Trader333

I use Firefox 3 and have not noticed any issues. Paul

I was referring mainly to US Stocks where the volume on IB can be up to 10 times less the actual volume traded. Paul

Actually you have to spend $30 in commissions or you get charged $10 for the data and this only applies to US Stock and Futures data. Other sources of data have to be subscribed to at a cost but Forex data is free. I have not had any issues with the speed of data and have found it to be as fast if not faster than any other data feed when used in real time. Paul

IB data is hopelessly inaccurate for volume so as long as you don't want to use volume in your trading you should be fine. It is more accurate on price though than most other feeds that I have come across. Paul

Poker is something I played many years ago and I have been interested in online poker but never pursued it further. If you set up a forum here then I would be interested. Paul

There does not appear to be anything especially clever about this indicator. What put me off even more was the hype with the guy next to his prestige car which is exactly the same as you see in all of the "Get Rich Quick" adverts. Paul

If you are talking about stocks then Level II was great until decimalisation where any real advantage to trade between the Bid and Ask disappeared. I used to use it extensively but soon learned that it was only of real use to reduce risk specifically at market entry. The strategies I now use are not dependent on that any more and as such I don't use it at all now. Most of the people I know who used it have now moved away from it. Paul

IB are difficult to beat in my view. If you are wishing to trade US stocks on an intra-day basis then you will need to deposit at least $25K Paul

One of the things that has helped me most in my trading is that of position sizing relative to market volatility. This is easy to implement for stocks or forex but not e easy for futures unless you are using large size. This way I can pretty much normalize my risk without worrying about highly volatile markets because I have positioned my trade to take account of it Paul

Why would anyone with an account of that size be interested in mentoring others ? Paul

I know of a 3 part professional NLP recording that was specifically for trading of forex. It takes around 20 minutes a day which is manageable in my view if you feel that this sort of thing can help. Paul

As an alternative have you considered checking yourself into rehab to treat this addiction ? Paul

Any attempt to manipulate a fair traded market will usually fail. If the price of oil is like the tech boom bubble and not ultimately caused by demand being greater than supply then it will go the same way and collapse again. If not then trying to stop it rising in price will quite simply fail in my view. Paul

GJ, Yes I had no idea that it was news related I just got an alert and that was good enough for me. Paul

Hi ztrader, I have been using the Excel Currency Strength program and have found it very useful. I have adapted a few things on it as follows: I have changed the links for the Bid and Ask live data to come from Interactive Brokers because the data from WHC is often way behind reality. It is fine for HOD and LOD (which IB dont provide) but for actual Ask and Bid I have found IB to be better. I have also set up an audible alert so that when the difference in spread is > 6.0 or < -6.0 I get a Buy or Sell sound alert. This means that I don't have to watch the screen and get alerted as soon as a big enough spread is detected. I had a Buy this morning on GBPCHF at 2.03695 and as of this post it is at 2.0522 for +152 and is still giving the Buy alert. I wanted to ask you what the significance of the interest rates are in the sheet ? Paul

I have worked in industry and had responsibility for exactly this kind of issue. Price is not the only consideration when dealing with suppliers. There is quality, service and a whole host of other issues and in many cases price is not a driving factor because the end product was not a cost focused market place. I agree with your Japanese story though. It is well known that almost all luxury watches are now made in China and that only the label is the difference between a cheap and expensive model. I also remember that Rolex decided at one time to double their prices for no reason whatsoever and sales went up which pretty much confirms your comments. Paul

In my view it will ultimately be time dependent. Prices will only fall when there is a lack of buying support rather than lack of actual increased demand. We saw this with the dot com boom as the true demand was not real and as a result the price eventually collapsed. I think that oil is doing the same at the moment because there is a reduced demand compared to 8 months ago when prices were below $80 so why has it suddenly gone up in price when demand has stayed the same or reduced and supply has stayed the same ?. I recently read that there are tanker loads of oil just sitting around in the Gulf states with no imminent need for it. I agree with you though that long term the law of economics will prevail and what often causes prices to keep going up is the frenzy you often see when price and volume spikes on a chart before it goes back down. This is usually everyone panic buying because they think everyone else is onto something. Paul

Thanks ztrader, I have it working fully now using WHC and I will also be running a version using IB data for realtime Bid and Ask (IB dont have HOD or LOD) but I noted a comment that it should not be used as a strategy in its own entirety and that is why I was curious as to what else is needed to enter a trade. Paul

ztrader, When using the Excel version what sort of setup are you looking for to take a trade ? Paul

Fair point and I was only trying to respond to your request for comments on whether the principles used to trade are market-specific or not and the methods involved but as you say I have digressed. Paul

Well I think there may be different interpretations here. What Grey1 has said is that he does not make most of his profit from day-trading and it mostly comes from 1 to 3 day positions and that day trading is just for pocket money. That said in 2006 he posted day-trading results for months and made between $2K and $10K a day in profit all of which can still be seen on the threads. You are right in that he doesn't really like day-trading as such but he is very capable of doing it. I have also seen him day-trade in his own house and it is a pretty impressive method that he uses. Also I don't recall him saying that the Dow would not go any lower (which was back in March) what I remember was him saying that he was closing his Short portfolio because he thought the worse was over and he was opening a Long portfolio instead. He did this publicly and made a fortune out of it along with others who did the same. I know that you have different views to him but in the end it doesn't really matter. I think you are both great traders but do things differently and I do things even more differently than that but I like to be open to how others make money regardless of how they do it Paul

In my view it depends on the timeframe that you may be trading. By this I mean that if you are trading for only a couple of minutes maximum (which is one approach that I use) then I don't take any notice of a chart and do it from the order book. I am in and out very quickly and only rely on the volatility which I can see as the orders move around on a price ladder. As this happens I can see where to enter and exit and pretty much know that I will make a profit 90% of the time. For longer timeframes then yes I agree that a chart is very useful based on testing of support and resistance levels. This is not the only approach though and I know that you are aware of how Grey1 trades which I have also used and is almost entirely based on indicators along with risk diversification. In the time that I have known him (which is over 5 years now) I think that he has only had around 10 losing days in total. Yesterday he gave a live day trading web based seminar that had around 35 people attend. He told us he was going to make $1000 profit and did it with ease. To select potential stocks to trade he uses fundamentals as a first port of call and then uses TA to actually trade them. Paul

A reboot has got it sorted as well as renaming the WHC exe file to MT4. Thanks for the help Paul

Blu-Ray, I hadn't but I have done now but I am still getting the same error. I will reboot and see if it gets better. Thanks Paul

Hi ztrader, I wonder if you could offer some help with MT4. I have installed the WHC version and it is working but when I try and use the currency strength Excel file I get a message "Remote data not accessible, Start MT4.EXE" When I click on OK it says the program is missing. Now I know that the WHC platform is called "terminal" and I have changed the syntax in Excel to reference that but is has not worked. I have also changed the exe name to MT4 but it is still not working. Is it possible to change the database reference in the Excel file ? Only I could not find the code that has it in or maybe something else may help. Any suggestions are most welcome Thanks Paul