zdo

Nope. A closer equivalent of Sim here would be a rope stretched out straight but still in contact with the ground. The middle photo is the like trading with very tiny stops. Probs of falls / failure (for presumably the beginning walker / trader) is higher, so ‘costs’ of each fall / failure is lowered… unfortunately in trading this will pull a trader off trading the system correctly and ‘groove train’ the wrong things. What you repeat… Generally – all this training wheel, etc stuff is not healthy or appropriate analogy ;( long term btw – I’m not anti-Sim! But I have concluded that Sim’s benefits are much more limited, they drop off much more precipitously, and more quickly become a trap and a detriment to LONG term success than the current industry paradigm would have noobies buy into… That’s like saying it you don’t have the motor skills to walk the rope lying on the ground you’ll never walk one suspended… duh …really not saying much.... This needs to be said same time - Sim can diminish crucial skills while it is supposedly building good skills and Sim can surreptitiously bind fear as much as ameliorate it ie it is not the cure all the industry sycophants would have us blve. Yes, and it’s perfectly reasonable, may even be ultimately a strange but strong beginning, to practice walking a rope stretched out on the ground before real tight rope walking… but benefits are much more limited and drop off much more precipitously and quickly becomes a trap and a detriment to LONG term success… yada yada Noobies – almost ‘everyone’ in the crowd is yelling Sim Sim at you … one or two old saws are quietly telling you to beaware… ...and to stay on topic - to the OP question. Yes, I do truly make a great living trading the e-minis intraday. I trade other instruments too (bonds, fx, ags, etc) but 70% minimum of my size is in the ES.. and yes, I do have my 10,000 hours in...

Line Changes: Extended red entry line at slightly lower angle New tentative Stay Line, same 0 angle Position Changes: None. Flat Order Changes: Moved Sell stops to ~ 10,890 Jun to go short 25% net allocated Comments: Glad I’m long Silver Glad I’m not short Dow…

The Median (or MedianArray) function won't work for you?

The middle photo is not sim...

:hmmmm:FXGirl, thx. but let's credit Minoo with that link. I sorta get what you're saying about intellect, etc. but most are not going to habitually “view their shenanigans with love and affection”. For most, he nails it with - “Ironically as soon as a thought enters such as 'wow this is incredible' or 'my God we're doing fantastic' or 'this feels good', the flow disappears. Then unfortunately, the more we try to recapture it the more illusive it becomes.” and “'anything we really know, we know not through thought but through direct experience'.” Basically, via ‘normal’ intellect, mind rarely even attempts to stop supplanting 'Big Mind'… more and more lately I been mumbling ridiculous things like "the brains are our greatest obstacles to real thought" :hmmmm: To me, he's saying our habitual, enculturated, conditioned, repeating, death and suffering avoiding semantic streams need to go quiet (without 'trying to' ) - as one of the requisites to flow. (..and btw, this ‘mindfulness’ / thought watching he speaks of comes easier to some than others). ... re "one of the requisites " It's been coming clear to me that flow is not a 'single variable' deal. Flow requires proper simultaneous involvement on multiple levels… For example, his paper seems to emphasize the 'surrender' / non doing / stillness aspects. Equally important are the 'tension' / doing / action aspects... and alternating them in sync with the whole... etc etc

Line Changes: Added new tentative Stay Line, same 0 angle Position Changes: None. Flat Order Changes: (Errata: from 3/29 “Moved Sell stops to ~ 10,742 Jun to go short 25% net allocated” should have been “Moved Sell stops to ~ 10,680 Jun to go short 25% net allocated” I grabbed numbers from cash chart instead of futures :doh:) Moved Sell stops to ~ 10,729 Jun to go short 25% net allocated

ES is Data 1 in subgraph 1 TF is Data 2 in subgraph 2 Indicator is Spread - Diff in subgraph 3 etc, etc. hth

Here’s part of why I brought up the term ‘subpersonalities’ From Embracing Our Selves 1989 Hal and Sidra Stone

More ... From The Path of Least Resistance (revised, second edition 1989) Robert Fritz

Flow One is either in Flow or in bound-flow While there are gradients to Bound flow The transition between flow and bound-flow is a discrete quanta…

Line Changes: Activated new Red line, same angle, whole line raised ~ 30 points Original lower angled dark red trend line deleted. Also lowered whole new trend line ~ 50 points (“Trend Lines are meant to hold. Stay Lines are meant to be broken” Stay Lines blog circa 12/09). Position Changes: None. Flat Order Changes: Moved Sell stops to ~ 10,742 Jun to go short 25% net allocated

Note: Made a small session time frame adjustment / correction to chart setup which required recalibrating some of the lines. This produced no changes to orders / action points Line Changes: Extended tentative new red Line same angle. Will activate it (and may raise it by ~ 40 points if aggressive) Monday Switched to new alternative dark red trend line. Will most likely drop lower one soon. Position Changes: None. Flat Order Changes: Sell stops moved to ~ 10,614 Jun to go short 25% net allocated

All (well not really ALL but mainly all) those points do is help reset / restore ‘peptide’ balance … and they do a good job of it. (btw Some have to locate alternative accu points to get good results.) …and that resetting alone is an incredibility important aspect for many - at certain points along the way. I personally credit persisting in EFT in helping me through some pretty tough times and then, much more importantly, in being a major part of laying the groundwork and preparing me for some really wonderful energetic ‘awakenings’ via other modalities. The keyword of this whole post is ‘persisting’ – not just going for ‘feel better now’ Don’t settle! Steve Wells wrote on this at Using EFT to Create Positive Change: Moving Beyond the Remedial Level If I remember correctly, he also wrote article(s) about working with a trader…hth All the best, zdo

Some comments about Legging in and out of spreads. I am an intraday ‘high frequency’ trader (HF for me, not for a server farm, btw). Always was, always will be. Yet it was an almost completely opposite type of trading, seasonal positions and spreads , that way back when allowed me to survive the learning curve to intraday proficiency and stability. When I first started trading spreads many years ago, I learned the ‘easy’ way to leg in and out of spreads. I messed up / f - arbed up many a trade but I learned to cease and desist the tricking myself with those tricks. It took me a while to finally learn the hard way not to do it. But at the same time I quit doing those tricks, I promised myself I would get good enough to come back and leg in and out of spreads profitably… With work and experience, I learned the hard way how to do it appropriately. I laugh now about how naïve I was. If you are a beginning trader and if part of your brains want to leg / spread / arb / whatever in and out of spreads, you can learn from the experiences of others to ‘Don’t do it yet’ or you can learn the hard way to ‘Don’t do it yet’ … either way you will learn… all the best. zdo

Line Changes: Extended new Active Red Line same angle Tentative green stay line updated Alternative dark red trend line added. Will resolve soon. Position Changes: None. Flat ( and long Silver btw. This will go unmentioned most of the time…) Order Changes: Sell stops at ~ 10,590 Jun to go short 25% net allocated Comments: ... the scent of a possible trend change... Also... And throughout this and any subsequent posts Disclosure! This is not trading advice. Only idiots would consider or construe it to be trading advice

Try this image Will keep working on image quality. Suggestions?

The $!(V@# / DOW Spread This is a MANY / MULTIPLE years trade campaign of Long Silver – Short Dow. Have worked this position 7 of the last 10 years Refer to http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/zdo/'>http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/zdo/ This spread is what has really been going on in that blog. Since the Dow side has had and most likely will have general strength nominally (due to the very money system itself and the symptoms of “quantitative easing”, etc.) I don’t just let the position ride when the Dow is running up. ie I am not extremely patient with this trade – even though for various reasons (vacations, other priorities, etc) I will sometimes just let it ride without any legging. I work it – mainly because that’s just the way I am and also because, for me personally, I’ve learned that most leveraged positions require watching and working them to allay risk anyway. Hence the legging in and out of the Dow short ( and even the occasional long!). Basically, ten 40 point losses is preferable to one 1000 drain and that’s sorta close to the results since around Oct 09 when I started the blog. The exploration and development of Stay Lines was implemented to give me a very quick, fairly consistent way to leg in and out of the Dow side of this trade. The long silver side of the position is much more fixed or ‘slow’ - illustrated by the use of a weekly chart for it compared to a half day chart of the Dow and I only leg out of the long on seriously confirmed downtrends . Note: this trade is in leveraged paper using futures contracts (and leveraged ‘fx’ for fine tuning the sizing of the silver side at times) The campaign is run distinct from long term ‘trades’ in physical metals and campaigns, in distinct accounts / allocation of capital, and in distinct methods and systems. It is also completely unhooked from my intraday trading sessions and other shorter term systems. Generally, I like to spend just a few minutes a day with it during mid session congestion Charts Blog used half day futures chart (running 12 to 12 to 12…ET) Thread will use half day cash index chart (running 1st and 2nd half of day session…ET) Am running analysis on actual Dow index ($INDU) instead of futures charts, and also being less specific about entry points on the futures because this whole Stay Line deal is one off experimental, unproven, and so antithetical to my usual trading style and methods that I think it’s prudent to even further reduce any appearances that it is ‘trading advice’ Stay LInes are current on the new chart. If you need to catch up, see http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/zdo/ The Stay Lines are a quick and easy, time efficient process. I don’t even look at background to see if my numbers could be tweaked with SR etc. If price action is below an active red line, I’m short. If price action is above an active green line, I’m back flat / out. Enough background . Start afresh – hootless! If I can (well sort of) frame this as Day 1 (of this whole 10 year campaign so far )…then certainly you can – since it really is Day 1 for you :missy: . Point is – the position has not really made its real long term anticipated move and it may be years before it does… Happy spring to all.

Why are we so smart? Why are we so dumb? Lloyd Pye - Everything you Know is Wrong

I haven’t been following these cutting edge (Volume Splitter, etc.) threads closely or lately… so if I’ve totally missed something along the way, please forgive me… Being your typical online ahole, I can easily find ways to agree with all of UB’s detractors. His online personality, his agenda, whatever. Nevertheless, I’m glad he’s around. If nothing else, his posts catalyzed me to finish an indicator that I’d been monkeying around with for some time to visually represent transaction / order / etc flow. (see attached jpg. note: this in the moment sample was actually not a very good example AND timeframe, market, indicator name, even some colors, and all the other complementing / synergistic indicators for this method not shown for proprietary reasons) If my two stacks (grey and colored) were summed / combined it would come close to being similar to the spikes on UB’s screenshots. I kept them separate because sometimes they diverge in sign (unfortunately no examples happen to be on the attached shot, but it would appear with the grey stacking on one side and the colors on the other, etc and that provides very useful / tradable information for me personally). Haven’t checked to see if his spikes consistently lead mine in time either – don’t care. I don’t trade just the spikes themselves. I look for ‘tells’ before / at the beginning of spikes, etc. (actually several other patterns in non spike areas are just as good for me as nailing spikes… generally it’s evolving to have more and more value in exits / scaling out of some systems in addition to its value in entry work ) I haven’t explored how UB’s indicator (like in http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f208/futures-arbitrage-7639.html post # 6) goes so flat in the areas away from the spikes, but I suspect his algo’s amplify the effects of size while mine includes size but applies different wrinkles…but really don’t know… don’t really care ( lump me in with the archaic dummies I guess) Unless I were to start snagging programmatic access to the actual TimeAndSales data in TradeStation feeds, I really won’t be putting much more energy into this. Don’t know what tricks he’s doing with TS datafeed, but my assessment right now is that TS data sure seems less than adequate in quality for this type of work… I’m not quite getting how all this stuff is so cutting edge and how realtime bar (and bar - like) charts are archaic. You can’t exactly HF surf the ripples on a fast bar chart (with a high enough hit rate, at least), but you can learn to surf the waves… and I can’t imagine HFT making the waves go away (and killing itself in the process)… Just saying … All that said - thanks UB.

The only thing I can think of - I had moved some funds between accounts in the last few days…had a little more hassle than usual I must have been in a dream sharing mood. Told the dream to 4 others. Two went in a sexual direction with it. One went ‘Jungian’/ 'archetypical'. My wife just sipped her coffee and widened her eyes a little …

Yep. If I remember correctly Mark Douglas went through a period where a trader “just isn’t who I am anymore”. Personally, I have had my interest and energy for trading ebb and flow across the years – but the passion and love for the game thankfully persists enough for me to stay active. Also, I know there will come a day when developmentally / age I will be done with it. An older friend of mine just reported he is no longer has the interest in poker and going to Vegas twice a year like he did for years and years… I do experience a similar phenom. more with physical skills. By the time I’m good at something, the project is just finishing up and then I’m not really interested in starting more similar projects… etc.

bootstrap, Welcome back. Remember your poll? Now I would vote yes... All the best zdo

Yes, the primary ‘know thyself’ is to know what you really want from deep within, and choose it as purpose – “choosing what is chosen…” Let’s credit Blowfish, DugDug, and others for pointing that out early in the thread and Rande H. for pounding ‘true self honesty’ and 'avoiding avoidance' throughout. Uli, I over-reacted to your distilling it to the question of “Did I Worked the Plan – Yes or No?” because at this time answering that question daily doesn’t provide me with much information. Quick review I run quarters from solstice to equinox to … This quarter, in my intraday bread and butter active trading, so far I have Losing days: 1 - Jan 8 Trading mistakes / off plan: 2 - One corrected immediately. The other I focused in and worked my way out of . It’s been over a year since I made a real bonehead mistake like ‘staying with a loser till it comes back’ etc. Execution mistakes: 2 - Both corrected almost in the same breath they were made. Results: Entries – Most are immaculate. Some are a tick off from where they should be. A few are 2 ticks. Not very susceptible to jumping in early – an issue in the past. Exits- Have been exiting profitable trades a little earlier than usual plan, but daily range and swing sizes haven’t been exactly large lately so can’t really don’t call that not following plan - it is what it is. 90% of time was glad I did get out. Happy with where I’ve been taking losses too – ahead of stops usually. Bottom line is running about 0.2 – 0.3 % less than long term average daily net net. My ‘prayer’ - Give me some wild days to play and I’ll ‘fix’ that in a couple days… Comments: I have cumulative 3 - 5 hours truly in ‘flow’ this quarter. However, large percentages of each day’s sessions are spent in the zone, in near intuitive trading (for me), glance and click decisions, in acceptance of results and self. Trading “emotions” – steady, no anger, angst, or suffering this quarter – so far . It has generally been ‘fun’ and trading has virtually no reach or duration outside my personal trading sessions. Basically, folks, I’ve got my ’10,000 hours’ in – and, yes, many of them were tough and painful. Answering that “Did I work the plan?” question at the end of the trading day is truly important and I don’t want to discount it - but it does not get me to the subtleties and depth I need to explore right now and actually have always needed to explore -- hint hint noobies. With that vitae, Uli, I really appreciate having you around. You can depend on knowing at least one person is listening to your posts. Type it in … and thanks! I had a dream last night. The dream ego had three little fish in a bag / bowl and a series of dream obstacles to getting them to the main tank that had 1 other fish waiting and bubbles going etc. My wife was for a time involved in leading me / misleading d.e. to the location of the tank, etc. During the process, the dream ego was concerned about the condition and survival of the 3 fish and was considering whether it was best to just dump the fish in or let them ride in the bag till water temperatures matched when the tank was ‘located’ … All the best

re “We can become observers of the thought patterns (what I call voices on the stage of the self) and begin to choose which part of our internal dialog we feed and nuture” Rande, are you talking subpersonalities here? thx

re: “Regardless of how you define "knowing thyself," in trading there is only one measurement for me, and this is the most important thing in my journal: Did I follow my plan? Yes/No. Few things are so black & white.” and re: “If you're on plan and profitable, then your psychological plan is proceeding in an effective direction.” I’m not so sure about that emphasis on bottom line as an indicator of know thyself for traders I know a guy who is all over the bottom line, it’s admirable how extremely well he sticks to his plans, and he quickly built a small fortune – but he is seriously low on a ‘know thyself’ / insight about himself scale … and that has now shown up in the last year or so in his failure to adapt… Ulli, you mentioned plan. Well, one of the reasons behind starting this thread was noticing some subtle cyclicity / variability in my own ease of implementing sound proven plans. I could ignore that, measure my knowing self via the bottom line, etc. work with it in standard ways – or I could ask questions and explore the whole... and maybe there are a couple others who could benefit from such an exploration. Every nth post someone comes along and basically tells us to get practical again and stop mucking around in what has of late unfolded as an exploration of developmental stuff Rande mentioned ‘story’… Has this material changed my narrative re my development as a trader (before I started trading)? Not yet. But… Has this material threatened others’ narratives? I take ‘what you are discussing is wrong’ posts as symptoms of that. This thread is for a few. There are huge crowds of bottom line, plan, discipline, edge threads to be ‘practical’ in… Not a slam Ulli because you are one of the best posters on this forum... Just a reminder that a few of us want to explore some things and shepherding us back to the more objective fields is really off topic…