Kiwi

You might want to read through a couple of threads at elite trader and just see if they raise any questions for you. Like much at ET they get infected with strong opinions but looking at both sides may help clarify all your thinking. Best of luck with the shift. Forums - Would you rather trade on your own making 100k yr or trade for a firm making 500k yr Forums - Mental break-down from TA

If you can tell whether you are in a range/slow trend or strong trend you may want to use multiple tactics. When slow use tight targets and keep stops wide until near target where you might snug them up very tight. If running hard use no (or extremely optimistic) targets and trail you stop behind retracements until you find some reason to snug the stop tighter.

The game is great ... fantastic ... and trying to beat 70% reminds you what you're focussing on (not just the highest score). The best bit is it gives you the adrenalin buzz you are craving that might cause you to overtrade.

One can inject ones views, beliefs and concerns into trading as much or as little as one wants. eg, only long on your countries stocks, only short on opposing countries stocks and futures, no purchases of suspect stocks etc etc. No problem; only two issues. 1. Don't actively trade the beliefs just use them as a filter to remove trading opportunities. 2. Recognize that the beliefs limit some opportunities which may occasionally cause frustration followed by the satisfaction that you're sticking to your beliefs (but the opportunities are nearly infinite anyway).

Darn, You've got my attention again. We are in two of the (imho) silly loops that we keep getting into in trading arguments. Loop 1 is the predict/don't predict argument. Loop 2 is the lagging/leading argument. To a degree both are rubbish. To a degree both seem to be "more experienced (??)" traders getting frustrated with misconceptions less experienced traders display. In particular the hope that anything will give you certainty, and that more things will give you more certainty. The way I, personally, display this problem is trying to apply volume, market profile, market delta, volume momentum or anything but price derived data to the HSI. I am searching for a better probability of being right (instead of just trading with the probabilities I get from my method). So lets attack the misconceptions (and hopefully not make enemies while I do but it won't be the first time if I do): 1) Predict/Don't predict. predict v 1: make a prediction about; tell in advance; "Call the outcome of an election" [syn: foretell, prognosticate, call, forebode, anticipate, promise] 2: indicate by signs; "These signs bode bad news" Everything we do in choosing our entries and exits is about predicting. If you buy at the bounce on the LVA you are predicting that there is a high probability that you will move down X before you retrace Y and thus the trade will have a certain win ratio and win/loss that gives a good expectancy. You are predicting. What you are not doing (I hope) is making the beginners mistake of assuming that there is a certainty associated with the prediction. Similarly when I see price bounce of a carefully chosen ma after making (say) only 2 thrusts away from the ma I am predicting continuation (x% chance based on history) and thus enter a trade. A second bounce of the same MA may have a higher or lower probability and thus may cause me to increase my bet size or lower it. Even going with the flow is forecasting. We forecast that if its flowing up now then it will keep going up for Y with a risk of X. But lets be realistic; if we analyse price and volume, we then predict a probable outcome. Similarly at exit time we exit because the probability of continuation drops below a certain level. 2) Leading vs Lagging. If you smooth data to build an indicator then the data will have lag built in - and T3 mas, hull mas, and jurik everthings are an attempt to use better signal processing algorithms to get more smoothing for a given time shift in the output (lag). But. CCI's don't lag the data because the prime determinant of the output is the current price of the current bar. But. It doesn't really matter anyway for many forms of discretionary trading whether there is a lag in the indicator or not. Its whether there is a lag in the usage of the indicator. For example, EMAs have plenty of lag. But I don't care because I use an ema the same way you use a POC ... its support and resistance and as support and resistance it has no lag. The ema represents in real time with no lag exactly what every other trader looking at it as support and resistance sees so if price reacts appropriately at the ema (or the cci does) then I react without lag to reality. But. Pure price can have lag. If you buy support then thats "zero lag." If you wait for it to reject support thats lag. If you wait for it to form a double bottom at support thats more lag (vs just buying). So even in pure price trading you have lag and the lag is a trade off of increased certainly for time and probably position. So IMO predicting is what we do. What we must understand is that every prediction has a probability of being wrong so we must have an exit when its wrong and we must really understand that its probabilistic. The enemy is false confidence (and resulting disillusionment) not prediction. And how bad is lag. This is a game of predicting and probabilities and risk vs reward. We trade two types of risk: risk of being wrong vs risk that when we're wrong we give more back. What do I mean by that? If you buy at the ema with a 3 pt stop you might have a 50% chance of being wrong but only risk 3pts to find out. If you buy after price forms a rejection pattern from the ema you may need to use a 7 point stop but have only a 30% chance that you are wrong. The second had lag but in return for the lag you get a higher probability of being right (at the expense of a higher risk and less reward (because you are part of the way to your target)). OK. Monologue over. Hopefully that makes sense.

I'll go with the circle that considers Williams to be a marketer who will use whatever is new (at the time) to sell books, subscriptions or systems. Like ez I have used his stuff, bought the book, and moved on to more realistic strategies. His stuff does NOT use chaos theory (I actually haven't heard of anyone using Chaos etc as part of a working trading strategy) but is a proprietary jumble of displaced mas and macds renamed to sound sexy. More snake oil sadly.

Good post ezduzzit, Two little added bits of wisdom borrowed from others, one about risk and the other about approach. Risk: Its important to distinguish the type of risk when entering a position. Risk can relate to the certainty that price will move where you expect it if you anticipate at prior support and resistance. Risk can relate to how much room you have to give a position to chop back and forth if you wait for confirmation from either a breakout or an indicator. Bigger traders tend to have to take the first type of risk. Approach (from Lescor on ET): The three goals of trading, in order of importance. 1. Preserve capital 2. Earn consistent returns 3. Earn large returns. The 'rule' part is - don't try to skip any steps.

Thanks James, For anyone else who wants these views then you can create a bookmark with these urls to go there directly: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/search.php?do=getdaily http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/misc.php?do=cybstats

I'm using this link to open the site: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/search.php?do=getnew What it shows is new unread threads and old unread threads. What I really want is to show new unread threads and old threads in order of most recent contribution --- whether read or not. Or just threads in order of most recent contribution. What I don't want is to lose track of one I had a quick look at and then closed. Is there a config or command I can use to achieve that please? Also, that page doesn't give you a "mark all forums read option" which would be nice. Thanks.

I wouldn't agree that indicators are worthless. I would agree that believing that your indicator is telling you the "whole truth" is a less than optimal strategy. I use two indicators ... I have emas on my main entry chart and I have the same emas plus a cci mapped onto my short term exit and "fine tuned entry" chart. The emas are selected because over a long period of time (several years now) they have been support in weakly and strongly trending markets. Watch the markets: if you can find emas that create support in a trend and help you too see when the trend has changed then they are useful. For me they help me see that a retracement is "sufficient" and thus likely to end before the "trend" resumes. They also help me see when the retracement is probably reversal but there is a mix of ema and price behaviour required to convince me of this. The CCI I use for one thing only. I count short term thrusts and when the third thrust or one that corresponds with prior highs or lows is divergent I look for a price action based exit. Thats all ... it works for me. Edit: The use of indicators doesn't preclude the use of price action/support resistance to fine tune entries. Also the CCI will show divergence not visible in pure price action because the CCI's normalizing function takes into account the recent range - but like everything in discretionary trading you have to figure out what will work for you.

Agreed it is overrated and it spends a lot of time explaining simple things. Van Tharp also, sadly, implies ideas generated by others are his own rather than giving credit where it is due (such as r-multiples). He also misses out a lot of information about more advanced money management, I suspect, to encourage people to buy his other material. I might have a shot at writing an article on money management for the Articles section of the site and see if I can do a reasonable job of expanding on the book (this will take a while, even if I am successful). I would still recommend this book for new traders.

Boredom is my worst enemy too; well, one of them. I've found that posting on bulletin boards doesnt help because the boredom causing me to post seems to precede the market finally setting up properly. What sort of activities do people do that let them maintain enough activity to prevent boredom and inactivity trades yet don't involve them so much that they miss the next trade?