There Are Trades Everywhere!

Everywhere I look there are great trades. As we go through this transition with changes in volume and volatility, I change my range bars and Renkos to reflect the "new normal". The new normal is that there is this change. I don't know how long the transition will continue, but it will be for some time.

In the mean time, there are trades everywhere. Whether you look at overnight activity or look for what news is out tomorrow, it's a fairly straightforward process to work out where to trade.

Patience Pays

I was trading around a bit all morning. DAX, Crude and a little bite at the Euro. I then had a longer lunch and packed the car as we are driving up to London for a bit.


After lunch, the Euro broke. I didn't catch the down draft as I wasn't paying enough attention, but I did catch the move after the pullback. And joining the trend after the pullback is my basic business.

No post tomorrow as I'm off line. I'm running my longer term trades and can check these with my iPad. We are progressing with working out how to show these trades before I place my orders with the brokers. Should make it more interesting being able to watch in real time.

Another Quiet Day

Today was a fairly quiet day. I traded across a few markets including the Euro.The first two trades didn't get me much, but the next two were OK. The bars on the chart were not so clear. Renkos are usually clearer, but the CCIs were what showed the trend and the pullbacks that I trade.

Knowing Your Business

One of the most important things in being a successful trader is knowing your business. Sounds simple, but what does it really mean?

Well, mastery comes with time. 10,000 hours they say. 10,000 hours doing the same thing over and over. Henry Ford worked that one out when he decided to build cars using an assembly line. Doing skilled work with less skilled workers.

My basic discretionary trading business is buying or selling at the 33EMA and covering at the outside keltner bands. Very specific and very simple. I do that over and over. After my 10,000+ hours I know my business. Having a very specific trading plan and sticking to it, doing the same trades over and over, developing that muscle memory, mastery comes.

Oil is the flavor of the day for me. All I needed to do was recognize the trend and trade the pullbacks. The news in the Middle East pushed prices here. I'm not convinced we can stay at these prices unless things really hot up in that part of the globe.

Oil

Oil is the focus of the markets. It's clear that Iran needs to be put back into it's box. Raising world tensions through terrorism has changed all our lives. It's time that we pushed back.


Oil has been pressured upwards not only by speculative buying but by a big  increase in oil option volumes. As market makers sell calls, they have to buy Oil to hedge.


I traded Light Crude yesterday afternoon. This morning was very quiet in London. Everything was very quiet. It was a matter of grabbing what there was between the Euro, DAX and one oil trade.


This Euro 5 tick Renko chart is very clean and easy to trade.

Day Trading Wins

Looks like day traders are the ones that are not getting bored to death in these markets. Things are pretty quiet. Up until a couple of days ago, the stock indices were mono-directional: UP. Now we are consolidating and the market will break one way or the other, eventually.


In the mean time, we make our living taking the middle out of the daily ranges. Not a lot of cream but more than enough milk.


This morning in London time, the DAX did it's thing. It hit the VAL of yesterday's higher distribution and failed there. It then sold off big time. As of the writing of this post, we've almost touched the VAL of the bottom distribution of 17 Feb.

Wednesday Notes

Yesterday was quite a quietish day. We used to stand in the pit when it was quiet and say we'd never make money again. The market was dead. And then hell broke loose and we were in a manic period again. Markets go through quiet periods and the spring coils and then leaps out. In the mean time, there's money to be made but I just need to grind it out.

I bought the DAX on the open around 6908.0 and exited against the recent highs at about 6922.0. 14 points is 350 Euro per contract. The trend was identified as up. The market pulled back. I just bought the thrust up after that. Not too hard if you have the discipline to follow a trading plan. The Renko bars make it much clearer to see.

Today's trading was bits and pieces, Euro, ES and Light Crude. The transition is continuing as the world downsizes.