Kiwi

As I read this I liked the tone of your post but found my face screwing up. A little like the pain some seemed to feel when the CarCo bailout failed (I went short spi and stw to my immense pleasure). But now the momentum has eased and posting time is here again. What you're saying has elements of right (hence my agreement) but critical elements of wrong (hence my uncontrolled facial spasm). Lets agree that picking tops and bottoms is not the easiest way to take money - so I don't do it either. Its an unfortunate ego driven habit that most pickers would be better of abandoning. Lets agree that indicators can work. But here came the first facial spasm. You see its not just about lag. Lag puts one in late and out late which is a problem. But it can be overcome. The other bigger problem is that there is a reason for the lag - its the smoothing. And smoothing removes good learning opportunities. You see, when I watch the price bars I am looking for length, which ones get more or less volume than in the last push, the time between bar breaks and the general form of the retracement. In these subtleties lie the difference between 50% win rates and 80% win rates. So when your stoch or rsi or dblestoch or whatever presents a clear clean actionable signal - it does it at the expense of smoothing out valuable information. In the next paragraph you talk about raising of the old nose. And it does happen a lot. But do you know why? Often its because the more experienced trader who has long since moved thru the indicator zone goes "oh god, another newbie passionately extolling the virtues of <subst indicator here>; I wonder how long it will take for them to get past it? Will they ever? Is it worth pointing things out? Or even trying?" And up goes the nose. The trouble with indicators is this: - it takes you away from observing how price behaves at or near or on the way to support and resistance - it takes you away from observing how volume might or might not give you clues - it takes you away from noticing the subtle nature of retracements, their progression thru a trend, and the little differences between, say, SPI and STW. - it removes information - it adds lag. Now, I've fueled indicatoritis and still do sometimes when I get bored and write a little code. I've written 1000s of lines of indicator code for Sierra Chart and even added a new one in a moment of boredom earlier this week. But. I don't use them. The day my trading really started to improve was the day I started removing them one by one. The finer improvements have included better and better observation plus gradually honing my key trading tool - me! It ain't easy. But it can be done. And there don't need to be any indicators involved. Confession: I still have one ema, because I'm too lazy to draw trendlines and channels and I just love to take that ema bounce that follows a larger consolidation in a trend.

To avoid notifications of posts in private groups (which are annoying) go to the Private Groups area and choose to Ignore the entire Forum.

Yes, markets around the world follow each other to some extent and the overnight markets everywhere are even more affected when they are drifting without news. No, its not the overseas traders trading ES that determine the effectiveness of various potential s&r its the traders who are buying and selling es in response to worldwide movement. They may be overseas but they are most likely to be in institutions or situations where the US markets are their concern. So they are also paying attention to s&r when they trail world activity. If you look at the aussie spi which is a tiny market compared with es you will see that it still trades to its own resistance points during night trade as it follows first europe and then the US but ... its not because the US is stopping to avoid pulling spi thru s&r is it? Having said that there are likely to be major horizontals for the ES that will hold significance to a good proportion of international traders and when approached my result in reversals. But they are rarely dominant in discussion or decision.

Let us have a report on marketdelta after you have been using it in live trading for a couple of months Jean. I know a couple of people who put quite a few months into it and neither of them use it now.

I've used all of the front ends here. I ended up with ZeroLineTrader because it was flexible and powerful like Ninja (both better than bracket) and quite cheap. Recently I've dropped zlt as well because I'm trading directly from my charts instead. My charting/trading is Sierra Chart.

I've thanked Steve's post and db's post. Why? DbPhoenix correctly points to the merits of a forum devoted to interpreting Wyckoff's work and how to use it. And I strongly agree with his points, as one who has eliminated element after element from my trading until I am very close to W's form. But, one of the problems with forums is that people who have done the work and developed their trading increasingly get little from them. Unless you take a guru position there is less and less to be gained from the boards (no insult meant: someone who is expounding a particular school of thought for the benefit of those who might want to learn). Steve is one of those guys who offers an extra bit of insight which I appreciate and which keeps me here. I may never add the insights to my trading but contemplation of them is an enjoyable activity. Consideration of their relationship to what I have been doing is potentially a productive one. So, Db and atto (mods here?), perhaps you could start a thread or set of threads appropriately titled to move those posts and discussions that are (poorly?) related to Wyckoff's core material. Although this discussion is "off topic" I for one find the resulting discussion to be more interesting and informative than most other posts here. Kudos to you all

I found this post on "Re: Trading The Wyckoff Way" interesting and have nominated it accordingly for "Topic Of The Month December, 2008"

Anyone who says "you need fundamentals to succeed" is wrong. Fx is actually easier for a technical trade than stocks/futures because trends persist so well. The advert quoted is just another way of getting suckers for yet another forex course. Classic sales technique, induce doubt, create a need, gets someone nodding, and provide the can't lose, give me dollars now solution. Bump: To be honest I am a little suspicious of WarrenForex's motivations. I just spent 10 minutes looking at his 25 posts and they make grand claims of performance, suggested a number of times that he will start a fundamentals thread here, etc etc. But look more like a subtle solicitation for business than the activities of a normal board member. Warren, why not put up and start that thread. Bump: To be honest I am a little suspicious of WarrenForex's motivations. I just spent 10 minutes looking at his 25 posts and they make grand claims of performance, suggested a number of times that he will start a fundamentals thread here, etc etc. But look more like a subtle solicitation for business than the activities of a normal board member. Warren, why not put up and start that thread.

"unless there is something more exotic missing here" You missed the most important, waiting. What one does in waiting and the quality of ones waiting sets up the entry, manage, exit quality.

Yes Blowfish. Affirmations (for the reasons above and rational emotive therapy plus later cognitive work), disputation (ret + cognitive), and rehearsal (visualization etc as part of cognitive approaches including trauma therapies) have all become part of mainstream psychological therapies. They do tend to get mixed up with questionable new age and nlp approaches but the basics are there and they can work. The talking out loud and listening for your stories has more to do with psychoanalytic work like Denise Shulls. There you are searching a little deeper to find out what is driving your incorrect actions. One of the tricks is to remember is that one of the reasons there are so many approaches is that at any one time one approach may not work on you. Finding the right one / ones is part of the path to growth that trading provides us.

Thanks for thanking me --- you can do it again for giving you something to think about. :doh: I largely agree with you but I don't here because there are a couple of times when affirmations work (in my experience) and they are called to action by this approach. 1. When you say an affirmation in the midst of trading it pulls you to your forebrain (you have to recall it and say it out loud) so it pulls you away from carrying out actions generated by your emotions and conditioned responses. 2. When you say an affirmation and you get a "wrong" feeling at that time its an important affirmation because in some way you disagree with it. Challenging that and exploring it until you can say it without the feeling is one way to eventually (time, hard work) change a "belief." Said belief can just be an unexamined habit or some bad thinking. 3. Rehearsal as part of it will replace old patterns (see steenbarger etc). So, its worth doing. IMHO one of the (humbling) things about developing yourself through trading is that so much doesn't work the way you'd hope. You could do the affirmations and it mightn't work. And another time after achieving something else it might work. The trick imo, once one has an edge that can deliver without continuous tinkering, is to get the you part of your edge working. I do note that I failed to say "do it during trading." I think that having scripts for various points in your trading process is one thing that can help (some) people a lot by keeping the brain working properly, focusing you on what you need to focus, and keeping you aware of patterns of error that you have exhibited previously. One little thing at a time.

Adding to it tlfx I did a "liquidity chart" by multiplying the percentages out to give "pair liquidity". The raw data is at the top. The information at the bottom shows how liquid the pair is compared with what I would consider the minimum tradable liquidity audusd. I always laugh when people talk about trading nzdaud. Its a little like wanting to trade the lumber future - the trends look great but liquidity/slippage and in the case of lumber, lock limit costs are very very high. No offense if you insist on trading it of course

The other thing you might try is to tackle fear head on. Figure it out. Dispute it. Work out what the worst that can happen is and try to accept it as ok. Then work out what is likely to happen and accept that too. Before you start the day say: I choose not to fear losing money; and I accept that losing money is a part of the trading business. Say it over and over. Visualize doing it. Breath and relax. If you feel discomfort try to figure out why and persuade the discomfort that there is a better rational way of looking after your own best interests. Then go back to saying it again. Also accept the fear of losing the maximum amount you've allocated before you stop trading for the day. Finally try to learn to love your losers (yeah, love them, those cuddly little suckers). I choose to love my losing system trades because you can't have a profitable trading business without losers. I love my losers and each one is just a down payment on futures profits. I don't think you have to love "off system losers", just the system compliant losers. Thoughts.

et I don't know for sure what's causing it but here is a suggestion. Download the Audacity (free) voice recorder or grab a tape recorder or dictaphone. Place your order as before. Switch the recorder on. Sit on your hands (yeah, physically, and stay there). Describe (out loud so you hear yourself) what you are thinking and feeling. Remember to breath slowly. Keep talking. Later analyse what you said. Over time you will figure out what the issues are. But in the mean time describing it and naming your emotions will reduce them and their effect. Personally I'd change my target. Aim to take X trades that meet your criteria each day. Add a further aim to manage each one by your clearly written rules. Let the cash take care of itself (I don't believe you ever have to focus on cash --- just have good process goals that will ultimately give it to you).

What about the idea of characterizing markets? My approach to trading, which has a lot to do with Wyckoff's methodology is very simple. Except it's not. Why? Because I characterize the markets I trade and then apply what I learn from that process to fine tune my entries, targets and exits. So I trade SPI (aussie futures), STW (taiwanese futures on the singapore exchange) and HSI (Hong Kong futures) and in each case, Wyckoff's methodology can be applied. But each has a slightly different character reflecting the mix of pro/retail and nationalities trading them. Is it still W if you tune entries and exits to the historical behaviour and current trends of a market?

I had always believed that the majors were crosses with USD which equates to the available currency futures and the use of the USD as the standard currency up until the rise of the EUR recently. Below is Wikipedia's extract from the Triennial Central Bank Survey (December 2007), Bank for International Settlements. So the majors become EURUSD, JPYUSD, GBPUSD, CHFUSD, AUDUSD and, given that the large players are now trading EUR directly against JPY, EURJPY. Other USD crosses might technically be majors (with reduced spreads) but you can see by % traded why the spreads rise dramatically away from EURUSD. All others, GBPJPY, included must be crosses.

Heres a zig zag then a hull(4) of the zz and then a hull(6) of the hull(4) (green)

Why not just double smooth price then. Try a 3 ema followed by a 3 ema of the 3 ema (or sma for that matter). Or a hull ema. That will look like price. Or if you want the extensions use a zig zag or a zig zag smoothed with a 3ema.

An oscillator diverges for a simple reason (well its simple for a good oscillator). When price doesn't have as much velocity (measure vertical move/number of bars) then an oscillator will not push as far as price because in some way its a 1st (or maybe 2nd in come cases) derivative of price. So by definition oscillators will diverge. Will divergence be meaningful? Quite probably not ... slowing down doesn't mean that something is going to stop and reverse does it?

Gann stuff ... retail $1800 usd ... as so many of this type of book do. Get it now before a mod deletes the post

Sam, Here is something that might or might not help ... ask what the stoch is telling you. A stoch is basically a measure of how close the close is to the most recent X day range (high-low). So for a 6,3,3, stoch then 100% would imply that close was at the top of the 6 days. Its smoothed (3) and smoothed again (3) which give it lag which can actually be helpful also because it removes noise. So, I'd suggest studying the stochs behaviour with this in mind. You might find after a while that you figure out what price move creates the stoch behaviour you are looking for. Even why it works sometimes and not other times. Just a though. Note: not a substitute for a solid un-secondguessable plan but might remove one more fuzzy variable.

It depends on what history granularity you charting requests. 5 second is the finest and SierraChart only requests that when you are in a 1 hour or below situation. 30 second is used by SC for longer term backfill requests. If you are backtesting a system based on ib tick data you need to use the same fill you will use live ... ie live. But to be frank if you want to test based on tick data you had better pay the money and get a feed that provides you true tick data live and backfill.

Good article. One of the most important things Tim does is not call a median line valid until a test proves it so. I don't think I completely got that when I was interested in MLs.

21+34= + 34 = (teach a man to fish )

One of the brokers most used by day traders is Interactive Brokers.