Kiwi

When it opens it will no longer be limit down (unless it moves). There is an overnight limit (which is where it is now stuck) and a larger day limit (which is somewhere else (i don't trade us markets)).

Hmmm ... cant complain about my own post. Someone please complain so that the mods notice. add prdfatima. Mods. T2W has been bombarded by changing nicks over the last two days. I think they all have the same ip address or subnet. Sound like these b'stards have moved here. Readers. Please add the name of anyone who pm's you to this thread.

Just got a spam pm from the twat. advertising his site.

It might be that the incremental millions required each day to put the pressure up do come from amateurs (or at least, not currency trading professionals). Perhaps it is caused by perceptions of value from business people and individuals fleeing certain markets.

This is a good point brownsfan. An interesting one for me because I am concerned that after this bottom we will get a dramatic reduction in market participation and return to the daily ranges (and maybe lower liquidity) of 2002/3 or earlier. In this case waiting for price confirmation may give up too much of the move (I like markets with a daily range of 60-100 points to give me profitable price action). In this case we may need to anticipate reversal at the mas/s&r more rather than wait for price confirmation. I am thinking about scaling in strategies in case my preferred markets contract significantly. I found this to be the case with N225 up until the recent increase in volatility and suspect it is true whenever daily ranges drop into the 30-40 point range. .

Also look at the bund. It trades a lot like ESTX50 but (was) slightly trendier.

How you treat them depends on what you need from them. There is an old management dictum that your performance will reflect your measurement (e.g., if you want customer satisfaction you'd better measure it, not just the bottom line). For me, a loss of any scale is a loss, and a win a win. But that's because I don't have a scratch trade policy. If I chose to scratch trades and treat those trades as "non-trades" I might record them as a separate category (win, loss, scratch) so that I could more accurately measure and change my performance.

Let us know how that goes Jesse (Value in Time). I'd love to see a review. Also your opinion of its effectiveness on futures, small caps, big caps etc. Its one of the few books I've seen recently that looked really interesting.

Lets get real. The CCI does provide the basis for working trading if its used properly. First: what is required? People trade with the trend or countertrend. Lets say that trading with the trend is easier (longer moves, and more forgiving because if you get your exit timing wrong the retracement frequently won't reach your stop before the move continues, although obviously a trend will finish or do a larger timescale retracement at some time). When you trade with the trend you either hang on trailing stops or you exit at targets that (for most people and strategies) should be at least twice as big as your planned losses. So, can Woodies' use of the CCI help with this? Yes. Its a trend following indicator (its just the current price minus a CCI length simple moving average divided by a normalizing factor (so that reaching 200 is similar to reaching the 2sd bollinger band ... similar)). If you wait until its above zero for a while then the chance is you have an up trend. If you wait for a pullback to zero or a little below you have a pullback of sufficient magnitude to feed liquidity into continuation. So you buy. Then you have to exit. How? When it hits the 2sd bollinger (200cci) or when it pulls back from that perhaps? etc etc So basically Woodie has taken standard reasons for entering and exiting a trade and framed them around a 14sma and 6sma based indicator. They can work. Do most people succeed with them? No. Do most people succeed with any trading method? No. Is it the best method? No. Most would do far better understanding trend, support and resistance, and price action (and where it and volume action are relevant) than messing with the cci. But is it that wcci doesn't work? No. So what has to change? Study price based methods and yourself. In simplicity and understanding lies the holy grail.

Its interesting db that in Australia they keep saying "there are no subprime loans here (or alt a for that matter)" but we had: - mortgage brokers springing up everywhere - people maxing out their credit cards as part of the house purchase - plenty of "buy now or you'll never be able to get in So our houses kept rising into late 2007 in some areas. The strangest thing is that although "average" houses are down now even ignoring currency effects the big drops are at the high end. Beach side properties have been immune until recently and we've just had reports of sales at 1.1 and 4.1 million under the last sale price on two properties in my area. Plus the school trip to Italy is losing students, presumably as parents assess their risk. We have been coasting on the China affect with CEOs and Polititicians saying "China's growth will keep us growing with the Mineral boom." As late as last Monday the Prime Minister was claiming immunity because his pals in China were saying "she'll be right." The funny thing was that the Australian Newspaper carried a small report that the smaller miners were being told by their small Chinese buyers to expect order cancellations. And a week later the hype has died.

Damn youtube; I've lost my interest in the markets; these are good: If you're feeling sympathy ... you have to watch the second one. LMAO.

Borrowed from jacarob1 in the joke of the day thread. Too funny.

Lets get the frame right here. When bankers decide that they are swashbuckling risk takers --- they deserve whatever evil comes their way. Have you heard of a lot of bank CEOs who are giving their bonuses back?

Remember that Tim says of the mid line --- 80% chance of reaching it. Its not really a bounce target ... just as likely to slide down it for a bit and maybe continue. Although things are feeling pretty extended today. Aussie AORD closed the day at -7.14% and the week at -14.2%

I can't help agreeing with the average american that a bunch of CEOs etc have been overpaying themselves at everyone else's expense. I'd like to see them exposed to the downside of their companies' performance rather than just the upside. Over here in Aus I saw a bunch of those b'stards running their banks like risk machines and all I could think was "I remember 87 and when they went down the last time." This time "it's the hedge funds' fault" and the government bails them out! On a lighter note, these came over IRC while the SPI was pushing -6% for the day (and what a glorious day it has been): CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer. CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer. BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius. BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex. VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower. P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing. BROKER -- What my broker has made me. STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell. STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock. STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves. FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected. MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks. CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet. YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share. WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Potash @ $240 per share. INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse. PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

This isn't really right/the point. 1. The value of a futures contract isn't the margin --- it's the price. Margin is just something we put up to be in the business so in a sweater business we'd pledge our car or part of a t-bill to show that we had credit to be in the sweater business (given the leverage you could buy a lot of sweaters if you pledged a car). 2. You don't have to eventually sell a futures contract back if you roll it over. The issue is that a futures contract is a right to own a sweater. You put up surety (margin) to assure the vendors that you'll pay them if you stuff up. And if you want to keep "owning" the sweater at the end of a contract you rollover (sell/buy) from one contract to the next. Sure the analogies are imperfect but it is an auction market so they are not as imperfect as suggested in that post.

An interesting article from a guy who does seem to be an honest teacher of simple principles. One thing the first picture illustrates that Bo doesn't raise is that although his mas just form a chop zone, key support and resistance regions still provide profitable opportunities to trade. . .

A good question. And the answer is ... drum roll ... because the purpose of an entry is different to that of an exit. :crap: At least, that is how I treat them. I enter when I have a high probability that a move will continue in the direction (and magnitude) of my target before it falls back in the direction (and magnitude) of my stop loss. So an entry is about probabilty*magnitude of target move minus or divided by probability*magnitude of loss move. An exit on the other hand has different aims. My exit is essentially based on a high probability that the planned forward motion is ending (but much lower than the probability required for me to enter). I take (repeated) chunks out of trends so my entry is with the trend, has the above probabilities and is taken cautiously. My exit is "against the trend", doesn't care if there is trend continuation afterwards (I'll either catch it or not) and is taken with the enthusiasm of a long time profit enjoyer.

It depends how much you know about computers. If you know enough, build it yourself. My pc and my eldest's are my "design" and they rock. If you need superb performance in a multiscreen communications platform and don't know enough (or have a huge ego helped by spending silly money on a custom job in some cases I'm sure) then buy the custom trading computer. Some people need this extra help. Some people probably trade better because of the extra confidence it provides. But I've just bought another dell laptop and I'm sure their performance standalones are good too ... just get a bit of help insuring you have the power to drive as many screens and apps as you need if you have "special needs."

Interestingly, despite the chart with all the countertrend trades and the use of the RSI and the bollinger bands in an attempt to shore up the traders ability to determine where the candlestick patten is likely to be meaningful in the above example, the James16 thread is pretty good. James went on to form a paid private community though. I suspect the candlestick threads here would give similar information without the risk of being polluted by forexfactory indicatoritis. Also Trader_Dante set up a very good forex pin bar thread last year. Dante uses support and resistance rather than indicators to determine "good" points to look at the price action (pinbars) and is somewhat longer timeframe than the chart shown above so I think a newbie would get a lot more value from it.

Nice story James. I've been at it a bit longer. Mainly as an observer of manic behaviour in 1987 (where New Zealand had financially deregulated and thus received a much heavier fallout from the crash than the US or Australia while the mess was cleaned up and the public gradually forgot the pain --- women do get pregnant more than once). Most of the guys at work were investing in Judgecorp, Brierly's and Goldcorp, turning the Videotext terminals on each day to find out how much they'd gained by morning tea. I was busy paying off my first mortgage. My boss borrowed money from his mother and maxed out his bankcard to buy shares. NZ was STEAMING in August 87 ... steaming. Two out of three of those companies died after the crash - funny how the financial guys can really screw it up. In 2000 I was telling everyone I knew about stop losses. Do you think anyone I used them? I had friends buy Cisco within a $ of the top and hold for a 90% decline. Some of the brightest people I knew. I met a smart MBA on a plane who had just invested millions of $$$ in high tech companies he'd just visited in California for NZ's wealthiest family. He didn't have stop losses either. Its hard to be a trader in an up market when stupid people sometimes do better than you do. Its hard in the down market when everyone knows you're making money and they are not. And worse still - why didn't you tell your friends and family it was about to happen? Why? Kiwi

Another view: CNN -Glenn Beck

The game is rigged blue. By you. Because its not like anything you've succeeded at in the past: - you don't have to work hard to succeed - working harder doesn't necessarily make it easier - your emotions and what you do because of them seem to hinder rather than help you etc etc We seem to be jumping to solutions too quickly here. I'd suggest we stay in the problem space a bit longer. Why? Because there is a chain of things you need to be doing right to succeed in this hardest easy game in the world and any one can cause failure. One basic thing you need is a method with positive expectancy after expenses. While one is in the "having trouble" stage that method needs to be something that you can't second guess - what mark douglas calls the mechanical stage. So, questions: 1. Does your method consistently make money with hindsight (when u review charts). What's the ratio of money won vs lost? 2. Does the method live up to that in paper trading? If not why not? 3. Is the method mechanical (if x happens then y happens I will do z)? After you answer those questions here then try this. Something you might want to read follows. Read it. And as you do so post your reactions to it and how well and where it fits your experience. http://www.precisefutures.com/free_doc/doc_1.html

It makes little difference to me - I trade while you sleep - and who's interested in trades that average less than 10 minutes anyway. But the idea that they don't need to be private seems reasonable to me.

I often wonder whether the clues are there at all. Part of that is that I suspect that a lot of so called "smart money" is actually a little stupid. It seems to me that the reason that smart money enters before I do is that, being bigger, they can't wait for my opportunities (or they wouldn't fill). In the case of the Sept 23 chart I'm reminded of the adage that "the best moves come when participation is minimized." I really like to trade situations that follow an overall trend but see people join, place their stops, and then get stopped out. In that situation there is a lot of extra liquidity available to get in when the trend recommences. In the case of your chart the second leg is steep and breaks any stops on the 3/4 waves up from 19:30 and any close stops on the bottom around 1186.70. So, I wouldnt claim any magical perception of what was going to happen but the breaking of all those probable stops does free up a lot of liquidity to jump on the next days up move.