Opening Range Breakout: One Great Trade covered yesterday's losses

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Finally, I got a One Good Trade. Today, I have more than recovered from yesterday's losses.

Trading the right scrip matters

Today was a metals day (I didn't check the other commodity charts). All of them, Hindalco, Vedanta, Jindal Steel, Tata Steel - all of them were on fire. Taking a Opening Range Breakout Long trade on any one of them would have made me rich.

That way, I was lucky that I chose to go with Hindalco today, instead of State Bank Of India or ICICI Bank. Also, kind of made my own luck, when I decided to switch from Nifty Futures to Stock Futures. Just look at the Nifty Futures chart today. There was no life in it.

On these Stock Futures, though the Day Trading Margin Requirements are higher, the brokerage and other costs are lower per unit of volatility, when compared to the Nifty Futures. An important thing to keep in mind is the volume/liquidity of individual Stock Futures. I am satisfied with the liquidity in the scrips that I have chosen to trade so far, though many times I could not get my entry orders filled for what could have been potentially good trades.

This trading style has been working so far. I guess that it will keep working.... until it stops working. The sun is shining right now... so make hay with this trading system.

Opening Range Breakout

Lately, I have been logging into my trading terminal a good 15-20 minutes after start of trading. It could be that I am just lazy, but I try to rationalize that due to the delay I avoid a number of early whipsaws. Today, I logged in early, just about 3 minutes after trading began.

Though I liked the look of both ICICI Bank and Tata Steel, I decided that I like the pattern on the Hindalco chart better. Hindalco had a good gap up and had higher volumes. That matches the kind of better Opening Range Breakout scenarios that I was evaluating earlier.

This one was a good Opening Range Breakout day, with no deep pullbacks that could take out my Trailing Stop Losses, and I only had to sit through it. The One Good Trade rule for my Trailing Stop Loss kept it wide enough.

From tomorrow, I will try to log in early into my trading terminal to catch similar trades, if possible. Especially, need to keep an eye on the gap ups and volumes at day open.

Day Trading Price Action Chart

>>> My live tweets of today's trades <<<

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Budget Day, March is already better - Day Trading: Feb 29, Intraday

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After the drudgery of the February series, a better day today. It was the Budget Day. For me, it was a  shorts day, with 7 shorts and no longs. That also meant that I could not make anything in the almost 300 point upmove - in fact, I made a loss during that move.

I loved my entries today - each of them had potential, but the exits are what I am unhappy about.

Trade 1: Range Compression entry, even before the budget announcement. Target was the then day low 7025, but I decided to demur even though price reached 7017. Finally, booked a loss. Trade Drawdown -26 points.

Trade 2: Another Range Compression entry, just as the Finance Minister was announcing something about the LPG scheme for the poor. Entry slipped by 4 points. Wanted to trail to 7001, but did not. Trade Drawdown -25 points.

Trade 3: With Trend Pullback entry. Went well. Again, I wanted to trail to 6852, but I don't know what got into me. Trade Drawdown -50 points.

Trade 4: Counter Trend Breakout Failure. Moved immediately, but not much. Trade Drawdown -30 points.

Trade 5: Entry after Breakout Failure. Trailed fast. Good. Trade Drawdown -13 points.

Trade 6: Range Compression Entry. Wanted to trail to 7050, but did not. This was the only time today, that I benefited from not moving the Stop Loss. Trade Drawdown -19 points.

Trade 7: Another Range Compression entry, just 3 minutes before auto square-off. Entry slipped 4 points. Exited in 1 minute for small profit. Trade Drawdown -8 points.

Total trade time of all the trades was just 1 hour and 13 minutes. Happy with the results, though this was a big points day, and I could not make much out of it.

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A good start to the February series - Day Trading: Jan 29, Intraday

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Today is the first day of the February series. A big outside bar in the initial minutes was confusing. Then, when the price fell back into yesterday's range, it started to look like a range-bound day.

Unlike the past 2 days, I tries to be relaxed with my entry, focusing only on visual clues. After my long entry, the price moved pretty much one way. There were a couple of deep pullbacks that came close to my trailing Stop Loss, but no damage done. In my mind, this is how the Range Compression Trading System is supposed to behave - that is the whole purpose of having wide Stop Losses. The icing on the cake - the auto square-off exited me close to today's highest price ☺

Got my second century since I began posting on this blog. Been a long time coming. The last century trade was on November 18th. On January 13th and January 14th, I was in trades with MFE of 125+ points, but they were booked for less than 100 points.

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20151118 - Dropped catches in my century today!!!

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Today, luck was with me. Since Monday, when I moved to the M5 chart, and tightened the Stops, shake outs (bad luck) have been affecting. The market pulls back just to eat my SL and then continues on its way... See the trade 2 on Monday and almost all exits on Tuesday.

Not so today. The price came within 1 point of my SL 4 times but did not touch them. Finally, I have a century in this series with the help of all those dropped catches!!!

I have no clue about why the market fell. I don't really follow the news, I follow only my system. The advantage of a mechanical trading system is that you get plenty of free time, since you don't need to analyze the price moves in real time. Unfortunately, I do not do anything useful with all that free time.

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