I know! This is what makes it so endlessly fascinating and why we are obsessed with trading. At times you feel like a Trading God and then the inevitable drawdown brings you back to Earth with a jolt. I'm in God Mode right now.

I would tell you but you would not believe me so there is no point let's just see what I do in here with this small sample size and then we can talk but my goal for this thread is over 100% in the first year with a very limited number of trades vs. what I would take on my own.

Important Point about different styles and time frames of trading

I see this conversation flowing in the thread and rather then answer each post individually I thought I would give my general 2 cents.

Yes it is true that I could be trading a 5 mins chart for 20 ticks short and Erniebilko can be trading a 4 hour chart for 200 ticks Long and we both can make money.

On a 5 min time frame you will need a specific skill set to do that. These days though the Algo's own that world and the randomness is almost impossible to scalp but I do know some very large players that can do this but only because they are big enough to push the market around for a few ticks so shorter term trading is basically dead unless your throwing around 200 contracts at a time.

If you move to a 30 min timeframe this is the world I live in at the funds I worked at, the reason being is because its a sweet spot were we can crush the retail traders but stay out of the way of the very big institutions. We typically take profits ranging from 20 to 60 ticks.

When you go to the larger time frames like the Daily or the 4 hour now you are in the world of the mega funds 100 million plus.

So my point is you must know WHO your competition is at various levels because they all play the game very differently and have different agenda's.

I will get into this in greater detail going forward.

Trade List for Thurs 5/21/15

Lets start with my favorite chart for tomorrow the ES or the SnP mini 500



We have Unemployment claims coming out tomorrow and analysts are looking for a worse number number of 271 vs 264 this is favoring our short big time. However at 10 we have Existing Home Sales and the Philly Fed and these numbers are expected better then previous so I actually like the short side even more because if I can find my way in to a trade and the 10 numbers are worse the market will tank even further so this is my number one chart for tomorrow. Lets see how we do.

My head is a little clearer these days because I just finished up a 10 day supply of antibiotics for a bad tooth infection thats cleared up now so I'm hoping to be a little faster to some trades.

Trade Opened



I will monitor this trade till I go to bed at 11 est and will check on it through the night a little.

Come on baby I need a winner or this thread is going to die off soon lol.

Update right after I took this pic I moved stop to 2125.50 (save me from posting another pic)

Your only competition in trading is yourself. Day trading a 30 minute chart? Tuesday morning I had my day made before my markets were open for 30 minutes! You have a strange fascination for the way "your fund" did it. Trust me, it aint the only way!

Trading has to be a personal journey. Your style has to be unique to your own personality, strengths and weaknesses. Like I said before I am a momentum guy. I jump on the moves and ride them, can't fade a thing. Others would rather have a root canal than buy a new high or sell a new low.

You have to figure out what works for your own personal mindset. I trade the most volatile markets for the most part because it best suits my style and strategy. A buddy of mine wouldn't trade the S&P 500 because he felt it moved to fast for him. I wouldn't trade it because it moved too slow for me.

If you worry about what the big players are doing I firmly believe you are doing it wrong.

Come on, you know better than to make blanket statements like that. What you said is either wrong or needs to have some assumptions cleared up.

Knowing who (or at least what type of participant) is putting flow through is one of the biggest pieces of info you can have. If you have a reliable prior for the "who", then you often don't even need the "why".

Just answering a blanket statement with a blanket statement.

For a market flow day trader it doesn't really matter "who". The fact is there are lots of big players often opposing each other and none of them are always right. Worrying about stuff like "who" is just one more bump in the road and more noise that can derail you.

I started out as a market maker in the trading pit. A different environment for sure but every trade we would take the other side of the biggest players in the game.

The fact is you are competing with all market participants all of the time no matter what your timeframe and your only real enemy is yourself. If you can control your own plan and psychological approach all of that other noise doesn't matter.

Who are the players what is the reality very Important point

Sorry but this is so important I had to make it Red lol. You definitely have competition. Trading is a Zero Sum game just like Poker.


When you go to Vegas what do you see? Huge massive Institutions called Casino's that make 100's of Million Dollars a year.

When you go to Wall Street or Hide Street or LaSalle Street or any of the Financial centers in the world what do you see? Huge Massive Institutions called Investment firms, Banks and various other professional trading companies that make Billions of dollars a year.

You are talking like the market moves in a "Random" fashion and that just isn't reality.

90% of the big funds use the same decision model and that is Fundamental Analysis. The only thing they differ in is their ability to get information and their interpretation of what that information means and then their time horizons on that information.

Do you really think that if 90% of the volume in a market is interpreting the data points to equal an interest rate cut at the next fed meeting that the market is random ?

Thats ridiculous !!

We know for a fact that these players will be positioning themselves for this event and future price movement.


Now lets get down to the smaller time frames. WHO do you think is making money on the smaller time frames ? and whats their business model ?

The market Makers or Liquidity providers and HOW do they make money ??

Well they make money by taking the difference between the Bid and Ask spread that's it thats all. They are all algo driven these days and what we use to do on the floor is now done on a super fast nano second high speed algo siting within a kilometer of an exchange.

Yes you are your own worst enemy as a Trader because once you make a decision YOU are in control of that trade management but to make the best decisions you must know what and where and how the money is flowing and why its flowing there.

Again not to sound arrogant but this idea of finding price patterns and not understanding why the pattern exists and having away to confirm the pattern with facts is completely unprofessional and retail FISH thinking.

I'm not saying your a fish but this thinking is just silly and if you took a different attitude like Trading is a war between those with Information vs those without Information you may find you crush the market a lot more then you already do. Just like Poker is a Game of Information, Trading is a Game of Information.

Trade Update

15 mins before the Unemployment data and I'm tightening my stop to 2122.75 I don't have time to post the chart also because this is a high variance data point I may be trading very fast after it so I will do my best to update as fast as I can but afterwards I will review my trades to clue everyone in.

10 mins and counting.

I'm not sure what to say as you haven't understood what I have already said?

When there is a huge volume spike there are big informed played ON BOTH SIDES! There aren't enough "retail fish" as you call them to do that volume. It's all institution against institution in a zero sum game. Knowing exactly "who" other than being impossible is unimportant because there is a "who" on both sides. The market is a constant battle between goliaths.

As individual traders we have to interpret that action and trade accordingly. I like to play the breakout because in the markets I trade they work more often than not. All I need to see is that is indeed breaking out and trending and jump on with a mathematically calculated stop. Others may fade the breakout. Others may have some fundamental opinion. Other may be scalping support/resistance levels. But they are all doing it at the same time.

Like I said and firmly believe the battle is with yourself. The more noise you inject into the thought process only muddy's the water and lowers your chances at success.

Trade Update

Added to my short position after the news

Trade Update

Bounce off POC (will explain this later ) had to take the add on back off with a small $650 loss

Update on EUR/CAD Short

Stopped overnight at 1.3631, which at this point is the top tick in its retracement. Trade netted 2:1 overall.

Chart: http://www.screencast.com/t/9Z7F0E22Q

Update on CAD/JPY Long

Final target now 99.69. stop unchanged at 98.81.

New Trade opened

Short 6B British Pound

Trade Update Adding to 6B short

Could you give us an idea of what timeframe you are playing? It would be nice if you would add your initial stops and targets too even if these are tentative and subject to change. Just saying that you are short with no indication of what you are targeting is not helpful.

Trade Update Stopped Moved ES to 2124

Im almost always on the 30 min chart but will go down to the 5 min occasionally.

I do sincerely apologize but I rarely use a HARD stop on a chart because so much can change candle by candle and volume.

I'm taking as many screen shots as I can to show the trades AS Im moving things around so we can review later but I will show all screen shots which obviously I cant tamper with but Im posted as quickly in here as I can the updates in real time.

Trade update Data out in 10 mins

Holding both these trades into the 10 am News again I apologize but I will have to trade as fast as I can once I see the data and I am taking screen shots at various points and will review this all in detail later.

I'm just posting updates in real time without the charts till later when I can write them up.

Trade Update Took half off 6B stop moved to b/e before report

Trade Update Stopped out ES will look again to re enter higher

New Trade 6B short 2nd trade on this today profits on trade #1

Here's a trade I saw on Tuesday but didn't take as I was already in 2 positions and didn't want to take the trade late in the day ahead of the inventory report on Wednesday. Had an opportunity to take it after the report but decided not to as I didn't want to take anything ahead of Fed.

This is CL 120 min chart. I have a long bias on CL and had been tracking it last week for an entry. It sucks when you have the right idea but don't capitalize on it.

http://www.screencast.com/t/urmk4EakTV

Chart and Trade Update with description