TinGull

dalby, With Ants indicator you won't be able to do composite MP charts on TS. I use Investor/RT which is the same charting and MP that Marketdelta uses (it's the same guy who codes it) the only thing you dont get is the footprint stuff. If you want a fabulous MP charting package, you could check out InvestorRT, Sierra Charts has a great one as Ive been told. I'm on a Mac, and haven't had many issues with IRT, but those on PC's have complained a little of some issues. IRT was originally made on a Mac, so that could be a reason.

GCB, you're right. You need to have TPO's calculated on a tick by tick basis, showing up on a 30min time frame. I have no idea about coding or its difficulties, but thats why I pay for a Market Profile charting package. I know it's going to correct, and I dont have to worry. If you're a good coder, then you've got about a million steps on me I haven't got the faintest clue on how to code stuff, so I dont know if it's easy or not. You're right in that to get the value area, you need to know volume. To get the POC, you need only time.

The patterns are showing up in the profiles themselves. Historical would be cool to see, but I think the profiles right now speak for themselves. Markets are weak, continually placing value lower. Notice how price ended higher today, but value was lower...always watch value. The most important lesson is to differentiate value from price.

Write to them and try and find out what's going on if you choose. They are usually pretty good on the support side of things.

It absolutely matters with imbalanced profiles. When a profile is balanced, it hasn't as much bearing on it. With the record volume, I'd again say...feels lower.

For sure, Soultrader. There wasn't fresh long term buying in the market today...and the recovery thats being touted on the money shows....Was only like 10% of yesterdays decline. Crumby attempt at a rally after that kind of corrective day. Tomorrow should see more downward movement. The decline at the end of the day was on some decent volume with YM closing at the low of value for today. I'd be surprised if we did see another significant move to the upside within the next few trading days.

I just wanted to post up a pic of the past few days' profiles because it is very telling of what was coming, and I think it could be used in the future to see how the profiles form when coming into a downward move. Notice how the profiles were forming continuous "b" shaped profiles. What this shape is indicative of is long liquidation. Why? Simple. The fact that there is no initiative selling tails at the bottom of the profiles is showing that no new selling is coming into the market, so the longs are just letting go of positions. You can notice there is a balanced area, "b" profile, balanced profile, and then another "b" shaped profile right before we had this major move down yesterday. One other thing to notice...value continually positioned itself lower. Every day of last week value moved lower. Thats a big signal that we're heading lower and any longs should have a TIGHT stop, or look for initiating short positions on a longer term basis. Today we've got a P shaped profile, showing short covering. There isn't any new buying that is showing in the profile of today. And while value placement is inside of yesterday's value area, we must remember value for yesterday was larger than it's been in a long long time. Value has now been placed in the lower range of yesterday's value. I would expect to see some initiative selling once again in the coming days until we start seeing profiles that showing us new buying is coming into the picture.

youre welcome!

I used to use 830-930, but then I realized I should be using the actual market open, which is at 930.

JG, the IB is from 930-1030 EST, and I dont take the IB break often. IF the IB is extremely small, then the break of it is a great trade to take. That doesn't happen too often, though. I'll ditto what Soultrader said

A TPO is simply a letter marking out where price has been in 30 minute increments. To determine how to derive it, you could just look at 30 minute bars and give each a letter, A, B, C...and then squish them all together so it forms a profile. Hope I explained it ok...

"Go for it now. The future is promised to no one" "Conflict can not survive without your participation" "Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you a for empowers you" - Dr Wayne Dyer

This is a partial review, as I haven't had time to finish it just yet, but wanted to share what I have read so far, and get some people interested in this amazing book. Dalton, once again, has given indescribable insights into the market place via Market Profile. His previous book, Mind Over Markets, was the bible for MP followers, and this is like making MoM the old testament, and Markets In Profile the new testament. It's an amazingly holistic look at the market place and shows how simple it can be to see if a market is eroding or if it is still going strong. While much of the concepts still remain, he provides insights that were not covered as thoroughly as in Mind Over Markets. The writing style is a bit different as well, seemingly more conversational than textbook-ish. All in all, this book is amazing! Keep in mind, it's about the same size as MoM and retails at 65 bucks...but this book is by far about quality versus quantity. Each page is packed with amazingly insightful information that gives the trader the ability to see the whole picture. If I had 10 thumbs, I'd give it 10 thumbs up, but since I've only got two....

Cool! Just drop me a line if you've got Q's or need chart definitions

Ah yes...the value area, profile and TPO indicators can be off if you aren't using a 30 minute chart. What I do is make reference lines and peg those to a V# variable. Created by Camtasia Studio 3 Never have to worry about having messed up lines from the indicators, cause you take it right off the MP chart.

Also...marketdelta and InvestorRT are the same coding...done by the same guy. They shouldn't differ.

9:30-5 session time, 30 minute periods. mypivots will use 8:30-4:15 for YM. Thats why they are sometimes off.

Pretty simple setup

I just wanted to share a little insight I've gleaned into the markets as of late. It's something I'm a little excited about. Trading with a simple strategy on the ER based solely on MP and nothing else (no internals or anything) is producing a profitable outcome. I'm attaching a spreadsheet of my backtesting, done all manually as I can't get a computer to take into consideration the nuances that would be the exits. Entries are strict, exits aren't always as strict. This spreadsheet only goes back to Sept 11, 2006, which was when I started trading. yea yea...I'm still considered a newbie in some respects, so get the laughing and joke telling out of the way.......still going....ok. Noticing that October was a draw down month and the November wasn't quite the good recovery, but all other months kicked butt, I wanted to find out why. What I noticed was interesting. Someone said that the majority of the time the markets spend their days ranging. Well, this strategy is meant for those markets. If you notice on a 10 period ATR daily chart of the ER, the ATR during October and into November was showing 11-12 point range days (as outlined in the first green box). Nevermind the 16pt ATR...thats just where the chart starts so its kinda fudged up. Looking at the chart, too, you can see we had a very healthy move up. This kind of massive trending wreaked havoc with this kind of system. But when the ATR started to come back into its own 9-11pt range, the system performed well. That was December. January starts with the 2nd green box, and Feb the 3rd blue box. As the range dies down, this system performs amazingly well. Knowing that...when big trending, expanding markets start to come into fashion, this strategy should be left alone. But when we are in a range, be it a small trend channel or sideways channel, this strategy can perform very well. A note about the spreadsheet...the days highlighted in red are days where my stop was taken out by 5 ticks or less, and then reversed. I'm trying to see what I can find out about those days. 2ERValueTrades.xls

Nice...now to figure it out in IRT....

Hey Robert...intense chart Something to keep in mind with it all...those indicators are lagging ones. Price reigns supreme, and those are accounting for price after a certain amount of bars. For instance...my charts are set up relatively simple. All I really need at this point is chart attached. The pink lines are Market Profile levels, and the other lines are daily and weekly price pivots. My plan is strictly on Market Profile, so I don't need much else on there. I went through the indicator craziness stuff once...and really, as you said...it confused me to no end. Simpler is much better...and I think when you start looking deeper into the market you'll see that it is much simpler than what you've got there. It's not easy...but it is simple.

Yea, it is amazing.

Yea, I'd love to see them mainly at those pivot levels, or like a certain tick amount prior. Like...only show signals if price is within 2 points of VAL, VAH or POC kind of thing. Hmmm.....gettin me thinkin. Here's my chart, though.

Soul, was there a way to get this to filter out the noise dots? I've had one built for Investor/RT and I can't figure out if there's a way to filter out some noise. Thanks!

Kiwi hit it on the head. That was a MAJOR hurdle for me, and now I've devised a method that I believe in whole heartedly and and allow myself to know that I will lose, and the market can in fact do whatever it wants. I in no way can move the market (yet *evil grin*) and know its the rest of the people that will move it my way or not. It kinda stinks to think about being dependent on other people....but it's the way it goes. Do you keep a spreadsheet of your trades with data that goes along pretty deep with the trades? I recently started doing that (thanks keymoo) and it has done WONDERS to help me mentally. Things like the amount of time it takes the trade to hit, how long did the trade last...mine are Market Profile based so I have the size of the value area, did we open outside value? If so, by how much? How much heat was taken on the trade....if I got stopped out, how far did it go past my stop and if I had just reversed instead of stopping the position how much heat would I have taken before profitability came my way? Having a plan of attack is awesome, and if your setups aren't working in this market, definitely try and either find ones that are more suited to rangebound markets (we might be in this one for a while) or maybe look for a different instrument to trade that favors your setups. There's so many different things to trade out there that something is bound to have a style that fits the way you want to trade. Just my measley $.02