My name is Brian Weber. I created this site to document my trading ideas and thoughts about markets. Although it largely focuses on something proprietary that I created (Aggression), one can learn a lot just by studying the charts and reading the thoughts that I post.
I also post about things that interest me regarding money, learning and life at aLifeUnlived.com
If you’d like to reach out, please drop me an email. I’ll reply. [email protected]
Here’s how I trade…
The market moves in two modes.
Trend and Consolidation.
As a Momentum Trader, I want to buy or sell right when the market begins to transition from consolidation to trend.
Timing it is the trick.
Aggressive Momentum is what I’m searching for with every trade I place.
Aggressive Momentum is when traders are aggressively buying or selling on a breakout of a consolidation chart pattern within a broader momentous move.
Think of this as having the wind at your back while also being in a slingshot.
The wind at my back is the broader momentous move.
The slingshot is the Aggressive Momentum out of consolidation.
I don’t want to buy or sell just any breakout though.
I want to buy or sell when there is
MASS PARTICIPATION -AND- URGENCY.
Mass participation is easy. Volume. Is there massive volume on the breakout relative to a look back period.
Urgency is more complex. We have to measure the speed of the move relative to a previous moment in time.
That’s why I created Aggression Bars. When they signal, they help me to identify whether a breakout will have a better probability of success or not.
(NOTE) I almost exclusively use Heikin Ashi charts. I find that they are better at giving me a more holistic view of the previous price action.
I am less concerned with exact entry location than I am with making sure I can see any larger structure building. To me, Heikin Ashi bars do a great job of this.
I generally cycle through regular candle and bar charts as well as Heikin Ashi charts. This is a personal preference.
Let’s look at an example.
First we’ll look at a daily chart of the E-Mini NASDAQ Futures.
We can see that the market is currently in a pullback trend. In this case, the momentum is down, favoring short trades.
Going down to a 30 minute chart, we can see places where there is diagonal chart structure. In my work, diagonal trend lines are as important as horizontal. Especially in a volatile product like the NASDAQ Futures.
Going down to a 15 minute chart we can see an even closer look.
Now let’s examine each one even closer. Going down to a 5 minute chart for each arrow.
The #1 arrow shows where an Aggression bar signaled bearish pressure on a diagonal support line. Once it sliced through and the bar signaled, it would be considered an entry location for the breakdown trade.
The intensity of the color indicates how strong the volume is AND the speed of the move relative to a look back.
Arrow #2 shows where a breakout to the upside would have been a quick and intense short covering move. Taking these in a downtrend can provide quick and large profits, but just know that you’re trading against the down trending context. In the overall context of Aggressive Momentum, I want to be buying when the “big picture” trend is up and selling when the “big picture” trend is down. I do not mind buying higher or selling lower. This is preferred to me.
But, as a scalper, one could do very well taking any signal that you define as acceptable.
Consequently, the break out of #2 failed. Although I didn’t put an arrow on it…there was a very nice trend line break to the downside letting you know when the break out was failing.
The downside after the failed break out was severe.
In trading, what doesn’t happen is often more severe. What didn’t happen was, upside continuation after a break out.
Arrow #3 shows a great example of “what doesn’t happen”. This would be classic exhaustion. The market hit a trend line, and sliced through it with Aggression. Then reversed.
The short covering was AGGRESSIVE.
Arrow #4 shows another breakout to the upside. Notice the color of the bars getting more and more intense. This is signaling that each bar is getting successively more volume – AND – successively more speed of the move with each bar.
This would be a characterization of exhaustion to the upside.
This is what I want to see to go short within a broader downtrend.
Arrow #5 shows the Aggression bar breaking diagonal support – AFTER – the failed break out to the upside.
The downside move was AGGRESSIVE.
So how do I put all this together to come up with tradable action plans?
First, are you a short term scalper and the broader context doesn’t matter too much to you?
Does a 15 second chart fit the way you trade? Let’s look at one:
As seen here on the 15 second NASDAQ E-Mini chart, I removed several of the lower Aggression bars…now only the most intense bars are being illuminated. Most of these signaled exhaustion and a temporary end of the the move in that direction.
I don’t usually trade on a time frame this small, but you can see how well they work. And it’s not just the NASDAQ. Let’s look at Soybeans on a 1 Minute chart. This was just a random day.
As you can see, the Aggression bars highlight the end of the temporary move in that direction nearly every time.
For swing trades, I like to look at the broader context like a daily chart or a 4 hour chart. Then I’ll go down to the 30 minute or 15 minute to execute the trade. Kind of like the NASDAQ trades we discussed above.
But let’s look at another one. How about a stock. Yes, the Aggression bars work on anything that I can get data in Sierra Chart with. So, basically all U.S. Stocks, and Futures.
Let’s look at Tesla.
Here’s the daily chart for context.
Since we’re in a temporary down trend I’ll be looking for Aggressive break down trades to hop on to the downward momentum.
Down to the 15 minute chart to look at the structure underneath.
Seen in the above picture, there is a chart pattern that emerged. $TSLA broke out to the upside on heavy Aggression bars in succession.
Then it broke down.
Again, what didn’t happen was more important. The aggression bars showed a nice visual picture of this.
In general, the Aggression bar is only relevant at a crucial chart location of the chart I have loaded. For example, seen here on the 15 minute chart, an Aggression bar that seems to be signaling in the middle of nothing.
But a look under the hood reveals what happened on the 5 minute chart.
As a holistic trader, all of these things matter. Unless I’m scalping, I want to take everything into consideration.
Aggression bars are just my own work. They aren’t currently available to the public, although I might publish them at some point. I coded them in Sierra Chart as a custom indicator. I’m just sharing my thoughts and work because it helps my trading to go through all of this stuff on a daily basis.
A high quality data feed is needed to use them. Currently they can’t be used in TradingView with their native data feed, at least to my understanding last time I checked.
Sierra Chart is one of the most robust charting platforms in my opinion.