Hi!
It seems we trade off very similar chart structures!
Yes, that is one point that I would have entered.
I should mention immediately that, as I think I mentioned earlier, I trade in the direction of the trend but I am not a trend trader. I only look for an initial impetus and jump on the “enthusiasm”. It’s a bit like surfboarding (which is the name I give it! ). One tries to catch the wave and ride it until it starts to exhaust itself. This usually means 15-25 points per trade. Then I just wait for the next “wave”. Sometimes they just fizzle out and one has to just close it.
I should also mention again that I employ a lot of discretionary input to my entry/exit decisions and, although it might look mechanical, I take everything on my chart purely as indicative and not concrete signals.
This is a 1H chart for this week on SP500. The little arrow at the RHS shows the position I took this afternoon.
I have added lots of circles and rectangles to highlight various POI’s “points of interest”:
The yellow rectangles show POI’s that develop on or around the horizontal High/Low/Midpoint lines projected forward from the previous week’s range. During this week, the Low POI was interesting because we had a big down candle but price subsequently failed to reach the low line and actually turned back up to the midpoint, which suggested an underlying bullishness.
The other notable POI’s were the series of yellow rectangles along the green high line. We hung around this area and returned to it several times but never actually closed below it. This again gave a bullish suggestion which also justified taking the long position this afternoon.
The blue circles show entry areas where the thin red EMA (14-period) is breaking out from the slow ribbon (which, like your’s is a 20-50 EMA ribbon with some added interims to give it identity and highlight the compression/expansion and angle of direction (this is purely a visual aspect).
If these blue circled areas occur close to the slow ribbon then it is a good trade with a stop on the other side of the ribbon. However, the red rectangles show breaks through the ribbon with big candles which need care as they are often followed by an immediate retracement, offering possible delayed entries on a retracement of traditionally around 50% of the move.
I also include an RSI which is 56-periods since this is a proxy for a 14-period on the 4H chart. I don’t pay too much attention to this but it can support the direction shown by the slow ribbon and raise suspicions about a trade in the opposite direction.
I generally prefer to take trades in the directions moving away from the midpoint line as that suggests something “new” may be happening, whereas price moving in towards the midpoint line suggests directionless consolidation and price movement can be rather choppy as a result.
It is not my intention to put the whole thing here, there are many things that I will look at as time goes by and these notes are only to give some indications in general.
Although this mainly focuses on the entries, the real key to this and any other approach is deciding where to exit. Picking exit levels makes all the difference between profitability and loss. An overly optimistic TL and/or an overly cautious SL can ruin an account very quickly regardless of getting the direction right and picking entry points.
These are just some things that i focus on. I am not saying that are good, or even that they are right. But, hopefully, they give food for thought that results in some inspiration!
Have a great weekend!