bakedbeans' learning journal

[kiwiarian]

Trading is mostly about timing.
You can have bullish bias on the big and entry tf but can still squeeze some pips/points from the chart.
Yes, you can.
Pro and IgazI has been going on about this for pages and pages with no end.

Questions are:

are you brave enough?
are you skilled enough?
do you have the mental fortitude to pull this stunt?

I got the ss perfect just for you coz some of these trades have only 1 to 2 pips target:

UJ D1.jpg
As you can see, there is really no bullish bias yet on the D1.

UJ H1.jpg
But the H1 is screaming "BUY! BUY! BUY!"

Meaning, there is no clear bias or conformity between the backbone tfs. What would you do?

As for me, I scalp the market like so:
M1 entries.jpg

After a couple of losses, I switched to NO SL mode
And another more up to a couple of minutes before the raging bulls take over:
M1 entries 2.jpg

Some of those trades are pip-based scalp (small target) others are time-based scalp (1 or a few M1 candles).
These things take time to master. But, you WILL get there! Picture yourself where you want to be in the future. Believe that you will be able to take those trades. See yourself taking those trades. These will be your mantra! This is the mental exercise that most tutors don't have the science to teach.

Focusing on 1 pair, 1 tf, 1 session, 1 trading method will gift you the greatest gift of all... the "Intimacy" with that pair, that tf, that session, that trading method. Without even realizing it, you'll be able to "read into the future" up to a certain point of what will the price do when it enter a certain market condition and draw up from your trading muscle the appropriate scenario to deal with it. After you pass this stage, then, only then, you are allowed to expand your WIL to trade more pair, more tf, more sessions, more trading methods.

Bruce Lee said "I'm not afraid of someone who practiced 10,000 kicks once but I'm afraid of someone who practice 1 kick 10,000 times" or something to that effect. But, he himself has many different types of kicks on top of punches and grappling and choking and other devastating forbidden blows.

There are stuff in this post alone that you can add in your WIL. Expand it!

Another gold post thanks.
Those 1 minute trades are just based off the closes if its higher or lower I am presuming?

Yes. Dots originally.

Its funny how I can see it when you present it in those charts but the dots eluded me
Must be how my brain is wired.

[bb01100100]

Thanks so much Don - it's very helpful to see how you worked with what the market was doing.

I don't really understand your scalps, but I do understand that the opportunity was there at the time and the lack of bigger chart bias didn't stop you from making the most of the opportunity.

I've been thinking a lot over the weekend about your post and your comment on picturing where I want to be...

That lead to two things I'm rehearsing mentally:

1. "Zooming out" - just zooming out on my trading chart to get a sense of context and looking for patterns that might not be obvious on higher timeframes or zoomed in charts.
2. "Continuation trades" - being comfortable with momentum bar, zline test and enter. This still feels awkward, so I need to make it fluid and without hesitancy.

Thanks,
Baked.

[Don_xyZ]

Thanks so much Don - it's very helpful to see how you worked with what the market was doing.

I don't really understand your scalps, but I do understand that the opportunity was there at the time and the lack of bigger chart bias didn't stop you from making the most of the opportunity.

I've been thinking a lot over the weekend about your post and your comment on picturing where I want to be...

That lead to two things I'm rehearsing mentally:

1. "Zooming out" - just zooming out on my trading chart to get a sense of context and looking for patterns that might not be obvious on higher timeframes or zoomed in charts.
2. "Continuation trades" - being comfortable with momentum bar, zline test and enter. This still feels awkward, so I need to make it fluid and without hesitancy.

Thanks,
Baked.

Yes. Don't hesitate. Act.

No clear bias on the backbone tfs, so... scalp. When the market looks "good" in your eyes, enter. When it doesn't look good, exit.

Jul. 17 15.53.jpg (23.67 KiB) Viewed 1167 times

27% gained in that small move. 22 minutes.
If you ever feel scared, scale down your lot size. If you want to train your mental side of the game, open a very small live account and find out what kind of risk % you could handle per trade. Don't demo it. Go live. That's the only way to learn real trading psychology. Also, going with M1 will train you and check whether you still hesitate or not. Think fast, decide fast! In? Out? Do it quick! After that, you'll see that trading on M5 or M30 will feel super slow and you'll be surprised that you already make up your mind even before that last candle (the decision candle) is closed

[bb01100100]

Thanks Don; those scalps look well-reasoned and are fearless - inspiration for me.
I'll try some M1 scalps with MES tomorrow in my next session. I'll need to adjust my eyes - I've become quite used to my 4500 volume charts on ES.


Today I took the time to zoom out, and could see a rising channel; so I saw we had an upward bias but were neither at the upper or lower side of that range; so I watched. I had to double check the calendar to make sure there wasn't a US holiday - it was very very quiet and hesitant.

2023-07-18-ES-bigger-picture.jpg (91.93 KiB) Viewed 1133 times

The vertical green line was when I started observing.

After it looked as though we'd rejected the channel high, I got short, looking for a reasonable 3pt scalp to test the prior momentum bar and touch the MA.

2023-07-18-ES.jpg (117.71 KiB) Viewed 1133 times

That worked out well; netted 2.75 pts after it stalled.

I was hesitant to go long since I thought we might get another leg down into the channel, but price was hesitant to go down, so I entered long and had a stop below the prior candle low. I calculated if I was stopped out I'd still have some profit for the day so thought I'd let it run back up to highest yellow line - about 3 pts upward.

Price was very hesitant.. in retrospect I should have been more patient and committed to the possibility of the trade simply not working out.. but after two upper wicks I thought it best to exit for 3 ticks and see what happened next. I didn't want to be on the wrong side at 3pm NY when there is often a burst of volume.. What happened next was a melt up.

After that I thought it best to observe rather than speculate, so I sat on my hands. I managed to bank some profit for the day, avoided over-trading and netted 5.2% with max open loss of 1.17%.

I realise that I'm very /slow/ to see patterns: I marked up the green boxes long after the fact, realising belatedly that yes, there were some very nice shorts available as we pulled back to the MA and started to make lower highs and lower lows.

Edit: I took a 1pt scalp at the start of the Asian session, finishing today at 4.5 points / 6.63%.

Next steps:

• M1 MES scalping
• Practice seeing (the patterns)
• Practice doing (fluid, fearless entries)
• Practice waiting (for exits, for good entries)

[IgazI]

If you have a 'line by angle tool', try making all of your diagonal lines 15 degrees.

"truuuuuust me bro".

[aliassmith]

Thanks Don; those scalps look well-reasoned and are fearless - inspiration for me.
I'll try some M1 scalps with MES tomorrow in my next session. I'll need to adjust my eyes - I've become quite used to my 4500 volume charts on ES.


Today I took the time to zoom out, and could see a rising channel; so I saw we had an upward bias but were neither at the upper or lower side of that range; so I watched. I had to double check the calendar to make sure there wasn't a US holiday - it was very very quiet and hesitant.

2023-07-18-ES-bigger-picture.jpg

The vertical green line was when I started observing.

After it looked as though we'd rejected the channel high, I got short, looking for a reasonable 3pt scalp to test the prior momentum bar and touch the MA.

2023-07-18-ES.jpg

That worked out well; netted 2.75 pts after it stalled.

I was hesitant to go long since I thought we might get another leg down into the channel, but price was hesitant to go down, so I entered long and had a stop below the prior candle low. I calculated if I was stopped out I'd still have some profit for the day so thought I'd let it run back up to highest yellow line - about 3 pts upward.

Price was very hesitant.. in retrospect I should have been more patient and committed to the possibility of the trade simply not working out.. but after two upper wicks I thought it best to exit for 3 ticks and see what happened next. I didn't want to be on the wrong side at 3pm NY when there is often a burst of volume.. What happened next was a melt up.

After that I thought it best to observe rather than speculate, so I sat on my hands. I managed to bank some profit for the day, avoided over-trading and netted 5.2% with max open loss of 1.17%.

I realise that I'm very /slow/ to see patterns: I marked up the green boxes long after the fact, realising belatedly that yes, there were some very nice shorts available as we pulled back to the MA and started to make lower highs and lower lows.

Edit: I took a 1pt scalp at the start of the Asian session, finishing today at 4.5 points / 6.63%.

Next steps:

• M1 MES scalping
• Practice seeing (the patterns)
• Practice doing (fluid, fearless entries)
• Practice waiting (for exits, for good entries)

I would be fine with net 4.5 points on ES each day and never be mad. Nice work. $250/contract, pretty sure you can trade 20+ contracts at a time without order fill issues.

[bb01100100]

If you have a 'line by angle tool', try making all of your diagonal lines 15 degrees.

"truuuuuust me bro".

Hello!

Yes.. I do recall MightyOne writing about that in.. 2009 or thereabouts?

He mentioned that the market is slower than you think and that has stuck with me. In fact I guess today could be a case in point - price zooms up up and away and then retraces back, back and back... now that lower channel looks more like a resistance line..

I could never really work out why MightyOne placed the lines where he did - eventually I assumed it didn't really matter.

Let me see whether can I find an angle tool of some sort..

Thanks,
Baked.

[bb01100100]

What do I see with my 15' angled lines on a 15 min chart for ES...

2023-07-18-ES-15min--15-degrees.jpg (183.29 KiB) Viewed 1091 times

(a yellow horizontal line snuck in there, it was for something else and can be ignored)

I'm not really sure on my placement, I was going for swing points or congestion areas where it might go either way afterwards...

• I see a sort of "median channel" in the middle - perhaps this is the real trend...
• I see price breaking out of that middle channel to the upside, then breaking in again
• Ditto for the lower channels, but more slowly.
• I see price frequently respecting those projected lines.. that's interesting.
• I see confluences of 15' projections and prior congestion zones.

Igazi, what do you see? (and, does my placement of the lines make any sense?)

Thanks,
Baked.

[IgazI]

What do I see with my 15' angled lines on a 15 min chart for ES...

2023-07-18-ES-15min--15-degrees.jpg

(a yellow horizontal line snuck in there, it was for something else and can be ignored)

I'm not really sure on my placement, I was going for swing points or congestion areas where it might go either way afterwards...

• I see a sort of "median channel" in the middle - perhaps this is the real trend...
• I see price breaking out of that middle channel to the upside, then breaking in again
• Ditto for the lower channels, but more slowly.
• I see price frequently respecting those projected lines.. that's interesting.
• I see confluences of 15' projections and prior congestion zones.

Igazi, what do you see? (and, does my placement of the lines make any sense?)

Thanks,
Baked.

15 degrees is the "horizontal line of the diagonal world"; anywhere you would use a diagonal line, just make it 15 degrees.

Why does it work? I have no idea! it's just magic. . .

PS: most of the lines were based on Andrew's Pitchfork.

magic.jpg (116.95 KiB) Viewed 1083 times

[bb01100100]

I suppose we end up with a line in the sand and make do with it as we need.. I think it was someone on this board that said in the future price is almost certainly not going to be where it is now LIS seems pretty good to me from that perspective, so long as I'm not stubborn.