brownsfan019

Cory - I may have mentioned this through a PM, but the more I look at these charts the more I feel your frustrations. Maybe I can toss some ideas out there and Thales or others can chime in. IMO... 1) If your S/R levels are good, you are buying into resistance and selling into support. You should expect a brick wall at these levels. At least on the charts you are posting, this is what I've seen. I don't recall seeing the same brick wall on Thales' charts, so I'm wondering what the difference is. Is Thales doing some additional step(s) that you are not? Time of day, trading around news, etc. 2) Instead of driving into that brick wall, wait for others to fight there and just be patient for a pullback to enter. Get your bias down (long/short) and then enter on a pullback. In that example, you could enter on the pullback and EXIT at your breakout level or wait to see if it does break the 2nd time. Keep in mind that 1st tests of a S/R level should be expected to push price back. The more times that S/R level is tested, the weaker it becomes. I just imagine someone on a trampoline bouncing up to break a floor board - the first test for sure is going to hurt and be hard to break. The more times you bounce up and hit that board, the weaker it becomes till you blast through. Here's your chart with a few ways to define your pullback once the long bias is in. You don't need all of them and I know the 'no indicator' crowd is all over the forums, but all you're looking for is a visual that confirms you have a pullback. Over time it may become 2nd nature, but why not let the computer do it for you if it can -- at least in the beginning. Just some ideas to work with - I do not trade this myself, just trying to work w/ your existing charts.

Exits are tough, no doubt about it. Sometimes you will buy the lod or sell the hod; and that same trade the next day better be a 'hit and run' or you will get stopped. I've eventually come down to a few things that I look for... 1) I'd like to have my target greater than my risk (not always per trade but most). 2) I don't like big stops, so I try to enter at good spots and identify where my stop could reasonably be placed. 3) Win more than you lose. 4) You have to find what your risk tolerance is that will allow you to trade w/o having emotions interfere (the less the better). If you can keep the numbers in your favor, you can come out ahead most days. Some days are easier than others. For example, last Fri was a difficult day for me as the chop/slow ate up trades and then a day like Tue or Wed was just gorgeous (on the ES) for me. Same setups - entry and exit - just some days are easier than others. Contrary to what some on this forum or others will tell you, no system is perfect every day. Any reasonably decent system should make money during certain market conditions and your goal is to make the rough days as least painful as possible. As for how to exit, there's a few threads around TL as I went on some very long and exhaustive hunts for the 'best' exit. My end result - I use fixed targets. Sometimes those exits are perfect and sometimes they are terrible in hindsight. At this point I've realized that I will probably never develop a perfect, consistent exit method so I'm better off dealing with it and making sure my entries are the best they can be.

Could be some stuff in this thread too.

Yep, how one manages the trade is a big part of any trading plan. This thread has given some ideas on how to enter. Exits, stop placement, etc. is the next part of the equation and each trader has their own views of what is 'good' here.

Open ECry has a very nice demo. Limit orders are realistic. If you decide to trade live with them, data and platform is free.

I'd love to see some examples of this MM. Sounds great in theory, but care to elaborate?

JMC is using a 100 EMA with a 100 bollinger on a 1 minute chart. I have posted some charts with a 20 EMA on a 5 minute chart.

In this thread from 2007 (thank you TL search) I documented what appeared to me at the time as games on the DOM.

I use Open ECry. Margins are listed here and updated. I think the margins are fair.

Cory - keep in mind we've all been there. I can't tell you how many times I've been in trades and thought to just creep that stop up a little bit to 'protect' the trade when really I just wanted to know I would at least breakeven. There's a psychological relief when you can be in a trade but know at worst you will get out w/o a loss. Let's face it, no one likes to lose money. So that protective stop movement is a natural reaction to wanting to protect your money. With that said, I've never seen it work b/c so many times I would get ticked out only to watch price do what I thought it would. So that protection cost me a winner, but then my quick losses were full sized. That provided 3 outcomes: 1) Full sized loss 2) Break-even trade 3) Winning trade that withstood being ticked out #1 and #2 are no good for growing your account size. #3 requires near perfect entry AND near perfect stop movement so it doesn't turn into #2. Do you see how difficult that is? So that means you have a 1/3 chance of making money w/ those outcomes. If you remove #2 from the possible outcome list, now your chance of making money is 1/2: 1) Full sized loss 2) Winner These 2 outcomes do not require you to enter perfectly and trail perfectly. It just requires you to follow the plan and exit where you should be exiting. From there, as long as your win %, risk-reward and all that adds up, you can make some money. Trading is hard enough as it is, at the very least put the possible outcome of your trades at a 50% shot at working, not 33%.

I'm with Tams on this one. At one point I would have said that's crazy, but in the end, all that matters is whether $$$ came into your account or left. How a trader does it is up to them. If the trades make $$$ when it counts (real-time) that's all that matters. We've all seen plenty of these wonderful looking backtests, but it's gotta count when real money is on the line. Obviously if trading a lot you'd want to get your commissions down as much as possible - through your broker and looking at leasing/buying a seat as well. But even a $5 round trip charge on the ES is covered by making ONE tick. One ES tick = $12.50 so as long as your win/loss ratio works, you could make money going for 1 tick on the ES even at retail commissions. I don't recommend that, but the numbers could work.

Chart increment settings are very important as it's amazing how the exact same market can look different through different views. And there's plenty to choose from: Minute charts Sub-minute charts Volume based charts Tick based charts Momentum based charts And even more than that. You have to find what works for you. If you want to smooth out the noise, look at charts not based on time and see how they look for you. For example, in a fast moving market, tick or volume charts will be very active - and not so active when it's slower. I find it easier to make money when things are really moving, so non-time based charts help there.

My on trailing stops - don't. Either exit trade or get stopped, I have never seen a successful consistent way of trailing a stop. I'm not saying it does not exist, I've personally never seen it. IMO trails do one thing - remove your fear. You can think - yes, this is a 'free' trade now! But those 'free' trades will get costly quickly.

http://blog.themistrading.com/ Read that blog if you want to learn more while getting a little along the way.

Good to see there are still people around here sniffing the spam, trash, whatever you want to call it out. Turns out posting charts after the fact is rather easy or back tests that had never been traded forward with real money.

I would not get hung up on that actual number being used for the EMA setting, just get consistent with it I would suggest. The thread started with a 20 EMA, we've seen others up to JMC's 100 EMA and they all have potential to work entries for you. In addition to time charts, you could apply the EMA to tick, volume, momentum charts, etc. I've found the tick chart on the ES with JMC's settings to produce more trades (both good and bad).

Negotiator has it - you can spend upwards of $10k or you can work with a standard Dell and everything in between. I have never purchased from ibuypower (yet) but have read some good things about that site. The tech guys around this forum would know better if they still post.

I think if someone filters the trades by saying must tag the bb first and then cleanly test the MA, you could easily watch a few markets looking for clean setups like those ES longs this morning. Now if you do not filter w/ the bb or something else, there will be more trades on a market but then the issue is defining what your pullback should look like. IMO a tag off the BB just provides a structure - price gets to 100 BB and rejects, retraces to EMA.

ES 1min/100 ema from this morning's action: (also called the JMC setup )

ES 1min/100ema after hours doing pretty well tonight for anyone up. I'm just looking at pullbacks to the 100ema and preferably have tagged the bollinger band first. No other context being used, just noticed a few nice ones while doing some other chart work. JMC also posted a TF chart and that brings up another way to play these if you develop a specific rule set (for example saying it must come from a bollinger band tag before looking at the pullback) - you could monitor the 4 indexes fairly easily as these charts are literally 2 indicators other than price. That TF short JMC had may not have occurred on the ES if you were just watching the ES. Yellow boxes = EMA entries after a BB tag. ES 1min/100ema from 8-23 after hours.

Nice job on the charts guys, keep it up. This thread is growing into quite the collection of MA based charts.

Clear identification of those selling trading related products is needed IMO - sponsors of TL or not. As tams said though, if you are making $, then why not pay to be official here? I mean, it's got to be a drop in the bucket for the vendors mentioned in this thread. You got something to sell? Great, but the entire forum should be able to recognize this immediately w/o having to dig through posts to see mentions of 'students' or 'class' or 'uber secret indicators now on sale' or insert your own 'stealth marketing' phrase here. And here's a crazy thought - maybe those labeled as vendors could actually show they trade and do this for a living. I know, that's not standard among vendors at all (guess why), but maybe TL could set the new precedent - vendors that have proven they trade. (Cue up all vendors to now comment on why that would be incredibly silly and not worth their time). At the very least, blatant/stealth vendors should kick MMS some cash for using his site to generate new business for yourself. That's just the nice thing to do... will any step up to the plate?

23:29 EST CL 1min/100EMA looks like a pretty nice pb there JMC. You trading around the clock by chance? Only a 40t+ move for anyone trading the late night times. Came from the opposite BB as well.

phoenix - I would like to keep this thread about entering w/ the use of the EMA. Exits can go into a million different directions and I would welcome you to start a new thread on the topic, but right now this is a great thread about entries. Thanks!

JMC - those big ones hit the BB first? I just glanced, got to run but was trying to catch up on the thread. Nice job w/ the charts everyone, visuals sure do make it easier to see what you are talking about!