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That's a great start, because it shows you're actually thinking about it (better than most). I highly recommend you read The Phantom of the Pits. Don't let the price (free) fool you, you'd have a hard time beating the wisdom for any less . This may help you with position managment, helping you take an idea and make it as profitable as possible. Push yourself to quantify your entries/exits. You will struggle when you add real money to the equation if you don't have something exact to fall back on.

Contact him if you feel what he's posted is something you'd be interested in. I applaud your young start and desire to learn. My word of advice: define exact setups you're looking for. For example, let's say you want to "buy pullbacks" (assuming bull trend). Define trend (define this in exact terms), pullback (same; along with any prerequisites that help avoid reversals), what is the exact entry signal, how you will manage risk, and how will you exit (doesn't have to be a specific point amount, could be at next resistance confirmation, climactic volume, etc). This may seem like overkill, but it will simplify your trading, give you confidence in your edge, and allow you to actually backtest to verify that you have an edge. Start with one setup. Learn it backwards and forwards; learn nuances, when it tends to work, when it tends to fail.

Be wary of simply jumping into options; while the leverage and risk safety net look attractive, you're paying a premium on it. What kind of trader are you (day, swing, longer)? I urge you to use as little margin as possible (less leverage, if any) when you're still new, because that will only steepen the learning curve.

I think Ninja is great for newbies (because it is free to demo), and the cost is very reasonable, imho. I know of a trader who uses Ninja for charting and data (using a free demo), and places orders through another setup, if you're completely averse to fees.

I use both NinjaTrader and Zenfire, and am very pleased. Never had any real problems, and love the speed.

It all depends what you want out of trading. Something more stable, or where you can still work for yourself? Done correctly, trading for yourself is one of the most liberating "jobs" out there. How much time are you willing to put into this (per day, week, etc)? If you have a stable financial situation, I'd urge you to try it yourself. All the information you'd need is out there (free), you just have to filter the crap and know where to look (this is a good place to start). Identify what kind of trading you want to do, and study one aspect / method. Don't waste time searching for a holy grail, and don't give up on something just because you see a pretty birdy flying near by (another attractive looking system). The mark of a newbie is hoping from method to method, never actually mastering any. Personally, I use price action only, focusing on Support and Resistance and volume (if that sounds good, check out the Wyckoff forum here). Otherwise, find what seems to fit your personality. Stay away from guru's, systems that cost, etc for now. There's a few I'd trust, but most are overpriced and present information available elsewhere. The financial vendor market is very sleezy, so be careful. Financial jobs are competitive, especially with no background. Trading for yourself wins here, because you are you're own boss, so to speak. If you work at it, you can make more money and be more free outside of a "job", but that might fit you better (you judge that). Money managment is one of the most important things in trading, so you should have a significant leg up already. In addition to that, you need to be psychologically fit, and have an edge. Spend more time working on yourself than the edge, at least to start. I suggest you get a free demo and sim trade for a while (NinjaTrader demos are offered by several brokers; it's what I use).

I've been anxiously waiting for I.O.U.S.A., even if it's not entirely new news to those who are informed. Hopefully, this will put the budget and spending problems in the spotlight, so politicans can't ignore it any longer.

I found this post on "Re: Support and Resistance" interesting and have nominated it accordingly for "Topic Of The Month July, 2008"

We are now close to my first technical target (a 50% retrace of June high's) on $COMPQ. Dow is close to a 50% retrace of June high's. We are nearing some significant possible resistance areas, so we'll see. I expect at least a short term test of this new move, regardless of if we continue up, or head back down.

It seems to me that MTPredictor has taken a good amount of emphasis off Elliott Wave, and more on risk management and other kinds of entries. Am I correct in this observation? Do you find that the entries/exits are fairly accurate, in general?

My sympathy goes out to you. It's tough to lose a canine family member like that, especially after so many years. I hope you are able to grieve, and eventually find another dog as a companion. Good idea on taking a break from trading.

I find using uncorrelated markets is most useful for longer term trading, when you're holding multiple positions at once. The main issue is that trading uncorrelated markets doesn't nessessarily clean up the equity curve for day trades, because strategies are most affected by differing market conditions. Volatility tends to be highly correlated across almost all markets, even if it's inversely correlated, as general investment fear and greed changes. However, if you have a robust strategy, trading several markets will give you more trade opportunities (which should be largely uncorrelated with each other; ie, you don't want to trade a breakout in both the ES and NQ at the same time with full positions, because you're doubling risk on equities).

Yeah, it sounds like it works like that.

Would you mind demonstrating, then? I don't think anyone's attacked the use of trendlines as S/R.. I have said what I use (after you asked) and stated my personal opinion, but that doesn't mean someone can't profit nicely from them. How do you trading using them? What rules validate/invalidate trendlines for you? What is considered a breakout (and are they tradeable)? A bounce (ditto)?

Iceburging would be a huge problem, and it's trivial for large size traders to do this. Hiding order size isn't the only reason to break up trades, by the way. Additionally, any arbing or hedging could actually go the other direction, even in huge size. The ES isn't a closed market, people trade it many different ways. I examined a few charts with this indicator on them, and I couldn't find a significant edge (small sample size, but these were cherry picked charts to begin with). In fact, a few times, the small orders led the market much sooner. This whole setup also assumes that bid/ask volume is correct, and truely represents buying/selling exactly (it doesn't). Also, I noticed an undo emphasis was placed on the zero line, but in reality, that shouldn't have that much more significance than any other line.. a "slightly below the zero line, so they're net sellers, so it's ok to short" is not very different than a "slightly above..." in terms of actual orders. Finally, this assumes that everyone is trading on the same timeframe. A 60 minute chart trader enters in a zone he defines as "buy" or "sell", regardless of the micro movements below him, and regardless of his size. The concept seems interesting, and may be a good tool, but it isn't as simple as he leads you to believe, in my opinion. If he finds this thread, I welcome him to respond to these issues.. I'd love to be wrong about it.

My hunch is that their breaking order sizes into "small", "medium", and "large" (such as 1-10 = small, 10-50 = medium, 50+ large, or whatever), and then doing volume at bid/ask for each. Not too complicated, and the concept has some definite uses. Not sure if you could trade straight off it, though.

Sounds great, I hope we can all learn something. A few of us hang out in the TL chatroom, which is linked above (also: here). Feel free to drop by. Hope you enjoy TL as much as I do.

Yeah, I've thought so for a while also. But, the "official" numbers have always been much less. This study put a little kick into that notion (and remember, the bottom bound is around 7.5%.. it could just as easily go over 10%, or more).

Thanks for the additions guys. If anyone has anything else to add, feel free. On a similar macro-market view (-ish), I saw this and thought it was interesting. It's projecting, with 97% historical accuracy, that inflation will be over 7.5% in a year. Eeesh.

I too have seen the ET thread, but I'm interested in what you have to say, and how you support your argument. What kind of thread do you want this to be? The concept sounds good, and I get the premise. One thing I questioned is that how can you tell when there are "No Sellers"? The "no volume" area on the chart above looks about the same as the other valleys, which were met with more and more selling. Thanks, welcome to TL, and hope you enjoy it here! edit: Your track record looks extremely impressive, but I'd rather keep this discussion on your method than what you do outside of here (I think the moderators would agree with me too). If you wanted to join us in the chatroom during market hours, we'd love to chat.

He stated that the second link is a summary of the first (it's the same thing, without a lot of crap). The second link is 6 pages.

No other interpretations have been "disallowed".. A number of us trade using similar views of the market, but as in Db's intro (which I believe is in the free sample), there's many paths to success. I have done a good amount of statistical analysis, and historical horizontal support / resistance areas do have a greater "price resistance" (movement of price past them) than both random entries and trend lines. However, if trend lines acting as S/R works for you and makes you profitable, I can't say anything bad about it. It's my opinion (and only my opinion) that trend lines work at S/R often because you are entering on the right side of the trend, so you get to trade the longer traversal. That said, it isn't an exact science, and I could completely be wrong and/or ill informed.

Hm, seems like it (I didn't see the above posts at all). There are absolutely people out there (the "5%" you refer to) who are willing to help for free; several of them post frequently here. It takes work, something most newbies don't want to do.

The search links you gave are actually search caches, so the link is dead already. Here are ones that won't die: DbPhoenix Peter Crowns TheRealThing edit: Are the last two usernames correct?

As a side note, people do have a stigma for "daytraders". However, a job in "Finance" is perfectly acceptable. As a joke, I got (free, trial on a site) business cards that listed me an as "Intra-day Market Liquidity Provider". Make sure you're getting into this for the right reasons. If we sound harsh/hard, it's only because it's true. Just remember, for trading and poker, if it were that easy, everyone would do it.