in DayTradeToWin, Price action Trading |

A Pro Day Trading Setup Anyone Can Configure

Do you trade with multiple charts? If you don’t, you probably will do so eventually. And when you do, check out the linking feature that’s built into NinjaTrader 8. By selecting matching “link colors” for either the instrument, interval, or both, you can create a responsive and adaptable trading environment. This video explains it all.

Take a look at the configuration being used by the trader in this video. He has six charts total. Two of them, those on top, are for the 5-Minute time frame. The four toward the bottom-left corner are 1-Minute charts. To the right, there are two SuperDOMs. Imagine if you had the same setup. Without chart linking, if you wanted to switch the interval (type of chart) or market (instrument), you would have to spend time switching each chart over. Instead, it’s more efficient to set up matching link colors to create relationships between trading windows/tools.

NinjaTrader 8 provides far more colors than you probably need. You can see how one high-resolution display (well, larger than a common 1920×1080 or 1366×768 computer monitor) can be an effective solution rather than the common multi-monitor setup.

The Divvy window management tool is used here to set up a 9×6 grid. Note that you may want to use different grid or column sizes depending on your resolution. Tip: first, start with seeing what column size works for the width of the SuperDOM window and go from there.

Flip-flop or Trend? This Price Action Indicator Helps

In this video, the Atlas Line gives two winning signals. The first signal is a Short winner. The second is a Long winner. The market is the E-mini S&P 500. The Atlas Line is installed as an indicator into the NinjaTrader 8 platform. Once applied to the chart, it will automatically provide signals based on how price moves around and through the plotted line (dashed pink line in the video). When two candles close above, that causes a Long signal. When two candles close below, that causes a Short signal. Since you know the basis of the signals, you can prepare yourself for placing a trade ahead of time. This is made easier with a 5-Minute chart, as the market moves slow enough for most people to prepare a trade.

Do you focus on previous highs and lows or guess when trends start and stop? That’s a mistake. As demonstrated, if you thought the market was going to continue down, you could have been stopped out by the reversal. This is where the Atlas Line is useful: the line itself maintains its direction all day. In effect, you can gauge the overall “bias” of the market: whether you should be prioritizing long (buy) or short (sell) trades. The automated signals are icing on the cake.

Whether you purchase the 6-Month or Lifetime Atlas Line, the signals will be the same. Remember that your 6-Month won’t count towards your Lifetime, so keep in mind that purchase a Lifetime license may be a better value unless you decide to roll into the eight-week Mentorship Program. In that case, your purchase may count towards Mentorship.

We should mention the Atlas Line can be used across many market types: the YM, CL, NQ, etc. The requirement is that the market needs to trade overnight and be reasonably volatile. Therefore, stocks won’t work. However, you can trade currencies (aka forex) just fine. NinjaTrader is free to use with futures and forex data available. You only have to purchase or lease the platform when you’re ready to trade with real money. Click here so we can help you get set up with NinjaTrader.

Are Short Trades Better Than Long Trades?

When it comes to price action trading, long trades vs. short trades is too simplified a discussion. It’s really about what your reliable trading systems are telling you. If you have more than one system telling you “go short” or “go long,” then that’s probably the best information you have. If anyone is telling you “short trades are better X amount of time,” that could be 100% correct historical information. That has no bearing on future results.

Regarding historical information, many trading systems have been in a self-destruct mode ever since COVID-19 caused turbulence. We saw, and still see, more volatility than average. We saw huge volatility months ago – fluctuations and halting that was unprecedented. Though the virus is still raging in parts of the world, mainstream information implies European countries mostly have new cases under control. At present, the same cannot be said about the U.S. Have you looked at big companies and industries in states that are projected to be hit longer-term by the virus? What about job loss and stability of these companies? Is it a time to go short? If Florida continues to be hit hard through fall and winter, what about those tourism dollars? Are traders going to short Carnival or Tropicana? You may be tempted to say short trades are better, but once recovery occurs (yes, be positive!), long trades may tempt you.

Part of being a successful intraday futures trader is being mindful and not getting carried away by news events and tempting patterns. Stay as objective as possible. If there’s negative news, there’s not always a negative reaction. And if negative news is coming out, you can bet the big players and analysts are already aware and ready to manipulate the markets in their favor.

2 Videos: Multiple Days of Price Action Trading Reviewed

When evaluating any day trading system, it’s important to look at multi-day performance. How did the system perform over multiple days? What about consecutive days? How big were the wins, if any? How big were the losses, if any? What’s the recommended trading account size? What markets can be traded? What is the underlying mechanism – price action?

DayTradeToWin.com’s Trade Scalper and Atlas Line price action day trading systems are seen in many day trading videos. We can see signals that promise to be the same as what a regular trader would see via their personal computer. Long and Short signals are equivalent to Buy and Sell, in trading vernacular. When a signal appears, the trader is supposed to follow the rules and place a trade. If the market is too volatile or too slow, it may be best to wait until conditions return to normal. This is one example of many. Fortunately, the rules for those two price action trading systems appear to be relatively straightforward.

Both allow customization of the signal text including color and size. This is especially useful if you’re older and prefer not to squint. The NinjaTrader platform allows dark and light charts. Some traders are colorblind, so offering the ability to change colors to contrast with background is very important and overlooked in indicator development.

On the bottom of the charts, you will see a gold-colored line. That’s the ATR (Average True Range) and included with many trading platforms, such as thinkorswim and Trading View. It should be configurable, allowing you to specify the time frame or period value for the primary “averaging” calculation. Four bars is recommended, as greater values consider longer periods of time. This depends on the type of chart in use, of course!

Does Your Trading System Produce These Results?

Here, we have John Paul from DayTradeToWin reviewing trading signals from multiple days, back-to-back. You will see the Atlas Line and the Trade Scalper signals and how these may have resulted in winning trades in the E-mini S&P 500 futures market. Once you’re a customer, you will see the same signals. Day Trade To Win helps clients configure their trading platform to be a complete practice environment for simulated futures trading. The idea is to get as close to real-money conditions without risking real funds in the markets. Why increase risk while learning? Once you’re ready to trade with real money, you can then purchase or lease the NinjaTrader 8 platform and open and fund a brokerage account.

The Atlas Line is useful as a standalone trading method and works nicely with other trading systems. The line begins plotting soon after market open and remains consistent in direction throughout the day. When price intersects the line and closes twice above or below, signals will appear. These are the main Long (buy) and Short (sell) signals. Additional Strength (S) and Pullback (P) signals are included. The “how” and “why” behind those signals are included in the customer-only live training. At about 2:35 in the video, you can see a collection of signals discussed, with the major identified as winners.

Generally, scalping is fast trading, in and out with smaller profit goals. The Trade Scalper scalping strategy is shown at 3:45 in the video. The signals appear with a directional triangle and are colored to represent Short or Long. On a 1-Minute chart, you could well see eight or more signals before noon. The Trade Scalper is also compatible with a 2 Range chart. The customer training fully explains how this strategy work, so you could trade it without software if you want. This is one of the most popular trading systems offered by DayTradeToWin.

How to Day Trade After-hours Using NinjaTrader 8 Market Replay

If you work during the day and only have time to practice at night, Market Replay is the way to go. Market Replay, accessed via NinjaTrader 8’s Playback connection, lets you replay market activity as though it’s occurring live. It’s the next best thing (and in some ways superior) to real-time practice. You can rewind, fastfoward, and pause playback. This makes Market Replay ideal for getting a sense of how your trading signals work in relation to market conditions. For example, many trading systems have signals that appear when a bar closes. During playback, you can see exactly when the signal fires.

Before you can use Market Replay, you must download replay data. Follow the steps in the video to navigate to the correct area in the platform. Next, select the instrument (aka market) and date you want to download. Then you may connect to the Playback Connection. Upon doing so, the Playback window will appear. Playback begins at midnight, so you’ll need to drag the slider or fastforward to market open, if that’s your focus. Keep in mind that every time you move the slider, you have to wait for the data to plot again up until that point.

All trades placed while connected to Playback Connection occur within the Playback101 account rather than Sim101. Sim101 is reserved for real-time NinjaTrader Continuum connections. You should be able to monitor your performance using Playback101 using the same Trade Performance area of NinjaTrader 8 (see the New menu item). Try to use Market Replay data rather than historical data, as the former has Level II data. Some traders like to see the buyers and sellers in the SuperDOM and this is only available with Level II data.

Price Action Patterns & Indicator Signals

Take a look at this live webinar where the presenter, John Paul, shared his real-time signals with a room full of traders. All of the signals are based on price action. We define price action as price movement over time. By recognizing price action patterns that often lead to future movement (up or down), we believe it is possible to develop a successful trading system. That is what DayTradeToWin has done. Sounds simple, right? Well, the rules are straightforward and fully explained. Choose from the Trade Scalper, Atlas Line, or ATO 2 for price action trading courses. You may want to go a step further and get a trading coach via the eight-week, all-inclusive Mentorship Program.

When trading the E-mini S&P 500 (ES instrument in NinjaTrader), you can expect each tick to be worth $12.50. One point is considered to be four ticks. Therefore, each point = $50. If you have one point of profit using one contract, you have made $50 before any broker or exchange fees. If you trade with two contracts, you can double the profit to get $100; again excluding any additional fees. The amount of money you have set aside for trading plus broker requirements and how much you want to risk on each trade are all factors on profit potential. And of course, the main factor is how reliable your trading method is. DayTradeToWin has focused on price action patterns and signals for over 10 years. If you want to scalp the markets using price action, consider the Trade Scalper. If you prefer fewer, but larger moves, maybe the Atlas Line is right for you. If you are only interested in the morning activity and want a trade or two at most, go with the ATO 2. If you want all this and much more (10 or so methods), the Mentorship Program is probably the way to go.

Consider a trading education like any other education. If you want to learn how to drive a truck, you have to pay to go to school to get your CDL. The same is true for healthcare and pretty much any other occupational category. Just because you can casually trade from home does not mean the learning process is a free ride. The cost of trial and error (placing losing trades) can be huge. Wouldn’t it be better to go with a price action trading course from someone who’s done it already for years?

What’s the Best Price Action Trading Strategy?

Becoming a successful trader is about testing different strategies and figuring out what works best for you. So many books and courses are out there that promise huge profits. The truth is, trading is a high-risk activity, even for seasoned pros. That’s why you should only trade with money you have set aside for this type of investing. Our main approach focuses on price action. Price action is all about letting price movement be the lead indicator instead of some complicated analysis or lagging Bollinger Band system.

Day Trade to Win uses price action as a primary driver of decision making. In a given moment, a trader has to interpret multiple values. Should I stay in this trade? Should I get out early at a smaller profit, a loss, or breakeven? Is there a trade present? Does my other trading method confirm the direction of this trading method? How many contracts should I put on this trade? If I lose this trade, should I attempt to place another or call it a day? These are all questions that run through the minds of intraday futures traders.

Having objective rules simplifies the decision-making process. You have to make the right decision. Having a retail trading robot tweaked to how you, as a human trader, would respond, is probably not going to happen. Also, you may not know anyone who will let you in the door to be part of their high-frequency trading system within the CME building. You’ve got to figure out what’s in your control and what you can rely on. That’s why price action is preferred. Have a plan through a day trading course like those offered at DayTradeToWin.com.

Get Better at Trading: Go Beyond Guessing Tops & Bottoms

One of the most tempting and basic forms of trading is related to support and resistance. Have you ever drawn a horizontal line to connect a series of candles or price bars that group together as though they cannot pass beyond an invisible barrier? Have you done this to the short side and the long side?

Yes, identifying highs and lows, or tops and bottoms, or support and resistance, can be useful, but not as a primary trading strategy in our opinion. When coupled with a trading system like the Atlas Line or Trade Scalper, you can get clear direction on whether the market is expected to move high or low.

In past videos, you’ve seen how DayTradeToWin uses a price action approach to Fibonaccis, simply using the 50% value between a previous high and a low. When that 50% is surpassed, that can be the start of a longer (and hopefully profitable) long (buy) opportunity. But what if there was a way to immediately make sense of intraday price stalling? Yes, in the video in this post, you’ll see how John Paul’s use of price action Yo-Yo Bars can help you stay clear of choppy conditions.

The Atlas Line provided plenty of Strength (S) and Pullback (P) signals that were on point. Those signals and their manual calculation are taught in the included live training. Generally, if you see those signals, price is expected to move in a consistent direction instead of chop back and forth. Watch for such signals around those extended periods of price stagnation, such as the 35+ minute period shown in the video.

Trading Tip: Sync Your Windows 10 Computer Clock

If your computer clock is off by mere seconds, you could experience unwanted behavior in your NinjaTrader 8 trading platform. The NinjaTrader 8 software “grabs” the current time from your computer clock. In turn, the indicators running within NinjaTrader reference that time or schedule operations accordingly. For example, if the Bar Timer indicator is running on a computer with an incorrect Windows 10, the Bar Timer may fail to countdown and could remain at zero.

In an ideal situation, your Windows 7, 8, or 10 version should automatically recalibrate (sync) with official time servers on a regular basis. This is supposed to be done by the operating system automatically every once in a while to correct any “drift” in time caused by, well, physics essentially as related to the battery on your computer’s motherboard. The official time servers are maintained to ensure great precision. You can check how “off” your computer clock is with the official time via https://time.is. Note that this is not an official time server, though it is frequently used to gauge computer clock accuracy. When time.is recognized your time is pretty much exact, it will tell you so.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix to the Windows time inaccuracy issue. We will go over instructions on how to set up a shortcut you can use every couple of weeks to manually correct/update the time.

  1. Right-click the Windows Desktop and select the option to create a new shortcut.
  2. For the location, type in timedate.cpl. Make sure there is no trailing period if you copied the text from here. Proceed forward and give the shortcut a name, such as Time Sync.
  3. Now that the shortcut is created, you’ll need to perform the remaining steps every two weeks or so to correct time drift. Double-click on the shortcut.
  4. Click the Internet Time tab a the top. Then click Change settings.
  5. Click Update now. It’s actually normal to see a failure message. When this occurs, select the other time server and try updating again. Repeat among the time servers until success occurs. Upon success, close out of the time area. Wait five minutes for the time to “permeate” the Windows OS.
  6. If NinjaTrader is running, restart it.
  7. Optionally, visit https://time.is to confirm your computer clock is now accurate.