Trade Plan: Friday, August 4th, 2023

Rippy pls

Hi all! Back with another trade plan. Yesterday was a nice green day! Unfortunately I gave some of the morning’s gains back with small papercuts trying to chase in the afternoon, but every day is an attempt to do better than the last.

Timeframe Overview

Monthly OTF: up, ends: 4500

Weekly OTF: balance, ends to the upside: 4505; ends to the downside: 4530

Daily OTF: balance; ends to the upside: 4570; ends to the downside: 4505

Thursday Session Recap

In another sizable gap down, ES opened for business at 4513. In A period, there was quite convincing selling down to 4507, but we started to notice passive buyers in the area. Unfortunately, this was one of our papercuts of the session, trying longs around the 4512 area but getting hit by a stop run (which again was scooped up by those passive buyers, and we rocketed to 4525 by the beginning of B period). In B period, there was a harsh rejection before getting us above local ON highs, and we sold off to 4506. Right at the turn of B to C period, buyers stepped in and this was a nice looking look below IB and fail setup. This could have been a chance to get long, but the models I use were showing (given the opening price action we had) a 40–60% chance that C would close positive. Still, it was nice confluence that the close of B and opening of C corresponded with this look below IB low and fail, and longs probably still would have been a decent business decision from a risk reward perspective (stop below 4505, for a potential 20 point+ bagger!). Further confluence is that this was a meer 5 points away from the previous monthly high (4500)!

Alas, I opted to wait for the close of C period and look for a trade in D period: my models were showing that given the market price action we’d seen so far AND given C period closed positive, there was nearly a 100% chance D period would close positive as well! This ultimately turned out to be a 10 point trade, and could have been even more, as D period even exceeded my expectations and closed above the IB high at 4526.25. I’ll put out a blog post about how I found this trade soon.

Through G period buying was robust, up more than 35 points from the sessions lows, but still buyers could not break us through the overnight high (4547). This could have been a decent short signal, but shorts were tough yesterday as there was continued buying effort i.e. challenging price action for shorts once we broke through the IB high to keep us above that IB high. ES closed for cash at 4520.75.

Market Structure

The daily balance continues, as we were unable to break Thursday’s HOD (4570). However, do note that buyers made a high (4541) above Thursday’s lows (4527). Looking at the market profile from Thursday, the overall session was quite balanced, but there is a poor low from C period below 4506 and a poor high from H period above 4540 (though this poor high looks it is already being filled in ON as I write this).

Trade Plan

Structurally, not much has changed since Thursday’s session, so I’ll copy my description of levels / trade plan here: Going into Friday’s session, I will observe Wednesday’s TPOC of 4541. Above 4541 targets 4549, as a bit of confluence here, as this is both the VAH and the session halfback from Wednesday (it’s also an LVN). (the session halfbacks are commonly used by AMT practitioners after a big trend day like Wednesday’s). Above 4549 targets 4558, a bit of an LVN at the juncture of Wednesday’s A, B, and C periods. It would take strength but then I would observe 4570, the high of Thursday’s session. Below targets 4533, what’s looking to be like today’s ON low and also the beginning of a low volume area. Below that is 4528, the VAL / poor low from Wednesday. Below that, I don’t see anything until 4520.

Key Levels

Pivot: 4541

Bull Levels: 4549, 4558, 4570

Bear Levels: 4533, 4528, 4520

Notes: Wages, nonfarm, and unemployment at 08:30 — could bring some vol into the markets

Trades & Session Review

+$203. Daily profit goal met (trying for $200+ daily). Note that the account I was trading today is now $5500, so I was well within my risk by trading 3 lots of MES and 1 lots MNQ. The first trade was a look below a massive level in MNQ and fail during the NFP prints, leading to a 50 point rally, so I was up over $100 before RTH even began:

However, again due to my poor execution issues, I gave nearly all back trying to initiate trades during RTH. Here, some failures on MNQ:

And then some small failures on MES before catching that great ripper to IB highs and beyond:

The confidence I had to hold on to this last runner will probably be another blog post, as days that: 1. have a gap up, 2. have a deep sell B period, but have 3. C and 4. D period close green, are almost ALL strong trend up days (0.66% RTH session return on average!). We found this using AMT JOY’s Session Matcher tool, and it was key in holding our trade for 20+ points!

I really think if I can minimize these poor execution issues, I can really start being (on average) more profitable. Though, its always hard to say if these stop outs are just “the cost of doing business” or if some of them truly are poor entries. (That one on MNQ definitely WAS a bad entry though!)

Cheers and as always, good luck out there!

-Chris

A reminder that I am still ultimately a beginner to intraday trading and trading futures. This is not an alert service and none of this is financial advice.

Originally published at https://amtjoy.substack.com.