firewalker

I'm not sure who 'the predictors' are, but I take it you are talking about the people who voted option (1)... Like I said at the start of this thread, I'll try to play the 'moderator' of two different sides, trying to stay neutral and open to both sides as we go along. Therefore I think it's important to keep in mind james_gsx' remark: "I voted Yes, all is known in advance. That doesn't mean anyone knows what it is..." I'm under the impression that the majority of those who voted (1) did so, not on the basis of empirical evidence but rather on the basis of a belief. This is not so much a criticism as it is an observation. Of course anything that may help support a certain case, is welcome

This is something I already pointed out during the posts in this thread. But no one is obliged to participate if they think the topic isn't interesting enough Depends on how you define 'professional'. I've seen some people have a surprisingly good clue about where the market is going...

While I think this thread is getting off-topic, I believe your post warranted a reply, so I've sent you a PM.

Interesting debate going on, but I'd hate to dwell on semantics too long. Although it's indeed necessary to clear the air to know for sure what we are talking about. So I'm going to try and be more specific about this. When you choose option (1), you are basically saying that now, in the present, the future course and path of the market has already been determined beforehand. Whatever happens next, whatever news comes out, whatever happens to the state of the economy or business conditions, it's all irrelevant because the market has "a plan" and it will not deviate from that. Picking direction is easy. I said about a month ago that the market would turn very soon and head towards the March lows, which it did. But that's easy. Giving exact times and dates and exact price levels, that's a different feat and something I have not yet seen a lot of people, except on occasion. Making one bet is easy, but doing this continuously is a different thing. Hlm, have you read the interview with Gann? That's the sort of predicting I'm talking about. Have to disagree here, if you get the entry right, you can have a very tight stop. My stop is about 10 points on the YM and 2 points on the NQ. If I get stopped out, price almost always continues in the opposite direction, so I was wrong (but the stop was right). Perhaps adding the 'time factor' would make the prediction a lot more interesting. It's not that difficult to see that price is often attracted my S/R levels, so if you're saying "price will continue in that direction up till point x", than you might have a very high probability of knowing so, but can you determine how long it will take, how price will react when it gets there, and can you draw the course of price along the way? Doing it one time might be luck, but what if someone managed to do it each and every day? I don't care much neither, but I still think it's an interesting topic worth exploring. Albeit perhaps from a more philosophical point of view, than a pure "how to make profit in trading" pov. Indeed. I hope with now that I've added the time element this will help in determining exactly what predicting is. Bearbull, I'm actually more biased towards that kind of belief. I'd like to make that clear because it's not because I started this thread that I have some sort of fixed opinion on any of this. I'm open to suggestions

Actually, I believe that even on the smallest timeframe, S/R can be enough to take decent trades off. Being only in a trade sounds more like scalping to me, but whatever works for you There are -obviously- a wide number of approaches possible. There are those who do fine without ever looking at a chart, and there are those who do fine without even knowing the company of which they are trading the stock and just play technical patterns. Whatever works I say! But when it comes down to analyzing the supply and demand and making decisions on what price does, any thing else you throw on top of a chart is probably superfluous. But -and this is according to what Grey1 told me- he's not an intraday trader and he thinks daytrading is not the way to profit, so unless he does actively trade stocks each and every day, it's a completely different ballgame (this puts the 10 losing days in another perspective). If I sit on a 'virtual loss', but don't close out my position for the day, I don't have a losing day... All of this is pretty relative, especially since he said about a month ago that the markets were -quote "very strong" and would never turn lower again (the DOW was trading at 13100 at that time, meanwhile we dipped a decent 1000 points). But, like I said, each to their own!

Good point. With predicting I would consider: clearly stating what the market is going to do now, or the next 5 minutes, or the next day and so on, by giving exact numbers, swings, moves,... things like that. Sort of like painting the picture of the next day's chart beforehand

:o worth framing that one

... but about behavioral economics. Which is still, imo, a very very interesting topic: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Dan Ariely) A review can be found here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/02/25/080225crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all

Nice! You got in around same level then? The only "risk" I had was we had news pretty close and that almost caught me out as price was at 49 but came quickly down back to 41 before resuming the move up. Close enough!

Scaling out 1/4rd (so 1/4rd still open) at 1972 for +32. Stop moved to 1962.

It's a shame not more people had replied before the markets opened, as probably a lot of people will now be commenting "yeah I saw it coming, the markets would go up..." But the analysis is still there, if anyone wishes to add something and for me there was sufficient enough reason to go long today (incidentally, live entry posted in the trading log thread). Good point about the hinge but, as you pointed out, it was not as clean and sweet as on the NQ. Which is one of the reasons why I prefer to trade all the minis so I can take the best signal available out there... Thanks for posting the ES charts.

scaling half out at 1961 for +21 Note: Not using the new 1/3rd scale out rule today as I don't have the time to sit in front of the screen all day today, and price is already at resistance.

NQ long 1940.

Some thoughts to send you guys off with into the weekend. Reminds me of this teacher I once had, who on Friday afternoon, gave us this really hard riddle or puzzle and pretty much spoiled our weekend since some us wanted to find the answer by Monday! http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f2/the-unknown-future-to-predict-or-4022.html

I'm sure many of us have made "calls" about the market from time to time. Some of us probably have made some astonishing calls, but - speaking partly from personal experience - having a good idea about knowing what is going to happen next does not mean you'll necessarily make a profit from it! Having seen people try to pick turning points and actually being right about the reversal, but being off with the timing (and by doing so, have price go against them for several hundred points before being shown right), reminds me of the famous words of William Hamilton: "Wall Street's graveyards are filled with men who were right too soon."

Without a doubt, many people would scoff at the thought of using lunar and solar cycles in determining the future trend of the stock market (I'll admit being one of those myself)... Followers of the Delta Phenomenon believe there is a "hidden" order in the markets. After all the publications one would think that order is no longer "hidden", but available in plain sight. Quote: "In the early 80's, Welles Wilder founded the Delta Society International. His purpose was to share the “secret of the order behind the markets.” This order, the Delta Phenomenon, is the basis of all market movement relative to time. All other methods of technical analysis are enhanced by this timing tool. As you will learn, the Delta Phenomenon gives higher probability trading success to existing systems. Mr. Wilder states "I have solved the Delta Phenomenon for many different markets over hundreds of years of data and I have never seen a failure in this order."

I thought about starting a Gann thread first, but I figured why not make it more general instead... There's been a lot talked and said about W.D. Gann, but reportedly he had an uncanny ability to predict the markets. To what extent any of this can be verified today, I don't know. I need to be careful with copying information from a website, so please feel free to check the sources. This is an excerpt from an interview I read that Wyckoff had with Gann: "One of the most astonishing calculations made by Mr. Gann was during last summer [1909] when he predicted that September Wheat would sell at $1.20. This meant that it must touch that figure before the end of the month of September. At twelve o'clock, Chicago time, on September 30th (the last day) the option was selling below $1.08, and it looked as though his prediction would not be fulfilled. Mr. Gann said, 'If it does not touch $1.20 by the close of the market it will prove that there is something wrong with my whole method of calculation. I do not care what the price is now, it must go there.' It is common history that September Wheat surprised the whole country by selling at $1.20 and no higher in the very last hour of trading, closing at that figure." - Ticker and Investment Digest, Volume 5, Number 2, December, 1909, page 54. Full interview can be found here: http://www.tradingfives.com/gann/wd-gann-interview-1909.htm

Before I go off about this or that concept or idea, let's make clear first that none of this is representative of my own trading, let alone my own personal view about the market. This thread is intended to discuss two fundamentally opposing views: (1) The market is completely predictable and all you need to do is find the right key to decipher its language. But basically the market will do whatever it plans to do, regardless of any 'external influence' or manipulation. In other words, the path of price is laid out in advance. (2) The other one is that the market is unpredictable, but not random. Randomness and unpredictability are not the same, but that's topic for another discussion. The second view is what I think most people would adhere to, and it's also what Douglas says in his "5 fundamental truths": on the one hand "anything can happen" and on the other hand "you don't need to know what's going to happen next, in order to make money of it". Throughout history however, a lot of people have tried to determine what is going to happen next (rather than trade in the moment). Whether or not they were successful and to what extent, is another matter. Everybody knows that from time to time a new method or guru comes along, claiming he has found the secret to the markets. Some people probably have not given the above much thought. Perhaps because they need not have to, and their trading is doing just fine. The more time I studied charts, the more I observed that price moved in a very "orderly" fashion... although there are times where I have no idea what the market is going to do, I still make money by following my plan. On other times, the market acts like if it was destined to this or that. But let's not get into anything too esoteric Thoughts, views, opinions,... all welcome in this thread!

This thread is related and has some interesting questions: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f3/continuous-futures-chart-question-3659.html?highlight=rollover

It's annoying when there's a big offset between the current and the following contract... on the YM both are in line, but the NQ has a 10 point difference. If for example you had your eye on important S/R at 1950, all that changes :\

This might be interesting: http://www.dacharts.com/faq/futures-rollover.htm The following applies to many (if not most) futures contracts especially those from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). * Rollover is 8 days before expiration. * Expiration is the third Friday of each quarter month (March, June, September, December) * The contract letter associated with each month is: March=H June=M September=U December=Z * Rollover is on a Thursday. * Rollover is usually on the second Thursday of the month but will be on the first Thursday if the first day of the month falls on a Friday * Volume shifts to the new contract at market open (09:30 EST) on Rollover day * New day trading or swing trading positions opened on rollover day should use the new contract month irrespective of when you plan to close it. * New swing positions might be better opened using the new contract if opened within a few days of rollover day. * Market myths abound at rollover and expiration. Check the source and confirm the probabilities before believing anything

Nice Soultrader! Qosmio's are very multimedia directed, the HP setup is totally business oriented, it's a different target audience... I think both come very close, the Toshiba has the same 1920x1200 resolution, but also HDMI. The only thing I'm surprised about is they deliver these with two hard disks with only 5400RPM. That's a real shame, that's a true bottleneck. I'd throw them out instantly, especially with so much processing power and internal ram you don't want the hard drives slowing you down. The Toshiba also has GDDR2 instead of the faster DDR3 memory. On the other hand, it has a TV tuner and all onboard... Just in case anybody would start to think otherwise, I don't have HP shares. Only pointing out the differences

That kind of changes the picture... this one is incredible value for money imo. I'd give the HP "best laptop" and the Toshiba "best value for money". The HP has a much more professional graphics card. The Toshiba leaves out the specifics about the hard disk drive (you really need to get a 7200RPM SATA minimum). Finally, the Toshiba has a 17" Widescreen, but it only offers an internal resolution of 1,440 x 900. The HP 17" goes up to 1680 x 1050 or if you go for the Wide Ultra 1920 x 1200 resolution. Now thàt is an amazing res, I can tell you... you won't have trouble putting charts on that screen obviously it'll cost you more... I had an ASUS on my hands once with such a resolution and it's amazing how much information you can put on a screen like that. You need good eyesight though because at 1920x1200 the letters start getting tiny!

Then it comes down to the HP or the Falcon. Imo the HP wins it, because (a) it has a professional nVidia Quadro FX graphics card, only found in high-end workstations, while the Falcon has a Geforce 8700 which is still one of the fastest cards out there but more of a gamers card. (b) That Falcon company only offers return to base warranty, while HP offers an optional Carepack where you can have Next Business Day Onsite service for 3 years for the ridiculously low price of 76£ ex VAT. © The only thing I see about the Falcon which might interest me, is the possibility to have multiple displays connected. But the HP has one external video output as well, so you can attach one external monitor or a TV screen. So you expect us to do the work for you, right? :hmpf: Now, all this advice costs you 10% of the purchase price :o

And what are your personal preferences? (1) screen size (2) battery life (3) performance or portability? Because, unless that Toshiba link is wrong, that model seems strange in your "top 3", it only has a 13.3" screen, it uses shared graphics memory (nooo!), and it's a completely different price category really...