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

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

htf smart selling activity

today on dow jones futures - hft algo as a response to offered liquidity. they tested the stability and hit the quoting bid.

i could not trade this situation because it didn't fit into my risk management. i waited for the price to make a little pullback up so that i could jump in, but it didnt.. and it continued downward

here is the chart

i suppose these selling guys are smart, because they first tested if the offered liquidity is real, and when it appeared as true, they hit the waiting limit with a bigger sell market afterward - this "liquidity test" activity is useful for a subject that needs to open a bigger size and - and the same - doesn't want to move with price (zero  slippage).

imagine, if you want to open a big sell position quickly (let's say 200 contracts), the best thing to do is to hit a big waiting limit on one level. but first, you need to be sure that the quoting limit is real, that it is real, not fake liquidity that will disappear when you pull the trigger.

so first, before you send a big market order, you send a "probe", a couple of small market orders to see, what will happen. if the quoting limits still stay there after being matched with your probes, it is REAL - the liquidity is there, waiting. if they disappear, it is NOT real and you should not open the bigger sell into it.

this is a technique of a subject that (1) wants to open a bigger size and (2) has a similar risk like me - because it is very precise when it comes to entry price, i can assume that the position will be liquidated in a very short time (just like mine)

here is how the footprint chart looks like in this area. an interesting thing to notion is that the falling market goes against deep buyers. this is a good orderflow context for short

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. 

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

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

dow jones futures short (after trapped late buyers)

these days after american lunch the volatility drops significantly and the markets are literally dead. trading in such environment takes lot of discipline when t comes to waiting for an opportunity. there are not many opportunities these days, so whenever one appears, one need to catch it quickly, automatically.

this was the only tradeable situation today. ym futures tried to break the swing high but the buyers were absorbed. the entry moment is here:

here is the support at market orders that show diminishing power of buy market side - this would be a better moment for the entry

a nice "second entry" in the area of my "first entry"

wmo shows no interest at buy market side and it is flat - good for "second entry"

although i planned the second target further, i closed it prematurely because i did not have any profit today and the market were terribly slow and tiring today (and about to close in a while)

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

nq long

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

closed safely before a possible breakout