Trade Plan: Wednesday, August 9th, 2023
Was that it?
Hi all! Back with another trade plan. Tuesday was a nice green day for me! Let’s get into the review of yesterday’s session and plan for today.
Timeframe Overview
Monthly OTF: up, ends: 4411
Weekly OTF: balance; ends to the upside: 4622, ends to the downside: 4493
Daily OTF: balance; ends to the upside: 4561
Value Overview
Monthly value: above, VPOC 4604.25 (July) VPOC 4544.75 (August)
Weekly value: above, VPOC 4604.25
Friday’s value: above, VPOC 4544.75, TPOC 4540.00
Tuesday Session Recap
Let’s review what we had planned for Tuesday:
Below 4528 I would target 4518, Monday’s VAL, then the key 4500, and then the remainder of the levels provided in Monday’s Trade Plan.
In Tuesday’s ON session, sellers erased all the gains of Monday’s session. However, in premarket I was active at my turret and saw again convincing volume and delta reversal at that critical 4500 hundred level, going long on a few micros. I tweeted this trade out to my Twitter:
About half an hour later my 10-point profit target was hit, paying nicely before RTH even started. Already before RTH opened I was leaning biased as I assumed that would be the last and final time we would visit 4500 for the week.
However, some key structural points were important to take note of. Technically, Tuesday’s RTH session was not opening as a true gap to the downside, as the opening print of 4510.75 was nearly to the tick identical to the lows of Tuesday’s session (4510.5). However, this opening print still represented more than a 0.5% drop from Wednesday’s RTH close, so for all intents and purposes, I was modeling the developing session as a gap down on AMT JOY’s Session Matcher. It’s important to consider that in these pseudo gap down scenarios, many buyers may find themselves offsides, leading to even further selling.
In A period buyers struggled almost immediately out of the gate, managing to only acheive 7 ticks above the opening print. From there, sellers took full control of the market and ES sold off nearly 30 handles. We took a small short in MNQ, taking profits relatively early and leaving quite a bit on the table, but booking a 3:1 RR trade regardless. The selling continued into D period, cleaning up poor structure from all the way back in July! In D period, there was one final look below the IB and fail, which is usually a powerful setup for me to look for longs. However, we didn’t take any longs due to the elevated VIX, and choppy price action near these lows was quite difficult to find entries with. However, after more consolidation in E and F periods, we quite impressively one time framed up until the close. ES closed for the cash session at 4517.25.
Market Structure
On the TPO, Tuesday’s session was fairly balanced, with some bullish bias to the upside. There was a poor low left under 4483 from D period, and a poor high from M period above 4519 (which looks like it’s being cleaned up in the ON session as I write this). There’s also quite a LVN at 4511.
Trade Plan
Going into Wednesday’s session, I will again observe 4528. I still want to see confidence and building above this level to be convinced that buyers / bulls are back in control. Also note I am revising my 4480 level to 4487, as there was some interesting price action and order flow at those levels Tuesday, and is actually the VPOC of Tuesday’s session. All other levels remain the same.
Key Levels
Pivot: 4528
Bull Levels: 4545, 4561, 4570
Bear Levels: 4518, 4500, 4487, 4472
Notes: No prints today, but tomorrow are the CPI and jobless prints at 08:30. In yesterday’s session, VIX was crushed from +18 now to sub 16. So, was that the end of the pullback everyone was talking about? Chances of a sort of “buy the rumor” rally?
We’ll see…
Trade Review
-$667. A bad start to trading ES and NQ! (Note to all readers who may be surprised by the magnitude change from previous week(s): I’m trading my full sized account now and, like always, I risk 2% of my account per trade, as the pros recommend, and my max loss lockout is when 3 of these trades hit their stop (i.e. $200x3 plus commision change, $650). I’ve had people say, and read myself “don’t trade minis” but the math is the same regardless of the leverage. I just can’t let it affect my execution, which I can proudly say it did NOT today. Really just got stuck trying to time bottoms when it’s clearly a trend down day so far:
These setups obviously pay nicely when they work, but cut you up when they don’t. (My case today!). I will try one more time tomorrow with ES and NQ, but if I hit this limit again, I’ll move down to 5–15 micros, more or less half size what I’m trading currently.
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.
