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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: booters who wrote (9106)	6/23/2000 11:09:00 AM
From: Robert Graham	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

I find the time frame that works depends both on the instrument that I am trading and how the instrument is trading in its market. I have used 1-min charts and even 15-tick (15 ticks to a bar) successfully, and for that matter, at times were the only charts that I could trade from to provide me good entries and exits. But the norm for me is the 3-min and 5-min charts with the SPOO. I find charts like the 15-min to be too unreliable. But the way the market has been working lately, the longer time frames charts have been becoming more reliable. But you still have allot of time covered by each bar. This gives price allot of "room" to operate in even when the final result may be a successful resolution of a pattern that showed up on those charts. This means price is more prone to whipsawing and indirection, which means I would have to allow for a significant stop loss to play those patterns. That is when they do work. And there are significant periods of time where patterns in the larger time frame would not work for me at all with the SPOO. But I am sure the a workable time frame to trade in depends on the instrument being traded. Probably for many stocks the 15-min time frame would indeed be the smallest one can successfully trade in, and quite possibly a larger time frame would be required. This would not surprise me. For that matter, sometimes the SPOO trades where I cannot use enything less than the 7-min chart and sometimes even the 15-min chart. This situation requires me to alter my approach to trading. I need to wait for an opportunity to show up on a shorter time frame chart for me to take as a trade. This opportunity needs to provide me entry for the setup seen on the larger time frame chart. If this does not happen, I do not make the trade. Bob Graham