rsi77

Thanks a lot! It looks like the Ninja stuff is very close...I'm using a 4181V chart so that may account for the little difference that I see. Thanks again, Ron

I'm using Ninja and have the VWAP with the SD lines indicator, but I'm dubious as to whether it is giving the same results as what's shown on the videos. Does anyone have a recent chart of the ES (S&P minis) using Ensign with the VWAP that they could post so I could compare it to what I have? I would appreciate it. Ron

"You can get very impressive optimization results with pretty much any system... " Yes, that's true...that's why "walking forward" is important. Even then you have to be careful. There seems to me to be some very odd characteristic of this free "clone" strategy. Quite often it buys at the exact low of a bar, even though that low is lower than any recent bars. As I understand the Clayburg strategy it should buy at the lowest low of the last 3 bars. Maybe the TradeStation interpretation is to blame, or maybe it's the strategy. In any case many of the trades shown would not have been possible in real life. Either they wouldn't have been filled on the touch of that price, or there's no way to know what the lowest low is the last three bars is until the last of the 3 bars has closed--in which case it's too late to buy there. Also the targets fill even if only touched--often times in the charts I'm looking at that is the last chance they had to fill before stopping out, meaning a stop likely occurred instead of the profit. But the backtest shows profit. I'm still going to play with this a bit and see if something useful can be learned from it.

I'm getting very impressive optimizaiton results on EC using 512 and 144 tick charts. Profit factors better than 2. I'm going to start forward testing and see how these hold up. I also know that TradeStation counts a touch on a limit price as filled, whereas in real life it usually aint so. I'll probably try to code it up in Ninja and see how it fares there. In any case it's pretty interesting for a start of a system. rsi77

try "...next bar at open;"

I tried this service. Indicators do seem to work pretty well, but not as good as "adverstised" since many of the entries are limit orders which don't get filled even though the price is touched. Other setups exist but aren't explained extremely well. Or are explained at some point but then entry rules "evolve". I felt like an outsider in the room they offer--I seemed to annoy the guy when I asked for clarification about some of the setups mentioned. Overall I'm beginning to feel the bad out weighs the good, even though the system itself is probably profitable.

I'm surprised you wouldn't use MP as a source of support and resistance--it often works quite well that way...so what do you use for your scalping? Ron

This will certainly vary hugely from broker to broker. I trade DAX quite a bit and have information for this market only. TradeStation requires something on the order of 14k maintenance for the DAX, while Infinity AT Brokers require something closer to 1k. Commissions can range from $3.50 to $7.00 (or more) a round turn. You need to contact your a specific broker to find out what you will be paying. Ron

I'm not sure how they derive their historgram, but the MP points I was referring to were the value area high and value area lows which are often tagged if the market is in a "range bound day". Those value areas are simply 1 standard deviation from the "point of control", which means they aren't purporting to have anything to do with low volume. They certainly do act as support and resistance as can be observed if you draw them on an intra-day chart. (But as mentioned earlier in this thread this could likely be due more to the number of people watching those areas than to their statistical significance.) However, as I mentioned they are not as strong resistance and support as are these multi-month low volume areas. If one looks on a 60 minute chart and goes back over the same time period from which the data for the histogram was taken, you will notice that the low volume areas correspond to inflection points in the market--which makes sense. You will also notice that the high volume areas (which can also act is R/S) are areas of consolidation. Thus understanding the high/low volume areas as support or resistance makes intuitive sense to me, while 1 standard deviation from the POC does not. But the the latter still does give you tradeable information--though probably is simply self-fulfilling (imo). Some examples: A relative low volume area which came into play on Friday was the 1292.5 level. The market opened close to this area and after this level showed some support I had confidence to take a long shortly after the open. This worked for a 5-point bounce (though I only took 2 of them). The next low-volume area on the histogram was 1287... this also corresponded to a Value Area Low from 8/22 (on week prior). This level also gave a tradeable bounce (3 points) within a tick of the low value level (the low prior to the bounce was 1286.75). Some other levels which may come into play in the next week are: (going down) 1280.50, 1275.50, 1270.50...and (going up) 1302, 1311.75, 1311.75. Watch them yourself and see if you notice any tradeble support or resistance at these levels. (NOTE--the data I'm looking at has not been updated for a couple weeks, so the data lower may not be as good since there has been volume traded in that area and the low or high volume areas will have changed--however since the historgram is for several months worth of data the numbers a likely still valid. To the upside the numbers are valid because no volume has traded there since the histogram was formed.) One more thing I should mention is that I may not have given the TradeMaven indicators a sufficiently good try to know whether or not they are good for trading. I had a lot of other ideas I was working on at the time and may have been a bit impatient with them. I think they may be worth another try (and certainly worth a first try for somebody else). As mentioned I am seriously considering renewing my subscription. Hope this helps.

I subscribed to TradeMaven for 1 month just to check out their method. I quit the service after several weeks because I found their special "inside edge" indicators weren't very helpful for me. However, I did notice that their 180-day volume histograms were extremely useful to predict turning points in the market over and over again. Before my subscription ran out I took a bunch of screen shots of the ES volume historgram covering prices from from 1250 to 1400. I have watched the appropriate screen shot each day while observing the more standard value areas and POC's. On a number of occassion I noted that when MP theory would have predicted the market should "tag" a certain level, if a low volume area on the volume historgram was in the way it would pretty much always take precendence, and the price would turn at the low volume point rather than get to the MP target on the other side. I'm seriously considering rejoining TradeMaven, or at least try to get hold of that larger timeframe volume historgram (maybe write an indicator in TS?). In any case these guys do seem to have some useful insight to share (imho).

Jerry, First of all thahks for your posts--very informative. Secondly, are the ensign indicators that you use available with the software, or did you develop those by yourself? Thanks, Ron

Thanks Nick, I found one of the indicators, and I will keep looking for others. It seems this could be very useful. Ron

Thanks, The screenshot he showed looked very nice. I think Ensign isn't too expensive, and it works with Infinity AT, so maybe I'll give it a try. Does TS do this same thing well? If so do you know the indicator name? thanks again, Ron

Could someone tell me which charting package was used to create these charts? Thanks, Ron

Thanks BR, and thanks also for the other indicators (squeeze, etc.) that you've posted.

I enjoyed the presentation. Is it possible to set this up in TradeStation? I'll be looking into it in any case. I guess I must be a scalper at heart cause when I try to trade another why it doesn't work for me. I want to get in fast and get out fast with a small but dependable profit