to buy without slips

later in the evening

on friday, later in the evening, there was this situation that offered a good short setup for nq nasdaq. this is 30 minutes timeframe that i use for a long term planing if necessary.

from all the four markets, only nasdaq broke the daily low, the other three did not. it creates a pressure buying, because nasdaq looks to be cheaper and dis-correlated.

i was waiting for an orderflow timing to jump into short trade and speculate against these buyers who were trapped. this is the closed trade

this was the second trade on friday. the first trade was a loss at 9:00 - i did not notice there was a report at 9:00 and took long one minute before it.

as soon as i opened the long position, the price dropped, so i had closed 200 usd loss. it was one of the quickest loss ever.

my mistake to open the trade right before the announcement report.

daily result is here.

still volatile, but readable

the volatility in us indexes is still high but the market seemed a little bit more readable today. there was an intermarket scheme that i know as a good setup for long entry.

it happened in nasdaq some 15 minutes after open. i took a long trade right here. as you can see, i went into a little drawdown, because the volatility is still very high, i am not able to catch the reversal very precisely

i am opening only two contracts to eliminate the risk. i hit both the targets. the first one was closed here, making it a risk-free trade, the other was after the breaking of the daily high.

the second trade today was dow jones short after an orderflow gradation with confirmation of low heat entry.

both of the targets were closed at the level of fist one. i had a feeling that today the price will go up so taking shorts was not the most comfortable.

the result is 650 today is enought, i did not want expose to it any longer

depth of market liquidity disappeared..

last week the indexes went into extreme volatility and i did not trade much and if so, it was kind of a testing mode..

this environment is dangerous for order flow trading because the limit side is really shaky.

when you see dom liquidity like this, you immediately have to know there is something wrong with the market.

this is something people who don´t see the market depth never realize - the change of the quoting limits.

trading in this environment is extremely dangerous, the laws that normally works and that i use for trading, does not work in this environment.

it is basically caused by market makers who are no longer interested in opening trades and thus, the short-term price action is much more unpredictable

why i trade intraday

this is the reason why i trade within intraday timeframe and don´t invest long term

i can hardly remember when i saw something similar and i would NOT like be a long-term buy-and-hold investor these days. 

in the markets, there applies a simple formula: the longer the timeframe, the lower the probability of guessing the correct direction

no, i don´t believe in long-term investing. it is a fake idea. all these investing gurus, buffet, hedge funds managers etc.. no one knows what is going to happen on the markets within one hour, how can they say what will happen within a week, month or a year?

short-term investing makes sense to me much more.

i am able to say what is going to happen in my life within one minute from now. much less i can say what is going to happen within one day from now, even less within one week and i have an idea what is going to happen with a year or more..

in the same way it is in the markets. i can quite accurately say what is going to happen with the price within a couple of seconds or minutes. that is all i need to do day trading.

for example today, i took one trade that lasted a couple of minutes. and by the way, it was a long trade! hah.

this was quite an easily readable long entry, due to increase volatility i took only 2 contracts. +330 usd was the result within a couple of minutes. stress-free trading

one long trade after one long hour

today i took only one trade on nasdaq 100. it was long, and i had to wait for it for almost one hour.

the session started in quite a fast tempo, and i expected to get a trade signal quickly. increased volatility should offer some signals to jump in, but it was not the case today.

the market auction was not readable and i could not find a low risk entry for oppening a trade.

finaly, i found this situation.

due to increased volatility i opened only half of my normal six-contracts position, prepared to compensate up to six in case the price will move against me to the level of stoploss while still holding the edge of the entry..

unfortunately, it did not happen, the price oscillated little bit back, but not enough to add to the position.

here is the exit

i mean, this looks like a small trade in the picture of the whole intraday session, but it is +450 usd. with three contracts it is not bad.

the exit was executed according to fixed (but due to increased volatility expanded) trade management.

come on man, this is going to rise!

well, these two trades are quite readable i would say, and the price went up really quickly after i clicked into them..

the timing entry at the first one is not really easy but .. what is easy in daytrading after all? we can see a sharp & emotional move downwards from the highest high.

the word "emotional" is really what makes it important because i trade against the emotional people so i really enjoy seeing something like this.

it was validated with the actual non-correlation of the markets. the entry was planed couple of minutes before it actually took place. here is the hit.

the other one was right here, after nq discovered new high and tempted high sellers to jump in. as always, i go against them, because they are too predictable. 

nasdaq 100 futures filled with huge sell market orders

on friday there was a big selling subject on e-mini nasdaq 100 which is clearly visible from the attached chart. 

nasdaq was undervalued compared to other three us indexes, which is always a good constellation for building a bigger position into the short side. the selling subject used active market orders that were really big (up to 200 sell market size) in the frequency of a couple of tens of seconds.

that means it was not really a high-frequency short term algorithm, but rather a fond or a bank that holds a position for a longer period of time.

thus, both their risk and their reward tend to much further from what i use in my intraday trading and it is not always clever to track it

that is why i can without any problems take a long and go against the big selling subject because the rotation i speculate on, is - compared to their risk/reward - really small.

this was one trade with a clear timing entry base on exhaustion of (retail) sellers.

3 trades, 3 contracts, 3 profits

today i took three trades on e-mini nasdaq 100, all were with three contracts only and all were closed it proper fixed trade management.

here is the screenshot showing the closed trades.

many people when they this screenshot or another screenshot with my trades have the idea that it was a mistake that i closed the trades so early.

sometimes people really wonder and ask me, why i don't hold on the trades longer, for a longer profits.

the answer?

i am an intraday trader, not a god.

i don't know if the price will move further or retreats back. i am not a prophet. and i don't try to be.

closing trades in a fixed trade management is the best thing you - as a trader - can do. 

because by closing them properly, you are not playing russian roulette. you are not positioning yourself in the place of "a prophet". you are simply doing your job correctly.

here is the results. 3 (little) trades, with only 3 contracts. 3 profits. + 730 usd netto. 

dow jones futures trading

today i traded only dow jones futures (ym), and it offered a number of opportunities. unfortunately i was not able to hit the further targets, except in one case.

all the four trades i took hit the first target but only one of them ran further. and that one was with the smallest position possible (2 contracts only), because the risk of that trade was higher. it is quite a shame, and pity taht i was not able to get more from today´s volatility.

here is the intraday chart of e-mini dow jones in the first hour after open with my trades and comments

result

by the way, today i have noticed two iceberg orders (one at dow jones and the other at nasdaq futures 100).

still don´t know how to use it in my trading but it is an interesting thing to observe and follow the big guys through this visualization

here is the situation at dow jones where the iceberg was triggered after the price fell through bigger buy limit order (white line on market depth)

here is similar situation at nasdaq (in different time), but this one is not so strong

it is interesting to notice that the the price level where the iceberg sell order at dow jones started was not broken higher. in fact the market moved consolidated near daily low and after it sucked in enough buyers, it dropped deeper. 

speculation on thin dom liquidity

an example of relative absence of buy limit orders on depth of market. this time i opened a trade speculating of overturn of liquidity and fall of price.

this is the intermarket state - not very clean but visible .. 

the price should move sharply into the liquidity vacuum, penetrating the relatively smaller limits and hitting the first target. 

in this case only the first target of 10 ticks was hit.. the price is extremely slow in these times..

yesterday´s nasdaq

couple of short signals

eeeeh..

this was really fortune with the third target:-(

this was a nice entry on the exhaustion of sellers with a quick fill of the first part of the position

trying to trail the third one.. but the market is a bastard sometimes - it took my sell order and went up 

anyway. quite a good result 275 usd today

donald trump inauguration speech

today was the day D for donald. today, the inauguration of the president of the united states took place. donald trump had a speech. as a result of that, the markets were quite volatile until the very end of the session..

this is the full intraday session in two minutes chart

one short later in the afternoon - timing entry based on the extinction of breakout buyers.

 before i took one more short so the result for today is 300 usd

wem´s last public entry

against late buyers in undervalued nasdaq futures

exit after seller´s eruption

undervalued nasdaq futures

at the end of the day there was a nice situation to short e-mini futures nasdaq, because it was visibly undervalued (compared to other four markets), thus luring buyers.

i am going against them, it is too predictable to buy here. and these who are predictable will lose

and yes, the market moved against them and they lost

market orders extinction

a nice example of timing entry with market orders study. with every new high, the market orders diminish

the first target is nicely placed in the thickened price action

huge selling sentiment on the market´s open

today nq opened with quite a strong selling sentiment. i was putting sell limit orders immediatelly after recognizing a known orderflow pattern. yet, again, no fill

the market ran down and here was another possible short entry based on times and sales. this one is more risky..

but.. it fell down pretty fast and to catch this kind of a selloff is almost a superhuman task