Today Was Very Hard for Me.

[james_gsx]

I agree OAC, I think next week will be a rough one.

[brownsfan019]

It just comes down to knowing how your plan operates in different conditions and how often those conditions appear. If you KNOW that a day like today happens once a month, then today was your once a month day (hopefully). If this happens more often, then you need to adjust. But I would not adjust after just one day like this b/c as another post said, it's not often you hear about a major bank in trouble. Today was a news day and those are to be expected.

[Minetoo]

We are finally seeing the true market effects of the recent abolition of trading curbs and the uptick rule. Adapt or die.

[markw]

Although my main trading chart is the 3 minute I also have up a 233 tic chart. This allows me to enter sooner or later if I want on the move. Also on days like this a huge bar on the 3 minute could be 2 to 3 smaller bars on the 233 tic. This allows me to use smaller stops and keep my risk low.



Mark

[darthtrader]

This is where I think it makes sense to try to get an understanding of how your setups work in different volatility environments. I don't see how you can beat monitoring the VIX for that. I don't see how you can really expect to trade the same if the VIX is at 15 vs it being at 30.
With higher volatility you almost have to expect to use bigger stops but hunt bigger game, otherwise your stops will seem like magnets just from price wiggling around more than normal.
Here is a 30 day and 1 year chart of the VIX with a kalman filter to get a picture of the trend. kalman filter is like a moving average for noisy time series so its a pretty good tool for the job. You can see yesterday was one of the super high volatility days in the past few years actually. The volatility trend is still up so you really do need to adjust for this.

[smwinc]

This is interesting. The Market Psychology section has had a few more posts recently than average.

We have had extreme days in an already extremely volatile market lately.

Friday 14th was a very big day. In 5 years of trading, Friday was the best day I have ever had, period. Friday, let alone the entire week, has truly been a gift as far as volatility.

We all trade differently, but something that applies to all of us is in these volatile days/week/months, you have to:

- analyse the market without bias
- analyse how YOU are behaving
- analyse how you think OR can see (if you trade with others) are behaving

We have continued to see the big moves and relative highs/lows for the day occur before the start of the US day session OR right near the open. I can't stress enough how useful it is to follow and understand the European markets.

Let's take a step back and look broadly at the last week.

Many big traders put positions on around the time the fed announced the $200 billion in 28-day Term Securities Lending Facilities (March 11th).

After a few minor pushes higher, on the 13th March it retraced back to the areas where those original long positions were initiated. This is a standard pattern you see over and over again. Government intervention causes a move, we retrace it, and bounce off it. Longs were still happy to be long.

March 14th - This is where it got interesting. Things did NOT go like a few people I know of expected. The Bear Stearns rumours were already out, and the market was not looking that great, and you're stuck LONG a few 1000 contracts.

Before the news release on Friday, we had NOT seen any big selling yet, in fact we saw buying come in on tests of lows in the European markets before the CPI figures. This was a great opportunity to take a long position with size. This good news release was the last opportunity to get OUT of big long positions.

By the time the US opened, institutional longs had already been liquidated, and the free-fall occurred basically because no one was there to step in.

As a day trader, in the long run day to day you are making your bread and butter. Recently we have been extremely lucky and been given multiple "home run" days. When you have fundamental events, they give you an opportunity to hit a move with size and confidence.

Take the time to analyse how you traded and hit it hard next week. We ALL pay the price of education multiple times throughout our trading career.

SMW

[Nvesta81]

Well the good news is I recovered most of what I lost Friday today. However, the bad news is I had to deviate from my trading plan quite a bit to do it. I guess it's not so bad considering these high volatile days need some adjustments made in the strategy one uses anyhow. I'm learning!

[james_gsx]

Glad to hear Nvesta! Today was just.... weird. Glad to hear you made it back, that's what you trade for. Each trade is really meaningless in the grand scheme of things, especially considering how many trades you'll take over your career.

[Nvesta81]

	Quote:	james_gsx
	Today was just.... weird.

Very weird indeed! The market has been trading in and out of Friday's Value Area. It just can't seem to decide which way to go. Some incredibly profitable moves to be had though if a trader's timing is accurate and has the guts to hold on. Very educational day for me. Good luck everyone.