Walt: Thanks for the post. Yeah, I did well getting out early Friday morning, but those Friday bounces are fairly predictable. In fact, I had my best week in the futures markets yet this week, and I attribute a lot of it to starting to use the longer timeframes to a greater extent. I had less time to focus on my trading this week, and actually put less effort into it than usual - and had much better results!
As for overnight holds - a real dilemma. But I have never had any problem with orders filling properly at stops overnight. (Been stopped out - or in - many times in overnight sessions, and never had any problems with order executions.) The way I am approaching overnight holds lately is this - no overnights in the NQ: ES only. I do hold QQQ overnight, with less risk than NQ, IMHO. But I am using overnight holds only when substantially ahead on a trade and my indicated stop loss is pretty far from the settlement price. If I am ahead slightly to moderately, I am exiting at end of day and looking to pick the trade back up the next morning, and at a better price if possible.
Regarding the Ed Downs method - it looks like you hit it just right when you caught that 40 pointer that started all the hoopla here about it, lol! Nothing even close to that since. I am not trading the method, but I do still pay attention to the chart formations and S/R lines that he references for my own trading. I still don't think his stop loss levels are rational - 10 points on the Nasdaq but only 2 on the S&Ps. But he took a bunch of 10 point hits this week, so in that context the 2 point stops look relatively smart. I am auditing that method each week along with a couple of others that have been discussed here just so we have a record of how they are preforming. (Need to do those weekly report cards soon.) |
