Bob Volman Price Action Scalping

I mentioned in a previous post that I was tracking a couple other exit strategies. I'd like to describe the strategies and performance of each for July's trades.

1. Tipping Point Technique - straight FPAS
2. +10/-10 Bracket - every trade is either +10 or -10 pips; no early exiting except for news.
3. Trailing Tipping Point - trail the price action with tipping point until it is eventually broken. The idea here is to be able to catch the larger moves. (See attachment for example.)

A note about how I counted these - I traded the standard tipping point but tracked the others as if I had traded them to see how they would have done. That means that if I closed a trade then reopened a new one before the Bracket strategy (for example) would have closed, the Bracket strategy only has 1 trade where TP has 2. That accounts for the difference in number of trades. Also, I tracked this for ALL my trades, even the errors.

So, this is how it went across all good, bad, and ugly trades:

1. Tipping Point: 53 trades, 49% wins, +52 net pips

2. 10/10 Bracket: 49 trades, 63% wins, +141 net pips (had a couple news exits in there)

3. Trailing Tipping Point: 48 trades, 38% wins, +92 pips (89 of which came from today's crazy move)

Hi JRS, great analysis. Any typos? I had the impression you have been doing quite well. Is it 152 instead of 52? What's your broker?

Also I'm surprised that trailing tipping point only gives you 3 pips (excluding today).
 
Hi JRS, great analysis. Any typos? I had the impression you have been doing quite well. Is it 152 instead of 52? What's your broker?

Also I'm surprised that trailing tipping point only gives you 3 pips (excluding today).

Sadly you read that right :) I've attached a chart of the running totals for comparison.

The beginning of the month was great then after Greece was "fixed" the market changed and we started seeing more summer-like conditions. I failed to adjust. If you look back at my charts during that time, you'll see I was getting a lot more losses because I was still trading pretty aggressively.

The other part I think is probably variance. I've had quite a few pretty tough shakes in the last few days which you can see in the divergence between the TP and Bracket on the attachment.

I have an active trader account with TradeStation. The spreads there are typically 1.1-1.2 pips on the EURUSD which is really all I trade.

Edit: just a follow-up on the Trailing Tipping Point performance. We really (today aside) haven't seen any big break-out days where the price took off and didn't look back this month. Fed day on Wed had some of that but I didn't take any of those trades. So the TTP has all of the downside (shakes, etc) of the TP but unless you have a big move, I was typically getting <10 pips even for the winners because of the ranging behavior we typically see (esp in the summer months).
 

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Today's trade. After tracking the various exit strategies last month, I've decided to switch this month to a +10/-10 bracket exit. I'm going to continue tracking, will post the results at the end of the month for anyone interested.
 

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Bob chimed in about choppy markets in this week's charts. Reposting here.
 

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Just laid low today. Super thin price action, didn't see any high-odds opportunities.
 

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Failed breakout -> barrier bounce?

Fellow Volmanites,

Here's one setup I missed today. Was monitoring upper barrier of the big range (UJ 200 tick) after the false break right before 9am. There were two teases, and if they had broken out further, preferably taking out the red horizontal line (high of the day), then I would have been looking for an ARB setup. Then prices went south and took out the three equal lows between the two teases (a double top). I realized I missed a possible IRB (barrier bounce). I believe this happened in the past as well.

My questions: 1) Do you think this was a valid setup? The squeeze wasn't perfect but Bob said you can be a little more aggressive when trading barrier bounces. 2) If you have had similar experiences in the past please share your thoughts. Thank you,

Cha-ching
 

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Fellow Volmanites,

Here's one setup I missed today. Was monitoring upper barrier of the big range (UJ 200 tick) after the false break right before 9am. There were two teases, and if they had broken out further, preferably taking out the red horizontal line (high of the day), then I would have been looking for an ARB setup. Then prices went south and took out the three equal lows between the two teases (a double top). I realized I missed a possible IRB (barrier bounce). I believe this happened in the past as well.

My questions: 1) Do you think this was a valid setup? The squeeze wasn't perfect but Bob said you can be a little more aggressive when trading barrier bounces. 2) If you have had similar experiences in the past please share your thoughts. Thank you,

Cha-ching

Wouldn't sweat missing this one Cha-ching. It was a pretty tight range with a round # and some previous blockiness to fight through just under 124. Just as easily could have retested 124 only to bounce off and test the high of the range again.

In the right conditions, I think it would be a fine setup - just not in this slow, summer market.
 
Not the easiest trading day but at least we had some movement.
 

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JRS,

In your 8:36 trade, the original tipping point would not have been taken out right?

You're right if you put the tipping point at the low of bar prev to entry. In this case, I think I would have trailed closely, putting the tipping point right under the entry bar. As this example shows, however, certainly not always the best plan.
 
Question to the Volmanians: would you/did you skip that second skip or did you take it? If you took it, what convinced you?

After I missed that move I let myself be bothered by it then quickly committed an error. Pep talk: "Do you want to win or do you want to be a part of every move as well as every false break? To win, you'll miss moves. Get over it. Get ready for the next one."
 

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Question to the Volmanians: would you/did you skip that second skip or did you take it? If you took it, what convinced you?

After I missed that move I let myself be bothered by it then quickly committed an error. Pep talk: "Do you want to win or do you want to be a part of every move as well as every false break? To win, you'll miss moves. Get over it. Get ready for the next one."

I skipped too. I want to see a horizontal line break after the angular line was broken (there are many such examples in Bob's charts). Here the only good one is 44 but it's too close to 50, and 49 was high of the day at that time.

Like your pep talk.
 
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for me price action trading has been the best form of trading, it has worked perfectly, better than other types of trading.
 
Today's Trading

Hey, gents. It's been a while since I checked out the forum. I thought I'd join in the fun and start posting my trades with since some of you are doing that now. I'm trading the Europe and US morning sessions right now and napping during the UK lunch break.

THIS WEEK'S FOCUS: improving my exit strategy
TODAY'S GOAL: be patient and alert (I've been multitasking too much lately)

Today I missed 2 trades that I believe were valid. Mostly I was not fully engaged mentally as the trades were setting up. I stayed out of some bad trades. I'm satisfied with how I read the charts today, but tomorrow I'd like to work more on staying alert when a trade is potentially setting up.

Note: Though I trade from the 70T chart, I also use a 5M chart to help read the price action. You'll see both charts in each of my snapshots, but I make my notes on the 70T.
 

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