Kiwi

I both like and am amused by your post Brookwood. The funny thing is that I gave up fibs around 4 or 5 years ago. And just recently I have reinstated them for a couple of specific purposes where they are doing a nice job of increasing my expectancy. Specific is the key word and it is very market dependent - read that as "when do the sum of players consider value has been reached or perhaps the acceptable stretch has been overdone."

If I read MM's post then I presume that he is failing as a trader and feels that its all due to luck. Which couldn't be more wrong. It would take me too long to address the whole post but just a couple of points might illustrate flaws in the reasoning: - This concept that "your edge has to be better than the edge of the person you are trying to take money from" implies that I am trading against XXXX. And that if I'm long and they're short one of us will lose. Yet I have experienced the situation of trading in the opposite direction to another trader a number of times where both of us made money - because we entered and exited at different points, both following our (different) rules to a win. - The "also luck that your edge continues to be an edge before you have drawn down your account because of bad luck" includes the laughable concept that a professional won't adapt to the market as the market evolves. Markets must evolve otherwise even the most moronic would eventually get it and pluck them for the bucks. So a trader who has a certain type of edge will adjust their approach slightly as the markets evolve. In some cases they may even retire it for a period (or forever) if the specific behaviours they are preying on cease to provide a decent meal. Trading is gambling. And the outcome of individual trades is down to a bunch of uncontrollable factors which we end up labelling luck. But the positive outcome of a sequence of disciplined trades is not down to "luck." The positive outcome (with expected statistical variation) is down to strategy and execution. It is up to the trader to be a professional gambler and not a losing amateur. This takes time and some steps in the right directions. (Should the outcome of a series of XX trades not be positive then their is valuable feedback about the current fit between the market's behaviour and your edge's parameters.)

Actually I still have a couple of spreadbetting accounts. Scam is a pejorative and not entirely accurate. Spreadbetting does these things: - offers you tax free income in the UK which makes up for a LOT - charges you in extra spread instead of commission which does reduce confusion (and reduces comms for small bets but increases them for large) - lets you use small position sizes However, they are bucket shops because they take the other side of your trade only offsetting some of their risk, and may indulge in some practices that irritate the punter: - varying spread at news times (to protect their axxxs, as do the market makers on ecns) - holding that spread too long (compared with the market makers) - shading the spread to one side or another by a few ticks. - doing their own stop hunting (as opposed to every other intelligent person joining in taking a bit from the most obvious positions for overly nervous stops to be placed). If I was in the UK then the first point would overwhelm the advantages of the others but I'm not and my size is reasonable so I use Interactive Brokers even for my forex. Note that most of the forex brokers are also "spread betters" although lacking the UK tax free status: Oanda, Fxcm, etc etc all hide the commission in the spread and take the other side of your bet. Note also that you can overcome the effect of the second group of practices by trading longer term with holds in the swing trading range rather than day trading.

It's gambling MMS. It seems you've lost your taste for the Casinos because you now realise that the odds there are either against you or very poor - so you are now much wiser. To me, gambling is "taking a chance" for thrill or profit. Amateur gambling is usually for thrill (with the perception that you might make a profit). As you get better at trading you move towards being a professional gambler in a casino that offers the opportunity to run high expectancy games - if you are calm, disciplined and professional enough. What's more, the liquidity and price discovery that you assist with actually provides a valuable service for the financial world you are part of - so you contribute, unlike in the Casino (unless you count community and sports group donations financed by gambler's losses). So I like to think of myself as the professional gambler. I come into the HSI session after 30 minutes have passed and the wild thrill seeking of the open is over. I watch carefully for a very few high expectancy hands, putting nothing on the table except my time until they occur. I don't get excited; I minimize frustration and boredom; I just wait and stay alert ( 1m time bars, none of this tick rubbish ) When the cards come up right then I place my bets. Stay calm. No thrill. Leave that to the amateurs out there. And take my money or pay the cost to find out. The differences between a professional and an amateur: having a tested setup or setups with good enough expectancy; waiting until it happens even if they have to sit through entire sessions with nothing to show; accepting wins or losses with little emotional impact; being there to do the job not for the thrill.

Or create a bookmark with the following in it: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/search.php?do=getnew

Interesting posts you have here. I might have agreed with you about production in the past but I don't currently. Trading is almost exactly like the production process that Demming was dealing with in Japan in the 60s and 70s and both continuous improvement and statistical process control are applicable. In trading I produce a series of actions. The ultimate goal of these actions is to produce profit but just as the factory worker must act not to produce profit but to contribute to his part of the manufacturing process in a manner that contributes to improvement and a process that is in statistical control so a trader must focus on process and not results. It goes on, but thats probably enough to get what I mean about trading and production. Its funny that we seek analogies for trading but so far the best two I see are assembly line production (with a string of opportunities coming along the line towards you and all you, the humble worker can do is execute your element of the process as cleanly as possible) and gambling (where you aim to be the professional poker player not the amateur donor player).

I agree that it is a sound approach and Ryan is one of the nice guys.

To delete or not to delete ... that is not an option.

Please advise the name of your company so that we can short it. Thanks in advance. bro.

No. Slippage is on stop market orders only. Limit and Stop Limit are slippage free.

50 tick moves in under 10 seconds are rare except at the beginning of either session. But the advice to look at the mini (about $1 per tick) is sound as a starting point. Another thing to look at is treating the mini as though it trades in 5 tick increments. This will take its daily range into the zone most are likely to be used to; improve the tick to commission ratio and the tick to slippage ratio; and let you treat each trade as "slower." The fact that you can enter and exit within the 5 tick range is just a nice opportunity for profit improvement on entry or exit. One of the nice things about HSI is that I sometimes get positive slippage on stop outs. Typical slippage is 1 or 2 ticks although 4 or 5 ticks happens with reasonable regularity. Bigger slippage would suggest that you are fading breakouts that were supported by trend - not sensible with HSI which almost trends better than forex.

No news is good news .... very occasionally something happens in China or recently Korea that impacts the markets but just trade what is happening to price. The lunch break move is unpredictable and likely to follow what happens to the Nikkei/SPI/ES over that period but not always. I trade very short term and don't hold through lunch. If I was trading daily trend then I might. Anything is both Ok and not Ok for new traders. All have their differences obviously.

You trade hang seng index futures or mini hang seng indefutures (hsi and mhi). Both are available with interactivebrokers (.com) There is not a lot of volume but there is nothing slow about it. No. I use IB as my broker and Sierra Chart to view the data and manage the trades (sc does chart trading and dom trading).

I place the majority of my attention where I spend the most time ... waiting for the context and setup to signal entry ... but I agree that the time one needs to be most disciplined is when the emotions are likely to be strongest. The reason is that the right context and setup lead to a 75%+ win rate to first target and there is almost never any manual intervention in that trade. So for me, the phases of trading are: - waiting for context to be clear and then for the setup to appear - taking the setup - setting the stop mechanism (I partially automate my trading so I don't have to watch every tick) and the initial target - managing trade, which mainly consists of doing a few sit-ups and slow breathing to disperse any stress for the 1-30m my average trade lasts, but may include a manual exit - resynchronizing myself like a tennis player so that each trade, like each serve is treated independently of every other serve in the game. In the managing the trade stage I have an extremely specific set of reasons for manually exiting or altering the automatic exit. All are purely technical: . 3rd advancing swing . 3rd attempt at same break . Confirm reversal by 3 pts . Opposing ma color w/o channel

Actually I vote for the irritating spammer to be banned or banished to a single thread. I also liked the ability to rest my cursor over the post and see the first few lines of the last one so I could decide if it was likely to be worth looking at when I was on the front page. That seems to have gone and there are now two columns of new posts that are different but not in a way that makes it clear why. I also vote for the Guru label to disappear ... such post based ratings are more suited to a file sharing board.

I also favour useless spammers (or even useful spammers) being limited to one thread. The only reason I haven't been down his throat is because his threads are so recognizably a waste or time that I haven't wasted my time there. Re the popup. The easy solution is the adblock+ extension for google chrome. After a few times I chose to block it ... and it has gone for good now. Re the search for posts vs threads. First, on advanced search you can select that but I agree that the default search should be to posts not to threads - I usually end up having to try again to get the posts.

You almost always want to be trading the contract with the most volume. MRCI reports yesterdays volumes for a wide range of futures and current contracts so you can use it to check that you're in the right contract and to roll over when it switches - make sure you know when they expire though so you can ensure you change in time. Contracts Volumes and OIs On some contracts (Asian 1 month index futures) the rolllover is 100% predictable with the contract expiring at the close of the day before the last business day of the month. In this case the afternoon has almost no volume and that morning the volume switches so you simply roll on the morning of the day before the last day of the business month. For some (like ED say) you might find that the logical front month isn't it and everyone is trading December. So watch the volumes as well as applying any date based approaches.

You asked two different questions ... trend/volatility and respect for S&R. IM experience the likes of EJ and GJ can offer excellent trend/volatility even applying brooky's spread/averange test to determine costs. But S&R is determined on the majors as that is what the money is watching so you need to look at EU, UJ and GU while trading them to find "valid" S&R areas. Often they will appear to work - but generally that occurs when the majors hit S&R at the same time.

ES you seem to be confusing a lot of different things. Many of them could be resolved by carefully reading IB's material and the information they provide. For example they have two initial margins. The difference is simply based on the time of day that you take the trade. If you open a trade during the US day then the initial margin is 2813. If you open outside of rth the initial margin is 5625. Once you have a position then you no longer have to be concerned about initial margin figures. You simply need to cover the maintenance margin for the time of day that IB's computers are examining your liquidity. If you fall below their liquidity requirements (sum of the maintenance margins drops under account value) then they will start dumping your positions with remarkable rapidity. Next: swing vs day. You only need the margin to cover you at the current time. If you are foolish enough to start swing trades with total margin close to your account value during the day then you will get an unpleasant surprise during the evening when IB sort out your misunderstanding by reducing your risk automatically. IB is for big boys so if you screw up then you suck it up. Next: the brokers will go bankrupt if they let you trade lots of ES contracts. Some might. But IB won't for two reasons: a) they aggressively and automatically liquidate positions when you fall below requirements something that does cause a lot of whinging from newbies but not from professionals; b) the law of big numbers: not all of their customers are holding positions in the same directions and thus they get a little room to move even in a catastrophic crash for large numbers of their customers. Next: IB uses the exchanges margins. Well, to an extent. But not always and necessarily. I still recall the screams when they assessed risk to be higher than the exchanges views and raised margins. I was happy because I knew it meant they were sensibly managing the brokerage's risk (see last Next). "he Federal Reserve Board and self-regulatory organizations (SROs), such as the New York Stock Exchange and FINRA, have clear rules regarding margin trading. In the United States, the Fed's Regulation T allows investors to borrow up to 50 percent of the price of the securities to be purchased on margin. The percentage of the purchase price of securities that an investor must pay for is called the initial margin. To buy securities on margin, the investor must first deposit enough cash or eligible securities with a broker to meet the initial margin requirement for that purchase. Once an investor has started buying a stock on margin, the NYSE and FINRA require that a minimum amount of equity be maintained in the investor's margin account. These rules require investors to have at least 25 percent of the total market value of the securities they own in their margin account. This is called the maintenance margin. For market participants identified as pattern day traders, the maintenance margin requirement is $25,000." for more info seach for "margin" at that best of brokers

Came back to read the first post and suspect Johnny may not be trading live. Hope not anyway unless he's just planning to be a donor. Johnny, It seems to me that you have a divergent path here while you are practising live in the market. I haven't seen this lead to success in the past. A more likely path, given your time, would be to take what you know and attempt to define an effective edge (context, entry, exit plan). Then, having tested it on historic data, and practised it in replay to find out if you can actually do it at the rh edge of the chart, forward test it for a bit. I would expect that the forward testing would lead to convergent minor modifications or abandonment rather than the adding of entirely new "things." But, it is your life, your money and as for all traders, your choice of your path to success or failure. I will watch with interest. I'd wish you good luck but luck shouldn't have anything to do with trading any more than hope. So, best wishes for your fast convergence.

Prediction: Unless something changes dramatically this thread will describe Johnnycakes failing as a trader. Why: "Today I added the Chaikin Money Flow indicator as well" "I found some indicators I liked yesterday spending then and last night reading up on them" combined with (unless somewhere it said otherwise) "live trading." In summary, the process is wrong and will just result in JC building bad habits and damaging himself if the $$ are significant enough to raise his pulse rate. A gambler is born?

Two things I would add to the comments: - its a good idea, once you've confirmed that targets and stops are correct and you should actually be in the trade, to physically walk away and maybe do a little exercise. stress is mainly bad for our bodies because it isn't associated with exercise as it was in hunting days - work out when the earliest next event can happen and set a timer so that you KNOW that you don't have to look until the timer goes off. I have a nice little free minute timer I use, Easy Timer from InspireSoft which doubles as an analogue clock in the background. - ok, three things: its a good idea to sometimes just watch the action but sit and focus on calm and breathing. Becoming calmer while watching those ticks = $$ could well make future trading easier.

I'm not at all sure I agree MightyMouse. The thing about trading is that each person who ultimately succeeds finds their niche in this ever flowing, ever gyrating thing we call the market. In fact a niche in one of the many different markets. So there will be a niche for skills in that space. Just as their seems to be one for skill in my space. As long as we don't all try to occupy the same niche we can continue to disagree and, perhaps, thrive.

So, getting on for two months after the last post you promote the room. This does make you seem like a shill for the room.

You'd get plenty of arguments on both points. For example I only ever use limit orders to open a position and am sure that many are also more profitable in their own application of that principle. But it depends on the overall context and perhaps in the markets you trade.