MightyMouse

They did jobs they have a strong passion for? How about they got paid for doing nothing and set up socialized retiree benefits for themselves to the detriment of generation upon generation of our youth. Sure they went to work, but they did not produce. There is a major major difference. They voted for and agreed to every major spending increase and war that got us to where we are. They have a small fortune because the glorious fed increasing the money supply and forced prices higher. They have a small fortune and left the younger generations holding the bag. I personally think that instead of sticking the bill to those who are still working and the children who are not working yet, that we should stick the bill back to them for the social services they set up and expect for themselves. They want them, they can pay for them. Make tho old shits go flip burgers or something or increase the tax rate for those over 65. They want pity? Go break your bones producing and paying for the things you want and then I'll give you pity. Until then they are just leaches. They should be called the shameful generation. In America you need to produce to survive. Am I pissed? Bet you ass I am pissed. I can pay all my expenses for a year with what I have to pay in tax and I do not get shit for it. Sorry Tim MM

You are reading it correctly. in my example, delta isn't going to tell you too much. An example of how delta might be helpful is if there is a nice move up in price on decent volume and then price reverses on even higher volume and retraces some percentage from the high. Now you have a high volume situation that it might feel uncomfortable stepping in front of and it should feel uncomfortable stepping in front of it. Lets say that the delta is very low now much lower than it was when price is at its current level last time. well that tells me that there is a lot of aggressive selling and, at the same time, a group of traders, inside buyers, is willing and doing a pretty good job of absorbing all the supply that is coming from the outside sellers and are holding price within a small range. As soon as price gives me a remote indication that it is reversing back up, I would be all over it with a long because I would expect those who patiently purchased all the supply on the inside to start hitting the offer and searching for stops to create an upward flow of orders so that they can get out at the old high or higher. On the other hand, if the same situation occurred with higher delta instead of lower delta for the level, then I would either be short or wish I was short because I would expect price to continue lower and it is doing so on high volume; however, in no way would I want to be long unless other things presented themselves. In the above scenario there are other things to consider too, but delta is one of the lead indicators that I would consider. Keep in mind that once you enter a trade it is just beginning. You still have to decipher what happens next to squeeze money out. There is no such thing as a magic set it and forget it entry. You need to make decisions and it is going to require judgement. Once you learn what you need and want to see then "screen time" takes on a whole new meaning and the learning curve turns up quickly. MM

Sure, if you are pragmatic, trading is a waste of time for most. And I think this hits on the very nerve of why people quit. They don't have the capital to make it make sense. Earning 20% a year is awesome. On a $5k account at 6 hours a day that works out to about 65 cents an hour. Real successful. Those who do have the capital are left to soak up the accounts $5k at a time from the dreamers and gamblers. MM

In my example, I would want to go long if delta was high or if delta was low and price was unchanged at the top of a range and volume was high. In this case, delta doesn't tell me much. Price is rising and you should not be bet against it because volume is increasing on the move up. The likelihood in this scenario is that if price attempts to reverse downward, it will be met with weakness. Is that a guarantee? no.Would I exit if it did try to reverse? probably. Would I get back in if it started to go back up? yes. I would also consider the price range relative to other price ranges and the delta range relative to the delta ranges and the time that it spend within that range. If the delta is high and price is increasing and volume is increasing, then you can expect delta to continue to increase too. Delta, in this instance, will be finding a new level. What will matter most is what it does next and now what it does now. So, it is best to put delta aside for the moment. If price is rising and volume is high and the delta is high, that tells me that possibly patient sellers are losing and aggressive buyers are winning. If price is high, volume is high and delta is low, that tells me that the aggressive sellers are losing and the patient buyers are winning. Either can win and at this moment in time, all that really matters is that price and volume are increasing. You have to consider each and every possibility as it develops to determine which indicator ( Price, time, volume, delta, etc) is giving you solid information and which at that moment are ambiguous. You then need to judge whether you want to take a trade with a lot of ambiguous information or a little ambiguous information. I promise you that some of the best trades arise out of relatively ambiguous situations where traders continue to fight the direction. That guy sitting on the step of the pit at the CME holding his head in despair amid the sea of spent order tickets is a guy who spent his day fighting direction. This is the guy who makes trading profits possible. MM

Peter, He stated that he added more and more money as he proved to himself that it worked. He said he has an EV of .10 but i don't know what period he is calculating that over. MM

If you are a retiree and are not used to seeing college girls in bikinis, and struggle with the concept of not being able to do anything about it, perhaps we could argue that 5 years is a long time for plaque to completely block a continuously constricted artery and make one fade from existence.

Rande, Can you please post a link to the actuarial tables that show the life span of a retiree in Florida? MM

In my opinion, we should use every bit of information possible to make trading decisions. Information is king. The more we have the better informed we are. There are times where volume and delta will not tell us anything and price is rich in information. there are other times where the converse may be true. As a simple example: if price is back to a level which we can call unchanged and it came from below, that tells us that price has been rising. Will it continue rising or will it recede and become unchanged with a previous low? We will also say that the range of prices that price has traversed on the upside is nearly equal to the range of prices that brought it to the previous low. So the range of prices are unchanged. From a price perspective, I am not getting too much information and if I were trading only price, I think it would be a good bet to take a short at the first minimal change in price direction if I had to take a trade. Volume: if in the example volume was higher over the range of from the low to the high than it was form the high to the low, and possibly (ideally) higher than the last time it went from a low to the same level, that would tell me that there were fewer people interested in getting out on the way down and more interest in getting in or covering shorts on the way up. If there is more interest on the way up, I am no longer very interested in taking a short, expecting price to go back into the range. On the other hand, if volume was lower or unchanged I might still be interested in taking the short. Delta: If in the example, when price was unchanged at the high of the range and volume is higher, whether the delta is higher over the range or lower doesn't tell me too much in terms of whether price is going up or not, but the delta and the range of delta would tell me something about who is trading and how far the current move might go up. Inside traders can both win or lose and getting a better idea of who ( institutional, retail, or etc.) they may be and if they can win or lose is helpful for making trade decisions. If you are opposite me in a trade, I do not know much about you. All I know about you is what I know about human nature. It a cow was coming at a group of you, you might not move from the post where you are standing because the likelihood of it trampling you is slim; in addition, you will not see others move either and it may be frightened by the sight of your group, but if you see the cloud and hear the roar of a stampede of hundreds of cows and see the panic of the people scattering, you will likely be rattled as well and abandon your post. Individually, someone might be grounded by a heavy steel set, but most people give in to fear and panic. Any info that I can get that is going to tell me if you are going to act is good info. Nothing personal of course. Just my 3 cents. MM

When there is a lot of competition, it is hard to easily make a lot of money. This is a basic law of economics. What one person calls a living is what another calls starvation. So, to get the output that you need to pay expenses, you'll need to have the right input. If you have the right amount of capital you can make a living trading. But, given the above, I am not too sure that most people would want to get paid the way they would get paid if they were trading for a living. MM

Right about too many participants. And that is why tape reading is a lost art. it worked way back when volume was more transparent and much much lower. If you look at the volume of a stock that traded in the 1920's or 30's, you'll laugh. There were maybe 20 trades per half hour. That would give you over a minute to examine each trade and make a phone call to find out who put the big trade in. It was a lot more personal then. It was real "trading" and not what we call trading. The electronic markets killed the pit traders. Some still trade but it is a shadow of what it used to be. A lot of those guys were unable to transfer the skills they learned in the pit to screen trading because they lost the feel they had in the pit when it was dominated by locals and floor brokers. We are probably all thinking of different things when we think of tape reading and that adds to the confusion, but I think we all think that you do not have to know who is doing the trade. The point I initially made was made regarding the ability or lack of ability to know who it placing the trade. MM

The trading gods are fair and honest. They take exactly what you are willing to give and give exactly what you are willing to take.

Peter, I was really only kidding. I only had time to get to the f's in my list of indicators. But if you do are in the habit of trading in the direction of a trend, and care less whether you win more times than you lose, you will end up better off than a random coin flip if you give it enough time. The fact that people are willing to lose money and quit, virtually guarantees there will be some there for you. MM

Peter, I think you might improve results over a random flip of a coin if you look at the aroon oscilator before you consider the cci patterns. But, I would only do so if the chaiken monyflow index confirmed the darvas box break out. At that point I would make sure that price stayed within the donchian channels and watched for a fib retracement of a fisher transform signal. MM

To state the obvious, we are in an obvious shorter term down move. At this point if we get above 1333, I would feel comfortable thinking that the move down is over. At that point it will look like a lot of selling occurred in a very small range and to me that is bullish if the shorter term direction turns to up. But, for now this looks like it wants to continue lower. Going out a bit wider, the span my trade is in, the direction is still up and I am staying long.

Blowfish, It is but it isn't. If I know you take a trade, i would act one way if i knew you were initiating a trade and another way if I knew you were ending a trade. Then add in if I knew how you trade. If I know that you had a short tolerance for risk, I would act one way. If I knew that you were a long term position trader, I would act or not act another way. The anonymity of the tape deprives us of this information. On the other hand you can make judgements about the amount and quality of supply or demand and gain something from it, but I don't call that tape reading. You can, or at least you could have, see on stocks who is putting up orders and if you know who they trade for, you can get an idea of who is buying and who is selling. In the pit you could see who, physically, is buying or selling. But the pit is just a sliver of volume these days with the advent of the electronic slot machine. MM

Josh, Thanks. It's not over until its over Though, I cannot lose right now, a possibility exists that I do not win too, Pressing for more has a double edge to it. There were a few times when I had the the right direction, the right bias, etc and I had a limit order in to get long and it went to my limit order and no fill and proceeds to go higher and higher. Like a fool I started taking shorts for reasons that I could explain, but just were not good. That had to stop. A market is going to go where it is going to go regardless of whether we think it is going to go there or not. So, I want to simply be on it and not question if it should be going where it is going. In oil, I wouldn't look for a "top" and also consider that in days it could be back down in the 70's 80's, 60's, etc. Everything falls faster than it goes up. Either way just try to be on it. MM

The trade I am in isn't over yet. But, I did want to make a comment to anyone new who thinks you have to catch the bottom tick to make money. I entered this trade at 1310 and took almost no heat. 1310 was 20 points from the low of 1290ish. If someone other than I were in this trade, he could take about 25 points and put them in his pocket and spend them. I am not that person. Not only would he have taken 25 points, but he would have missed the low by 20 points. I know that a lot of traders who miss getting the low for a long start to want to take a short. I am staying in it because there is really no good reason to get out, but in addition, there is a really good chance that we go to new highs and if that happens, I want to try to be in it. I am not going to throw caution to the wind, but i am going to do my damnedest to try and ride it I will likely have about 7 contracts crossing 1350. I will continue to add above it at a faster and faster rate, until I get to around 20 contracts. This could end up being the largest gain I have ever had. Of course things could change as early as tonight and i will have to bail at a small gain or with no profit.

I would recommend that you choose tails to go long instead of heads. I too like to live dangerously.

Filled on the first add and my stop is brought up to 1318.25. Hopefully, the days activity acts as a cushion against any attempt to go down. Oh, I love trading.

I am adding at 1334.25, 1339.75, 1343.75, 1347, and possibly 1349.75. Things may develop where i have to bail before I get all the adds. I will not ever let it go beyond my BE stop. A lot of times I get an add and it turns on me, so i lose on the add, but make money on the earlier position and adds. Sometimes I end up @#$%^ what would have been a decent trade and giving away a nice gain. Shit happens. Its a bet that the rally will continue. Maybe a good bet. Maybe a bad bet. I am kind of hemmed in by the long week end and don't know If I am going to hold over the weekend.

That is mini dow? that sucks.

It currently looks like it is going to fish me out at 1321.25. that could all change. This range really sucks. I would feel a little better about surviving if we get to the 1327's.

I do not agree with the statistic. since there is no exit poll to get an accurate stat for overall winners and loses in the market. Secondly, what makes a loser? if someone is trading futures, which are highly leveraged, and he loses 5k and never trades again. Is he a loser? Technically yes, but does it really say something about how hard trading is as the 90% BS stat would lead you to believe? I think trading is considerably easier than most people think. I also think that it isn't as lucrative as people think. I also think it is foolish to assume that all the winnings end up in the accounts of a few. Those are my contributions. If you read closely, there is a positive message there. MM

It doesn't look like anyone feels like selling, which makes me want to think that it is going higher. Probably get a short burst up to get the highly capitalized short term longs the chance to get to sell to the buy stops that are accumulating above the high. I am biased long, no doubt, but i just don't see the sellers winning here. Whether I am right or wrong about the above, my stop is at 1321.25 and I am likely out if it is touched prior to going higher than 1329.50. I'll leave the forecasting to the smart guys.

If we aren't able to push through the 1329.50 high, I am going to have to bail if we trade 1321.25 first. Though conditions do seem to exist for us to get to 1330.75 or so.