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

it looks amazing..

yeah. the markets were falling today, the volatility was doubled compared to a normal state so that the risk and reward had to be doubled too and the opened position had to be halved.

currently, i trade smaller positions, so i opened only two contracts right here

the timing entry of this trade later in the afternoon was based on the tick-nyse indicator. the first part of the position was closed in the profit, the other part (which i meant to close quite far) ended up at stoploss.

it looks amazing, doesn´t it?

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.

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

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. 

liquidity overturn on e-mini nasdaq futures

against late buyers in undervalued nasdaq 100 futures. here i have set up more advanced times and sales setting which i was testing for a couple of days or weeks.

sierra chart provides a good interface for times and sales and hopefully somewhere in the future i will provide a more in-depth description of what i observe on the tape

exit after seller´s eruption

big subject activity on daily low - scalping algo breakout

this is what i have noticed today on daily low at e-mini nasdaq 100 futures somewhere around 13:10 chicago time

the interpretation of this visualization is this: near daily low a big rough market and a big sell market order of the same quantity appeared. it was immediately identified by an algorithm which started selling using sell markets in a "clever" manner.

at the same time, sell markets were supported with huge sell limit (on the depth of market as the white line). when no one wanted to buy this big amount and fill the huge sell limit, the subject starts selling in a harsh manner - using big sell market orders. the price drops a little bit down and the subject closes the position in a "clever" way using smart activity. taking profit.

the price made a small pullback up and the algorithm started selling again, using a high amount of sell market orders in a matter of (mili)seconds. at the same time, big sell limit appeared at the depth of market, was filled this time with a big buy market order and the price slides lower. the selling subject closed the position in a smart way, taking profit again.

again, it started opening bigger sell markets now to break the daily low. its big sell limits were strong enough to eat all the offered liquidity in the dept of market. 

at the break of the daily low a 100-contracts big buy market order tried to protect the zone, but was neutralized with a 100-contracts sell limit. moreover, the 100 sell limit was supported with an even bigger sell limit (the size cca 230) accompanied with sell market in the size 120! it hit the daily low, closing the position in a clever way, taking its profit (yes again!) and reversing the position for long.

this is how a very powerful and very clever scalping algorithms operate..

this is where it happened in the chart (daily low - sensitive area)

this is how the footprint charts of the area looks like

mid test

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

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

nq long

a second entry with timing based on the extinction of sellers. the potencial was nice

closed safely before a possible breakout

orderflow mirroring

experimenting with a new sierra chart studie from www.intraday.cz aka www.order-flow.cz. here i took one trade based on the idea of mirorring orderflow. bigger buy limits are matched with bigger sell market. just one contract to test it..

here is how it went. similar situation appeared 20 minutes after

the orderflow situation 20 minutes after

video of this peculiar trade is here

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

the signal of the day

today´s best signal on nq, couple of minutes after open - market in a divergence with pretty nice orderflow on highest high and clever algorithmic action selling short..

feeling sorry for not catching, i was slow..

.