My biggest concern trading the QM was execution speed and overall liquidity. The QM or mini contract represents 500 barrels of versus the 1000 barrels of oil in the full size CL contract. I was a bit more difficult to get fills when I would try to scratch a position. The CL contract although more leveraged still provides more “stopping places” with 100 ticks per point versus 40 in the QM. At the end of the day IMO the QM contract lacks liquidity and is only a more viable instrument for those trading small accounts and need a less leveraged contract in order to trade more contracts. For more information regarding contract specifics see:

Regular CL:

Light Sweet Crude Oil

E mini QM:

E mini Light Sweet Crude Oil

I have finished the Market Profile studies part of Joe Mertes mentoring program but still need to complete other aspects like refining my business and trading plans and completing detailed strength/weakness analysis. I am planning on spending another trading day with Joe live sometime over the next few weeks. I will post later on my progress with some thoughts on the use of Market Profile in general.

I had another record day today and bagged my best trade ever by catching a 344 pip x 2 cars (over $4k) on 6B. Fortunately, I was not even tempted to take any longs last night with the repeating P pattern on the Market Profile. See below for a 2 week composite that bring in some key areas below. I was pretty sure that we wouldn’t break 6240 today but when we do we could be looking at a significant continuation move down. I will post more analysis of these key areas over the weekend.

I traded 6E, mostly on the short side, for most of the day yesterday and managed my best day for the year so far (4.4%). It is worth noting that this 30 minute chart is indicative of a continuation move upward.  The “P” pattern formed on the Market Profile for 10/21 shows price exhaustion and normally a good place for trade placement for a rotation back to the mean. But in this case we need to exercise caution with shorts due to the fact we had a repeat of the “P” pattern on 10/22 (today) on lesser volume.

Daily 6E Chart showing key S/R areas and 200EMA.

With regards to the monthly ES Market Profile we have rotated around the 1061.5 area forming a recent high volume node with a September POC 0f 1059.25 and a running October POC of 1061.5. We are now trading at least 50 points lower than last years lower end of yearly value area. That being said going into tomorrow, a low volume holiday, I will be looking for shorts and a rotation down before rotating up as we will need significant buying conviction and volume to rotate up from this area. Last years POC and high volume node is 1275.25.

I have continued with the eminiaddict subscription but not always listening to David’s webinar. I am usually in David’s chat room and also in Vlad’s chat room at esecfutures.com. for the most part during the trading day. In addition, I have also subscribed recently to Ben Lichtenstein’s squakbox broadcast of the live S&P pit. I have both going most of the time but slowly trying to use Ben’s service primarily. I trade only futures now and use the futures contracts to trade currencies. My current trading plan as follows, ES and 6E (Euro) trades constitute 8o% of my trades with the other 20% being of 6J (Japanese Yen) and 6B (British Pound).  I have become much more regimented and find myself sticking to my trading plan better. It has also shown in my results as I have had my best 3 weeks of the year in the past 7 weeks, ranging from 6.2% to 7.9% per week. In reality, I only expect to have one week like that every 6 to 8 weeks. I am trading on accounts totaling 60-70k total for now and is sufficient for my risk tolerance and position sizing. I am looking forward to doubling my trading account size in 6-12 months as I become more consistent.

My trading setup has changed a bit. Hardware wise, I am all Mac now and do not use any PCs. I am still using TOS and Tradestation for charting and have not been able to fully convert to Tradestation. I am using IB and Tradestation as brokers but still have accounts with Infinity, TOS, and MB Trading as well. I currently run Tradstation on Windows XP inside of VMware Fusion on the Mac. I am at the same time and on the same machine running TOS, IB, Market Internals spreadsheets, etc. on Mac OSX natively. I like this setup as it is very stable and also mobile on a 17 inch MacBook Pro with a secondary 22 inch Samsung T220 monitor, secondary Mac full keyboard and mouse. I still have a desktop PC with a Samsung T260 and a T220 in my upstairs office that is not currently being used.

I will be starting a one-on-one mentorship with Joe Mertes at Joseph James Consulting next week that should last into the holidays. Joe uses Market Profile data extensively in his trading so I will be learning something new. We will be refining my trading plan over the next few weeks and will post it here once it is refined. Our goals are not to overhaul my trading since I am already profitable and getting more consistent every week but to enhance my trading by working over the basics of planning, execution, tracking etc. inside of my existing plan. I will also post periodic updates of my training and hopefully some examples.

Well that’s enough for now. I am hoping to get back to posting on this site and get some fresh material posted. Thanks!

The above implemented by drawing H_Lines across all new extremes.
This is working, but when small, barely visible new extremes
occur, it is often difficult to see which candle caused the
new extreme. Thus a PB indicator will also be added to color the
TICK bar that causes the new extreme value.
}

vars:
DayHi ( 0 ) ,
DayLow ( 0 ) ;

if date <> date[1] then
begin
DayHi = high ;
DayLow = Low ;
end ;

if High > DayHi then
begin
DayHi = High ;
end ;

if Low < DayLow then
begin
DayLow = Low ;
end ;

Plot1( DayHi, "Tick Hi" ) ;
Plot2( DayLow, "Tick Lo" ) ;
Plot3( 0, "Z-Line" ) ;

(Above this is the code for the indicator do not copy below this.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Below this is the code for the paintbar do not copy above this.)

{ PaintBar for tick extremes }

vars:
BarColor ( White ),
DayHi ( 0 ) ,
DayLow ( 0 ) ;

if date <> date[1] then
begin
DayHi = high ;
DayLow = Low ;
end ;

BarColor = White ;

if High > DayHi then
begin
DayHi = High ;
BarColor = Red ;
end ;

if Low < DayLow then
begin
DayLow = Low ;
BarColor = Green ;
end ;

PlotPaintBar( High, Low, “Xtreme”, BarColor ) ;

From left to right: RV, breezerhead, Ripster, Letrader, me SteveC, DH aka EminiAddict, RayC, and AnnArbor.

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I finished the day with a gain of +165 USD holding only a small position long in DZZ. I was tired today and only traded 1 hour in the morning and 2 in the afternoon but did so scalping the ES with some success. I have been really focusing on disecting the $TICK and also limiting scalps to areas around signifcant levels on the 15 minute chart. This weekend I am looking forward to setting up my new trading computer and getting caught up on some reading. I started Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas last night and looks like it’s going to be a great book.

I finished the day with a gain of +197 USD and holding only a small position long in DZZ with an entry of  22.52. I scalped the ES a few times for a gain. I accidentally added to my DUG position when trying to put a sell limit order in that cost me some change. I later closed the entire position at 19.20 (P&L above not correct). I tried scalping the E7 Euro mini contract a couple of times and stopped out. It is looking like I will use the currency futures over spot FX going forward. Tonight to take a short position in the ES if we move up near the daily pivot.

Debbie Ellis-Dooley

debbie0040@yahoo.com

Cell 404-625-4986

I have finished the day with a loss -140 USD holding a position long in DUG. We opened up above previous days highs and still managed to get a full gap fill on the ES. The gap fill is a great play but my bias was too bullish to jump on. I got stopped a couple times in the morning, once after lunch and hit my max loss for day and sat out afterward.

I finished the day flat with a gain of +168 USD (the 500+ above on DUG is misleading, read on). I only traded between 8:00 and 10:00 this morning and then had to leave to run errands. I scalped the ES a couple of times and closed the one long DUG futures contract at 20.05 for +146 (0.15×1000-4 comm). I would normally hold DUG for more but was a bit anxious to close as it as it was tying up a bit more than I like to carry in one trade and I was about to leave for the day. Too bad for me as it ended up retracing up to 50% of the move down from Friday afternoon (see chart above). It would have been a gain of +600 USD in that one trade exiting at 20.50.  Oh well, you know what is said about hindsight.

I finished the day holding only 1 futures contract long DUG with a loss of +18 USD (-56 today and +74 last night) I did not trade FX today as I was focused on scalping the ES. I missed the morning move up and got chopped up afterward. I was not thinking when I went long with the DUG futures contract and thought that I was securing control of 100 shares when in reality I secured 1000 (a bit more leverage than I wanted) I will usually scale into a DUG 50-100 at a time for a swing trade.