zdo

MMS, Was in here Sunday morning waiting for a tee time and was thumbing through J.M.Hurst's book and thought of you when I read this… ” nothing new… TadeWinds summarized it even better above... just confirms… leverage up that “scanning”!

tradergurl re: "Anyone do yoga regularly?" Bikram Yoga once or twice a week Prasara Yoga once or twice a week Indispensible to health and performance - period. btw, those two forms are among the most physically demanding yogas... ie if you settle for less ( like for some tame little 'western' yoga class) , then less is about all you can expect... TN, See Yoga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia etc etc btw, (and evidenced in that article to some degree) the ‘west’ has so bought into the ‘nameste’ / peace and light images of yoga that the ‘fighting’ part is rarely mentioned. Any of the yoga’s, (whether it be the hatha yogas for a more secular day to day flow or the highest spiritual yoga’s) when properly practiced, involve bringing the just right for the moment balance of extertion and surrender. hth

TradeWinds pretty much nailed it with "Make sure your right. :rofl:" I would also add: Be ready to get up on the wheel and drive it manually. Attached is an example of ‘layering’ to exit a high leverage hedge in silver last Thu and Fri where the lowest limit was ‘layered’ too far. Squares are buy limit orders ( the ‘layering’). First three triangles are fills. Last triangle (chronologically/on the right) was going to mkt order to make sure all out by weekend (and pink square is cancel of lowest limit order.)

Sounds' like you have too much time on your hands... It's system and mkt condition dependent. A few systems get incremental but significant returns by 'laying in'. You'd have to test it out. If the instrument you're trading is currently showing lower 'volatility' / movement then it's a good idea to 'layer' inside like you described. If movement is higher, then 'layering' outside may be indicated. My term for this is 'arraying orders' and I do it with several systems ( and btw, actually do it more for stop losses than for entries). For me, best results for this technique are with mean reversion type systems in conditions of screaming extreme outliers.

Preface: The perspective from which my response is coming = ADHD. Don’t know which type or mixture of types of ADHD it is and it’s not serious enough to require medication (which I would resist anyway), but it does result in tendencies that I have had to grow and develop. I used to ‘fight’ with it. Then I started to see the advantages and opportunities nascent in that cluster of traits. That’s how I relate to “It appears I may be lacking focus and always jumping onto the next thing” . The best thing I can say is that’s just the way some people are! Find a way to leverage it! Also, it mellows with age… instead of forgetting a mkt when I took a position off, hell I used to put positions on and then forget them - for weeks once when I had originally planned to hold it for less than 24 hours. Over the years, a rough schedule evolved to accommodate these tendencies and roughly 2 hour ‘focus and energy’ limits in my trading. Early AM – Forex ‘scanning’ (your word not mine ~16 instruments on .5 to 4 hr charts 9 – 11 AM – my am daytrading session in ndxs. Only work one mkt, but sometimes add NQ trades 11 - whenever – typically ‘scanning’ / working longer term trades unless conditions are compelling to stay in the daytrading session all day… I can enjoy two or three of those a month, then it gets old. 2 - 4 PM If I’m still around, more day trading. Always seem to “jump onto” looking at financial for good setups After 4 PM + if I open a platform, it’s usually to lift FX trades or move orders, but occasionally will trade for a while if it happens to be a particularly active asian session. Post Japan earthquake good recent example of that... For most traders, the stock advice would be to focus on one niche (and maybe automate the 'scanning') For you , re “Are you focused in a niche and dive deep into it or are you scanning for trades everywhere” my answer to you is Find a way to do BOTH! Hope this is helpful...

Short Apple now! Could it be worth it?

As I alluded to on the first page of this thread - silver is a bullet, but silver is not a train. I have orders in to cover most of my hedging shorts starting at ~ 34.75 ... but would not be surprised to see it go much lower... would enjoy seeing $24 again... just for snicks and giggles... remember when silver was under $3 oz?

Applying the underlying principles of NeuroLinguisticProgramming is the absolute best thing a very tiny percentage of traders can do to improve their trading... For another minor percentage, it is marginally helpful... And for all the rest - it's useless jmho

J.M. Hurst has one of the best 'explanations' of the pattern I have ever seen / used. re: "So how useful is the head and shoulders pattern today?" And in that context, it's as useful as it ever was. ie It 'succeeds' as much as it ever did... and it 'fails' as much as it ever did...

a quote from their home page --- "start meetings directly from the comfort of your home. In a world where everything is focused on feeling good about one self and others." so re your ? "It can be done?" = For traders, probably not...

Thanks for the feedback. My reactions… re “Stroop effect shown nullified by hypnotic linguistic suggestions” ?? More accurate might be “Stroop effect shown nullified by ‘presence’ and interaction.” re “Some non-conscious parts of the brain can and do use language” That “Some” is still extremely miniscule in my view. re “Placebo effects are strong evidence that non conscious parts of the brain do process verbal linguistic information” that’s a stretch… a big stretch… re “willfully want it to work” Willfully wanting it to work is a factor but not major factor… transitions to the issue of ‘highly hypnotizable individuals’ / the ‘highly suggestible’ …which unfortunately transitions to this pivotal issue – the ‘highly suggestible’ are even less likely to retain changes produced from what I called all this ‘verbal crap’ than are the ‘lowly suggestible’. Specific to NP, to me this means, bignore the “subliminal / suggestion / self-hynosis / affirmation” features of the product… even if you were lucky enough to find the right agent voices for yourself, ultimately the returns from the additional ‘crap’ would still be relatively low …here we go again… just because neuroscience is all new and au currant doesn’t make it ‘right’… I personally have some serious questions about basic assumptions of the whole field… and have accepted that I may not live long enough to see the fad fade…

it's a 3 part series... I still wonder how all those rail cars got scattered all over the place to begin with...

ccsli, What measure of volatility do you want to use? zdo

Me? Smart money? I think the "Smart money plays the big trend, not the gyrations" part disqualifies me using those measures. Article infers investors are smart, traders are dumb. Maybe he never saw the Market Wizards books, etc. Haven't enjoyed it, but I've done well across all the years trend and seasonal trading. But my forte has always been much shorter term trading. Per some of those other criterea, like "Smart money sees trends others don't. " I am now starting to allocate some in very illiquid investments, (not trades?) I nominate MightyMouse's "smart money is smart because they can get out of a losing position quicker than dumb money and smart money stays in a winning position longer than dumb money." for post of the month!

Ever wonder what would happen if you just faded these oanda ratios? (btw mfx, let us know if you don't want discussion cluttering up your thread. thx)

Position Changes: None. Still long Silver, Still trailing entry stops up under YM to go short net 25% allocated. fwiw and not related to this thread Comments: Still inching arrays of hedging stops up under all other silver and gold positions now. Still taking 3% off the table in AG each ~ dollar move up. (eBay is a great place to sell physical silver now – they pay over spot and also pay shipping… hm) May hedge everything at 52 and equivalent in AU at that time... Comments: (and definitely not related to this trade…) getting short cotton for a year or so…

Yep http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f103/v-dow-spread-7706.html But - better late to the party than never ??? I'm taking profits now. Stopped buying at 24... MMS, not to go all 'autrian econ' on you but ... do you have thoughts on the Gold/Silver ratio? At this point, that seems to me like a far more prudent trade to bring your readers attn to than outright AG trading... that is unless they are prepared to manage and thrive through a possible correction down to 32 ish The Real Gold/Silver Ratio Part II - SilverSeek.com etc etc

Magnus, What is your need? Do you have a certain way of charting that none of the other (large or small) platform providers offer? etc?

Much of this can be attributed to changes in the markets and auctions themselves… so much that the very CENTER of my trading approach is MarketTyping(tm zdo). For a longer term example, while I have these personal cycles with bonds also; imo, the auctions in bonds have become much more ‘institutional’ since around the mid 90’s than they were in the mid 80’s (back when ‘real men trade bonds’ really meant something ). The indexes provide a much much faster alternation – often hours or less in one type and rarely more than a couple of days. Also, my personal synch cycles with the indexes are measured in X days hooked up, y days unhooked, instead of in months like with FX.

Steven, re "then it abandoned me" Isn't it amazing how that happens. When I first started trading FX (we're talking futures, late 80's) I was so hooked up with USDJPY for a while. Then it abandoned me. ...Moved on successfully to USDCHF, and that one 'stayed with me' a lot longer than did USDJPY, but the synched up quality was never the same. Honestly, after all those years and even though the USDJPY has come back around for me several times since, I'm still not over that first USDJPY loss of resonance... I suspect that probably says somthing about my neuroses and attachment style

"Being mindful that a silent internal dialog is defending against repeating emotional distress experienced in the past" ??? Being mindful that a silent internal dialog is is being mindful that a 'silent' internal dialog is. Have a great Holiday all...

iwshares, I like Oanda. Have had an account with them a long time. Reliable, fair costs, good customer service, overall platform is good, great reporting but charting just barely up to snuff,.etc. - High recommendation for beginning traders. Start live from day one instead of doing all the sim crap. (ie -noobies! Sim after you know how to trade! Not before!) only con: In my experiences comparing side by side feeds (currenex, etc), I think they 'slide' more than they should in fast markets. But certain techniques can actually take advantage of those departures so ... I use them for fractional positions mostly. The 'infinite' sizing is great for precise MM Also use them when I can't get business done at the 'banks' hth

re "internal dialog " What about all the 'parts' that are mute ?

... any pair with a spread <= 3.0 Currently 15+ pairs. Many of them are correlated but even among those, at any given time, one (or two) will be the best 'technically', one(or two) will be the best 'symetrically', and one(or two) will have the best 'volatility', etc.

correction - evidently TS has dropped charging commissions on FX trading .... spread only now Now if they would only get rid of the fractional pips on the Matrix. Or even better, allow user defined parameters of the intervals. re: "Regardless, I still pay my monthly TS fee since I love the charting if not the trading. " Steven, why don't you just have an account there, then there is no monthly fee. I think they have even dropped the minimum turns per month stuff... just saying