GammaJammer

Haha no worries - looks like you nailed it - good work

Out of interest - what are all those millions of lines close together near the highs on your chart? Couldn't quite make them out. They manually drawn S/R, fibos or what? GJ edit - actually they could be pivot points I'm thinking.

Actually, if you look closely at a totem pole, there is usually a butt-ugly face on it, right near the bottom. That's me

Sea kayacking kicks @ss! Did some on holiday with the girlfriend last time (in the absence of any dinghies we could hire on the beach) - was a good laugh.

I genuinely don't think so. Maybe in the ultra long run, but 100% not in the short term. Sometimes this indicator will be positively corellated with volume, sometimes negatively, and sometimes uncorellated. To me that means any relationship is circumstantial at best, and since it's such a random, artificially created bit of data, I just can't see it as anything other than a mental crutch. Bit like a pair of lucky pants or something GJ

Fair enough - I'm not asking for trust - it's no skin off my nose either way. I just happen to know a fair bit about this subject. There might be a correlation, and it might be that Walter's system works better with this tick volume stuff overlayed, but that in no way proves cause and effect. And for the reasons I outlined, it's unlikely it ever will either. If it works then great, but equally I could develop a system that worked better if you overlayed the volume of blue BMWs going past my window onto it and say that that equated to FX volume in some strange way. The fact is I would be wrong, but I might still be making money. GJ

Sorry to be blunt Walter, but that assertion is absolutely and utterly false I'm afraid, and, while that doesn't necessarily mean your strategy can't work, I think you are potentially placing yourself and others in harms way if you continue to assume that tick volume bears any resemblance at all to actual traded market volume, as it simply doesn't. Why? Ok - let me give you an example; You are plotting a chart of eur/jpy on your charting system. Where is this price derived from? Unless you have an actual trading feed from one of the wholesale ecns (most likely EBS in this example) and you are actually plotting the deals given and paid, all you are getting is bid/offer updates. So when does the bid / offer update? Well, it can update for three primary reasons; 1) Some trading has taken place in the instrument you are tracking, in sufficient size to affect the interbank market's bid / offer 2) There has been a bid / offer change in one of the underlying 'components' of the price (in this case the eurjpy price on your chart feed is almost certainly derived from eur/usd and usd/jpy 3) A certain amount of time has elapsed, and the data auto refreshes. So if you use example 2, there could be all sorts of trading going on in usd/jpy which might cause tick updates in eur/jpy even if there isn't a single sausage going through the market in eur/jpy. What's worse, the better charting packages use 'blended rates' i.e. they take their feed from more than one source (professional data services such as reuters, bank e-commerce feeds etc). And all these rate engines in turn are updating frequently, for the reasons discussed. Even Worse - there are several ecns trading FX, so even if you could somehow get volume data from one (and you don't even get full volume data from EBS unless you pay them an absolute fortune) you wouldn't get the others. And venues such as currenex, Lava etc are, these days, an increasing share of the volume, and definitely non-negligible. EVEN WORSE THAN THAT - sometimes, the most volume is going through when the price ISN'T moving, if eur/jpy is 70/72 say, and I try and sell 50m EUR, normally that will move the price a few pips. But if I run into someone bidding for eur 50m at 70, that bid might absorb ALL of my selling (if I'm lucky). Thus lots and lots of volume going through with minimal or even zero tick update. OK - THE FINAL REBUTTAL - lots of the bidding / offering these days is what is called 'support pricing' i.e. big banks bidding / offering at certain levels not because they really want to buy or sell euros, but because they have comitted to the ecns to support their product. So these bids and offers will be auto generated by algos, and will track the price up and down. And some are smart. Very smart. So if it's 70/72 again, and I'm trying to sell no worse than 70, and maybe I offer at 71, the market is suddely 70/71 (my offer) so the smarter algo will pull it's bid at 70 and replace it maybe at 69 or 68 (as it doesn't want to get hit at 70 in a market where there's already a 71 offer as that's possibly a losing trade). Bingo - another situation with two price updates and NO volume going through. Hope this all makes sense - trust me on this one - tick volume in FX is a marketing ploy by the chart providers only - it has zero and even potentially negative corellation to actual volume in the market. GJ

Blimey. That's all I can say. I sail on occasion myself, and incidents like this always remind one of the need to be respectful and even a little fearful of the open seas. GJ

OK - quick question here - how on earth are you able to calculate a Vwap? Are we talking about futures trading here for FX, or some other form of access? Excuse my potential ignorance GJ

Anyone have something in excel that can calculate this for me (not fussy about format). Have a little project I'm looking at, and want to do it in excel. Thanks GJ

OK - it's your thread mate - will watch and see Not trying to hijack. GJ

If you want to track broad USD movements, you can look at the Dollar Index (although you have to pay exchange fees to get a live feed, unless you want to take the components into excel and do it yourself). In short, there is time to trade this way if you use longer timeframes, but if anyone thinks that the market in cable and eur/usd always moves in exact lockstep over micro timeframes, they are sadly mistaken. If this were the case, EUR/GBP would never move at all for example. The extent to which this is useable will vary intra day (as well as between currencies) depending on all sorts of factors. My $0.02 GJ

Agree to a certain extent, but imho finding / honing that adaptability is far harder than people think. But it clearly seems to be working for you so good luck mate.

I think that's kinda what a lot of people find tough - the market can be v fickle when it comes to what is actually being concentrated on - at some times it's rate differentials, other times it's data, other times it's risk appetite / aversion etc etc. And unless you're sitting at a big shop it's hard to get enough of a scent of what's driving things imho. But I still would be extremely uncomfortable trading without an idea of what's really happening. Technical analyis alone is nowhere near enough of an explanation for me, and imho, without some idea of what's really going on, you're gambling, not trading. Which is fine if you embrace that, but it's not for me. (now cue GJ being shot down in flames .......)

Absolutely, reason I asked today of all days is that imho it's been an interesting mix of factors driving price action today, and someone with just a focus on one out of the three core pillars (fundamentals, technicals and context) would possibly have been a star on one trade, and totally baffled and stopped out next time. GJ

Sure, I just felt it might be useful for people who might be reading who didn't know about this kind of thing to understand exactly how these things are constructed. GJ

Yes, if we're splitting hairs, I agree, but it's very much marketed as far as I can see, as an alternative, proxy measure of volume for people in FX that like such a thing. And a change in the price up one tick and down one tick in FX implies.......nothing. Literally, nothing. Doesn't mean a single sausage went through the market. Equally, could be yards and yards went through. The change in price is much more likely to be because the feed powering the chart is, at some stage in its lifecycle, a blended rate, and thus will update every time there's an update in one of it's 'spoke' feeds. This is especially true of crosses, where each spoke feed would likely update each time one of the dollar legs updates. So in EUR/JPY for example, you could have a flurry of tick updates just because something is going through in EUR/USD or USD/JPY. means nothing to EUR/JPY - might have been no flow at all. But equally, it could actually be that EUR/JPY is moving, and then a volume stat that potentially looked to all intents and purposes absolutely identical could mean something entirely different. SO if you just want to plot how many times the price has changed then great, but personally I can't see the use for it. I don't know anyone at all in interbank / wholesale circles who would give it the time of day. Just my $0.02 GJ

There is such a thing as 'tick volume' on some packages, but it is a laughable approximation of volume. I would guess (not that it can be proved) that the correlation between 'tick volume' and real volume in FX is less that 0.25 personally. Could go into the whys and wherefores of this, but maybe later. I once posted something on it on T2W so maybe I can crib my explanation from there. GJ

Are people on this site pretty much wholly technical, or does anyone look at macro factors, fundamentals, market positioning, geopolitics etc? Just curious GJ

You missed one vital piece of information - London were also closed

Yes think you misunderstood - think he was saying it can GET there (like you say, it IS there) but it ain't gonna STAY there. I think it's an interesting piece myself. GJ

Who cares - gonna be in the pub with some old mates And as for flashy wheels etc, hmmmmmmm.

No fair - I'm still very much stuck on the desk. Nothing going on, still can't leave. Oh well, my own fault for being a wage slave GJ

Can I be really pedantic here and say I don't wholly agree with your assertion. I think that to say supply = resistance is to over simplify the situation. Supply will only constitute resistance if it is in a sufficient quantity, and manifests itself in an appropriate way, to turn or contain the price action. As an example, two different traders could sell a billion EUR/USD and have two very different effects on the market. In both cases supply was the same (a billion euros) but when you look at the chart afterwards, one case would show resistance up at the level where the selling place, while the other very well might not. And this isn't a textbook, theory only example either. I see it happening absolutely every day in the market, for various reasons. And in my own particular market (FX), the absence of hard stats for volume (at least at the sort of intraday, time and sales level we're talking about here) makes this sort of assertion difficult to refute. But I'm having a go at doing so anyway (all in the name of friendly debate you understand - not aimed at anyone in particular, especially not the folks that are making us T2W people welcome at TL). My $0.02 as always GJ

http://www.netdania.com Best online (java) charting imho Also prorealtime.com has end of day (i.e. daily and longer) charts for free. Good charts but trickier to get to grips with. GJ