ym should fall down

today the open was really weak with low volatiltiy and tedious price action. i had to wait 1/2 hour for the first trade that i took right here.

form the dislocation of the markets i can assume that ym should move down, the orderflow is not the best but is quite allright. opening 4 contracts.

it took a little drawdown but the price slided as expected..

here i have 3 contracts from 4 cloesd and the trade is risk free

.

the final contract is closed after the seller´s emotion

it was the one and only trade becaus the price action was really slow.

+300 usd. 

finito. no need to waste time with such markets

short nq, short ym.. and again..

two trades right after the open.

the first one was here as a speculation for a breakdown. the entry was quite aggressive and the risk of the trade was not properly calculated before triggering.

 i assumed the price would slide down really quickly, but it did not happen. it wen up so here i closed the trade in a loss of cca 250 usd

good point on this trade was that i jump out really quickly, without any hesitation. these are situations that need to reverse immediately and if they dont, i get out.

another trade was one or two minutes after the first one.

here i am short at dow jones - opening 4 contracts as well as in the previous one but the last on was not filled. i assumed the price should not go above high where i would close the whole position

 here is the exit. in fixed trade management. with only three contracts cca +250 so i zeroed out the previous loss.

 these are two examples of a very strict risk/trade management. i play any russian roulette here. i only execute, without any emotion

here i was ready to open aanother short at ym again, but i waited the price to tick little bit higher so that i could place my stoploss into the safe area above high easily..

yet, it did not go any higher, so the drop was without me...

hmm.. bad luck

as i said yesterday, today i planned to trade with a bigger possition of 6 contracts but was little bit unlucky, because i did not get the fill of all the 6

here i was clicking to take short, on a nice orderflow exhaustion of buyers. it was quite clear that the price does not have enough power to move so i was not hesitating..

but the price slid down really quickly and filled only 2 contracts out of 6.

first contract was closed on target within a couple of seconds to make risk free trade as usual, the other one let little bit further on a volatile target.

it was quite a nice catch of the local high with absolutely precise timing entry and virtually no drawdown

feelling really unlucky for not being filled with all the 6. it could have been a nice profit

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

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

against late sellers

this trade is a model situation where i take long against late sellers.

the pattern is pretty clear - all the markets are running down, nasdaq 100 is little bit higher so the general public sees it as a "good opportunity" for selling.

but the general public is most of the time wrong.

the price retreats against them at least till the area where i can close my first target and make a risk free position..

a small trade with a small position

just one long today on e-mini dow.

this one.

nothing special to say about it. except, that it was that kind of a trade that was 100% repeatable for me.

i took it with only two contracts, +180 usd. virtually zero drawdown which is a sign of a good timing entry

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. 

crawly lazy price

today´s e-mini markets were crawly, lazy and boring. the session started with a good tempo but quickly became really slow and tedious. the candlesticks were overlapping one another which is always a sign of an untradable market.

within the first hour, i haven´t seen any opportunity for opening a trade. i stayed a little bit longer and took this short on e-mini dow

this is the kind of entry that is more speculative and riskier. at first, i opened only three contracts and compensated to the full position a little bit higher.

anyway, only one part of the position (4 contracts out of 6) filled the target, the other half ended up at stop loss.

+100 usd today is a poor result for such a long time.

where this will go

today, the market was like extremely volatile and price jumped like a crazy frog, piercing through many levels as big market orders flew into it.

i tried to take short later in the night (was not at the pc earlier). i opened short right here, using compensation in a drawdown to scale up to six contract, which is my normal position.

i hit only the first target, the second ended up on sl. so the result was zero. but it could have been a nice trade

unfinished auction

yesterday i took just one short on e-mini nasdaq based on orderflow gradation

and because some people asked me about an unfinished auction in trading orderflow - how to recognize it, how to interpret it, how to use it for timing entry or filtering, here is the answer.

here is a screenshot of an unfinished auction where u can see high volume at the highest levels of the fooptprint chart. it means the buyers are interested in buying at the high prices - that is why u can see them there, they are there, they accept this high price as ok for them, they keep buying. thus, there is no need to think about taking short for reversal because buyers simply want to buy for high prices and if buyers want to buy for high prices, the market will (most probably) rise. it is a very simple logic. 

moreover, what you can see here is that high-sellers (the guys who sell the market for the highest price possible) are caught at the high prices. they try to sell, but the price don't fall. what does it mean? someone bigger is buying their sell market orders with buy limit orders, eating and absorbing all the high sellers. 

this is how a fond or a bank opens their positions. a fond/bank needs to allocate a big size and they don't really care about the price. i mean, they care, but not so much because their primary aim is to allocate the big size into market. 

they use both (1) active market orders at the highest prices and (2) passive limit orders for buying from the high-sellers. they generally open their positions at the breakout of new highs, because there is enough predictable liquidity that can be (ab)used.

whenever you see this market auction, do not short it!

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..

after rollover

today is the first day after rollover of futures contracts and the market is pretty lazy. i took two trades today, first at nasdaq at 8:41 long (only with one contracts as it was risky) and a second, which was a beautiful situation in orderflow - very clear exhaustion of buyers

this is the entry moment (mid - which i consider a very strong line and perfect orderflow situation)

this is the moment when i hit the first target making the position risk free

and this is the second target

this the intraday price action with my trade - as you can see the range is pretty tight

result

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

orderflow gradation

this is an example of orderflow gratation entry - quite an aggresive one because it is only "half validated". but it was compensated with a nice potencial

i took a dradwon about 10 ticks and here i threw out two of three contracts to make the trade risk free. i am defining stoploss now

 

the cluster of buyers on the footprint chart made to cover the entry point. the third target goes quite far into the consolidation

yet.. it didnt work out.. 

result 130 usd.. not bad but if the third target was reached, there would be cca 300 usd..
there was only one tradable situation today and it was this one..