silvermachine

Here is one example of price action of today. The stock traded was BIDU. 1 bar is 5 minutes. The reversal pattern took place at 11:30. The 11:25 bar closed below the low of 10:55 and below its EMA, letting traders expect maybe a 50% fibonacci reversal. But then about 20 cents below the low the price reversed over its opening price and moved towards the prev bear bar's high. Missed it by 1 cent. The next 4 bars made new highs but failed to close over the 11:25 bear bar's high, letting some traders think that a correction or new bear trend was still about. The 11:55 bar finally closed over that bear bar's high and over its EMA. That made the reversal complete, leading to new highs. Given that the overall consensus in BIDU today was bullish, I entered right on that bull bar at 11:30. Since that bar was very tall, the risk:reward was 1:1.

The Momentum Indicator, RSI, ROC or even MACD are your typical reversal indicators. However if you focus too much on your indicators, you surely miss the price action. Compared to price, indicators are lagging. They are all lagging, especially the MACD. Well, it's up to you. You gotta backtest your system anyway before putting real money in it. :missy: My advice is still to learn to read candles and to draw horizontal lines. 1 cent for each... heh...

I don't trade ES but stocks mainly. The Reversal Play is one of my core setups. On average every one off six of my trades is a reversal play from a support or a resistance level. The best way to learn about reversals is to learn about support and resistance levels. To do that you have to put yourself into the mind of a buyer or a seller. Assuming you want to buy into a reversal after big sell-off. First, why are traders selling? They think that price cannot go higher anymore. As they sell, longs will have to cut their losses and will become sellers too and/or reverse their positions and become new shorts. Then comes the moment when those traders on the sidelines think price will fall even further. They sell the Low. Shorts who think that price will not fall further will cover their positions. If they were a lot of shorts, there will be huge buying pressure. Also the late shorts will have to cut their losses. An ideal scenario will show you a Hammer candle on your chart in that given time period. In an not so ideal scenario there will be trading range. I recommend reading Bar by Bar by Al Brooks. No easy read. But he gives you great insight how markets work (well, from his point of view, he admits). He trades the ES too.

You are not wrong at all. You can thank DeFazio for talking so frankly. Other politicians would say "we are looking for reasonable means to generate tax income". But that's just the insanity about politicians and the people who vote them into power: how do you want to tax a business that you destroy? About 80 years it was the "greedy jew" who was to blame for the world crisis. And they didn't tax them to squeeze some money out. They just destroyed them. And the destroyers didn't even bother to make it sound good or reasonable. Another evil scheme of european politicians is that they saw that a ftt in Sweden about 25 years ago killed all liquidity and sent money abroad. So to what conclusion has Merkel come? tax the traders according to their location, and not to the markets they're trading in. I really hate them.

I got to second Sierra Charts for charting and order entry. Do check out their web site and instruction videos. Another great front-end is Button Trader. Button Trader might be what you're looking for! Take some time to check them both out.

There's a book called Technical Analysis from A to Z. It's an encyclopedia of all technical indicators with their formulas. They are easy adopt to an excel formula. A cheaper way would be to google for them formulas. Here's what I've just found on RSI: Relative Strength Index (RSI) - ChartSchool - StockCharts.com eww, I just see your post is from 2007

Hi James, nope, I've quit on that one. I found out that automated trading is most profitable when using daily or weekly intervals. Excel is sure easy to program because of that copy and paste thing. It saves a lot of time. However with Java Script you have much more options. That programming took a lot of my spare time. I really like to spend my non-trading time doing simple things, easy things. The original idea was to have a program that alleviates some of my daytrading stress. But actually, I am doing really good with my discretionary trading. I beat everything of my past coding and backtesting. So I see little reason in my searching for a holy grail code. Those overlapping bars in trading ranges with their numerous conditions can drive me crazy. :crap: And in daytrading there are so my fake-breakouts that make my system a loser. Your software should have an Data-Export function where you should be able to save shown data in your desired timeframe and file extension (mostly csv or html). Right-clicking into a chart should do the trick. I have numerous data spreadsheets of Nasdaq stocks. These are just historical raw data without any coding. They are not update-able.

Interesting. Actually I use to code in Excel because the formulas are much easier than Java Script. What I do is to export chart data from my Data Provider to an Excel sheet. Then I come up with conditions or strategies. The most simple being "buy when interval closes over MA" and "sell when interval closes below MA". If I come up with a strategy that seems to work I (try to) code it in Java Script so that my charting software gives me signals in real time while trading. Of course, a trending strategy kills you while the market is moving sideways and chopping around. I'm working on conditions that keep me out of the market while it's not trending. That Spreadshhet shows an example of a stock trading around 75USD in 19 trading days with a 1 minute interval. I had to delete days because the file was too big to attach. The strategy is to "buy after 4 higher closes and exit when close is lower than previous' open" and "short after 4 lower closes and exit when close is higher than previous' close". What I'm working on now is to check different intervals and/or use an exit condition based on previous highs or lows. This strategy did not prove to be profitable in backtesting. It showed a meager profit of $300 in 19 days and a grand loss of about ($2000) in 55 days. So this is just the beginning. backtesting higher close smaller.xls

Hi there, it's been a long time since I've been here. Is there a forum which discusses formulas for excel spreadsheets for "objective" technical analysis? silvermachine

Excellent thread, Soultrader. Market Profile was the main reason I've joined Traders Laboratory. I've downloaded some Excel spreadsheets from another Market Profile thread over here to gain some insight into programming. I'm not willing to pay another 50 bucks per month for that since I know I can have it for free having the Data Manager already running. It's just that I stink in Excel sheets programming :crap: and I just don't have the T I M E to get into a Excel for Dummies book. So for the moment I'm helping myself by typing each single number (I'm using two-digit numbers instead of letters. It looks better.) At least that keeps me awake and alert when trading gets boring. I'm using MP on indiviual stocks. I'm not trading futures. I got a great feel on MP ever since I read the first chapters of Mind Over Markets. And I felt inclined to skip the last chapters of this great book. Now, I must say after trial and error I stick to Candle Charts and Fib levels to time my entires and exits. Market Profile is great for the overall picture of what's happening.