The transition to Futures trading

No idea on tonight.
Probably won't even look.
Only came on last night because of the gap.

Still bearish if I had to choose, however there is the gap.

Happy to sit this one out

CanOz said:

Nice call... As good as it got for me on the Z today though.

Click to expand...

A but confused about what the chart is showing?
Also your statement, is that 4 contracts? Why is the loss only like $60?

Pardon my ignorance. What have I missed?

I was having a think about the fact that there are some watching this thread who may not be posting. A few of these people have made comments here and there.

What I would really love is to hear a bit more about anyone in that position.

I'm curious to know things like:
- Where you are in your development
- What are you currently trading (even sim)
- What you are looking at trading down the track
- Where you hope to be in 6 months, 12 months, 3 year etc
- What are your overall goal with futures

Whatever questions people feel like answering.
I think it would be great to get some discussion going.

pavilion103 said:

A but confused about what the chart is showing?
Also your statement, is that 4 contracts? Why is the loss only like $60?

Pardon my ignorance. What have I missed?

Click to expand...

Nah, the chart is showing the my last trade where the entry (4 contracts) coincided with your call on the long. The table is my net trades for the day, -6 points including commissions.

CanOz said:

Nah, the chart is showing the my last trade where the entry (4 contracts) coincided with your call on the long. The table is my net trades for the day, -6 points including commissions.

Click to expand...

Ah ok got it.
I was thinking -$6 which didn't make sense!

I'm more interested to hear how you trade the FTSE.
I haven't discussed it in detail with you.
Do you ever hold much longer or not?

Thanks to the massive amounts of help I have received from the members of this forum I now have an IB account and have begun trading.

After reading a few of the books recommend I decided that I wanted to beat the learning curve and not loose money. Therefore starting very slowly.

I have been in your part of the world PAV on a course for the past 3 months, I had planned on sim trading the FTSE but have not had the time. I have been watching it most nights while studying. Wish I was trading last night even I seen that short.

As my time frees up again, start sim trading and build a play up a playbook and then jump in.

Where ill be in the future really depends on where my career heads, so who knows but hopefully at least trading in some capacity.

Overall goal is to generate extra income, very vague but all depends on where I am at in my career.

Love this thread and I am very appreciative to all the people who contribute.

Cheers

pavilion103 said:

Ah ok got it.
I was thinking -$6 which didn't make sense!

I'm more interested to hear how you trade the FTSE.
I haven't discussed it in detail with you.
Do you ever hold much longer or not?

Click to expand...

I don't really trade the FTSE that often as i don't have the DOM up for it, only for the DAX because i have almost three years of screen time for it so i just seem to feel it out better. So with this in mind i only take really obvious looking trades looking at the chart, where i think there could be a run of stops or traders trapped somewhere. I rarely hold a runner for very long on either market.

CanOz said:

I don't really trade the FTSE that often as i don't have the DOM up for it, only for the DAX because i have almost three years of screen time for it so i just seem to feel it out better. So with this in mind i only take really obvious looking trades looking at the chart, where i think there could be a run of stops or traders trapped somewhere. I rarely hold a runner for very long on either market.

Click to expand...

Is that why you took that long last night at 6652 (traders trapped)?

I've found these sort of setups to be very good.
It helps having been one of the people who used to try and take a short in that position of a break lower and not understanding why it failed so often.

pavilion103 said:

Is that why you took that long last night at 6652 (traders trapped)?

I've found these sort of setups to be very good.
It helps having been one of the people who used to try and take a short in that position of a break lower and not understanding why it failed so often.

Click to expand...

Yeah basically. The market gets that look in the depth that its "too short". So every time it pushes lower a bunch of shorts cover and sweep the offers higher. Sometimes the chart looks like a hockey stick when this happens

Inexperience had be confused with my last short.
Took the nice low risk trade, got to 20 points profit. Should have covered.

I traded it the same way I would the initial trade, but they were completely different contexts.
The first trade it had a nice distance to go.
The second trade the market was already oversold and needed to correct.

I'll get better.
All valuable lessons to learn.
At least I recognised that the long way on, but my initial thought to just hold the short and be willing to give back all 20 points if it came to that, was a terrible concept in that spot.

"hockey stick" ....

Gap filled

I haven't seen this too often, a gap big down day followed by a big gap up day. So the DAX has three gaps now and the FTSE at least two....

Correction, the DAX filled the gap created back on the 13th of Feb, yesty.

Levels 6760 and 6800-10

I'd watch those.

Favoriting short but not confident.

Won't be on

Hmmm, maybe this gap will fill today....lots of hockey sticks around

just a dirty ole grind today

Text book profile on the DAX today....pr*ck of a day to trade Unless you enjoy death by a thousand cuts!

CanOz said:

Text book profile on the DAX today....pr*ck of a day to trade Unless you enjoy death by a thousand cuts!

Click to expand...

What do you expect from demonic sons of bourses from lower Hades?!

Never a dull moment - the bourse that's got the lot including a wicked attitude!

Wlecome to my nightmare!

pavilion103 said:

I was having a think about the fact that there are some watching this thread who may not be posting. A few of these people have made comments here and there.

What I would really love is to hear a bit more about anyone in that position.

I'm curious to know things like:
- Where you are in your development
- What are you currently trading (even sim)
- What you are looking at trading down the track
- Where you hope to be in 6 months, 12 months, 3 year etc
- What are your overall goal with futures

Whatever questions people feel like answering.
I think it would be great to get some discussion going.

Click to expand...

I feel should pay some admission fee, so here's some background if of interest.

Long term buy and hold share investor who tried trading in the 90s but really had no idea. Late 2012 visited ASF on a feeling I could surely get some extra income if I took the time to better understand the principles. Started by devouring threads here and reading Nick Radge's "Unholy Grails". Have been trend trading ASX on an off since, through the challenges of the last 18 months based on my own Amibroker systematic system code heavily based on Nick's ideas. I find its important for me to have some faith something is possible and profitable - after that I'm happy to plug away at it for however long is required. The amazing thing about communities like ASF of course is being able to stand on the shoulder of giants rather than scratch around in the dirt in the wrong directions sometimes.

Have had futures in the back of my mind particularly after reading very helpful books such as "Universal Principles of Successful Trading" (Brent Penfold). Over Christmas hols finally had enough time to plough through all the futures/derivatives related material I could lay my hands on in ASF as well as "Futures mad simple" (Kel Butcher). Really had no hard and fast goals, rather it was more feelings I needed:

- to better understand short term trading
- have a way of making money in down periods (my trend system is index filtered, so is "off" much of the time)
- be able to make some income off low risk leverage positions (hopefully)

I figured it could only help with trend trading entries to have a better grip, and best case might be able to make some extra money from short term/futures. After a couple of months of learning Ninjatrader and playing with AMP demo data primarly for the FDAX, I'd describe my current position as:

- still struggling to develop my "playbook" (shorthand for certainly not profitable as yet )
- have replay traded this year's DAX data to date over many timeframes and find myself drawn to trades <30min
- can see the potential for making and losing over short time frame versus longer term trend trading
- Now starting to feel I might be able to reliably trade the first few hours of the DAX which is a convenient time for me in Brissy (particularly the 6pm to 10pm period). Suspect profitability likely to follow from disciplined approach to sticking with a few key times, patterns and setups.

Ideally I'd like to code my strategies once I'm confident enough in them, but nowhere near that in terms of trades or programming skill (NT C# doesn't set me on fire after Amibroker AFL either to be honest).


As for goals, probably:

SHORT: Open an IB account and learn TWS + continue to sim trade FDAX in realtime as much as possible. Keep better records, develop checklists for ideal entries, review (Pav, you put me to shame with this I suspect!)
MEDIUM: Aim to get profitable over at least a few months sim trading, start reviewing the FTSE much more closely
LONG: If I do succeed in becoming profitable, scale up contract sizes a little and look to create my own code for automating TWS where possible. I find "teaching" a computer to do what I have in my head a great way of clarifying my technique.

I personally much prefer people posting graphs rather than just talking entries/exits at numbers, but am guilty of never writing things up myself. Anyway, here goes a first effort.

DAX tonight:

• Very little movement at 6pm through 7pm local time - unusual - usually able to identify a couple of 15-20 pts moves in those periods
• Made me think caution required - possibly not worth trading tonight
• While typing tonight had the DAX running on 3min and 1min and watched the price action taper from 1845 through to 2045 with corresponding falling volume
• Looked like a breakout around 9pm area was possible, but decided wouldn't trade tonight without something significant
• Based on highs/lows tonight and previous day S/R pencilled in very conservative breakout limits at 9476.5 (for upward break) and 9438 for downward break
• Based on the gap up at open tonight, guessed any break would be down and programmed a stop entry@9438 with 10pt stp and 15pt initial take profit - the DAX can go off in seconds when it does break
• At 2050 the DAX started moving upwards quickly - cancelled my short entry strategy and manually went long (this is all sim for me). With no expectation of how far the move might go other than yesterday's S/R resolved to be timid and scalp 10pts here and there with aggressive manual stops (would normally try to sit out at least 25 pts for a decent break with 5pt stop)
  Managed a few quick trades over next 13 mins for:+3.5 ticks, +12, -7.5 (stopped), +1.5, +7
  = 16.5 pts net profit for the night for 30mins watching the screen
• Then it was time to chase the kids to bed
  

If I can get the technique and discipline to reliably get 10 pts off the DAX each day by late 2014 I'd be happy to be honest....