TradeRunner

Thanks Thales I think I understand. My second part to the question is do you always consider how a candle is formed for every candle or just candles that are in interesting areas?

Yesterday's trading and my first positive day:

Thanks Thales. I'm drawing them by hand. Is my approach too mechanical? I find it easier to draw the lines than mess with text - I add the text in later. Would you have stopped trading because of the two losses in a row or because you recognised the overlapping swings? I have a question about the first red arrow...

I look at 6J with envy:

CFDs - No stamp duty, but there is capital gains tax on profit. Spread betting is tax free.

OK: 6E, 30 tick TP and 15 tick SL. I guess it is not a good time of year to do this excercise.

If everyone won using the strategy/indicator where would the "winning" money come from? Kind of like a lottery where everyone knew the numbers up front.

It's a difficult question to answer because we don't know what you already know and I don't supose you are going to be happy with this reply (and I'm not an expert or experienced:)) You must know how to follow your trading plan You must know the diference between trading and gambling and have the self awareness to know when you move between the two You must know the contract is compatible with your risk requirements (contracts vary in size and volatility) You must know you have a trading edge and that your profits can overcome your trading costs You must know how to extract youself from a trade in the event of a disaster (e.g. PC crash, internet drop out...)

Here you go... Time is GMT so open is 14:30.

I find that it helps if you set the horizontal grid line spacing to something known (e.g. your default initial stop size). This then gives you a more in your face visual clue that price is moving when you see the grid lines bunching up. I think Sierra charts and/or Ensign allows you to fix the virtical scale.

Voting manipulation like this has already occurred with POTM. In January I saw DBPheonix organising "block" voting via the chat room. POTM is just a bit of fun so who cares about that. However voting to have posts deleted and people banned is putting too much power into peoples hands.

double post double post double post double post double post double post

How about trading behind your own limited company? This to me would be one of the advantages of trading for a living by controlling the amount of money you receive as salary. From a UK tax perspective... If Inland Revenue viewed your trading income as salary then you would pay 40% tax on any salary above approx £35000 + national insurance. If they viewed your profits as capital gains them anything earned over £9600 would be liable to 40% tax. That's pretty steep! Running your trading business as a limited company would mean you have more flexibility and control over how much tax you pay. I'm not sure how this translates to the US tax system or any other country but I would guess that goverments tends to screw employees (because they don't have much choice) and encourage businesses (by giving them more generous tax breaks) because they create jobs ....

8 ordinary people given a million dollars and a couple of weeks training and let loose on the markets during July and August last year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gthhq on tonight on BBC2.

Hi Steve why are trend lines tested during the night? Is it because of the affect of other markets that are open in Europe and Asia? So traders in those markets have half an eye on the affect they are having on ES and can see that it is approaching a potential turning point - in this case trend line and monthly pivot. and what is the idea behind using 81min candles? Thanks

Hi Steve Thanks for a great thread. I have some questions regarding your approach to backtesting: Trader A (your approach) Wants to develop a profitable system to take advantages of trend days. Defines and identifies trend days in an instrument using historic data Statistically tests properties that could be used to identify trend days Finds that property X, Y and Z leads to a high probability of a trend day Builds a trading system around X, Y, Z Trader B (using traditional backtesting methods) Wants to develop a profitable system Picks some properties from a large set of market properties {A, B, C,…X, Y, Z} Picks properties X, Y, Z and runs a backtest on historic data Builds a trading system around X, Y, Z Is Trader A’s method a fair summary of the approach you take? Testing my understanding is it true to say: Trader A Has defined the behaviour to take advantage of so has fewer market properties to test. In other words is more focused in the research Tests both correlation and dependency so will find significant properties for the defined behaviour Is vulnerable to changing markets but understands why the systems works so can change with the markets When the market changes would have to wait enough time to statistically understand the change Trader B Tests correlation via the backtest but not dependency and might select market properties that only work on historic data. So for example the backtest may have worked with properties A, B and C but these properties are independent of trend days. Is vulnerable to changing markets but might not fully understand why the system works so is in a weaker position to fix it

Got one from "jayklyani".

Thanks Hlm, I'll check these out. My second post took a long time to appear hence the crossed posts.

Agreed. I've spent alot of time on this and other sites. However, the question I've asked is also on my mind. Is that such a bad thing? Would someone who asks this question really hand over $5000 dollars to a vendor? I've been around long enough to know there is no holy grail. Why?

Yes sorry I messed up the links... Peter Crowns TheRealThing 80% unsuccessful ok. I don't know what the percentage is but I think you have accepted that the majority are not successful at trading. Some of the successful minority may participate in trading forums. So my point is that most of the posts are by people who are not successful at trading. So there advice or ideas have not made them successful. Exactly. To recognise wisdom and truth you need trading experience and only then will you start understanding what the 'facts' are and at that point you will have no need to read them if your only motivation is learning how to become successful. Accepted you may read/contribute to forums for other reasons. Yes and you may be in a better position to do this because you have 15 years of trading experience. However this would be an inefficient method for a beginner as it is difficult to establish the value. I have no idea whether these links are to people who are successful traders. Their messages strike me as being different and their underlying message is that your are going to have to do most of the work yourself.

If most traders fail or are failing, the standard figure seems to be 95%, then that leaves 5% of traders capable of helping others become successful traders. How many of the 5% would be willing to contribute their hard gained knowledge and experience for free on a public forum? I guessing not very many! How can you identify the people that are worth reading? Here are some of the attributes that I think you should look for: By definition their message will be different to most contributors They have worked hard so they have a spoon feeding phobia Here are some contributors that made me site up and think! DbPhoenix Peter Crowns TheRealThing Not a complete list by any means but my current top 3. What about the other 95+% well these are also worth reading for different reasons as these are the people you need to extract money from.