AgeKay

I have 2 Dell XPS M1330 laptops (one is for backup). I have connected 3 LCDs to one laptop. 1 monitor through the build-in VGA interface and the other 2 monitors through 2 small external graphic cards connected via USB.

This thread is about this thread on EliteTrader. TradeMaven Group is obviously trying to market their software/chat room/brokerage there (in which in am not interested in the least), but I am only interested in discussing the ideas outlines in that thread, specifically how past volume distributions might show you potential support/resistance points and when you should enter or stay out of the trade. I know there are a lot of experienced traders on this forum and that's why I am asking for your opinion. Do you think that the statements (their "rules") made in that thread are valid? Do you personally use them or some derivation of them in your trading? Their basic "rules" are these: I can see why rule #1 might be true, because there isn't going to be much volume past a prior high/low since this is where price turned around and did not trade much. But I don't know about rule #2 & #3. I guess you can only verify it by having looked at this data for some time. I am grateful for any shared insights!

Depends on the market of which you need intraday data.

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The only laptop I have ever been fully satisfied with is the Dell XPS M1330. I have 2 of them (1 for backup). It comes with Vista though. But I have put XP on both of mine. The XPS M1330 weighs less than 4 pounds, is the only Dell laptop that is sexy, and it's super fast.

There is only one provider of intraday data for Eurex products, which is the "Deutsche Börse AG, Market Data & Analytics" (Eurex is owned by Deutsche Börse AG). But they do not sell special time frames such as 1 min. They only provide raw tick data. You'd have to build time frames from that yourself. And they also do not provide the data per product, but for all products on the exchange. The whole package for one years costs 1000 Euros, which is about 1500 USD.

Nice find! I am always looking for trading movies.

Worst book about trading that I have seen so far, but that's only because I believe that candlesticks are completely arbitrary. If you do like them, the book at least "looks nice" with it's big letters and charts.

-"Way of the Turtle" by Curtis Faith. (It's not about the turtles or trend following what make this book so good. It's the psychology, discussion on robust trading systems and thinking on profitable trading) If you need more: - "Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom" by Van K. Tharp (I hate the title of the book though) - "Evidence-Based Technical Analysis" by David Aronson (cuts through all the bullshit in trading) For fun and education: -"Reminiscenes of a Stock Operator" - "Market Wizards" Books

Hlm, please reread post #23 by me in this thread. If you don't adhere to it, it just does not make any sense to me to reply to anything what you say in the future. Please reread my posts. I said why the value area in MP is arbitrary defined. It's because the creaters of MP picked some number out of the air to define the value area. That was not a starting point you defined, but just meaningless blub. SD's percentage probabilities work ONLY when there is a normal distribution. It has no meaning with any other distribution! Price spent the majority of the day where there was the majority of volume. That's it. What does it mean if price reacts with an value area line? How does that look like. Be specific, please! What does reacting "very well" mean? 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% of time? What adverse or favorable move can I expect if it does "react"? Well, I have studied it enough to understand it's shortcomings, which you seem to ignore. On that note, do you use MP because you have researched price and volume and MP coincidentally confirmed all of your obersevations or because you take everything the creators of MP said about it as gospel? Same thing with SD: I can't imagine anyone using SD was originally looking for a good way to accurately determine the expected deviation from price and has personally derived the formula based on a valid reason and then somehow noticed that it's known as SD. Instead people hear about it in a book, magazine, internet article, forum or from another trader using it and try it out to see if it "really works" without even thinking if it has any meaning. P.S.: There seems to be a lot of interest in this thread right now. I saw 4 other currently avice users viewing this thread while writing this post.

I would like to ask everyone to be specific when they make a statement, because if you're not specific and don't provide any examples, your statement does not add any value to the discussion. In this case, how do you use the "value area", what "pivots" are you talking about and how do you use them as "possible revesal points". How do you determine that it's a "possible" reversal point and what do you do if it reverses and what do you do it it breaks through. What does reversing mean and what does not reversing mean? What edge does MP give you? Can you quantify it? How is it "well proven" and how does "greatly used" make it any good? See what I mean? Most people talk so vague about trading tools that it's just meaningless blub...

Sorry, you're basically coercing me to reply, so here it goes: The value you're talking about here has nothing to do with the term "value" in MP. You're talking about value in general as it might be perceived by different people. I explained price discovery in futures markets that explains why a price stay's where it's at. The price at the end of the day is there because that's where people at the end of the trading day moved it. The price move in the last hour can undo an entire day's price move. Not because the perception of value has changed, because there are so liquidity at that time. I'll give you an example of the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 Futures (FESX) because that's what I am trading: You'll need at least 500 orders to move the price in the afternoon, sometimes 2000 or more. In the evening you usually need 200, sometimes 500 orders. The volume of the 4 hours after 18:00 is less than the volume of 17:30-18:00, but it can still move as much or even more than during the entire day in the evening. So is that the 'accepted value' at the end of the day which was caused by 5% of the previous volume? Not when used with Standard Deviation. When the price is moving up quickly all day, the Standard Deviation is huge even though it has never really traded much down. So how accurate is it in determining the expected move to the down side? That doesn't mean it has any value. There are successful professionals that look at how elefants move in the morning or look at something other completely unrelated with the market place like astrology and base their decisions on that. And it has nothing to do with being successful at trading. These guys are just good at managing risk, but I don't want to get into that. You're just stating your opinion and not providing any explanation. Please explain. I explained why the 'value area' in MP is arbitrarily defined and why the standard deviation makes no sense. Can you back up your disagreement with any reason? And if so, what is wrong what is said? Please be specific. Btw, you sound like you came straight from EliteTrader. I like this forum because people tend to be reasonable here unlike on ET. I use the VWAP without Standard Deviations and something else I have developed. There is a lot more in Jperls threads than just his indicators(VWAP & SD). For example, he explains why he believes they are useful and why he does what he does.

I don't know how specialists in stock markets make a market (maybe somebody could enlighten me?), but I know how it works in limit order futures markets (most large markets) where there are no official market makers and it works like this: Price stays where it is as long as there is enough liquidity. Liquidity is simply limit orders on each side. If there are no liquidity (limit orders) at one side, then price moves in that direction. There are 2 ways how liquidity can go to zero. A) limit orders are pulled or there aren't much in the first place B) market orders that demand liquidity (because they are matched with limit orders), you could also call this volume. So there you have it, that's it. A) explains why there is so much volatility around news time, because there is simply nobody willing to place limit orders because of the increased risk. One time I could literally see in the DOM that there was a news announcement going to be even though I forgot to check the economic calendar, because all of the sudden liquidity dried up. B) is what you would see on MarketDelta, but it doesn't give you the whole picture since you could have a lot of volume in one direction and the price could still be moving in the other direction just because there are enough limit orders to keep the price from moving in that direction. Standard Deviation is another thing that has no place in trading. Not even when used with VWAP. Standard Deviation describes the expected deviation of a normal distribution, but there is nothing in trading that follows a normal distribution, be it price changes or volume. It's another idea that somebody has just taken because it has a meaning in another domain, but is has no meaning in trading. Even if it did, it treats price changes up and down as they were equal, which they are not. You have to really understand the tools you're using to realize that they don't make much sense in trading. That's the same thing why I don't think much of MP. But that's ok, use it, if you like it, I am not going to leave another comment in this thread regarding MP.

As opposed to for example what I had mentioned in my first post: Trading the VWAP. I don't think you should use anything that comes from a book in your trading. Also mechanical trading and objective trading is not the same. Mechanical trading refers to the execution of a trading strategy, which has to be objective. You can also trade objective strategies discretionary. The thing is that you have something definite for orientation instead of the usual subjective "if it _looks like_ it's gonna do this, then maybe if it's _close_ to this, it could, maybe, maybe not, throw a dice, etc." How does a failure or breakout of an "balance area" look like. Does one trade above/below the "balance area" suffice? How much does price have to move exactly? Or is this also a gut feeling?

I have studied MP well enough to understand that it gives you as much of an advantages as most technical indicators out there (i.e. none). The examples you gave could come right from a trading author - vague, non-verifiable, but a plausible narrative - after the fact. What often does the price come back to the Value Area (and why is the VA 70% and not 72% or 80%) and if fit goes away from it, how far does it go away from it? What is the reward-to-risk ratio? The big problem with MP is that it's so subjective and the things that are objective (like time period & value area percentage) are completely arbitrary.

What is so valuable about MP and what are you using it for? Please be specific. For me, MP doesn't even make any sense from a logical point of view. Why does it matter at what time interval volume was formed? Isn't it completely arbitrary?

Forget MP. Instead, look at JPearl's thread series "Trading with Market Statistics" in this forum. You'll get a lot more out of it.

I second BlowFish. The market doesn't care how you feel or how much you want to make. Make the best of what it gives you.

I still think that you can trade this profitable with the indicator on the price chart alone keeping your stops smaller than your targets. Try trading the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 (FESX) then. The margin requirement is usually about a forth of DAX and the tick and point size is smaller, so it's easier to manage your position size. The FDAX follows the FESX anyway (the reason they have the same volatility percentage-wise) and FESX moves are a lot smoother (since it's a lot more liquid).

You're right. I also tried trading this through TT, but even if you're fast enough, it's extremely difficult since you still have to pay the spread and commissions. You'd have to automate this and have a really fast connection. Forget retail brokerage...

Don't go with Vista yet. I have Vista on both of my Dell XPS M1330 (which are excellent for anything, btw) and I found out that X_Trader does not officially run on Vista. You can make it run by changing the compatibility to XP, but their API won't run at all (I get some weird error in my code, which ran perfectly fine on XP). I am about to switch back to XP since there are finally all XP drivers available for my laptops. Vista is also a performance hog compared to XP.

There is NO volume for forex since it's not traded on an exchange. Even the volume of the forex futures that are traded on the CME is irrelevant since you don't get all the volume, just the volume traded in the futures, which is a very small portion of overall forex volume. Don't get me even started with FXCM:crap: No professional trader would trade spot forex through any of these retail brokers, including MBTrading, which is the best of those (FXCM is the worst, btw). If you really want to trade forex, trade the forex futures, unless you won't to get fucked by your broker.

I absolute agree with each and every word in this post. Time periods (with the exception of the open to close of a trading day) are completely arbitrary. Imagine the time on your computer being off by just a second or your data feed lagging by a second, all of your chart patterns and indicators might give you completely different values even though the actual trading that took place has not changed at all. I've also found that there is no noise in the market. I could even say that longer term price movements are more random than short term price changes since long term price movements are just a function of all this 'noise' in the short-term. Each trade is significant and can change all trades following it (like the bufferfly effect). Imagine one contract changing the best/bid ask price because there is only 1 contract left in the limit order book on one side. This price change could trigger buy/selling by other traders which could trigger even more orders. All of the sudden, the market is going down/up hard while you're still waiting for your bar to close.

Man, you are sooo right about these points. So many people are caught up in technical analysis (of which 99% is myth, stupid conclusions and wrong interpretation) that they can't see the simple truths of trading. Great post! I disagree, if you want to trade the DAX, look at what the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 is doing since the DAX is following it "tick by tick" (each tick in the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 moves the DAX by 4 - ticks on average - 0.1 seconds later). Just watch the DOM of both side by side and you'll see it.

I watched every video/webcast by Jack Broz, read each of his articles and listened to every podcast by him when I was really into reading order flow. Even though he knows what he is talking about (reading order flow), he admitted in one of the podcasts that I listened to that he isn't a terribly profitable trader. He makes the majority of money from those people paying him $500 a month for this service (like most guys who sell you books/software/services/advice). He said himself that his service is more a kind of floor commentary than trading advice. So he is just some kind of Squawkbox of the bond markets.