MightyMouse

If you want to data-mine the data to find results that support your hypothesis, then if they trade different markets is irrelevant; however, if you want to comprehensively examine the hedge fund industry, it is relevant and you will find that, on balance, they do not outperform the markets they trade. You seem to be making an assumption that you should not trade if you think that markets are random. I do not agree with your assumption if this is what you are assuming.

It is very difficult to use the hedge fund industry as a yardstick since they do not all trade the same markets or take the same risk. If you did break them down by risk and market, you'd find that, on balance, per dollar risked, they underperformed the markets they traded. And, you'd certainly learn that their positive returns are not quite what they are promoted to be. Such findings do not support your theory of non-randomness and does bring to light the fact that markets are negative sum.

This is trading. Not atom splitting. Sometimes in trading mistakes happen and you pay and sometimes they work out in your favor. When you pay, it is your job to make sure you pay with crumbs. I don't know enough about atom splitting to comment, but I am pretty sure a mistake is forever costly.

Couldn't help but see the opportunity. I prefer tick or range based charts to decipher market action.

It seems like you have a scenario where prices are higher, the price range is about the same or smaller, the volume is higher, the delta range seems wider, and the delta is lower ( more red). I would want to look at different charts to review the different relationship of delta to time, price to time, delta to volume, etc, but, in general, rising prices on high volume with a red delta tells me that prices are being held up by inside buyers, allowing aggressive sellers to sell at decent prices without prices falling. The sellers could be new shorts, inside sellers who sold earlier and are hitting the bid trying to push prices down, or weak buyers losing confidence. It is important to try to get an idea of who it was to discern what may happen next. Usually what follows next is the offer getting whacked as the shorts run for the exits and the longs hit the offer, crowding out the offers that are available. The delta, volume, and price should all rise naturally. There are stops above the high for the day and possibly areas to the let that are not visible. Most traders will have missed the move up and against all rational thought, will attempt to short the high to get a piece of the action. We are supposed to buy low and sell high. They begin to envision weakness to justify a short entry, but ignore the fact that the direction is still up. The only way someone who sells high can lose is if he buys back higher and the market is really good at helping people make mistakes. The bar before the last is the tell tale bar for me. It has a very short range, lots of volume and lots of red delta. The close of it is a small risk entry for a long. Without seeing the last bar, you could have entered on the close (or high) of the second to last bar and used a tick or 2 below the low as a stop. If the sellers were indeed able to push prices down below that bar, it would tell me that all the inside buyers who bought and are holding from that last bar are now underwater and will want to react. If you lost it would be peanuts. As a short term trade, I would stay in this until the delta went from negative for the range to positive an/ or volume dried up. If the delta continued to get greener and volume continued to be strong, I would try to ride this for as long as I could and add if there were opportunities and enough time left. The most important part is knowing what you want to see from price, time, and volume (delta), to stay in the trade. Without delta, on the chart, you might expect there to be some sort of resistance at the high. When price is at the high and cum delta is lower than it was last time it was there, I would see that area as fuel and not resistance. Some of the best opportunities occur where there is supposed to be support or resistance or demand and supply. MM

There is nothing like a shameless plug on a Thanksgiving Day morning.

A really cold glass of cola (I prefer the citrus base flavor of Pepsi over the Vanilla base flavor of Coke but I am generally indifferent and will go with whatever one is on sale.) is really nice about midway between lunch and the close. An espresso always comes after the close. I am in New York Time.

If you are feeling particularly timid, weak, vulnerable or too at peace before you start your trading day, the following might help to get you senses properly stimulated to take money from the markets. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO_QntXc-c4]Drowning Pool - Bodies (Let The Bodies Hit The Floor) - YouTube[/ame] Being too relaxed and serene can lead to distraction too. A gazelle that gets caught by a cheetah generally missteps or is not paying attention. The gazelle's serenity helps the cheetah. On the other hand, the cheetah is aggressive and stalking and looking for weak distracted prey.

Your position? I'll have 1 large coffee black, with one splenda.

You never know if its a good trade or a useless trade until after you make an attempt. Very simply, I look for HH HL or LL LH. A good trade turns positive fast and a useless trade turns negative fast. I cut quickly when my trade turns negative. I pound as hard as I can when I have a winner.

I didn't watch the video, but I assure you that you are misunderstanding the example.

Of course they are trading. Goldman is a trading storm in treasuries, cds and other swaps, and other instruments that they make a market. Their trading profits are different from yours and mine. They trade the instruments that you and I might trade to offset the positions they may have to hold as a normal course of their business. It would be rare or a very unlikely event that Goldman would take a position in ES because they think it is priced too low. Instead, they might, for example, short ES when a customer needs to liquidate a large position in IP, CAT, IBM, etc and know it will have an impact on the index. That is what they are all about. So, yes they trade, but they do not trade they way you or I might trade.

You can believe anything you want to believe, but Goldman does not move a market, they do not announce their position, nor do they own the holy grail all of which is great fodder for bedtime stories. My guess is that Goldman is not even trading the S&P for their own account. On the other hand, I am confident that Goldman and others do take advantage of the information that they have at hand. Most of which is either deeply in the gray or red area of ethics.

I found entering with limit orders very frustrating. A lot of times you get no fill or it misses you by a tick or it fills you and it runs right through you. At this point the trades that I expect to make the most money with, I enter with stop orders. Entering with stop orders alleviates the need to call the turn. To use stop entries you need to be mature as a trader since, by design, you are not getting in at the lowest (highest) tick possible for a long (short) and there are a lot of traders who will be bothered by getting in many ticks higher than they could have. The trick is to get into trades that have great potential so that the ticks that you missed in the beginning are chump change, but you do need to know how to get a good read on the direction of the market you are trading. I suppose the best of both worlds is to be able to call the turn and know the direction, but I resign to the fact that I am a turn calling disabled trader. In fact, I enjoy taking money from those traders who are unable to call the turn.

For what it is worth, volume on currency futures isn't really representative of volume on the currency. Superimposing corn futures volume on a CD futures chart will make as much sense as the CD futures volume does for VSA purposes. Sorry

Funny isn't it? But it's true

GS could be liquidating a short or buying contracts as part of an option strategy with a negative or neutral market bias, or buying contracts to fill a customer order, or the purchase can be a smoke screen trade to conceal their larger short that they have other brokers trading in the pit and electronically, etc, etc. It is very unlikely that GS or other large traders are announcing to the world that I am long 125 S&P contracts.

The objective verdict of Gann's work is that he was a fraud. There are references to him being a conman too. Calling him a master or a legend is a rather incomplete assessment.

Your perception of what trading is changes as you mature as a trader. Trading does not change.

Making light of the vicissitudes of trading. Mistakes are inevitable and sometimes you can profit from them. No offense intended to you or your trading.

If you had traded it without the extended balance profile and lost money, you could have blamed it on the oversight. If you made money, you could say it was keen insight.

The book has little value other than learning what not to do. It's more of an ego boost for JL than anything else. You have to be pretty gullible to buy his story.

You've gone 3 years without making money? You need a back up plan.

Check the temp of your computer. It might be running too hot which will slow it down.

He wasn't selling anything but he got paid. That is interesting. I suppose I can assume that not everyone who gets paid is selling something.