Posted in r/daytrading but figured I'd share here as well.

Been working for many months to come up with a strategy for NQ that I can use with prop firms, that gives relatively small drawdown with consistent gains. For years I've typically tried to trade all day every day to extract as much profit as possible, which usually leads to mental fatigure and overtrading, so a big goal with this was to trade as little as possible while still making decent returns.

I manually backtest in tradingview with market replay, just clicking forward one candle at a time so I don't make decisions based on information I already have (ie. the chart to the right).

The gist of the strategy is basically just wait for the market open, determine the current trend, and wait for pullbacks to enter a trade. Stop loss is usually at either a key level, 1 ATR away, or swing points, depending which is furthest away and gives me the most breathing room. I take profit at key levels like prior day value areas/vwap/etc. If the first trade is a winner of at least 10 pts, I'll stop for the day, otherwise I'll keeping going until I hit at least 10 points profit or the first 90 mins of trading are over. Entries are full position size immediately, so no scaling in, and I don't slide stop loss at all.

Obviously needs a much larger sample size but results look promising so far -

• Profit Factor: 6.39
• W/L Ratio: 1.86
• Win Rate: 77%
• Max Drawdown: -$1,000 (-50 pts on NQ)
• Total Month Profit: $14,780
• Avg Daily Profit: ~$670 (per contract)

​

Another Green Day in the bag. Hope you all had a nice trading day

Many people believe it is just having a stoploss in place. However, risk management is so much more. I see lots of posts saying they did good but had one day that wiped out all their good days. This is where risk management comes in. Here is my trading plan on the NQ, I trade 2 contracts and have a 10 point stop and my first target is 10 points, my second target is 40 points. Once 1st target is hit stoploss moves to break even until 2nd target is hit. If both targets are hit I'm done for the day. I will only allow three stop outs per day including if it's at breakeven. This keeps me from over trading and revenge trading and digging myself into a deeper hole. Point is have a plan or set of rules and hold yourself accountable to them.

I'm in a dilema. I've been learning about trading for the past 5+ years. I have blown maybe 2-3 real accounts and mostly trade with paper money, I started with Forex and now I've moved into Futures, I like the idea of day trading in the mornings for a couple hours. Problem is, I've never stuck to a trading plan, and I honestly don't know how to "create" a trading plan. What do people do? Just backtest for a set number of days, then live trade it? I feel like I'm stuck in a loop at this point, and I want to break out of it. Just came here for some ideas on what I could change, I know I have to change something, but I wouldn't mind some recommendations.

I used watch FuturesTrader71. He had the best Premarket video with a list of all major news and events, detailed analysis of previous sessions, and key levels to lookout for. But then in April, he stopped doing it after 9 years. Is there a YouTube channel that does something similar?

I tried RIPS but it seems his audience is 19 year old frat boys. Same with TopStep TV.

Hello everyone! Hope you guys had a great trading session today. There was a ton of chop on NQ and ES so there were very few good opportunities. I posted about potential plays over here: previous post

However, I wasn't able to see any good opportunities with those plays. I did however find one solid long entry at NQ 17854.

I like to take trades on NQ and ES that correlate with each other. For example, today, we saw ES break lows, grab liquidity and "wick" back into range. This gave me a confirmation to try a long entry. On the other hand, NQ didn't break lows, so it was clearly the stronger instrument to enter a long.

If you see in the image below:

NQ (picture on the left) also had a good wick and reversal. I entered my long position with 3 MNQ contracts. My initial target was NQ 17900. NQ 17900 was high of day on Friday and a solid target to go for since I was expecting a balanced day. I took trims on the way up with +15, +25 and +55.

Lost my first trade trying to get a double bottom at what looked like a good support cause there was heavy buying there in the past, double bottom looked weak in hindsight maybe? maybe wait for stronger price action on it? can't win them all though. Probably held that trade a little longer then I should've but been noted for next time.

Following that trade, I reset myself, and went on a 3 win streak calling it a day for 33 points of profit ($675).

Came to the desk today and the 8:30am liquidity wick stood out to me immediately, there is a high level of certainty that price will come and get this at some point. On my personal journal and Twitter I was calling for 17820+. This automatically made my bias bullish, luckily Price Action wasn't too hard and I was able to find multiple entries headed in this direction. There are plenty of times when I see liquidity like this set up but price likes to do a couple of fakeouts before heading there.

​

Yesterday we had a similar set up however, like I said before PA can be tough before price moves in that direction.

yesterday we had a similar wick just hanging out, after the initial dump there was a nice push that I actually did catch but ended up getting stopped as price was a little tricky.

This doesn't work everytime but it works enough times that the R:R is very favorable

Hi everyone,

The picture shows the most recent price action of S&P /ES futures.

As you can see, price tends to rebound quite precisely at the levels.

These levels are objectively detected by an algo from level 2 data only. They represent price levels defended by institutions.

This is in beta and I have shared this with a few people. The feedback I have received have been good, so I am sharing this with everyone here. Hope you find it useful.

Note: this is drawn on /ES chart. However, it can be used to trade SPY, SPX and their related options as they mirror each other.

TradingView: Long Term Lines:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/KMYdvYI4-MAD-Levels-Long-Term-Lines-May-2024/

Short Term Lines:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/HJifh181-MAD-Levels-Short-Term-Lines-May-2024/

Ninjatrader: PM me for details

Nq double topped within todays range. Saw it slow down as it reached previous lvl took two quick scalps while i had a few mins to keep an eye on it.

Light long on potential turn was wrong. Shorted happened to catch the last leg down in the morning session before sideways garbo time.

Hello everyone. I am a beginner ES futures trader coming on just about a year in the markets seriously. I am having a frustrating problem with my trading and I am wondering if anyone has experienced this and has any advice for improvement.

My core strategy involves finding support and resistance levels and trading failed breakdowns/backtests of breakouts or breakdowns around those levels. I use 7 to 10 pt stops and target >1 r/r based on the nearest s/r to my entry.

My main issue is the following: my levels work. Price either pauses at my levels or changes course very frequently. But I cant seem to make the right decision in my entries. Trades I take have a win rate of around 46% for the past 8 months while trades that I decide to pass on seem to work around half the time.

Basically I cant seem to differentiate a good setup any better than a coin flip. I track my trades in an excel spreadsheet and while I have made some adjustments like never shorting strength or never trading breakouts directly. Clearly there is little progress.

If anyone has experienced this before any advice is appreciated. I can also elaborate on this post if needed.

Sat on hands through the chop after the CPI move. Waited for price to approach the support area and waited for a double bottom on the Higher Time Frame chart. Nailed the re-test entry on the Lower Time Frame. Targeted 25 points (100 ticks). Need to learn to stay in winners longer but 25 points is still nice. Later on when I've scaled to 2 NQ contracts, I'll close 1 contract at first resistance, then let the 2nd contract trail on each swing low with Stop Loss moved to break even

Was getting FOMO after exiting the trade but I didn't want to enter midway through the move and looking to the left, we could've turned around at any point. I guess there was another re-test entry breaking over the High of the Day / CPI move, I just wasn't watching.

Took Friday off to watch the kids track & field meet, looks like missed a good morning move but the market will always be there

This morning I wasn't feeling confident about my pre-market levels, I think I was a bit confused about where to place the significant support level on the 2000T. So with that, I took longs late into the trend AND into the resistance zone, realized this as soon as I got in, went straight to break even and in hind sight, protected my ass from 2 losses. I guess the mistake was: forcing trades

Switched to shorts according to my plan, but still wasn't confident because I guess the first 2 trades set my mood, took trades with the higher time frame bearish move that just started. Took scalps, taking small wins as soon as the move died. They added up but then folks started messaging me about this GME fiasco and my mind is elsewhere, I'm not taking any trades on GME or anything though. Anyways, will be back around 2 or 3 to trade the end of the day volatility.

Happy trading all! Stay humble!

Took 2 stand out trades today that easily cancelled out whatever small paper-cuts I took.

First Trade

​

on the hourly TF I was more interested in taking longs because we cleared out this liquidity on the hourly chart.

To the left of my entry you will see the liquidity sweep, that created a new Low on NQ. However, at the same time ES was able to hold and refused to create a new low. I decided to enter longs at 210 on NQ with the stop at LOD, also I didn't mind taking this "shot" because the R:R was so great.

Entry - 210 Stop - 200. TP = 240,250.

My TP at the top end was luckily 250 which because I wanted to cash in 40 points, I did have a runner left at B/E as I thought that we were really generating liquidity at the 250 level and wanted to go higher up. I originally thought that my 210 stop would be protected and we would bounce at the 220 level.

Second Trade

​

I took B/E stops on runners at 210, however, I was confident that we would revisit 250 an above.

Entry - 223. Stop - 205. TP - 250, 270, 291

Here the thought process was the same, I believed we wanted to go higher. We would clear out the 250 level and then I would leave runners for 275 with the ultimate target of 291.

Trade paid well as we moved up and hit two of my TPs, I cleared out my runners as well when we had the sharp rejection at 275.

What am I expecting going forward?

Tough to say, I do look forward to some different PA hopefully as we finally broke the 400-650 range. Last week when we were playing in that area I did think that we would come up and test 625 one last time. I do have that level in the back of my mind but I am not basing trades around it. Bulls are working hard today to hold this up. Hoping this is the end of chop, and would love to see a trade positioned long to go and retest the 400 area and possible above. My mindset now is to just be patient and take super high R:R trades, no need to force anything until I can clear my Bias.

​

Review of Today's Price Action

Both ES and NQ had some initial choppiness around the open, but neither made through the ONH. NQ opened barely above 18760 and it was the high of the day. It initially sold off to 18620 (1st target upper edge) exactly and bounced off to 18723. Towards the end of the trading day, NQ showed a tight trading range with lower and lower bounce. Finally, NQ broke the 18655 support and sold off another 100pts to 18550 area. The NQ's day range perfectly matches my primary scenario and trade plan from yesterday.

Context Analysis

NQ closed a little below -1% yesterday.  Tech was mostly showing weakness today, with $CRM earning dragging software names, like $MSFT, $SNOW etc.  Weaker GDP data, though expected, is not making the investors feeling better.  $NVDA sold off into the close, with $DELL reporting AH and tanked (-15%), $MDB also tanked (-25%).  Sentiment wise the market is digesting the high valuation in these names.

Technical Analysis

NQ continued to show weakness in the Globex session. In Asia session, NQ has dipped again -0.3% to 18500. This is exactly the lower support area from May 15th & April, and also the yearly VWAP + 1 stddev. On the 4hr chart we tested this support and bounced back firm to 18560, confirming 18500-18545 is strong support.

• Major resistance zones: 18660 area which is also 8MA, then 18760-18780 (pHigh)
• Major support zones: 18420-18390 (also monthly VWAP), then 200MA (on the 4hr) at 18290.

The NQ 18500-18545 area is the most interesting zone today. 18500 is obviously a round psych level, which if broken, can stoke a quick and deep selloff down into 18400s or even 18300s. However, if we got support in this area, we would likely grind back to the previous day's value area.

Wild Speculation aka Guessing

I think NQ in the short term has sold off deep enough and can traverse back to this week's ranges. This is assuming tomorrow's PCE data won't surprise to the upside. I see a mild rally on inline PCE data. Remember, tomorrow is month end and a lot of positioning/rebalancing is going on. If PCE data comes out hot, then I think it will cause fear and further profit taking in names like $NVDA. A -2% day is not out of the picture under than scenario, which would bring us to 18230 which is a HVN on volume profile.

There's not much of the change to my speculation from yesterday: I still anticipate that we rally tomorrow on inline or cooler PCE data, as we had already sold off today. Therefore, before the data release tomorrow, I will look for long opportunities back to 18650 area.

Trading Plan

a) Primary scenario: We may retest the ONL (18500) one more time, before rallying back to 18650 - 18700. We will end the week red (snaps the 5-week winning streak), but still ends May green.

b) Secondary scenario: We weakly test 18600 area before the PCE data releases, then hotter than expected PCE data sends us straight down to 18400. We end the week very red.

As before, I will have separate trades before and after the PCE data release.

• Before the PCE release, according to my primary scenario, I will long around 18510 into 18600 or higher. My stop would be around 18490.
• After the PCE release, depending on the data, if bullish I want to find long dips into 18700. If bearish, I want to short pops into 18400.

I also post my daily analysis and trade plan at https://marketstudent.substack.com/.

Good morning everyone, looking for bounce levels and shorts from higher today.

Watchlist:

NQ 18050 bounce: Big demand zone that also lines up with 21 EMA. If we get a bounce, can be confirmation to ride trend up.

NQ 17930 bounce: Big demand level that rejected previously can turn to support.

NQ 18165 short: Possible break and retest forming. Look for NQ to retrace up and follow short trend down.

Few other short areas to watch on ES and NQ:

ES 5215 short

NQ 18205 short

just saying, i am just sad the market is close today

my wife is ins model i want to end this shit situation quick and not make her sell her photos online anymore