One important feature of our system is use of 2 time frames to position ourselves. We will use a 15 min time frame to position ourselves and under certain conditions, we will shift to 3 min time frame to gauge the progress of our trades.
One interesting observation is that most day traders trade the 5 min, 3 min or lower time frame to pick their entry, exit, direction. These group of traders are the ones who will normally never carry their positions and have to cut off their positions by the end of the day. They are also the ones who follow similar methods to derive their directions and most of them get the signal roughly at the same point of time, plus - minus 1-2 bars. Once the signals are generated on most of the systems, then volume of orders that give the momentum dries up. Unless the higher time frame players decide to enter the market, the smaller tf players are in control of the direction. When ever the higher tf players manage to trap this group in a direction, they are forced to exit their positions simultaneously (normally one of the reason we see the wide bars on our charts). They normally have smaller stop loss and have a smaller targets.
The bigger volume players normally trade the market on higher time frames of 30 min, hourly and EOD . They are looking for value and have no compulsion to trade and have the intention of carrying their trade for few days to few weeks till the point where they have extracted maximum juice from the trend. They dont have to exit their positions at eod and normally have wider stop losses.
15 min time frame is the perfect go-between the two group of players that drive the market. The absence of higher tf players will make the 15 min tf go flat and we can switch to 3 min tf to gracefully take our exits with minimum damage.