Trader333

I know that HP Compaq were considered a good brand and last year I purchased an HP Compaq for my Father who has been happy with it so far. Paul

ztrader, Yes I can see why you prefer the Excel version. I have checked my messages and responded. Paul

ztrader, Is your Excel version one that you have set up and coded yourself or is it generally available ? The reason I ask is that it is an option for me as well. Paul

I know people who repair laptops for a living and service around 4000 a week. So when I was looking around I asked which were the more reliable and they said either Toshiba or Sony. Toshiba is what I have and is cheaper than Sony but the only issue you may have is getting one with XP instead of Vista. I wanted the same so I went out and got one just before you no longer had the choice. I have found it to be great and it is unlikely that you will need one that is spec'd up for gaming. Mine is basic and as long as you keep up the maintenance on it such as defrag, etc you should be fine. Paul

Thanks ztrader and Walter, I am finding all of this to be good. I take your point about volume data but as you say the improvisation seems to be doing well for you. There are quite a few datafeeds that Excel can work with, do you have to backfill or just run it live ? Paul

I agree but he doesn't trade more than 2 contracts and often only 1 on the YM. Also the volume on YM is a fraction of that on ES so if I were going to use multiple contracts I would mostly use ES Paul

Very useful information ztrader, do you measure each currency relative to its own movement for the day as the basis for a trade ? If not how does the currency index work ? Paul

The play is not refreshing back to the mid band, he just takes 6 or 7 ticks off the table in profit from whatever price he gets in at and that is it. I tried it today as an experiment with one of my accounts and made 5 trades, (1 was scratch because I accidently hit buy when I intended to sell) and 4 were profitable with a net profit of 18 points after commission. You have to be very quick with this approach as it is a mini counter trend momentum method which can quickly exhaust. Also I don't see how he is making a living out of this because he trades the Emini Dow (YM) which is $5 per tick. He takes two trades a day and then stops and it appears that he makes around 14 to 21 ticks in profit which is 12 to 19 after commissions. So that equates to between $60 and $95 a day (or £30 to £48 as he is UK based) and that is not enough to live on in my view. Paul

If you have read all the threads then it should be just as successful on a non trending day as any other. On the non trending days it is more likely that the VWAP price will be close to that of the PVP price and on these days you would take a trade at 2SD with the aim of closing out at 1SD or at VWAP. Paul

Why would they not have success at say 2pm EST when the market normally takes off again ? The principle is that in any market at some point there will be a retrace and catching it can give a quick few points of profit. It is almost a micro momentum system and I can see that it should be just as effective at any time that it is used. Paul

In mine and many others view the weak dollar has helped fuel the rise in oil prices. However, there is no real difference in demand compared to that of around 8 months ago when the price was below $80 and in fact demand has declined. In many ways the rise is not unlike the tech boom bubble a few years back. The rise on Friday was directly related to a comment made in Israel by a leading politician that they have no alternative but to attack Iran. This was later refuted by others in Israel and the US so it may well pull back on Monday. Personally I think the rise is not matched by demand and has been sustained by speculators and I have a bet that the price will fall below $100 before the end of this year. It is just a bet though because I learned a long time ago not to try and predict market direction. Paul

Hi Jerry, I have already read "Scaling in and Risk Tolerance" and will apply it when I am happy that I have the basics correct. Previously I have always used a volatility based position sizing strategy so that my risk is consistent for any trade I take. I noted your comment about only becoming consistently profitable when you started using scaling in your trading. There will be some adjustment for me on this as I am not able to use my previous approach to position sizing so a change in mindset is needed which I will work on. Thanks for your replies as I am finding your comments of real use. Paul

Hi Jerry, I would have exited at either the PVP line or 1st Standard Deviation away from entry whichever was nearer at the time. Is that how you would have played it ? Also when you said that I could have entered at the retrace back to the 1st Standard Deviation, would you exit if the trade went against the position at the 2nd Standard Deviation ? Paul

I did wonder about that Jerry so thanks for this. Paul

I decided to try Jerry's approach today and with anything like this I prefer to limit my risk before I am familiar with the method so I decided to try it on the Dow Mini Future (YMM8) with 2 contracts. I have attached two screenshots of my entry and exits and I would appreciate feedback from others who have been using this. The trade was profitable with +8.5 and +23.5 points so even if I did not do things as I should have it has not cost me a loss Paul

Why do you want to do this ? Paul

Jerry, That is great that you have found IB to be OK for volume as that was my only concern and if it works for you then it is fine for me. Thanks also for your comments on Forex which I will apply. Blowfish, I think IB must have sorted this out and the only reason I asked was because back in around 2003 I was using IB as well as eSignal and plotting volume for both on US Stocks. There was a very big difference between what I was reading from IB and that of eSignal at the time. It is great though that my concerns are not an issue any more and I am very much looking forward to applying this approach. Paul

Jerry, Thank you very much for putting together such a comprehensive pack of lessons on using this approach to trading. I have used VWAP extensively in the past to trade US Stocks but not in the same way that you describe here which has given me new knowledge and approaches. I see from some of your videos that you appear to be using IB as a data source into Ensign. Have you found this to be adequate as I know a few years back that the volume data from IB was way out (up to a factor of 10 times actual) ? I am also curious to hear if this can be used effectively for Forex because getting the actual traded volume for Forex is at best very difficult and the correct VWAP completely relies on accurate volume data. Paul

Can you say in what way that it can be useful ? Paul

I have been giving this concept more thought and I am interested to know others view on what I am about to say: When price drifts away from vwap it is likely to come back to it. This applies especially with stocks when a stock price hits 2 standard deviations from the vwap price. If applied to forex I can see the same case. So in the above examples, if a currency is showing generic weakness then it would make sense to me that a high probability trade is more likely when price has drifted in the opposite direction of its weakness from vwap back to the vwap price and especially by 2 standard deviations. Any thoughts ? Paul

Good question GJ because as far as I know there is no reliable volume data for forex and it is essential to have volume to be able to plot vwap at all. Walter as GJ says is this actually futures data ? Paul

Hi thrunner, Can you elaborate as I am curios about this. How would you go about doing this in terms of what indicators would you use ? Paul

Thank you very much Blu-Ray this is appreciated. Paul

Oz.Fx, Thanks for posting the Tradestation ELD file. Is it possible that you can post an ELA or ELS version of this as I use TS2Ki and it cannot read ELD files. Or maybe post the actual lines of code as I can adapt it from there ? Thanks Paul

It was highly unlikely to have any impact because the actual result was pretty must as forecast. Paul