Zine Trading

If you’ve had day trading software installed for more than a month, you’ve probably tried to come up with your own trading strategy. Whether you’re using NinjaTrader, Sierra Charts, MetaStock, or TradeStation, you’ve undoubtedly tried to recognize patterns in the price bars. If you haven’t tried to decipher this price action, you’ve probably tinkered with indicators hoping for a strategy that is reasonably successful. Perhaps you even discovered a pattern that occurs frequently enough. Do you have exact profit taking rules? What about stops? If the market it works with is slow, do you have a backup plan? Do you think you performed due backtesting in order to determine accuracy? Developing strategies takes time and patience. You want to develop something that’s hassle free and produces consistent results.

Also, it’s difficult for an indicator or automated system to account for every possible profit-taking scenario. Simply put, there can be far too many variables. You’re bound to frustrate yourself remembering them or confuse the programmer you’re working with.

Let’s take a look at trading software that’s done right – the Atlas Line. Although you must place trades manually, the software has the perfect balance of accuracy, only necessary parameters, lack of conflicting signals, and reference / advisory role. This is why traders who are just starting out and those who want a filtering / confirmation tool consider the Atlas Line a must-have. There are two options available – a six-month and lifetime license. The lifetime is the better deal, but the six-month is enough time to evaluate the software if you’re on a budget. Trading without the Atlas Line and a direction can be far more costly.

The common term for the interface that displays buy and sell orders is the price ladder. On NinjaTrader, the price ladders is also known as the DOM. TradeStation users refer to it as the matrix. Despite what many trading books will tell you, using the buy and sell order quantities for any type of trading methodology will likely result in failure. Methods based on support and resistance often succumb to the unusual phantom-like orders that seem pop in and out of existence. These orders may drive retail traders into vulnerable positions, taking trades that they would have stayed away from. How can we trade based on phantom orders? These orders are likely placed by high frequency trading systems using latency far less than retailers can hope to achieve. We’re better off ignoring these orders and not basing our methods on buy and sell support and resistance levels. Many years ago, it was possible to accurately use order quantity to gauge support and resistance through a process known as tape reading.

If you want to learn price action the proper way to deal with market manipulation, the Power Price Action course from Day Trade to Win is what we recommend. There’s nothing else like it out there in this regard.

Day Trade to Win recently teamed up with DTI (Diversified Trading Institute) in an education event where three experts weighed in with trading advice. John Paul took discussion beyond the basics, sharing the day’s charts, identifying profit opportunities, and explaining exact methods. Since John is an advocate of using only price bars to trade, he teaches trades how to recognize setups (in the form of candlestick patterns) and trade accordingly. Each setup has its own set of rules. Since this type of trading is evidence based, it’s entirely objective an open to understanding.

On the other hand, indicators are usually closed methods of trading. Either offered as standalone software or used in trading rooms, the “how does the indicator work” question is never really answered. It’s black-box. Secondly, most indicators have to be optimized. Markets are always changing. Price moves in cycles on daily, weekly, monthly and annual time frames. Depending on the indicator in use, you may have to re-optimize it after experiencing several losing days. This “readjustment” changes the internal computation slightly, in hopes of improving trading. Is indicator-based trading sustainable in the long run? Most traders don’t want to bother with the complexity.

As an alternative to indicators, Day Trade to Win focuses on teaching traders exact methods. Each course comes with live training, so you can learn how to trade directly from the course author. Trade management is also covered with each course, so receive a complete plan, from entry to exit.

If you’re a trader who idly waits for an opportune moment to enter a trade base on instinct, you are bound to lose money. This is true even if you’re using an indicator that only shows entry signals. As demonstrated in this video by Day Trade to Win’s John Paul, it’s critical to know where your target should be and when / where to exit the trade if your target is not hit. Over the long term, you are minimizing risk. Long term minimized risk increases your accuracy, and therefore, profit margin.

What trading system provides you with entries AND has a complete follow-through method attached for trade management? The Atlas Line. After an entry signal appears (as heard by the doorbell sound in the video) with green (long order) or red (short order) text, you are given a direction to trade into. This is usually supplied early enough to allow for fills. Next, it’s a matter of watching the trade. Using three stops, you will have a satisfactory safety net in case price turns around unexpectedly. Since the Atlas Line’s internal algorithm is highly accurate, there’s always a greater chance of price heading to your target. Traders often short-change themselves by placing a target too close to the current price or have unreasonable expectations of grandeur. By using the ATR (Average True Range), Atlas Line users always place stops within reason – based on current market conditions.

If you want to find out how you can trade responsibly with consistent results, give the Atlas Line a shot. It’s highly recommended.

When the ES has low volatility, traders have a few options:

1. Trade around news events, crossing fingers that price will move in one’s favor
2. Hope for a trend to occur. However, the time at which one may occur is an unknown.
3. Try to scalp whipsaws – again, a lot of finger crossing.
4. Do not trade at all – wait days, weeks or months before volatility picks up.
5. Use an advanced, algorithmic trading tool like the Atlas Line to call time and direction to enter (Short or Long)

Trading is a gamble regardless of a trader’s choice. Our preference is #5 – using the Atlas Line. Although the recent trading results published by Day Trade to Win indicate strong performance for the last three months of 2011, the trend also indicates that volatility determines profit potential irrespective of your trading technique. As seen in the video below, the trader simply increases the amount of contracts to make up for the lack of volatility.

Not every trader can afford to trade 17 contracts. However, starting with a small account and slowly building the account by using and becoming familiar with a reliable strategy is an option. That’s why the Atlas Line has our full recommendation.

Here’s an example of a trader, Tony, who is finally seeing success after finding a trading method that works. In 2008, Tony decided to become a retail trader instead of working for a corporation. He then dabbled with tape reading and technical analysis, finding a preference in trading based on visual data instead of mathematical figures. Despite considerable time spent studying technical analysis, Tony found little consistency. Thus began his search for a mentor. His new goal was to find an individual who could teach from a price action standpoint. Price action, the ability to read a chart without analysis or indicators, is a highly visual approach to trading. Eventually, Tony found Day Trade to Win and joined the eight week Mentorship Program with John Paul.

From what Tony has experienced trading Day Trade to Win’s price action methods, he has eight preferred strategies to employ based on how price is moving. In total, about 11 methods are included with Mentorship, in addition to the written courses and software. Each strategy focuses on waiting for price to behave in a specific way, thus providing an indication of how to trade and what method to use. Trading based on evidence and having backup plans is key, as futures and currencies are largely unpredictable. Day Trade to Win’s techniques also introduce risk management concepts.

To sign up for the next Group Mentorship session, visit the coaching sign up page.

This nine or so minute video provides an exact method of determining trends and price movement by splitting the trading day into three separate areas: A, B and C. By placing vertical lines between hourly segments, we can determine where price will likely head based on the high and low ranges of the previous area. There are specific rules for trading the A, B and C sections. The video shows a couple of days in a row.

Systems getting in and out, swing traders and deep pockets move the A part of the day more than any other. This is where the best opportunities of the day exist. Part B usually consists of stagnant activity. Watch part B to see if price breaks the range of Part A. If it does, then you’re in for a good ride. Since most trading days are not trends, you’ll end of skipping part B. Look for trades that occur right away – within the first hour of B plotting. Part C uses part B’s range to determine whether there will be a late day rally or sell-off. The latter was the case in the video’s first example.

Remember, this ABC Pattern occurs in many other markets – not just the E-Mini. Throw up some charts and back-test. You’ll be surprised at how frequent this occurs. Also, It’s important before using the ABC Pattern to adjust your trading software’s chart accordingly. For example, 9:30 a.m. (market open in US/Eastern) will obviously vary across time zones. Keep in mind that NinjaTrader uses multiary time on its X axis. Google “time zone converter” to find a usefull tool for finding the market open close times for this video tutorial.

Visit the Day Trade to Win blog to find more day trading advice.

Perhaps the biggest mistake a newbie trader can make is jumping into an live account with a broker before practicing. Trading platforms like NinjaTrader offer a way to simulate the live trading environment using actual live data (often through leading brokerages). This is as close to live trading one can come without subjecting real money to risk. For NinjaTrader, there are quite a few free live data feed options: the Zen-Fire data feed from Mirus, the Rithmic / Vision feed from Optimus Trading Group and the CQG feed from Global Futures, to name a few. Each feed is quite close when comparing speed and fills, although feed uptime and access costs can differ between brokerages. Many brokerages will pay for the feed, charging only the round-turn fee. Keep in mind that each data feed may have a different expiry period. Whatever feed you decide, consider testing multiple markets on consecutive days to see if there is any missing data, both real-time and historically.

People who paper trade are most likely testing out a strategy. Day Trade to Win has been the long-standing authority on trading price action for the E-Mini and other futures. DTTW encourages paper trading first, as all of their day trading course strategies must be manually traded. The only automated DTTW system is the Atlas Line. With any solution, even the eight week Private Mentorship Program, you can keep track of your sim trading results using NinjaTrader’s Account Performance tab. This tab will show important statistics such as # of winning / losing trades, percent profitable, and average trade profit or loss amount.

In case your trial runs out, many brokers are willing to offer an extension, providing you show a sign of eventually investing in their services. Remember to renew your trial before this occurs, preferably in the evening, as most brokerages can be unresponsive to such requests during trading hours.

In this video, John Paul from Day Trade to Win proves how the Atlas Line can quickly turn a tricky situation into 11 ticks of profit. Notice how the Short order comes in when price is on the rise. Most traders would probably go long and end up getting stopped out where John eventually makes profit. Also, notice how price seems to bounce off the plotted Atlas Line. Because the orders are generated before big moves, this gives traders plenty of time to secure orders. As John points out, nearly everything you do with orders is processed on a first come, first served basis. As you’ve probably experienced, early positioning is key. How many times has price “touched” your target without securing profit? The Day Trade to Win results page indicates that November 15 logged 34 ticks in profit. Surrounding days also show promising results.

Day Trade to Win is running a special promotion – 10% OFF the 6 Month or Lifetime Atlas Line via the coupon code 10OFFATLAS. Purchase includes live training; instruction that covers basic software operation, targets, stops and specialty trades – Pullback, Strength and Bounce.

Even though the E-Mini’s home base is the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), many traders are surprised to find how this future is traded worldwide. Unfortunately, the CME does not provide any statistics that indicating the regions of the world where trades are placed. We can safely assume that the volume of regulated futures trades (CME) are on the rise, perhaps due to an alternative preference for wild-west Forex trading. In many cases, Euro Forex traders will use a 6E futures chart to obtain data that is inaccessible through normal Forex charting.

In the above video, a South African day trader named Sifiso uses trading methods entirely based on price data. Day Trade to Win specializes in using the same techniques that have been secretly in use by successful CME and NYSE traders for many years. Improved and adapted for online futures, these strategies are usually taught through live online instruction with DTTW found John Paul or in written cours material. Because the methods take manipulation, time of day, and real-time price data, the results are consistently accurate. In fact, the training offered at Day Trade to Win extends beyond the E-Mini S&P to other futures, currencies and commodities.

The most inexpensive course DTTW offers is the Floor Traders Secrets Manual (also called the X-5 trade because it’s based on “trading off the 5s”. This course servers as a great introduction to trading price action in the way only Day Trade to Win can provide.

Sifiso,