firewalker

The 1220-1225 area would also make for a perfect 50% retracement of the upmove from the low 1160's, which started on the 29th of December. That, and the action on the last day of 2008 has me on the lookout for action around that level.

From what happened premarket so far today, 1245 seems to be more than just a coincidence.

As far as I see, it's the only thread where if you post you can't edit. Even not within seconds...

I have that problem frequently. Logging out and back in usually resolves it. About the chart... (a) how about considering the whole move as a bigger pullback after breaking below 1247-1250? (b) green dot is potential long, but what with resistance so close? © and what's at 1240 hmm...

I've had bad experiences with anything starting with "pseudo-" Besides what does that even mean "pseudo-fractal"... Since you are a moderator, perhaps you can decide with jason what to do with the thread, since I'm pretty sure it's not anywhere near what jason expected of it right now (and I'm partly to blame for that as well). Change the title of this one and let him start over again elsewhere?

If you feel it's out of context, I'll just paste the whole alinea here: "A fractal is a geometric shape that can be separated into parts, each of which is a reduced-scale version of the whole. In finance, this concept is not a rootless abstraction but a theoretical reformulation of a down-to-earth bit of market folklore—namely, that movements of a stock or currency all look alike when a market chart is enlarged or reduced so that it fits the same time and price scale. An observer then cannot tell which of the data concern prices that change from week to week, day to day or hour to hour. This quality defines the charts as fractal curves and makes available many powerful tools of mathematical and computer analysis. A more specific technical term for the resemblance [does not equal exact copy] between the parts and the whole is self-affinity. This property is related [but does not equal] to the better-known concept of fractals called self similarity, in which every feature of a picture is reduced or blown up by the same ratio—a process familiar to anyone who has ever ordered a photographic enlargement. Financial market charts, however, are far from being self-similar." I am only trying to make sure that no incorrect assumptions are taking place. Mandelbrot said stock market charts appear self-similar when transformed via an appropriate anisotropic affine transformation for the level of detail being shown, a concept called self-affinity. Which is again, not the same as self-similarity, and in itself again debatable.

You are asking the wrong questions. When two objects, elements, patterns, charts or whatever exhibit a condition of "non-distinguishability" they are similar, because afaik those two words mean the same thing. And yes, you can show anybody a dozen charts and remove the timeframe and the will look alike. However, self-similarity in the context of fractals is not the same thing which, again, might be the reason there seems to be a lot of discussion. If people would take the effort to find out, they would most likely not be arguing.

Well, perhaps we should see what Mandelbrot himself had to say about the matter. This was most poignant: "Financial market charts, however, are far from being self-similar."(*) And that's all that matters. Lévy distributions, fat tails, chaos theory,... we could go on for days, but the assumption from some people is that markets are fractal in nature, ergo they exhibit the property of self-similarity. This is not the case, and even Mandelbrot acknowledged that. PS: yes I think it's best that we leave jason's thread alone and either move everything over or let him start a new one... (*) "A Multifractal Walk down Wall Street", Benoit B. Mandelbrot, Scientific American, February 1999, pp. 70-73.

Well there's no point in discussing something hypothetical when there a plenty of charts out there each day

You're being paid to vote? :shocked:

According to the Wikipedia definition of a fractal, self-similarity is indeed a necessary condition, which means that the fractal can be split into "parts, each of which are a reduced-size copy of the whole." And that's where I think the misinterpretation takes place, because although the market may exhibit similar patterns along different time frames, the element of recursion does not take place. See the home-made chart Just my 2c.

If you click on 'these sellers' you are redirected to the same seller I mentioned

Try http://stockspeculationclassics.com/

You can never have more buyers than sellers, because than no transaction could take place. You can have 50 people wanting to buy a stock at $75 and 50 wanting to sell it at $80, but unless there's a mutual agreement on price, no transaction will take price. The tape is a registration of all the transactions taking place. Trades that are not filled do not appear on the tape, so by definition you can only see an equal amount of contracts bought and sold.

Having a look at the average true range can also help determine which market suits you best. It's true that the YM is "only" 5$ per point, but it will move around 20 points at the same time the ES will move around 2 points, which in the end means the same amount of money lost or gained. If you want to take a safe route, you might want to check out the ETF's first, instead of the futures. The DIA, SPY en QQQQ all show the same price action, but you'd have to mess up pretty badly to lose a lot of money. While if you start on the futures, you better have a solid plan tested and worked out before putting real money on the line. Just my

NYSE: Up Volume 3,546,250,361 (87%) Down Volume 501,057,332 (12%) Unchanged Volume 28,447,590 (1%) NASDAQ: Up Volume 1,324,206,097 (90%) Down Volume 129,504,182 (9%) Unchanged Volume 10,769,831 (1%)

Tickets for the show on Monday now available. Limited front seats.

He's lucky we had such a nice trending day that kept me in a good mood today... You don't want to catch see me on bad days!

It could be me, but the hybris displayed here seems a bit misplaced, especially if you take this into account: "I have been trading for a few months now and at first i did take losses and my account with cmc markets got maxed out a few times. It's always game over when you get the liquidation notice e-mail from them lol. At first looking back at it, i was pretty much just gambleing on how i thought the market was going to react to the news on yahoo finance lol. I also noticed that the dow would shoot off when it first opens most of the time. So if i read some good news on yahoo, i just went long on it at 2:30. Obviously i didn't last long." Both texts are from the same person. The first from today, the other one from 18 months ago.

Given what I've seen from your trades, I'm actually pretty sure most people here have a higher ROI than yours. What you're saying is that anyone here is not anywhere remotely as good as you, otherwise they would not be trading their own accounts. Pretty bold statement for someone who has only done the talking here... That's okay. I can wait until February. After all, a chart is a chart.

The discussion is indeed pointless, until you illustrate what you are saying with a couple of live examples. I have shown enough examples and asked it many times now, along with some other traders in this thread, but it's probably easier to keep waffling about bias here and bias there. As always, shooting the messenger makes more fun than shooting the message, but I've become used to that... And yes I have been trading full time ever since I quit my daytime job, over two years ago now. During 2008 there were five weeks where I did not end up net profitable (three of the during July, the rest around holidays). Not that it's relevant, but I didn't want to leave that unanswered. The zero's are irrelevant also. It's not difficult to make millions if you're trading billions. However, it is highly probably that your ROI & expectation is a lot lower then mine. Good trading. Since I have provided dozens, if not hundreds of examples, (most of them chart analysis at the end of day of actual trades put on live during the day), I think I'm quite entitled to make those statements. If you want to put your money where your mouth is, and show us how any information outside of the chart can come up with a higher edge than what most of the purely technical traders around here have, then we well see you on Monday in the chatroom. If you're not there, you'll have answered all our questions. Good weekend.

If you have been following this forum frequently enough and if you have been visiting the chatroom over the course of the last year, then you would not be asking these questions. I see no point in a personal debate about credibility, because for all we know everything you say about the millions and the billions could be nothing more than thin air. So far we have learnt this: (a) if you trade without fundamentals (or your definition of) you are two steps behind the rest (b) if you make money, but not make billions you are a failure as a trader © explaining any of this FA-approach would take too much work, too much time, and most people wouldn't get it Right. And I bet I can make it rain tomorrow, I just can't tell you where yet. Fwiw, the only reason I'm still here on a Friday night is because I have been long since the buy signal at 16:10 (GMT+1) and have yet to close out my position. +30 ES points for just under 6 hours might not be your idea of "profits per time invested", but if I recall correctly the only trades I ever saw you put on have been +2's and +3's, perhaps a +5 max (In case anyone wants to have a dig, it's all in the Live Indices Trading thread). The invitation to come to the chatroom and enlighten the rest of us, still stands. I hope you bring your T-shirt.

We have time, after all we're sitting at home. And since you are not trading in the first half of January, a couple of hours worth of posting won't make that much difference.

Well... one has to wonder what you're doing right now then... :missy: Unless a trader is scalping, there is no reason to stay glued at the screen every second of the day. But I'm afraid we are deviating from the topic, whether traders are retail, institutional, professional is irrelevant. What matters is that the information you need to trade profitable is in the chart. PS: Note again how today economic news was bad (manufacturing index at 28-year low), but the market somehow mysteriously found a way to digest that and is currently trading well above the previous day's closing price. It would be even greater if those that do trade funnymentals come to the chatroom and explain what the market is doing in real-time

Did you have too much to drink on New Year's Eve? There will always be someone behind those computers, perhaps not all the time, but some of the time.