I’m sure it looks like we had the crystal ball in turbo mode today, but the truth is volume doesn’t lie and will always show you where the fights are going to be. The rest is up to you. As I said pre-market the OL just had me spooked. I felt that given it had been tested 4 times overnight and the interim support was likely to be strong at the 70 handle, it was just going to be too volatile to take a direct fade trade straight back to the overnight balance center. Ask around my office and they will all tell you I hate sitting through positions. It is true. That is why pre-market if you look back on my sheet you will see “scalp” as a trade type with question marks. I just didn’t like it and that meant I knew it would be volatile so I would shift into scalp mode and just grab some single ticks. NJ on the other hand liked the long there, bought them at 72 and traded into 75, which I also had on my sheet pre-market but couldn’t force myself to pull the trigger. This brings up an important point that we are always preaching. There is no one right way to do it. Trading is binary. At every level you are trading you have to ask yourself, “Do I think this level is going to hold or not?”. That is it. Whether you win or lose is going to come down to how you process the big picture of all the info and make your choice. All the technical analysis in the world at the moment of truth is worthless on all the meaningful trades. If you are long and it goes down you lose. If it goes up you win. The only exception is scalping where that doesn’t matter as you are simply trading the volatility itself. It isn’t about being right, it is about identifying very temporary exhaustion points. Anyway, we both had no interest in the short as we felt 70.25 was the bottom and we were right. But I felt since the first flush didn’t make it quite there it might try again so I stayed out of the convicted long. NJ took it. So I made 5 scalps for a total of 7 ticks and NJ grabbed the full 3 point trade. 19 icks on the day and we are done. NJ trade is green/red with the initial stop in yellow. My scalp areas are in purple. As I post this it looks like our pre-market 76.50 level ended up being a nice little acceptance area as well. I’ll be curious to hear how our readers traded this morning…
5 Responses to “4/8/2010 Post Trading Analysis”
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Nice Blog guys, and great that you big lot traders are kind enough to share some knowledge. Have found lots of really useful information so far. FYI, I took a long at 72 and scratched fairly quickly. I did
re-enter again at 72 for +2.5 points (sitting the the chop) so it was nice to read your pre and post-market comments after the event. I’ll be tuning in every day.
Jess
Thanks. Yeah, I get ants in my pants and can’t sit through it. I felt good about the long side all along and felt safe with a stop at 69, but with the only “sure thing” up swing sitting at 74, a risk/reward of roughly 3/2 wasn’t that appealing. NJ didn’t mind it though. It was the right trade any way you looked at it.
Word of advice to prevent the scratch next time: If you believe in the trade, believe in it. You can’t put a stop under the swing when it sets up like that. The cash market MUST run that level if it sits for more than one rotation – and the floor will follow. It is a practically a law. You have to stop back behind the nearest unfair or balance area, whichever is closer. From there decide whether your odds of being right outrun any risk/reward inversion. Food for thought.
Thanks for the great advice RG.
thanks for the posts and info DTG….i was short overnight at 77 and got rid of 2 of my 3 at 75. when the job number didnt do anything to push through 71 i got flat. i was looking for down or chop today so when things turned up i didnt want to chase it into what i thought would resistance. live and learn.
Yeah that was a good trade. We had been looking for the flush for a few days as we saw all the bigger traders selling the lows consistently since the first of the week. One of the partners sold the Stoxx off the German open with basically the same move overnight. In the ES the 70 handle was a brick coming into today for sure. Should be a little quieter tomorrow with no key news or earnings. Those conditons are best for scalping the edges.