New swing trading system
This link takes you to a new system I use for swing trading.
I trade this along my day trading system
http://www.paulus10-trendseeker.blogspot.com
Day trading is a method of trading that requires you to be flat ie holding no positions over night. This is probably the hardest way to make money from the markets and initially requires you to invest more time than money. Chapter 8 deals with my original system and chapters 14 -22 deal with my current system. You can view daily charts at www.dacharts.com ..daily chart ..date..user name is PAULUS
This link takes you to a new system I use for swing trading.
Tiger in the long grass..
Id like to start by saying im no guro or trading genius I like many other traders have strived to become succesful in this very difficult arena called day trading.I often read books that had comments like ..
The 1st steps
A few simple steps which if followed will ensure you fail when attempting to day trade the futures markets
Never try to outsmart the market,no matter how big,strong,intelligent,clever,old ,young,confident you are you can NEVER outsmart the market in the long term ,if you think you can you wont and you will fail
Never get emotionally involved in a trade..click the mouse forget the trade.. if you get involved at a mental level you will fail
Always use a stop and stick to it,never move it never cancel it never ignore it if you do you will fail
Never try and get back losses by trading harder or bigger than your management rules say so if you do you will fail
Never hang onto that losing trading hoping it will come back..99% of the time it wont and you will fail.
Never lose your temper or shout and scream..the market cant hear you it doesn’t care and you will have to take that next trade on an uneven keel..if you do you will fail
A few simple steps which followed will give you an edge when attempting to day trade the futures markets
This on the surface looks a very easy thing to do, but in reality needs a huge amount of time investment, self discipline and sacrifice. If you think you are going to buy a ready made system from the internet which is going to be profitable think again. Its true there are several excellent systems out there but from my experience they always have just that final piece missing. My own system is a combination of idea’s from several bought system over several years.
Just a few include systems that use
Volume information
Price patterns
Support and resistance areas
News
Mathematics
Japanese candle patterns
Point and figure charting
Wave principles
Moon and tide information
Now add to this list the 400 or so technical indicators that you can superimpose on your chart and you get a fair idea of just how big the subject is .If that’s not enough now add to the equation the time frame of your chart 1min 2min 3min etc up to daily and an unlimited number of tick charts 10 tick 18 tick etc etc.
If that’s not enough we now have to look at the number of chart we will use. Will we use 1 chart on say a 1min time scale or 2 chart of say 1min and 5min to determine a signal. Or if we are designing a signal for the Ftse do we want a chart up of the main US future ,after all if the US market is in a deep down trend do we want to go long in the Ftse.
Now you can see what just a huge subject this is.I think I can quite honestly say that in the 8yrs I’ve been trading 6 of those years have been spent in the search and the on going development of my system
There are various market conditions that occur through out the day that your system will have to deal with.

An oscillating market is one which is not making new highs or lows to any great extent, more it is ‘oscillating up and down in large wave like formations See the example below.

A range bound market is one which is stuck in a small range of just a few points, it seems to just meander up and down without any force or momentum. See the example below
No one system can deal with all these conditions. A trending system will fail when the market moves into an oscillating mode. An oscillating system will lose when the market moves into a trending mode. Both will suffer in a range bound mode.
Here is my list of trading software that I have found reliable. The costs are based on a real time package which is what is required for day trading.There are many more available
I have 3 signals that I use for day trading all are mechanical in there set up
Each signal can be used to go long or short in the market
Each signal has a series of green lights, and each light has to be green for me to proceed to the next.Hence if green light 1 does not complete but light 2/3 and 4 do the signal is invalid.
Only signals with the appropriate light are system signals and will be traded.
Regular signal - 4 green lights .. Price, Indicator 1, Indicator 2 , Candle formation
Delayed signal - 5 green lights .. Price, Indicator 1, Indicator 2 , Candle formation, Open or Close of trigger candle,
Inverse signal - 4 green lights .. Price, Indicator 1, Indicator 3 , Candle formation
For my own security I cannot disclose what each indicator is, the settings of each indicator or how I use it.Neither can I disclose the time frame of the chart.
Below are examples of all 3 signals all on the FTSE Future
This is the regular signal and is counter trend based
This is the Inverse signal and is trend based
This is the Delayed signal and is counter trend based
Many a profitable system can still lose over the long term if your exit is not finely honed.
We can exit out of a trade several different ways depending how aggressive we want to be.
But the exit is split into 2 categories.
The target which if hit will exit us
The stop which if hit will exit for us.
Lets deal with the target.
You have to exit clinically and quickly.
On the inverse signal for example - I use an ema to take me out of the position, or a signal in the opposite direction what ever comes 1st.If I am looking to close my inverse signal with a signal in the opposite direction I can only do so as long as I have permission by another indicator,if no permission even though I have had a reversal signal I stay with my original trade ..all rule based all black and white
With targets my own thinking along these lines are ..
If the market is oscillating in moves of 5 points do you want to take ½ point as your target ? .. No …ok so lets take 3 points after all that’s a nice profit thank you very much.
30 minutes later the market is oscillating in moves of 1 point… hmm .. Do I want to use my old 3 point target.. No ?…… the old ½ point looks good to me now.
We need a target that expands and contracts..
This way we can take figures like +1, +0.50 +2 +5 +0.80 etc etc all winning exits.
Move, change, experiment,consider........ but do it all with a set of rules..write them down laminate them and fix them near the PC
Consistency and time restraints
Is it all in the mind ...
This is a new post after quite some time on this blog.One thing bothered me about the listed system - It created to many signals.
The system is far from perfect because there is no such system.
If we win on average more ticks than we lose per trade we have stacked the odds in our favour
If we win more days then we lose we have stacked the odds in our favour
If we win more weeks than we lose we have stacked the odds in our favour
If we win more months than we lose we have stacked the odds in our favour
We have to stack up the odds in our favour to win in the markets.there are other ways to stack up the odds and I will give you my thoughts on that in part 13
There is a word in trading that few people like using but to me its a must especially when you go from paper trading to live trading..That word is LUCK
For a double bottom
For a double top
We now have set our mechanical measurements for find technical tops and bottoms, we can kick the emotions to one side. If the price doesn’t come into our range of technical top/bottom we forget the setup and relax.
But what do we use to determine the point at which we measure the tops and bottoms. We use an indicator to guide us, again a mechanical a black and white way
Here is a simple explaination of the above
Look at the example below.
We now have our double top we have found this using the methods in section 16.
We have now found a strong market pattern in its own right ..a double top .. this will give our signal a greater chance of success.We now have to go back to the stochastic momentum which I will now call the SM and use it to creat another part of the signal.
The way we use the SM is called Diversity which basicaly means that if price has made a technical top double top or higher high but the SM has made a lower high it shows weakness in price and the price may well be in a position to drop.
What do we have right now... we have a techbnical double top..lets now look at the SM.
See the chart below
Things left to be added to this blog.
And most important ...
This is a very simple section we want to go short on a red candle and long on a green candle.I have a timer on my chart timed in ticks ( you can see this on my example chart below) .My chart is an 89 tick chart
This can be a big subject Im going to keep it as short and as sweet as I can.
There are 2 occasions when I will not take perfectly good signals that qualifies under the rules in the previous sections.
There is prob 3 exception to this and they are as follows
1 -The invalid signal occurs just below high of the day and is a short
2 - The invalid signal occurs just above the low of the day and is a long
3 - If I have had a very good day and wish to take the risk knowing a maximum loss of $100 wont effect me being profitable for the day.
At the time of writing this section (1st march) 28th Feb yielded $1800 and the 27th Feb yielded $2000 trading the one contract. Both of these days mid way through the session I took the riskier signals.
Here are the 2 exceptions
1 - The trigger candle was 10 ticks ot larger
Reason for not taking – As our maximum stop is 10 ticks the price could easily pull back the full breadth of this candle over the next 2-3 candles and give us a losing trade
2 - The close of the trigger candle was more than 10 ticks for the moving average which acts as our stop
Reason for not taking – The moving average is there for 2 reasons
To support our trade
To close out our trade with a small loss if it goes against us
If we take a signal that’s 10 ticks or more away from the moving average we open our selves up to the 2 conditions above.
Example. We take a long signal the close or our fill is 12 ticks above the moving average. Our stop is 10 ticks and the price pulls back to the ma and we get a 10 a tick loss. The system then gives us another signal that qualifies under the mains rules and goes up 10 ticks. To wait and take the correct signal gives us 10 ticks of profit to take both gives us zero