UrmaBlume

As TradeStation's oldest customer and after using a handful of different easy language consultants, I believe the best by far is Martin Miller Support@JamStrategyTrading.com If you look at the TS Wiki you will find mmiller wrote most of it. cheers UB

Trade velocity can be very useful in locating the kind of trade that forms local intra-session extremes. The idea is that trade that is executed by computer is faster than a set of random orders placed by human traders and that small/retail traders don't have the wherewithal for computed executed entries and exits. One prime issue when using the velocity of trade as a trade decision support mechanism is that while arbitrageurs often use computer execution when deploying premium arbitrage strategies, at the same time they might be making large computer executed buys or sells in a derivative market(i.e., futures) - they are also making the opposite transaction in the physical markets.. That said, attached is a spike in buy trade velocity taken this morning at the open of ES which, as of this writing is also the low of the day.The chart is noted in PST and you can see the buy spike in trade velocity in the middle graph at the far left which is just at today's open in ES. The direct answer to your question is that that we use several different algorithms to calculate the velocity of trade and which one we use is dependent on instrument, sensitivity and which trade type we are trying to identify.We, as of now, don't use this indicator in Radar Screen buy will add such to our indicator pack in the near future. cheers pat

An extra parameter from eco 101 - "If it Floats, Fucks or Flies, lease it in the absence of positive cash flow. Boats,Women and Planes - sometimes they pay, sometimes not. Yet still nice to have around. Still have a couple and still miss all those that are gone. Of note are the various markets and prices. With duties aside the prices for both boats and planes are pretty stable worldwide. On the other hand a pleasant short time in Bangkok will cost just a bit more than an ounce of silver with a great overnight worth the price of a barrel of West Texas Crude, in Vegas that same quality of overnight will cost the price of an ounce of gold. Through all of that and around the world a Newer used Piper Meridian Turbo or a nice used 60 foot pilot house cutter will cost about $1,500,000 no matter where. UB

While all of my trading is much shorter term and done by automated systems, I have built a longer term indicator that I use for background information. The attached chart is of an overlay of day session day bars over the 24 hours session bars in ES. The indicator takes the net of buying and selling volumes for each day from a 1 minute chart and posts those values to a global variable which then makes the cumulative total of those values available to the day chart. I take very little stock in divergences between price and price based indicators but the indicator posted on the attached chart only sees buying and selling volumes with no input from price. The divergence is stark and has been building for almost 2 months. It also says that the divergence has not been satisfied. Divergences of this magnitude with this indicator in the past have led to well over 100 point drops in the ES. Again while this indicator has absolutely no influence on my trading, it tells me that 1) we are due a consolidation/correction from this down move but 2) new highs are unlikely in the longer term. My work with probabilities tells me that the shorter your projection/trade view, the easier/more likely it is to be right which is why I don't play outside the session. That said, I started recommending puts to my longer term friends 2 weeks ago. This is a link to the graph that is attached below. Another point of interest about this particular chart is that you might note that on most up days there is red at the bottom of the chart and on most down days there is red at the top of the chart. This denotes two points of interest: 1) News and trade follow the sun around the globe. Overnight news is first detected and acted upon during the Asian session and then later during the European session which means that if the news is significant it has already been acted upon by the start of our day session and we are not like to see prices at that extreme again that day, ergo, on more than half of the days, the best price of the day happens outside of our day session. 2) The nite session will often have the same or bigger price moves than the day session and those moves happen on about 10% of the day session volume. The explanation for these big moves on such lite volume is that there is no opposing activity. The trade that happens during those hours is mostly done by commercial/professional traders and they are usually of a like mind so very slim offers oppose their buying and there are very lite bids to absorb their selling. cheers UrmaBlume

OOPS. Wasn't too clear when I snapped that. Cheers UB

Thanks Blue, me neither. BTW, I see UK. I used to office in Finsbury Circus. cheers UB

Attached is a zip with 4 EL PDFs including a 1200+ page reference to all reserved words and functions. UB EL_Getting_Started.zip

For the first time in 200 years there are bald eagles nesting on the 3 rivers in Pittsburgh. This is a link to a day and night webcam that shows Mama and Papa eagle raising three eaglets. They catch and bring fish and other critters as food and in a couple of amazing loops chase off predators. A racoon foolishly tried for the babies and one look at mama eagle all puffed up ready to serve racoon to her babies and he was gone. This is a shot of my desk and one of those monitors watches the eagles 24/7. Enjoy. cheers UrmaBlume

Blue, If I was looking for a coding or any other service, a singular endorsement from an experienced user would be EXACTLY what I would be looking for. Plainly in any group of practitioners there is an average level of competence and a small group, third standard deviation, that excels. Less than the third standard deviation of traders succeed and I would think it obvious that such a level of trading, coding, understanding and execution would require support of an extraordinary level of competence. While EL is a great tool for system development, it is wrong and misleading to advertise that it is easy to learn at a level that will produce profitable trading systems. If that were true you couldn't get a cab in NYC, all the drivers would be watching their bots. The average or the lowest common denominator doesn't make it in this biz. Most everybody on this forum, including vendors, lose in their trading and will continue to lose until the pain makes them leave the markets. It is not a business for everybody and to foster the idea that everybody has an equal chance of success only leads to loss and heartache. The vast majority, for one reason or another, are just not equipped for this biz and certainly history documents this fact. Only the top few percent of traders and systems succeed in the long run and I put Martin in the top few percent of consultants. I say that not because I use his services and like the guy but because I have tried many others and find him the best and I think that this kind of information from an experienced EL developer is way more valuable that something as pale and bland that there are many other consultants. All men are not equal in ability and all consultants are also not equal in ability and in a world where only the top few make it, quality, not price, is the prime consideration. UB

All due respect Blue, but over the years I have used a selection of those listed and found Martin to be the best by far. As to rates, his is even higher, $125 Eu per hour and he is so much better than any of those listed that he is well worth it. When you are looking for help of this kind, the rate should be far down the list of selection criteria. Deep into execution issues with TradeStation I spent lots of $$ looking for answers from the list you mention. I finally found Martin and my issues were solved in less than an hour. UB

Your OP didn't say anything about "interval bars." The code provided will perform as per your specs. IMHO your strategy is a recipe for disaster but if you want custom coding for this or any other strategy let me recommend Martin Miller of JAM Strategy Trading Martin wrote the TradeStation Wiki, knows more about TradeStation and Easy Language than the technical staff at TradeStation, is great to work with and the best there is for TS Consulting. I have worked with him for years and wholeheartedly recommend him. His contact info including phone, Skype and email is here. Cheers UrmaBlume

Vars: Stoch(O), Count1(0), Count2(0), Count3(0) ; If MarketPosition <= 0 then Begin Count1 = 0; Count2 = 0; Count3 = 0; end; If Count1 = 0 and Count2 = 0 and Count3 = 0 and Stock < 30 then begin Buy x shares this bar on close; Count1 = BarNumber end; If Count1 <> 0 and BarNumber >= Count1 + 5 then begin Sell X shares this bar on close; Count1 = 0; end; If Count1 <> 0 and BarNumber = Count1 + 1 and Count2 = 0 and Stoch < 30 then Begin Buy x shares this bar on close; Count2 = BarNumber end; If Count2 <> 0 and BarNumber >= Count2 + 5 then begin Sell X shares this bar on close; Count2 = 0; end; If Count1 <> 0 and Count2 <> 0 and Count3 = 0 and BarNumber = Count2 + 1 and Stoch < 30 then Begin Buy x shares this bar on close; Count3 = BarNumber end; If Count3 <> 0 and BarNumber >= Count3+ 5 then begin Sell X shares this bar on close; Count3 = 0; end; Good Luck, you will need it. UB

While it will take 2 statements, this should do it. If MarketPosition > 0 and Time >= 1355 Then sell CurrentShares this bar on close; If MarketPosition < 0 and Time >= 1355 Then Buy to Cover CurrentShares this bar on close; MarketPosition will return a +1, -1 or 0 depending on whether you are long, short or flat. CurrentShares will return the number of shares/contracts in your position. Cheers UB

All due respect to your background in Macroeconomic stats etc, short term trading is about short term technicals and in Fx trading all of your technicals are price based with no consideration of volume, depth or order/money flow. In more fully disclosed markets, the trader who only uses price based inputs is at a disadvantage to those able to read volume velocity, balance and transaction size as well as market depth. As to your condescension based post, Trading Wizard, as an online poker player I find that those with such screen names as PokerStud, really aren't. Kind of like your 100 ton toy boat license. UB

That's only in the Fx markets. Wiz, I never understood, when there are so many other choices, why one would trade a market were you never have the slightest idea of volume, order flow, size transactions or the participation of size/commercial traders. Could you please tell us? I have always considered Fx a sucker's market and the only reason people traded it was because they first didn't know any better and second because they didn't have the resources either fiscal or intellectual to trade anything else. Wiz - I respect your posts, your position on this forum and your license with the Merchant Marine - Please show me the errors in my thinking. UB

What completely escapes this completely "clueless," certainly not a successful trader, is that most of the money that is made in trading most anything today is made by automated trading systems. If the method is precise enough to be taught or expressed it can be programmed. Certainly it is true that most traders do no use automated systems. It is also true that most traders, especially traders like this guy, do not make money. AT the same time it is also true that First, most of trade today is done by automated systems and second most of the money that is made today in trading today is made by automated systems. and third most of the money that is lost in trading is lost by traders who do not use automated systems. I have a labrador who can put those three together and come up with the conclusion that the clueless one is the OP himself. UrmaBlume

Even more crap, most of the trade in almost every market is done by automated systems and those systems make more money than all the successful human traders combined. Plainly you are way out of touch with the realities of today's markets and the technologies used by successful operators to trade them. As to bucket shops, haven't you noticed that most of them are gone? Of all the lame BS posted on these forums, yours, not to mention your attitude towards other traders and even vendors, is the lamest. UrmaBlume

Because of lower liquidity, margin requirement for trades outside the 405 minuted day session have always been higher than the day margin rates. Margin requirements for both day and outside the day session will vary broker to broker. UB

It's a ketch. It is not about the helm but rather the rudder post. In a yawl the mizzen is aft of the rudder post, in a ketch forward. The only reason that there were so many "split rigs" in the past has to do with sail size and sail handling. Now that all but the spinnaker are on rollers the trend is towards cutters. The difference between a cutter and a sloop is that the mast is in the middle of the boat in a cutter. I think the one endorsement you should be looking for is "Upon Oceans." UB

Mystic, I didn't know you were licensed. Mine reads: MASTER OF STEAM OR MOTOR VESSELS OF NOT MORE THAN 1600 GROSS REGISTERED TONS (DOMESTIC) 3000 GROSS TONS (ITC), UPON OCEANS; ALSO RADAR OBSERVER - UNLIMITED; ALSO OPERATOR OF UNINSPECTED TOWING VESSELS UPON GREAT LAKES AND INLAND WATERS While currently boatless attached is a pic of my last boat while in Hawaii after a sail from San Diego. Our new member seems to be of the opinion that success in trading in any time frame is merely the selection of a system and a bit of coaching. I believe he should be aware of the following from another post: In trading, being right is and always has been more important than being big/rich. You should know, however, that barring divine intervention or spontaneous intellectual combustion, it WILL take some money, a lot of time and effort and even with years of effort your odds of ever making long term profits are greater than 20 to 1 against. Few have the stamina for a trail that often includes years of disappointment and even fewer have the instinct or intellectual capacity to even have a chance at long term success. There is nothing that says that you can't be one of the few. But before you embark you should consider who the very, very few are that make all the money and their level of experience and resource. The competition for every dollar of trading profit is fierce. Your competition is not the posters on this or any other forum, it is the traders in high tech trading rooms and organizations like Goldman who are backed by legions of engineers, software developers, banks of servers and billions of dollars. The odds of anyone spending a few months reading books and forums and practicing with a few thousand dollars worth of hardware, data and software and succeeding are way worse than 100 to 1 against. Cheers UrmaBlume

Zup, Your point about the use of either indicators collapsed into functions or objects for order placement is well taken. But I still have my doubts. While I am not familiar with that platform because I have never even considered fx trading, I am deeply familiar with TS and believe my code to be both clean and efficient. Why don't we collaborate on even just one of your 30 line ideas and I will build it, test it and send you both the code and the results. The main point I was raising was about broker reliability which you said doesn't exist and I say I can write code that will execute within TradeStation with 100% reliability with the givens that it trades intra session and trades with market orders. Also it needs to be either US futures, US Stocks or fx via TS. What's to lose? I used to office in Finsbury Circus so we both might enjoy a chat. cheers UrmaBlume

Most probably the reliability issue is not so much about the broker's platform but rather with your code. If we are talking about a system that trades intra session, trades either US stocks or US futures, can be operated with market orders and produces an ROI > 20% then I doubt and would bet that you can not write such a system in 30 lines of code or less. While I can not speak to all brokers I can say that over the years I have code that executes in TradeStation with 100% reliability. That DOES NOT mean that every execution produces a profitable trade. It DOES say that every entry, exit, stop or take profit order was executed exactly as programmed. As to OilFxAmateur's discussion about systems, while a system can include discretion, that discretion must be clearly defined or it is not a system. Ergo the system can be programmed and tested. The reliability of back testing is as much a function of the developer's understanding as is the development of the system. The systems I run every day in TradeStation consider several different trade types, reversal, continuation and mean reversion and they contain something over 1,000 lines of code. The risk management part of each of these system, the parts that include stops, take profit and sizing, alone take more than 30 lines of code. UrmaBlume

One can always spot those without any, any, knowledge or experience with how funds and money managers operate. I bet this guy has other interesting theories about area 51 and a whole range of different conspiracies. UrmaBlume

In trading, being right is and always has been more important than being big/rich. You should know, however, that barring divine intervention or spontaneous intellectual combustion, it WILL take some money, a lot of time and effort and even with years of effort your odds of ever making long term profits are greater than 20 to 1 against. Few have the stamina for a trail that often includes years of disappointment and even fewer have the instinct or intellectual capacity to even have a chance at long term success. There is nothing that says that you can't be one of the few. But before you embark you should consider who the very, very few are that make all the money and their level of experience and resource. The competition for every dollar of trading profit is fierce. Your competition is not the posters on this or any other forum, it is the traders in high tech trading rooms and organizations like Goldman who are backed by legions of engineers, software developers, banks of servers and billions of dollars. The odds of anyone spending a few months reading books and forums and practicing with a few thousand dollars worth of hardware, data and software and succeeding are way worse than 100 to 1 against. UrmaBlume

And sometimes you meet self deluded, self inflated, Luddite wannabe know nothing bullshit peddlers. UrmaBlume