just one short

this was the only entry i did today, probably the last time with small position of two contracts only. 

from tomorrow i will start with 6 again because with 2 it is like a demo version

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

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..

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. 

the first 2 trades in 2018

after a little break, i decided to continue publishing here on this small blog. i started to trade this week, over the christmas time i was in istanbul and did not have good access to the internet.

these two trades were based on the same logic - there are reactive sellers in the NQ that are supposed to be shaken off the market.

i take long against them

this was the first trade that had pretty cool timing entry. the price went up immediately, offered +700 usd profit in a couple of minutes

the second trade was here - opening six contracts as usual

 

again, virtually no drawdown. price runs up quickly, the exit was right here - this is a save exit, after that, the price fell down

sellers liquidity abusion

a video of one of my trades, two contracts only. i was trading somewhere outside in a park with a poor internet connection. not the best setup

daily low stoprun

on friday late afternoon sellers broke the daily low and activated stoplosses of all the buyers who have bought within the day. this was the biggest candle in the whole day and - as usual- i was going against the visible movement and took long at the very low

i caught the low quite nicely, timing entry was based on sellers exhaustion. i openend only three contracts instead of six by mistake.

here is how the last contract ended - exactly at the poc area

pretty great trade i would say..

this is how the situation looked like on a slower timeframe (30 min). there was an expanding separator bar from the previous day.

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!

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. 

dow jones sell off speculation on friday night

yesterday i took these two trades on dow jones futures. the first short after open was taken with 6 contracts, the second one with two only. the first trade had a runner with was planned to be closed somewhere near the low of the day,

unfortunately, the market filled my trailing stop precisely and dropped significantly afterward.

what was interesting at the second trade was waiting liquidity of the huge buy limit orders at the closing time.

here is the prinscreen, the white line on depth of market shows huge limit orders waiting to be filled. at first the price rebounds couple of time from this level.

at the end it went through filling all the waiting limits (cca 230 on one level). as these limits were filled, i closed the trade, because i expected the price to move higher. anyway, it didn´t. the market closed somewhere around near this level. 

here is how the footprint chart looks at that particular place. you can see higher ammoung of sell market order paired up withthe waiting buy limit side (te low of the bar at 14:58)

here is the slower timeframe (30 min). the trade looks good, pity it was with a small position only

result +720 usd

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..

depth of market - thin vs. thick offered liquidity

here is an interesting situation on depth of market (dom) in intermarket state. it is easily visible that the offered liquidity on the bid side is much thinner that on the ask side.

the presumption is that the price should move into the side of thinner liquidity - it is going to be easier, as there are no "walls" of waiting limit orders. 

it is just a presumption now - no data have been collected to prove this idea.

what we have to take into account in such a situation is the intermarket state and the predictability of retail market orders. here we have ym under the daily low, all other markets are above.

it gives the (stupid) retail traders feeling that ym is cheap and that they should buy it. they start buying.

limit side with quoting market maker´s orders builds thicker layers of sell limit order to retard the movement up and sell in a bigger quantity against the retail public. the movement down is much easier because the quoting buy limit side is weaker.

this is how the situatuion looks at market orders with depth of market. the offered liquidity on dom overtuns and the price sinks into it

what happened next was that the price dropped down against the buying public. in this particular case it would have hit o the first target only but it doesn´t matter - there was a strong buying sentiment on nyse tick at that time and even thought the price went down to hit the stops of public..

here is the footprint chart of this situation

more in depth study of this phenomena needs to be done before taking these situation as a tradable edge

friday late afternoon short

speculation on the reverze into the value area of the last three days..

the chart above shows a tiny intermarket divergence - ym is lower, compared to other 3 markets that broke their highs, thus i am speculating that ym WILL NOT break.

and it didnt..

yesterday´s nasdaq

couple of short signals

magnificant stoplosses

today

yesterday 

no comment

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.. 

dow jones hit 20000 points

for the first time ever, dow jones has hit the level of 20000 today. but, who cares? i don't, i traded nasdaq futures today when dow jones, sp500 and emd were undervalued.

nasdaq hit its high and i took a breakout

the reason is quite clear from this view. i opened 2 instead of 3 - the risk area was near and i was ready to compensate.

result

diminishing buy market side

after breakout of the long a tedious consolidation there was observable extinction of buyers at the upper prices

here, after couple of minutes, the entry is validated

exit, f__king slow market 

mid test

timing entry based on extinction of buyers in a nonvolaile sluggish market. after test of the thickened price and pull back - exit