ES Thursday 9/21/2017

SHort at OR break 02.50 looking for 99.75

Nice trade Big Mike. What OR did you use? I'm to to MP and VP

1M opening range

Bruce's 1/2 SD was blown through as well. Should have held-LOL. Maybe next time

Big Mike, did you go long above 1Min range first this morning or just take the short? Just curious how you play the opening range BO when one side gets broken by a few tics? Thx

Typically I would have been long up there but really was biased short. We opened below the close and we are way up at all time high area (weakly going sideways IMO) so I thought the play was down. Normally I take whatever comes 1st and will try up to 3 times to hit +4/-4 number off the open.
I am set 1 tic beyond each end of the OR for most of the days.

Originally posted by sharks57

Big Mike, did you go long above 1Min range first this morning or just take the short? Just curious how you play the opening range BO when one side gets broken by a few tics? Thx

great to see the threads being kept alive...I'm trying to enjoy some unseasonably warm weather here in VT......two things for reference....1) we put in additional tpo's at last weeks highs and 2) we went 4 points below the weekly open


I covered my spy trade yesterday...here is fill...This was a terrible trade to begin with and selling spreads further out of the money in low volatility is not really a sound trading principle...this trade had a small profit but was a crappy trade....I still have my 249 SPX which is doing nothing good for me so far.......I really need a selloff and plan if we get one to either exit the trade at the profit target or if it hasn't reached that I will sell a further out bull put spread to bring in more credit...I'm trying to figure out how long and at what point I will stop rolling this trade

I think using the 1/2 SD as a target is the better idea as I don't think the 1/2 SD on it's own has as much power as the one SD level....."confluence equals confidence" so fading the 1/2 sd or any level for that matter always works better when you have other reasons at play...

why should the 1/2 sd level have held ? Why should any level hold ?


.

Originally posted by Big Mike

1M opening range

Bruce's 1/2 SD was blown through as well. Should have held-LOL. Maybe next time

a quick update to those who emailed about the "ordeflow" that I said I was going to start posting and researching ( I mentioned I was going to start posting that over the summer).......well, since I can't really capture my time and sales and trade and post all at the same time, my plan was to finally dive deeper into a product like bookmap.........but here is the problem.....I emailed them as I was concerned about IB data ( which I use to feed my market delta program and I actually do my ES trades from) and the way it pools or clumps volume data....here is the exchange :

the guy has the same first name as me so don't be confused....LOL !

"Hi Bruce,

IB TWS aggregates their data every half second. Therefore it is less accurate than other data providers that update at much lower sub-second levels. If you are trading off of higher time frames then this might be OK for you. However, if you are trading at at lower time frames like a 5 min chart, then it would be better to have more accurate data that is more frequently updated. Bookmap simply plots the data it receives from the data provider. There are many traders using IB and Bookmap, but most of our traders demand higher quality data such as Rithmic, CQG, IQ Feed, OEC, and others.

Bruce
BookMap Support"

I meant that I should have held on to the trade until we got to 1/2 SD

Originally posted by BruceM

I think using the 1/2 SD as a target is the better idea as I don't think the 1/2 SD on it's own has as much power as the one SD level....."confluence equals confidence" so fading the 1/2 sd or any level for that matter always works better when you have other reasons at play...

why should the 1/2 sd level have held ? Why should any level hold ?


.

Originally posted by Big Mike

1M opening range

Bruce's 1/2 SD was blown through as well. Should have held-LOL. Maybe next time

I think the plus or minus 4 is a great place........some things to consider depending on where we open........we could use 1/4 of an SD especially when the ranges start to expand as a target and if we open near the prior days close on cash market.......we could use the plus or minus 4 and see how that equates to the 1/4 and 1/2 sd......we could take some off ( the sooner the better ) and let the runners do the work.....as you know a lot of this will depend upon where we open and how far away from the previous days close....some days we will open beyond the 1/4, 1/2 and even the one sd...so then we have no Sd levels to use as targets....just rambling out loud here....

that trade rocked Big Mike....I was tuning around on the radio this morning and while I consider myself a spiritual person I am not always in tune to a specific religious thought .....the person speaking said that "contentment comes from being able to forgive"....now in the context of his talk he was speaking about forgiving others but I think in trading we need to practice being content and forgive ourselves if we don't hang on for the last tic or two or final profit target........so a content mind will give you more power in the long term....

This may sound as if I am preaching this to Big Mike but I know he's been around the trading scene for a while so these comments are not specifically directed at anyone.......Sometimes a series of words takes hold of you and actually makes you think about things even if they are simple concepts........so today those words took hold of me..........now if only I can remember to think about them more often....that's always the hard part.

I hope all can find some contentment and forgive me for babbling ......ha !
,l

Originally posted by Big Mike

I meant that I should have held on to the trade until we got to 1/2 SD

Originally posted by BruceM

I think using the 1/2 SD as a target is the better idea as I don't think the 1/2 SD on it's own has as much power as the one SD level....."confluence equals confidence" so fading the 1/2 sd or any level for that matter always works better when you have other reasons at play...

why should the 1/2 sd level have held ? Why should any level hold ?


.

Originally posted by Big Mike

1M opening range

Bruce's 1/2 SD was blown through as well. Should have held-LOL. Maybe next time

one last thing - just to keep track of things...at the start of the week there was an 86 % chance that we were to trade to 2515 on the cash or down to 2485 as per cash.....neither of those have printed yet and there is not much time left in the week.......

I was taught it to be the first minute but the real reality is that traders would call into the pit of the big contract long before the emini ( the ES) became popular and they would get the opening range told to them by their broker...the person who taught me the pitbull methods called in every day for the range...it would literally would be just the first few seconds......then he would use 2.5, 4 and 5.5 points above the opening range high and use the same increments below the opening range low....I modified it just to use the opening print to have something to use for the ES.....

some like the first 5 minutes...some like 10 minutes....some even use the first 30 minutes......so to make a long story longer , there really is no set definition !