Kiwi

Don't worry about it James. If some fool introduces it in the US market you'll still have bund, estx50, dax, the hsi and the nikkei for some great trading.

If you're building a system now you should go with a Core2Duo ... even just get the cheapest one (E6300). Also get the dual channel ram to give the two processors maximum flexibility. P4s were never great anyway and are now pretty much obsolete (the core2 was built from the P3s design). A trader will have more than just tradestation running and even if TS is only single threaded TS will run on 1 processor while other things will run on the other. WSAM, if its using a lot of ram something has to move the data around the ram ... and thats the processor. The e6300 is not expensive. I built a system at Xmas with an e6600, 2G of dual 800MHz ram and all the normal stuff including widescreen monitors and had paid for it a few days later. Nothing is processor bound or ram bound now. If your processor is lightly loaded by all means just improve what you've got. Be careful about mixing slow hard drives with fast ones because, when on the same cable, they'll be limited to the slower speed.

" Professional \Pro*fes"sion*al\, n. A person who prosecutes anything professionally, or for a livelihood, and not in the character of an amateur; a professional worker." A professional trader is: - making money consistently (ie doing the job well) - knowledgeable and competent - not likely to be left behind by the vagaries and variations in the markets.

Beware of text messages from outlook ... you might find that the receiver has to pay for them and gets pretty sore with you if you use up their account.

Yep, Tradestation: the tool of vested interests or just tools, full stop.

A hint: try using mas as support and resistance not as indicators.

I use Sierra Chart for charting (does everything up to full market profile with advanced package. Costs a bit over $12 per month. For order entry, when I left Ninja Trader I went to Zero Line Trader which is a lot cheaper at $89 per year ... there is a trial and also a 3 month subscription ZeroLine Trader

I have access to all of them with my Interactive Brokers account. HSI has no internals but I believe Nikkei has some ... I trade straight price patterns for HSI and with their trendiness would do the same with Nikkei and KOSPI. Both of the last two respond well to market profile and I understand from Midknight and Bolter that Nikkei is pretty good with Market Delta as well (but they don't use IB data for that as the snapshot isn't conducive to the MD analysis)

After a number of years I have just reread Douglas's Trading in the Zone. What I realize is that I have a similar issue. I have intellectualized probability but when I am trading I do not believe it at a deep level. I don't recognize that this setup has a 60% winrate so I should expect 4 out of 10 entries to fail. So, like most traders I try to improve the odds by learning more about the markets or somehow discarding those setups I think will fail (lol). This might resonate: "It's the ability to believe in the unpredictability of the game at the micro level and simultaneously believe in the predictability of the game at the macro level that makes the casino and the professional gambler effective and successful at what they do. Their belief in the uniqueness of each hand prevents them from engaging in the pointless endeavor of trying to predict the outcome of each individual hand. They have learned and completely accepted the fact that they don't know what's going to happen next. More important, they don't need to know in order to make money consistently. Because they don't have to know what's going to happen next, they don't place any special significance, emotional or otherwise, on each individual hand, spin of the wheel, or roll of the dice. In other words, they're not encumbered by unrealistic expectations about what is going to happen, nor are their egos involved in a way that makes them have to be right." I am just about to run a few cycles of his exercise to see if I can improve my performance. I'll let you know how it goes.

James, Given that all currency pair movements during asian hours derive mainly from the yen component then you might as well just do the one with the most liquidity ... yen/usd? But if you normally trade eminis why not trade an index future during asian hours? HSI, KOSPI, NK (3 variations), STW and SPI would all be good depending on your need for depth and desire for trendiness.

No Tingull. That's what was said at the top of the thread. I think my answer was much more creative ... and remarkably similar to the system for TC2000! No indicators or as little as possible is Niolap not Kiss.

No, KISS uses the %K Indicator of the Simple moving average Stochastic The parameters should be varied with timeframe. Use 5x the signal parameters for an overall trend reading.

To me its like the New Market Paradigm that Walt Downs put together. The bollinger contraction is essentially volatility declining which means that when a breakout occurs it is more likely to continue (volatility expansion/contraction being cyclic).

Yes dctrader ... if you ever want to see this happen then watch the Hang Seng Futures in action (HSI on IB, free data). Its a master class in manipulation but extremely tradable once you get past that.

XP is great. My E6600 duo with 2GB of fast ram is happy to stay with XP. The true techies who've been upgrading to vista are saying "at least 4 GB of ram" ... and don't forget that this implies the computer has to move all this stuff around to use the extra RAM (time). The weird thing is that all these laptops are now coming out with Vista and 512MB. And vista won't play high quality legitimate video with as good a resolution as you can get with XP. Vista: "You can't always get what you want."

You could probably trade the new mini-nk in osaka in the after hours timeframe. Its small, liquid, honest, and has nice trends on (say) 5min bars. Also market profile etc apparently work well with the Nk. IB will let you trade it or the SGXNK but you need to check whether its open for USA nians yet.

Thanks James. Notouch, Agreed that Ensign's a nice package especially if you like Andrews Pitchforks or the extensive fib extension products that are built in. If on a budget (or just looking and testing; or looking for a really good Market Profile package) then Sierra Chart is also well worth considering.

Soultrader, I don't know why you choose to let brokers troll the board. That's how people like Woodie lost his soul and his reputation - inviting the sharks in to feed on the weak swimmers. Personally I think its spam so I choose to leave this board while people like naik are welcome. IMO you shouldn't invite the predators in to prey on the weak. But its your board. CU.

1. Stop trading with money NOW 2. Paper trade until you find a method you are winning consistently with. Although we all did it, its stupid to waste your capital while you are searching for a method still. STUPID Learn patience. One element is being patient enough to trade on paper until you have no less than three winning weeks (really winning not just scraping in with a bit of luck). Another element is being patient enough not to use money until you find a method that works with you. Another element is being patient while waiting for a trade. STOP now. Be patient. Find a method. Paper Trade until its second nature. Then work thru any psychological issues after you move to cash. Your stake is way too small to waste it until you have a consistent method and a solid trading plan. Money management just creates a slow drip of blood as you cut yourself with a small knife.

No, you don't need (or want IMO as a non-US centric trade) to go to Tradestation. If you get Sierra Chart then you can get excellent Market Profile charts from your IB data. It will also let you plot your pivots, tick trin etc as prettily as you might want. SC is at Sierra Chart - Financial Market Charting and Trading Software and heres an example (with some extra scribbles) of SC market profile charts

Here it is in C++ BaseDataIn 0 is open, 1 is high, 2 is low and 3 is close: int pos, updn=0; float jO=0, jH, jL, jC=0, jHm1, jLm1; sg.DataStartIndex=15; jL=sg.BaseDataIn[4][0]; jO=jL; jC=jL; jH=jL; for (pos=5; pos < sg.ArraySize; pos++) { jHm1=jH; jLm1=jL; jO=(jO+jC)/2; jC=(sg.BaseDataIn[0][pos]+sg.BaseDataIn[1][pos]+sg.BaseDataIn[2][pos]+sg.BaseDataIn[3][pos])/4; if(jO>sg.BaseDataIn[1][pos] && jO>jC) jH=jO; else if(jC>sg.BaseDataIn[1][pos]) jH=jC; else jH=sg.BaseDataIn[1][pos]; if(jO<sg.BaseDataIn[2][pos] && jO<jC) jL=jO; else if(jC<sg.BaseDataIn[2][pos]) jL=jC; else jL=sg.BaseDataIn[2][pos]; if(jH>jHm1 && jL>=jLm1) {updn=1;} else if(jL<jLm1 && jH<=jHm1) {updn=-1;}; if((sg.Input[2].FloatValue!=1 && sg.Input[2].FloatValue!=-1) || (sg.Input[2].FloatValue==1 && updn==1) || (sg.Input[2].FloatValue==-1 && updn==-1)) { sg.Subgraph[0].Data[pos]=jO; sg.Subgraph[1].Data[pos]=jH; sg.Subgraph[2].Data[pos]=jL; sg.Subgraph[3].Data[pos]=jC; }; }

Price and a couple of moving averages. Learn to observe price and how it acts at support and resistance (prior highs and lows, well chosen moving averages or keltners). You can use volume if you trade something where it works (it doesn't work so well in heavily manipulated or very thin markets). Also you could add the behaviour in support and resistance created by action and volume at price levels (aka Market Profile).

This is true and also frequently makes the US session much less tradable than the European session. I was trading currencies from Australia so the European session starts late afternoon although I've given that up to trade Asian futures because the hours are more lifestyle friendly. Because the "big" news doesn't occur during the European session you get beautiful trends and retracements on 5m charts. The shock of the 8:30 news announcements in the US seems to create an underdamped ringing in the markets that spoils such trend trading for some time afterwards. However, when the market didn't spike you often got some lovely trends thru until the NY afternoon. Personally if I was in the US and really wanted to trade currencies rather than stocks or futures (you have a great range of things available in your timeframe) I'd either move to a larger timeframe or strategize my day based on whether there was an initial news spike.

Programs like Sierra Chart and Ensign allow you to replay previous days of trading at any speed ... 5x being a realistic compromise. Sierra'll replay all the charts in the chartbook so you can have realistic market profile development on one chart and price development on another letting you build your trading skills off line.

Something relevant borrowed from Ryan Watts (he has a book with chat and yahoo group support that's very good value IMO; google Watts Trading Group if you're seaching for "something" and haven't found it yet): Practice There are two things every trader must do to succeed. He must trust himself and trust his system. These may sound like minor details to some but I believe these two items lay at the core of most trading problems. The important thing to realize is that you need both. One without the other is an imbalance and trading results will reflect it. You can trust yourself all you want but if you don't have a system that you can follow and trust then your overconfidence will drive your account into the ground. If you have a good system but don't trust yourself enough to execute it then you will do exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. The challenge is to grow both together and really that is the only way to assure success. In my experience the way to grow both is through the four part cycle of (1) practicing your system after market hours in as real a manner as possible, (2) executing your system in real-time, (3) evaluating your results to identify weak areas that need work and finally (4) continue to practice over a large series of trades working out the issues along the way. Those who have read my articles before know that I am big on practicing outside market hours so this should come as no surprise. I just believe it is too costly an exercise to only limit your trading experience and growth to real-time market hours. Not to mention that the learning curve will be at least five times longer than if you were to practice every day on a scale of five trades for every one you take in real-time. Within a year of doing this you will have covered your market and your system by executing maybe thousands of trades in real and practice sessions. Even after just a few weeks of doing this you will notice a growing trust in yourself and your system and the process will become a habit that hopefully you will never break.