I've been writing very few posts over the last few months. The reason has been that I've chosen to concentrate more on my trading and less on my writing. I started trading futures almost a year ago. I tried trading the S&P e-mini contract (ES) both in a discretionary and a systematic way without much success (understatement alert!). Having jettisoned both systematic trading and the ES contract, I gave the e-mini Dow contract (YM) a try and I've had some modest success (gross exaggeration) with it. Despite my more than a decade experience trading stocks, I still often feel like a clueless newbie trading futures. It's a totally different game.
The trading style I've grown most comfortable with takes account of the sad but very real fact that my decision making in fast-moving markets (of which the e-mini Dow is undoubtedly one) has been less than sound. It is a subjective, discretionary short-term oriented style and a succinct way to describe it would be as follows:
Combining a study of the daily pivot points, support and resistance levels with an analysis of the Average True Range over the last 5 and 20 days, I try to anticipate the path the e-mini Dow will take during the day and the general levels most likely to see a reversal. I then enter up to three limit orders (it could also - and will often - be 0, if I don't see anything with the right reward to risk equation), each one bracketed by a stop and a take-profit order. I will usually do this shortly after the 9:30 am NYSE open but it could also be at any other time. The orders are day orders, which means they expire at 4:15 pm if they haven't been hit. This style of trading generates more orders than trades so many days will see no trades at all. Obviously this is a work in progress so everything I just described could change.
I will be using this blog to keep a record of my orders, which I will be entering here right after I enter them on my order execution platform (I am currently using Tradestation and Interactive Brokers). I might still write non-trading related posts if and when inspiration hits but I will mainly post the orders, whether they were hit or not and the per contract P&L.
The first order is:
Buy YMM10 @10161 limit with 10144 stop and 10188 take-profit.
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