[robster970]

Sorry guys about the acronyms. I have just assumed (wrongly) that people know what I'm banging on about.

OD - Open-Drive
OTD - Open-Test-Drive
ORR - Open-Rejection-Reverse

These 3 are all descriptions of how a day can open.

OTF - Other timeframe - a participant that's not interested in intraday and typically wants move the price away from it's current value.

T&S - Time and Sales - window of orders that have been filled, their size and their price.
DOM - Depth of Market or Ladder - order book above below the current bid and above the current ask

[TheDude]

Originally Posted by robster970 »

Guys - thanks for the answers so far.



@TheDude - I stayed out yesterday because it just looked like it was going up. As both my 'methods' rely upon identifying weakness creeping in and then taking an entry, you can see why I sat on the sidelines. When I've tried to trade a 1-way market, I find it difficult to get a good entry. The only place that looks vaguely sensible is when it is consolidating at a level, get in there and bail if I've got it wrong really.

well i guess you're getting ready to pile in now then! recently, the slowly climbing price on vapour volume is a sure sign than the price expansion isnt attracting new business, so weve got to auction down soon. thats the easy/obvious part. the difficulty of course is the when. many will wait for confirmation of course, however the risk/reward will be unfavourable then as opportunity becomes more symmetrical. i guess this will be price reverting to the mean?

as im sure you know, this, when it happens will be a 1 way market. every participant will be selling. in such markets i face the same issue as you - when to get in. waiting for the consolidation often means giving up some of the move. we're advised to just get on board, but i seem to crave a logical point where i can say im wrong if the market comes back. using a dollar or point stop seems silly.

an example of how good trading means doing something very unintuitive.

[TheDude]

Originally Posted by Phil-n-Texas »

interesting topic but having a hard time following all the acronym jargon... perhaps a legend would help? I've been a student of MP for quite awhile and can't get it right... OTF, OTD, etc.???

that aside, i mainly look at MP in multiple timeframes and key in on confluence areas such as fibonacci levels, trend lines, and pivots for "reaction areas".

as for Time and Sales, using ES as an example, i will have 2 or 3 T&S windows open with different filters... one with 3 or less lots, the next with 4 to 39 lots, and the the last with 40 and up lots.... too me these filters help parse the activity between retail and commercial traders... Mainly I'll watch the the activity in the smaller lot sizes and then if there are some prints on the > 40 window that signals that the larger players are getting on board... especially if they start showing up in triple digits.... same with exits... if i see a large print against my trade and i'm in the money, the big dogs are leaving the party so i'll go ahead and exit or tighten stops.

just my

so what do you do when a local trades a 500 lot through an iceberg trading 1-2 lots? (one reason t&s is so much harder, and imo, one is better off looking at aggregate volume. feel free to flame me....


BYW, OTD - open test drive OTF - other time frame (ie long(er) tf than that traded)

[robster970]

Originally Posted by TheDude »

...... i seem to crave a logical point where i can say im wrong if the market comes back. using a dollar or point stop seems silly.

Me too. I just don't seem to have it in me to just get on the bus and not think about where to bail if it goes wrong.

Take last Wednesday - OTD day, opened 88.75, tested down at 86.50 and then bang, it was off. By the time it started to consolidate in Q period (N&P are my IB) at the top of the IB (Initial Balance), you've missed 65% of the move or about 10pts. Where's your 'wrong' then? To cater for a 10pt stop I'd seriously have to scale back the number of contracts I'm trading and then I've got a cr@p r:r for a trade that travelled another 8pts in 7hrs.

Until I figure out a way of identifying OD and OTD scenarios (opening out of range is obviously no guarantee) I think I am destined to sit it out.

Maybe it's just more screen time that I need.

Incidentally, I'm stunned this move up on ES has lasted so long. I'm expecting one last attempt at pushing up and then I might get on the bus down. Looking like the start this week in my opinion. Then again, I am frequently wrong.

[joshdance]

Originally Posted by robster970 »

Take last Wednesday - OTD day, opened 88.75, tested down at 86.50 and then bang, it was off. By the time it started to consolidate in Q period (N&P are my IB) at the top of the IB (Initial Balance), you've missed 65% of the move or about 10pts. Where's your 'wrong' then? To cater for a 10pt stop I'd seriously have to scale back the number of contracts I'm trading and then I've got a cr@p r:r for a trade that travelled another 8pts in 7hrs.

After it moved up after the open and started to level off, I got a good indication and got long at 95.75 (at 11:20am EST). It tried but could not get back above the prior high at 97.75, so after a triple bottoming at 95.50 it seemed it would move lower, so I moved stop to BE and was out at 11:34am. No need for a 10 point stop when it's just not going. Then it broke another 1.25, and I got another indication to buy and was long at 95.00 (at 11:53am). Stop was 1.5 points, for reasons that should be pretty clear from the chart. This time it did go, and I closed the trade way early, but still had a profit.

My point is that there's no need for such a wide stop. Stop placement is still something I really struggle with, but the most frustrating thing to me is to have a 3 point stop (wide for me), watch it get hit, and then go my direction. So most of my stops are 1.5 points or less. There's nothing wrong with trying 3 times for a trade, getting out with -1 on each of the first two, and then hitting a nice +4 or +5 on the last try, if you can do it. Small losses are important psychologically too; when I get down 3 points on a single trade, on these days when the range has been 10 points, it makes it difficult because you could now capture 50% of the day's range and still only have +2. Lots of pressure for me.

More important is, "am I on the right side of the market?" I shorted last week and gave the thing 3 points of room, and it just kept crawling and crawling against me and finally got me. There's just no reason to do this, and I wanted to be right more than I wanted to have a good trade, because I knew it would get me, but I just hoped it wouldn't. Not a smart way to trade. On a day where volatility is high and the range is 20-30 points, a 3 point stop may be just fine, but in 8-10 point ranges, if you need 3 points of room, the location or timing of the trade is just off IMO. And if you need a 10 point stop in anything except a swing trade where you're targeting 30 or more points, something's very wrong IMO.