A few charts.

In the last hour can happen a lot but at the moment it seems the markets rebouncing a little. The S@P 500 below the 200SMA but testing this level today. The Nasdax above the 200SMA. We will see next week if these levels can maintain or if we will go further down. I expect a further recovery from here, but the optimistic mood of the last weeks is over for now.

daytrading
FDAX

System trading vs. Discretionary trading (2)

System trading has an advantage over discretionary trading: it can be automated partially or fully so that all decisions and emotions of the trader are negelected. The system works for itself. Now this is also the big disadvantage too: the experience, knowledge or intuition of the trader can be extremely worthful, things you can never progam a computer to do (despite many efforts neural networks hamper still too often).

Still I am trying to find a more systematical way of trading. I found this piece of software wich is really worth mentioning. It can be used as order entry or for simulation and backtesting. It is called Futures-Trader and is made by Christian Czirnich (anwalt@czirnich.de) and can be found here. A very good piece of work.

Read more about systemtrading vs discretionary trading methods:
System Trading vs. Discretionary Trading: Part 1
System Trading vs. Discretionary Trading: Part 2

daytrading
FDAX

FDAX at 5000 FDAX from the other side

So we are down now. Such quick movements downwards you allways see at the end of a big uptrend. The FDAX down almost 3.3% in two days. At the low of the day testing support at 5000. I wait with trading today.
A few nice charts to follow where you can see the US markets ended last night. The big uptrend of the S@P 500 has been broken as clearly can be seen by the broken trendline. Also the S@P broken throuhg the 200 SMA and closed below this level.

The NASDAQ making lower highs and testing the support at 2100.

The DOW Jones choppy during all summer. A confirmation of the fact that the uptrend this year was performed by the smaller companies (see Russel 2000).

daytrading
FDAX

End of the trend?

The important US indexes closed clearly below their 50 SMA yesterday. Now a pattern of lower highs can be seen in the charts, see the S@P and the NASDAQ charts of the last three months.

Though the longer trend still being up, the trendline in the S@P chart of the last 6 months maybe a last rescue for the bulls. See last chart. Maybe the of this trend. But before we can conclude this we probably will see some testings of the 50 SMA and the 200 SMA.

daytrading
FDAX

Profit run

It has been shown very often that it is wise to let your profits run. Every trader knows this, it gives the best results overall. Just the realtime implementation is so damned difficult. We know that too.

Today there was such a day. But there was something else too: my mind and my expectations. Not that I traded bad today, I gained in total 11 points which is very good but there is feeling I could get more out of the market today.I traded two times today and the first one was a loser and the second one a nice winner, but there you have it. When I was in this trade, I felt it would go in favour of my position, my position was good, but my memory was with the loss before. I was stopped out at my trail.

I have a timeframe for my trades. With this I mean that I am trying to make net profit during one or two days. There lies my consistency. If you use a bigger frame, say a month, a day doesn't matter that much as long as you stay profitable every month. Read this thread about trade consistency
So my second trade brought me a nice win. My target was not hit but later the day it did. This dilemma, choosing for a winning trade to maintain my consistency or choosing for a target to hit is an ongoing challenge which I probably never will solve.

The S@P clearly above the 50 days SMA but far below its years high. See chart. Where does the DAX go this year?

daytrading
FDAX

Fridays setup

I am not trading these days. I am upgrading my hardware, which is necessary sometimes. I am also testing another tradesetup. For the moment it is enough to say that I want to trade another more sytematical tradesystem besides my futures.

daytrading
FDAX