NoSquigglyLines

Frank, Just wondering if you've done any work using the IV of the ES options instead of VIX? Thanks

I was more picking up on what you wrote to be honest. You stated that Omni's answer was cryptic and convoluted and you preferred the simple straightforward and efficient. From what I read on this board and others, many traders are looking for simple concrete rules to help them understand/trade the markets. And when those rules 'fail' they begin a further search for 'better' rules. Throughout Markets in Profile it is stressed that context is paramount, and the example given that a fish flopping around the dock looks ridiculous until you see the same movement in the context of water. I believe that is the point Omni was making when describing Dalton's approach. You can use TPO or Volume or whatever method you like, and you can ascribe some rules to them, but you must be aware of the bigger picture and view everything in context. And when the market does not behave as you anticipated, you should view that as important information that you need to process and make sense of, rather than simply a rule that has failed. I've attached an image showing the NQ from 15th/16th June and the Globex session between them. In the Globex session (white TPOs) the green value area is TPO based and the pink value area is volume based. Is it better to use TPO, Volume, or be aware of both? I guess this is probably a cryptic and convoluted answer ... so please accept my apologies for that. I hope this answers your question but I suspect it may just highlight our different views. My basic point is that throughout both his books Dalton frequently opines that, in his view, trading is rarely simple and straightforward and those who treat it as such will probably fail. So when you write that his way of looking at things seems cryptic and convoluted, and you prefer simple straightforward and efficient, I think you are placing yourself in that majority he describes. Disclaimer: Many times I read posts on forums that are written as if they are from the perspective of a highly experienced millionaire trader, imparting their wisdom to all whilst sipping cocktails from the deck of their sunseeker. In most cases another thread tends to reveal that the writer in fact just took up trading last week. I am no millionaire trader, and I don't own a yacht. Just trying to make sense of all this like most others on this forum.

I don't mean this to be inflammatory but I believe you may have missed the point of Dalton's writing and teaching.

FWIW, I just got an email advertising a free webinar he is doing tomorrow. Webcasts Details I know nothing about him or his services, just passing on the info.

I don't know the stats or what market you refer to, but I would suggest the opposite is true i.e. majority of the time the high or low from the first hour will be broken. If you mean that it's likely one of the extremes from the 1st hour will hold then I would agree to an extent but not anywhere near 95% of the time. For example, there is a post on TL somewhere that suggests that the high/low for the ES is made in the first hour 66% of the time.

Frank, Have you ever done any similar work with other indices e.g. NQ?

Thanks for the posts, will have a look at these ideas.

Sorry to post this but I've done a fair bit of googling and can't find any real discussion on this. If the discussion exists then please point me towards it. I'm trying to determine the best period to look at MP charts for the Eurex markets. If we take FESX as an example - the trading hours are detailed here http://www.eurexchange.com/trading/products/IDX/STX/BLC/FESX_en.html?mode=trading_hours Pretrading starts at 7:30 CET RTH Trading starts at 7:50 CET (but most people seem to state 8am CET as the RTH opening) RTH closes at 22:00 CET Post-market continues until 22:30 CET My datafeed gives me data from 08:00-22:00 CET With MP the start time and end time are more important because of IB, VAL areas etc. What are people using for the session times with the Eurex markets and MP. My example is FESX, but the question applies to all Eurex markets e.g. DAX, Bund, Bobl, Shatz. Finally, beacuse of the large trading hours, does anyone look at a longer IB. For example, in the Emini S&P the day's session will very rarely exceed 4x the IB. However, in FESX on 12th March using 08:00-22:00 CET the session was almost 13x the IB. Hope to generate some discussion on this. Thanks

Thanks for posting Frank, finding this interesting.

No problem. One thing to bear in mind is that if you are planning to use value charts or if you do already, esp intraday, then it might be interesting to look at the price action profiles i.e. "how often does a +/-8 reading actually occur on a certain timeframe". This might give you more or less confidence in taking the signal. Just my 2c

Just PMd you now, many thanks.

Is there any way I can change my username in TL? I've looked in the profile but it doesn't seem possible?

I don't have TS so I've no idea if you can export data, I would have thought so though. If you can't do this then I could post a spreadsheet for the market and periodicity you're looking at if you post your findings here. I don't use Val charts but it might be useful for others.

No idea if you can do this in TradeStation, but if TS allows you to export the data then you can do this type of analysis in excel. See attached pic, this isn't Val charts, but you get the principle. If you google things like frequency, bin, histogram, standard deviation, excel then it's pretty easy to do. Post back if you have any questions.

Cool thanks, I'd seen the other two but hadn't spotted the Gramza one. If anyone does find an alternative source, the following would be interesting. 07/06/06 Trading Using Fibonacci Tools, Analytics & Technicals Carolyn Boroden BGTRU9 View 08/16/06 Go With The Flow! Find Reversals by Combining Momentum Bars with Pitchforks Tim Morge W46W34 View 01/17/07 Pivot Point Analysis - History & Formulas (1 of 3) John Person X8R2X5 View 02/28/07 Pivot Point Analysis, Part 2 John Person 88AWEX View 03/07/07 Pivot Point Analysis, Part 3 of 3 John Person 9Z4DH3 View 02/15/07 Successful Business Planning for Futures Traders Joe Mertes CDH9EG View My main interest is Market Profile but as a sort of side project I was interested to look at other ways of determining levels to see if I could find any useful confluence. I'm aware all these guys have websites.

Really? Interesting, which ones? Two examples I've tried are 07/26/06 Using Market Profile As A Basis For A Trading Plan Tom Alexander MXQUM5 View http://mediasrv1.cbot.com/07262006_alexander 03/14/07 Market Profile Trading Strategies Dan Gramza T47MYQ View http://mediasrv1.cbot.com/03142007_gramza Also tried a few more. If you could let me know what you can access and view then I will try it. Thanks

Thanks Sevenesa. I probably should have mentioned in my post that I've already looked on the CME website and while it has some, it doesn't have very many of the CBOT archives. In fact, it has none of the ones I was looking for. I have already emailed CME and will post back here any response. Any other ideas?

I see this is an old thread, has anyone had any success accessing these recently or know of an alternative source? I can still access the archived webinar page, but any attempt to view is met with a page error and disappointment :-) Shame, looks like some potentially great content up there.

Don't want to add confusion but it's all relevant I think and adds weight to the 'it depends' answer. It also depends (at least for me) how you configure your Market Profile software. I've thrown together a quick image to demonstrate this. I often look at MP in a 1 pt scale for the ES, but of course the ES moves in 0.25 increments. The chart shows the 0.25pt scale on the left and the 1pt scale on the right ... note the difference. Which is correct? No idea. Omni I see you are doing the DLC course so are probably much more qualified than I to answer that. One could argue that using 0.25 increments will be more accurate and thus is 'correct'. If I was doing a big merge I might be inclined to do it on a 0.25 point scale. However, I think at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. What's important, as Omni pointed out, is the context. Most likely you would note both High Volume nodes in your analysis anyway. We've also had a number of overlapping days in a row, so many would be inclined to merge those into a composite profile. IMO, It's all about the context. Edit: FWIW, I tend to pay more attention to volume. Disclaimer: I'm not an expert, only my opinion. Still very much a developing new trader.

Thanks for this. I would be lying if I said I understood all your post at first read ... but as I said, it's still very early days. I did understand your analogy though and managed to do some intensive googling to complement it. Stick with my simple explanation if you will ... by selling premium with a net delta close to zero you are looking for the lowest probability that they will ever go in the money. I guess you also have to monitor the margin reqs as you want to minimise risk as much as possible given that (as I understand it) it will be significantly in excess of the premium. At this point I get a bit more confused (I do have Natenberg's book in the mail though along with a couple of others!) ... as some of the 'option creatures' also place a high emphasis on being delta neutral. I guess they are not just selling premium? In addition to this, and as you said, the real skill here is learning to bias and hedge your position (and I guess this could be in the underlying instrument e.g. stocks, futures instead of options) without overtrading/overthinking in order to come out smiling the other end. Actually, I'm not sure I've actually done anything here except regurgitate your post so apologies for that. I don't think I have enough understanding of this to engage in discussion. Can you elaborate any further or point me towards any resource online or in print? If not I will comment further as my education progresses ...

jeffh0821, Thanks for your post. I've been a bit involved with my futures trading of late and haven't spent as much time on this as I'd like. However, will be building this up in the first half of the year and will see where I get to. Hopefully I can add some observations on this thread further down the line.

Here's one take on things ... First of all some quick background about me - I'm a relative newbie trader, only live about a week now. Spent 6 months + trying to learn about trading before even entering a paper trade, in fact haven't actually spent a lot of time paper trading. I find I can call the general direction of the market fairly well intraday (I mean generally in terms of higher or lower, not some holy grail) so when I've been entering my trades I've been going for a completely discretionary exit i.e. I've been entering from a fairly short timeframe chart but attempting to hold (trading two contracts) for the larger timeframe move higher or lower rather than scaling out at +1, +2 etc. Let's take Friday (19th) as an example, almost all of my trades were short yet my P&L for the day was just slightly below water after commissions (also bear in mind a fair few usual stupid newbie mistakes). After reading parura's post it struck me I was always going for Scenario B e.g 10 points or nothing ... and much more often than not getting nothing, or BE/scratch. I've just done a replay of Friday with fixed targets on both contracts (6 ticks and 10 ticks - pretty arbritary choice to be honest ... looked at my MFE in Ninja for Fri and made a stab in the dark at targets) and exactly the same entries as I took on the day (including the stinkers) and ended up about 5pts per contract better ... not incl commissions. Moral of the story ... I still feel the "better" approach is to have discretionary exits based on Price Action / larger timeframe targets, but in reality the better approach for me is to have fixed targets. Certainly on Friday it would have been the difference between a roughly BE day and a positive day. This could well be my relative inexperience and may change in the future, but an interesting finding none the less.

Thanks James_gsx, I must admit I can see it taking a while but I've started some preliminary reading. I do like the idea of the more complex strategies, been reading a bit about Iron Condors in particular. I think once I understand the theory and execution of these I will try to use my existing "knowledge" of price action as you pointed out and start to make some demo trades as a learning exercise. What appealed in the first place was the smaller more incremental profits i.e. consistent revenue/diversification with (so the adverts go anyway) just a small amount of time daily monitoring the trades. Of course, you have to go through the learning process first of all, but that's the case for everything in life. The other option I have is signing up to a service like redoption or condoroptions and learn through their trades. Platform-wise I've TOS paper money and like it so far so I think we'll just see how it goes. The long and winding road ... cheers for taking the time to post Al p.s. with your example of a triangle and a breakout - I was going to ask what stops you closing the position after the breakout ... why wait a week for it to retrace. Why not wait for it to hit a predetermined target and sell? If this is some basic options faux pas that I've yet to learn and the answer is obvious then just ignore it... I'll figure it out in due course, otherwise I'm interested to know the answer.

I got some flak for this post in another thread, so I've apologised. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/36/hey-im-new-and-need-three-4914-2.html#post53123 Apologies if this comes across as me saying "please give me the golden key to the magical kingdom for nothing". All I was looking for was a sentence or two e.g. read about x, consider y. I'm going to be reading everything on the redoptions site anyway, but sometimes it helps to have a bit of personal experience or a few tips to try and limit some of the more obvious beginner mistakes. I've got a lot of information from this forum so sorry to be causing offence here in only my first post. :doh:

Hi All, Been a lurker for quite a while on this site, mainly looking at futures day trading. I'm fairly comfortable with that side of things, trading in demo at the moment, just trying to build up experience and will be going live in the coming weeks/months dependent on other commitments. 'Other commitments' is really the reason for this post ... I have a pretty limited time available to me to day trade due to my job and timezone so have been thinking that I should try and do some swing trading too (as I have more time available when markets are closed/outwith RTH). I have pretty limited experience with options but it would seem to me that they offer a great deal of flexibility and are definately something that I should learn more about and try to utilise. My question is this - How should I go about learning about options, and more importantly, pertinent strategies that can be used e.g. obviously they can be used as a kind of proxy for buying shares with standard TA, but is it worth learning the more advanced butterfly/condor/AN Other type strategies? I've had a look at redoptions.com and thinkorswim, but there's so much information I'm not sure where to start and, as with so many online trading claims/products/services, I'm not sure what to believe. Can anyone provide a concise guide on where to start and what to learn? Thanks, Al