Anyone scalping the FTSE Futures??

Mazdaq - Best of luck to you and if my thread has helped you in any way, then that's just great. My current set up uses an 8 period boly on the 5 min chart, and a 12 period boly on the 1 min chart. You could use a 12 period on the 5 min if you want to, but for me the 8 period just works that little bit better for pullbacks in a trend. The middle bolinger band for the 8 period boly is the same as the 8 period simple moving average. Pullbacks seem to bounce off this line more times than they do for the 12 period SMA. And remember this is for the FTSE futures prices and not FTSE cash.

One other thing I have changed recently is the need for 2 clear points to trigger an entry. I now enter most of the time on a stop order, when it breaks by just one tick (0.5 pts on the FTSE). I have always found following the 1 min chart works well for me. I did try to trade just using the 5 min chart after I was told to stop wasting my time with the 1 min. These days I use both, with the 1 minute chart giving the best early warning for a change of trend. Especially if the price crosses over the mid boly band and goes into the other half. For example if in a downtrend the price pulls back but crosses above the mid boly on the 1 min chart and goes on to touch the upper band. This in itself is not a signal to go long. I wait for the price to come back and test the mid boly band again. If it bounces off the mbb and goes up by one tick on the next 1 min candle, I enter long on a buy stop. If it goes through the mbb and doesn't bounce off it, it usually, but not always, means more downside.
 
Expecting a large move to the upside here from both the FTSE and DOW this afternoon and I mean large

appologies if Ive hijacked a thread but there seems to be so many diverse threads these days
 
Expecting a large move to the upside here from both the FTSE and DOW this afternoon and I mean large

appologies if Ive hijacked a thread but there seems to be so many diverse threads these days

dc - you can hijack this thread any time. I appreciate an old pro like yourself giving out the odd nugget of info.

I am not so sure of your big move this afternoon, mainly because the US sold off so strongly in the last hour of trading last night. As I type the ES is only up 0.56% from yesterday's close
 
Great call dc2000. What made you call this up so far in advance?

I went long the break of the level at 5040 at 15:15. But prior to that it was range bound, The market tipped its hand at 15:10 when the 5 minute candle pulled up short and failed to go to the bottom of the range which was at 4989. When it cleared above 5042, that was my signal to go long. I had 5120 as a target and it sailed through that surprisingly. After that it refused to sell off and traded sideways into the moving averages, and as has been recently the case, it made new highs into the close.
 

Attachments

  • 11 Aug 2011 PM session.jpg
    11 Aug 2011 PM session.jpg
    81.5 KB · Views: 486
Last edited:
Great call dc2000. What made you call this up so far in advance?

I went long the break of the level at 5040 at 15:15. But prior to that it was range bound, The market tipped its hand at 15:10 when the 5 minute candle pulled up short and failed to go to the bottom of the range which was at 4989. When it cleared above 5042, that was my signal to go long. I had 5120 as a target and it sailed through that surprisingly. After that it refused to sell off and traded sideways into the moving averages, and as has been recently the case, it made new highs into the close.

Great to hear you caught the run
I had the FTSE on what I call a three pattern and the DOW on an inverted five as the FTSE was in a range earlier the afternoon was going to complete the pattern on the FTSE this meant a price higher than 5265 5335 would be price perfect. to complete the five the DOW would have to print a price 11305 or greater by tomorrow with 11335 being spot on.
 
I never took you for an Eliot Wave man. I always found it too subjective for me, but I know it works for many people. I'm happy just reading the price action and making my little trades.
 
Martin C-J

I am doing like you but a whole lot diffrently. I started very humbly with zero confidence in what I was doing about 3 months ago and now I have even quit my accounting job and doing this full time.

To be honest, I think I am doing well. Though my method is a hell lot different from yours. The good thing about my method is that its ZERO LOSS.

To cut a long story short- I do my FTSE100 trades in BETFAIR (these are 20mins FINANCIALS). You will find that its much easier if you download and use the BETTING ASSISTANT(Gruss). This might sound like gambling but am not gambling but making profits EVERY 20 minutes on Betfair Financials. My personal finances are now excellent as a result.

All you do is register with Betfair and download the BA(its only £6/month), and start trading.

Then-log-on to the BA and go to Financials - FTSE-20 minutes.

1) You then bring up the (20mins) just before it goes IN-PLAY, noting the level of the FTSE100 at the bigining of that 20mins. (whether its 5780,5560 or what ever it was just before the start of the 20minutes. These run from 9am to 4pm UK time.

2) Wait for any(whether down or up) to reach its MINIMUM-say @1.20(LAY). Then you take that twice (LAY) at say - one as 1.20@£2 and and the other as 1.20@ £100. NOW NOTE that you only do this when the odds START moving UPWARDS.(CRUCIAL)

3) To safeguard yourself -Place a BACK as 1.20@£102 and leave it UNMATCHED as the odds drift upwards. (this is for just in case the market turns against you.If it does-this CONTRAs your original entries.
Suppose the odds reach 100, you then ClOSE the deal by BACKING as 100@£2. This GREENSUP on both sides at £100 each and at end of the 20 minutes, your account inreases by £100. Then quickly cancel the BACK(security) of 1.20@£102 before it gets matched.

You do this 21 times per day and end of day you bank £2 100 or even more depending on your stakes. The main thing here is you LOSE NO PENNY at all and you make profits every 20 minutes. Sometimes out of the 21 events you might make 12 or more. To me this is good money without having to analyse this and that or lose.

I recently bought a brand new car using this method.
Am sure you can find my email on this forum-hook me up-maybe we can share more about this.

Well I had tried what you are doing before but it gave me so much pressure. I hope this might help.

Cheers

Hello teamwk, I'm wondering whether you can provide more detail on this.
It all sounds great, but:
1. you say it's crucial to lay when the price starts moving upwards. How do you know when that happens ? If I knew when any market bottomed out, I would have made a fortune by now, but no one has a crystal ball, as far as I know.
2. in Betfair, you have a spread as a difference between bet and lay prices, lay prices being higher. When you make a lay bet, you cannot place your security back bet at the same odds immediately as it will be matched pretty soon if the odds go up and you want to leave it unmatched. You have to wait until back odds go higher than your security bet. You can't really guarantee such movement, can you ?
3. People on Betfair aren't stupid. Odds on "FTSE going up" will not increase to 100 unless it is obvoius that FTSE is going down. In such situation it does not make any sense to make a back bet at 100 - what for, it your lay bet will win anyway ?
4. For some reason, you seem to advertise betting assistant, which is a paid software from Betfair. There are other trading solutions, some of them come free of charge, e.g. Geek Toy. It seems to me that your post is a simple advertisement for Betfair.
 
I never took you for an Eliot Wave man. I always found it too subjective for me, but I know it works for many people. I'm happy just reading the price action and making my little trades.

I dont do elliot waves for the same reason although the EW society were kind enough to send me some of their books a few years ago. I was also given a copy of Delta but that was pretty much the same. I used to joke with Tom Huggard that I went back to the future as my trading comes from the early 20th century.
 
Good to see you are friendly with Tom. I think he is a great guy, and has done lots for small traders. I wish him well with his Which Way Today trading room. It sounds like he was very lucky to survive his swimming accident in the Canary Isles.

The market seems to have settled down a bit today, and is fairly normal for once. Since the reversal at 8:15am, this has been a one way up day with retracements no more than 23.6%. Looks like we should retest the high of last night at 5277.5. That would be a pretty big gap to have closed. Then we have US retail sales at 1:30pm which should get the markets panicking again. The U of Michegan number at 2:55pm should be worse than expectations, which should produce a quick spike down, after that I think it will try to go up again and then range into the close.
 
looking at the price on the FTSE we are getting there slowly I expect a push midday poss spike then lower into close not many will want to hold over weekend still looking for the 355 perfect hit.
The Dow sold into close which suggests players not looking for a gap play more an early rally for the first hour downward bias for most of the day with end of day small rally
 
out of FTSE now @306 its good enough to complete pattern and dont want to hold over weekend + 500 points I aint gonna argue for an extra 50
 
Flux capacitor working perfectly. Well done dc. Great calls.

Retail numbers surprised by being reasonably good. But U of Michegan was poor as expected. Didn't take the market too long to shrug off the number and then it popped up into the UK cash close. Then it returned to a "normal" non traders market for the rest of the day. Looks like everyone headed for the Hamptons early in NY. It has been an interesting two weeks, and surely needs to catch its breath.
 
Expecting a large move to the upside here from both the FTSE and DOW this afternoon and I mean large

appologies if Ive hijacked a thread but there seems to be so many diverse threads these days

If you have committed any sins, I'll forgive you! :)

That was a great forecast for FT on the 11th. Just seen it, but to-day, unfortunately, is the 14th.
 
cheers Martin, Splitlink

good start to the FTSE week so far no price outside target zone, infact paint drying would be more exciting, but thats fine time to sit back and wait no entry today not even if we start to get whips this afternoon, At the moment I would be looking to enter a short tomorrow @5402 but this may change later today dependant on price action.
 
Top