Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Trade Pattern: RSI for confirmation of retracement or new range


I figured I start posting some of the patterns I use heavily for day trading. As mentioned I tried a few times today to catch a bounce. As you can see I kept on trying - I have a tendency to go in before confirmations. As a result I get stopped out quite a bit as you can see. However the risk exposure for each trade is minimal. As each entry normally consists of 2 positions - one to get into the money and then a position double on strong confirmation. The first "try" is normally with half or less of the intended size - this way I built up enough buffer to go in strong once my second confirmation is made - if I am too early on that second size position I would still be in the greens without having to worry about stopping out - makes sense? (sounds kind of weird writing it out)

I use RSI on the 1-min very heavily to let me know if I am dealing with a retracement or a new range. Today was a prime example of how it was easy to see on the RSI. The above graph is of futures (ESM09). RSI in the morning hours till noon never breached the 60 range and as a result we continued dropping lower. I circled them red here.

Now the low of the day I went long again primarily due to major support being down there, again a small position but worth the risk. The bounce of this range got RSI above the 60 into overbought conditions - it retraced back down and stopped at 40 on the low side, rallied again staying OVER 60 this time and one last drop to 40 yet again - here is where I doubled position and let it run towards my 903 target.

Downtrend, bounce with RSI below 60 = retracement
Downtrend, bounce above RSI 60 = high probabilities for new range

Uptrend, sell off with RSI above 40 = retracement
Uptrend, sell off with RSI below 40 = high probabilities for new range

I know RSI is common sense but I wanted to show how it can be used as a great confirmation for your trades here.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks Chris. this is good. I am still trying to figutr it out.

    overall, do you still see 920,930,940 this week?

    ReplyDelete