torero

Since these are very dependent on broad markets, you might want to correlate with another indicator such as an index futures (ES is index futures of S&P 500, YM is index futures of Dow, or NQ is index futures of NASDAQ) or $TICK (gauges the entire NYSE stocks that are ticking up vs ticking down). These are essential if you plan on scalping because market sentiment change by the second. But I think the most important is learning to read and understand market price action, that is, higher highs/lows and lower highs/lows. These should give you an indicator of the overall market sentiments. Support and Resistance you should be aware of as well as they can turn the ETF on a dime and you don't know why. These can be opening price, high or low of the day, yesterday's close, and yesterday high and low. Keep that in mind. Good luck.

Welcome to real trading, the only thing in front of you is the truth, everything else is just noise to distract from making the right trade. If you haven't been to LV (Las Vegas), they'll pour you as much cocktails and alcohol as possible, just another way to loosen your pockets (discipline) and get a bit reckless. Same old game.

Missed the move earlier this afternoon (went out to lunch, thinking nothing was going to happen since it's been dead all monring, doh!!!). Yeah, watching for the train to slow down so I can get down wit dit. Nice little flag forming right now. Hope that's the train!

I'm weak on the range play so I prefer the breakouts. Fighting for teenies is not my style at all. Last week was caught in a tight range so tight even I didn't feel had enough room to maneuver my profits. Oh well. Hopefully this week, the condition goes in my favor and move this badass.

I've never thought about the fact that back then, everything was done manually, it was a quick way to summarize the market. After understanding that fact the proliferation of the personal computer and super-computing power, it does seem more precise using Price Histogram than the traditional MP. POC is for me a very powerful and important event. The others VAH and VAL I'm still researching to find an edge using it. Thanks for the enlightment, jperl. I'm now using Ensign, a great tool indeed.

Looking, I was think it was wise to stay away from trading this week, so cowpip, you should thank your lucky stars, unless you didn't trade using my strategy. But next week is a new month and new week, let the games begin again!

Yes, it has been challenging last few days to say the least, nothing was sticking on my end. I was doing well and still ahead and I expected today would be the day hell breaks loose somewhat from the Fed news hangover, but afraid everyone knew it was going to happen or something. The range was unbelievably small. I'll have to keep that in mind at the end of the month weirdness. Thanks, Art.

Excellent, thanks for the heads-up, I'll make sure to have these areas mark-down for future reference. This week was range play for EURJPY, requires alot of patience from me, which isn't really my style. I like 'em dropping fast and stay the trend course a good while before turning.

I can only assume the cut was already priced in, hence the lack on enthusiasm. In any case, markets eventually have to test the recent low to find out if we're going into a recession or not. February should be a hot month for trading.

So what´s this H5 group? And what does it take to join it? I'm green with envy you guys throwing names left and right like a circle of trust has been closed. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to move in during the slaughter-fest, my quotes were erratic and didn't want to risk it (cowpip we share the same ISP?!! ). I'm sure tomorrow they'll be hangovers to be had.

I think it's great to see Anna-Maria like this once in a while, only goes to show how compassionate she is towards the rest of us who are deaf, dumb, blind, mute, etc. being tricked by charlatans and wannabes. She shares similar feelings like many of us who don't want to be swindled. Great post!

Thanks for the inside scoop, I figured as much that it's difficult to pull in all the volume in a decentralized market. To be honest, I've used tick charts to trade currencies but I knew volume doesn't play a big part in the tick charts. Seems price are what drives everyone else to act. I do use market depth (equivalent of level 2 for stocks) to measure where the hots spots are (quick movements of orders pulling in and out, not really executed). It's the only cue for me to get an idea what everyone else involved are thinking of doing.

Interesting topic! And great to see you back again Anna-Maria. I have a quick question. Since you guys get wholesale/institutional contracts with brokerage/clearing houses, do you get real volume? Or is this just another smoke and mirror data?

I double-checked the volume, it's almost exactly as PP's eSignal. Also, I saw the change in the tick, volume jumps 10 to 20 then 5 to whatever on each of the tick change so might be different than what I imagine. Also, I checked the last price, it's about 1-2 pips off from MBTrading quotes, much better than what I see with TS quotes, freaking 3-4 off (Gain Capital feed I believe). PP, I don't plan on doing too much programming, just enough to port over some codes I have from TS to Ensign. I trade with bare essentials but they are simple codes anyway. So far, I'm happy with Ensign.

Looks like I might staying with this platform after all. FXCM has volume on forex similar to eSignal. Double-checked with PP's charts and seems the same! Cool!

While I think CME is a great exchange, but I cannot imagine if they go down, all will go down all they own.... hmmmm. So if a major crisis day, guess what? The whole financial system stops? Variety is a spice of life, the basis of capitalism, not a few owning 90% of the market.

EPH is derived from 5-min, it's fixed while MP is from 30-min. POC from both are the same, it's the most traded price, assuming EPH is calculated from price and not volume. As for VAH and VAL, I'm not entirely sure just yet since I'm still new with MP and still trying to understand how's calculated, but EPH take the 2 standard deviation on each end.

Sometimes the range is so narrow that you have to be quick and deadly, else those trades will eat you up. I stay away from high spread pairs on this type of market and go for GBPUSD and EURJPY. Sometimes 10 pips is a good target but I hate eating teenies, but gotta take what the market gives us.

It depends on the style you're trading. If you scalp or at least short-term trading, Ninja with its DOM matrix is very good and fast. But if you plan on taking on trades that last a few hours to a day or more than, any one will do. It comes down to keep your commissions down, good and immediate support and reliable uptime.

I pare down the size when trading GBPJPY due to high spread, not sure how system will handle that. EURJPY is a bit slower but spread is good 1-2 pips max, I can go full size on that one. Good luck.

Yeah, I think Ensign is a poor man's program, not that it's a bad thing since it's an individual not a company that created this software. I totally dig that. So bare essentials with contributions from users like open source is an excellent source of enriching the software. Basically, this is to avoid paying out fees to the big bad bullies (exchanges).

If given enough time, I may just ending up coding one on Ensign myself if I can't find one that's already done. We'll see how time permits but from the books read, I don't think it would be different. Just need to learn the software and programming syntax first. Excellent idea, mr. ed.

Very nice suggestion zdo! How true it is. I agree with the mentor part, I think it's the experience that needs to be relayed and learned rather than the technique of trading. I think the last part to success is more mental than market competence.

Oh, it's not real MP? Bummer.

Here's MP from Ensign, pretty neat. Tons of other indicators I don't use but would like to explore for fun.