atto

I applaud you for being so diligent through this process. So, out of curiosity, are you back to week 0, or sluffing it off? For some encouragement, you have done very well so far, and down week out of 8 ain't bad, especially when you have to consider that you don't take many trades.

As Db has said, if you want to spend that kind of money on a program, there will be ample vendors to fill your need. But, it's completely and utterly unnecessary, and most likely counterproductive. The information found here would be quite likely far more valuable to you than any program, system, method, etc for sale right now. Before trying to fit a method to capture alpha, attempt to understand price action (what makes it move, why it moves, who moves it, etc) before trying to exploit it. And then, once you have an understanding of price, exploitation will be much simpler. Vendors usually disagree with me.

Yeah, IE copied that pretty quick (so I've heard, I don't use it). FF should have it on the next major release, as well as the fastest JavaScript rendering engine ever developed .

On that topic, Chrome has a superior long term strategy for process management as using many tabs is becoming more commonplace. Chrome separates each tab into its own process, so if one tab crashes (from a plugin, bad javascript, or Chrome itself), the browser remains stable. As the computing moves to more platform based verses application based, stability inside the browser is important.

I'm a self-admitted tab whore (I have 22 open now, for example), and it's running at about 240mb memory, so I don't think yours is too out of whack. Flash videos and large images will definitely bump that up (as there's a buffer in memory). A large reason for the high memory usage of modern browsers, imho, is that memory is cheap these days and people have a lot of it, so developers are less worried about streamlining memory requirements, and rather work on overall speed and features. Opera is an alternative if it's really eating you up, but to be honest, the speed advantages it used to have are negligible. Anyone else running FF that has a significantly lower memory usage?

Just a thought.. wouldn't this have trouble with historical data, which is not updated per tick? To fix this, you could a) check if it's live or not, b) if not, cycle through every tick in (High-Low) and assign that tick's volume to be Volume/(High-Low). It wouldn't be exact, but it would be a good estimate.

The guy above, who posted the nonsensical reply, was simply spamming a quick 3 posts so he could private message (you can't PM before 3 posts) hundreds of users about some forex system he's pawning.

Others that are obvious: taskyneem, rangytjani, anhksha, hatjjan, umafhkanta, valftyli

USO did the same thing. In fact, this while area (pretty much all of December so far) has been a very high volume area. Does this mean it's a bottom? Not necessarily, but it does mean to watch closely. For our completely hypothetical short, I'd place some stops at $40-$41ish.

karktymarkar is another. In fact, just go through all the unread posts. It's blindingly obvious which ones they are.

I've already received a spam PM as well, so it's quite obvious what happened. If you check their user pages, they're still busy sending messages right now.

I know you're here just to spam, so may not actually read this, but that's not actually true. In addition to what's been said, a counter-example would be USD/JPY, which is only priced to two decimal places.

That's one of the brokers I use, but they aren't that special: you can find those kinds of rates in most futures brokers (and could possibly get a better commissions deal, depending on your volume). I use the NinjaTrader platform. Their commissions are competitive, but nothing out of the ordinary. I'm not sure what their published rates are, because I pay under that, but it's in the $4-$5 range for a low volume trader. As a rule, commissions are always negotiable, so don't just accept what they give you, especially if you trade good volume.

It is very common to have much lower intraday margin rates. IB has a reputation for extremely high ones. AMP Futures, for one, has most futures instruments in the $400-$500 range (link), but almost all brokers I've seen come close. I personally trade with significantly more capital per contract in the account, but it's available.

I've just been reporting all instances of that. The usernames look random, and the posts are either all the same, or copies from someone else, leading me to believe it's the same person. PM spamming, anyone?

Even if you had a reliable source for who's long and who isn't (I assume a good squawk service), wouldn't you be relying on the fact that the big institutions mentioned are trading directionally? Since they clear for clients and hedge funds, there could be any number of reasons for them to be selling SP futures, with many having no bias to the equities short side. I'm not saying you can't make money by following the institutions (I'm sure you do quite well), but it seems that a) entry barriers to gain sufficient information are higher than most "struggling traders" can afford, b) even then, you're working with not all the information. GS selling SP futures before a news announcement could mean they are positioning themselves to be short for the news, or they're simply lightening up long positions (or neither, as mentioned earlier). From this, and going back to event trading, it seems that using logic to determine market reactions (such as: "the economy sucks, it's not getting better yet, so the numbers will be bad") wouldn't be great for struggling traders who don't completely understand what's going on (like you). For instance, today, unemployment came in at 554K, while the market forecasted 558k, so "sucky news" beat expectations. We also beat expectations (fairly significantly) on the Philly Fed MI (who would have known?). Even still, we end the day red. My misunderstandings of how this works (and how to profit from it) may stem from the fact that I don't follow news at all. Any thoughts Steve?

... wait, so it's a joke? All I can see from that is a possible double top, with extending trendlines up.

Go for it, and let us know . Seriously, I can without any hesitation, tell you that what you can find in this forum surpasses any course I've ever heard of myself, and I highly doubt the difference, if it did exist, would be worth any real amount of money.

Additionally, different zones of interest will be dominate in different timeframes. From a trading viewpoint, I personally wouldn't actively pay nearly as much attention to a smaller congestion that was a while back nearly as much as one (larger or smaller) from more recently. The same goes for midpoints of said congestion areas.

Here's my long term ES chart. Similar situation, but I drew my inner box differently. Nonetheless, the area we're at now is fairly important. I've noticed a good deal of bullishness from other traders (who use varied methodologies), but we'll see. It also should be noted that there is no $NYUD/$NAUD divergence on this recent move, and the bullish % index has made a higher high. I'd expect that we have a pullback from today's thrust, and then bust through this "interesting" area heading towards the New Year.

Db is so funny, but I must say I win for imaginative chart patterns

As a first note, the areas marked as potential support/resistance on this most recent chart aren't virgin. Go back to the previous months, and you'll see the same exact levels. My favorite entry is late Sept '08 (short) at about $70-71. Reasons: We're already in a downtrend (lh, ll), and are testing old support (now possible resistance) on the upside. Note that this area was also important as far back as March. This is the first test locally of this resistance, but check out volume: there's a lot of new interest, suggesting sellers feel these prices are high enough to begin again. Price peaked above res, but was (fairly quickly) rejected. Initial hard stops at $73-74ish. Move to b/e a couple days later after the breakdown. ============ A note I wanted to make about entries is that not only are you maximizing return, you're minimizing risk. Often I'm much more certain about price's direction than in some of my actual entries, but there's no great way to manage risk. My favorite entry from the bull run in Oil is my favorite largely because of this.

I have had two new people request to get in. As is, I can't add them (so I PM Soul). Until we get a better system of doing things, if anyone asks how to get in, just tell them to PM me and I'll forward it on.

While not specifically related to Wyckoff or Db, I found a neat game that's fun and allows you to practice on EOD charts, if you're so interested. http://chartgame.com/ Basically, you start with $10k and try to beat buy and hold. The chart is from an actual (liquid) stock, from an unknown time period (using daily bars). Db has mentioned before that beginners who do not have the available time to watch price live might benefit more from EOD trading. This is one of the best EOD simulators I've seen, and is darn easy to use (and fun!). I especially like it because fills are perfectly reasonable / accurate (it's buying/selling on open), and you have ample time to do your own analysis (like "real" EOD analysis). I thought those of you who trade paper might find this interesting and insightful.

Whoops, I didn't get the long only memo. Reasons to go long: 1st dot: On demand line and possible support, and finds volume. Not a bad long. 2nd dot: Congestion above support, decent volume. 3rd dot: ... (struggling to come up with good reasons beyond: Hey! It's an awesome uptrend!) 4th dot: Price finds previous support and stalls. 5th dot: same 6th dot: ... (it's holding the north end of the range??) 7th dot: Lands on supply line and finds significant volume (as I said before, a good exit) 8th dot: Same, minus the great demand.