Soultrader

Looks like you got it to work Robert. Let me know if you need anymore TS help. Ive been using it for quite some time so I am pretty familiar with it.

Open a new chart. Input the symbol $TICK and change the timeframe to 1 minute. Then use a line on close chart. I like to plot a horizontal line at the zero line. Also, look into hotkeys. They are extremely useful with chartwork. I have the letter "H" set to horizontal line for example.

My first encounter with trading was during my time in Boston. I studied the US markets initially and focused strictly on it. By the time I came back to Tokyo, I was completely absorbed with the US markets. Trading the US markets is a complete turn around for me.. I trade from 11:30pm night time and finish around 6:00am. A complete night trader. At first I felt extremely unhealthy... but after a few years Im pretty used to it now. I would move to the US if I could in a heartbeat.

Hi Robert, Are you referring to the NYSE tick, time of sales or 233 TICK chart? The symbol for the NYSE tick is $TICK. I use a 1 minute line on close $TICK chart. For the time of sales, see the attachment below. What I have done for the time and sales (tape for short) is divide it into two columns. The left hand column shows all transaction and the right hand column shows big lots or more. You can adjust it to fit your trading accordingly. For the 233 TICK chart, just right click on your chart and format symbol. You should see an option to change your timeframe or tick. Let me know if you need more help.

Very interesting post there PivotProfiler. When trading off pivots, I enter far ahead of the crowd. I also noticed that entries are usually at narrow range candles. Is this similar to the narrow range and high volume bars you mentioned? I attached an interesting chart from today. Notice the double top test at the R1 pivot line indicated by the green line. Notice the double top was on less volume. I personally use a TICK chart and read tape but.... a few trading buddies on mine love seeing double, triple tops with less volume. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks

Ok heres the indicator... thanks for the chart Tin. Apparently its called the volume breakdown indicator. Does anyone know if this exits for TS? Thanks

Gandhiadg, forget all that textbook crap about oscillators being overbought and oversold. Thats the first thing every new trader learns and the last trading method you want to be applying. Now the RSI can be used to spot divergences for short term trading. The MACD can be used as an overbought/oversold indicator for a longer timeframe such as weekly and monthly. Price moves due to an imbalance in demand vs supply. If there is more demand, price will lift until there is a balance between bulls and bears. It will then move sideways and chop around. If there is more supply, price will decline until it reaches an area of balance. Imbalance vs balance. Trading off oscillators for overbought/oversold signals is a newbie tactic and a 100% sure way to lose. Understand why price moves and why the market you are watching reverses at certain points. If you are able to understand market concept and what levels the professional traders are watching, you will be 90% ahead of the crowd. Good luck.

Because I am such a short term trader, I do not even plot a volume histogram in my charts. Instead, I can read volume of the tape. I usually watch for volume or lots at key support and resistance points. If Im long a position, I like to take profits at a climatic candle. The tall green bars with alot of contracts being bought at the ask. To me this indicates a volume spike or a short term euphoric stage. I tend to be a little more careful on the short side... price doenst stall as much during a decline.

Im not a coder at all... but I bug the heck out of ppl who are

Preservation of capital is king in any business that involves risk. My background as a poker player has taught me this at a relatively young age. Traders often tell you "When in doubt, get out". Similary in poker, "Fold the hand the moment you know you cant win". In this example, I will be referring to a poker heads up tournament. In other words a 1 vs 1 tournament. Let's say both players start off with a 1000 chips, 20/40 blinds. In the first hand Player A loses 100 chips. Player A now has a chip count of 900 and Player B has a chip count of 1100. Notice that Player B is ahead of Player A by 200 chips or approx 22%. Now if Player A loses 200 more chips in the next hand, the chip count would be 700 vs 1300. The difference of 600 chips is approx 85% of Player A's chipcount. If you take this into consideration, this is a HUGE difference. So Player B now leads Player A by 85% more chips. Now imagine in the third hand both players go all-in. Player A wins and doubles up making the chip count 1400 vs 600. Notice that Player B has now lost approx 54% of his stack. Player B went from up 85% against Player A to being down 133%. In a game of poker they say a player is still in the game with one chip left. True but what are the probabilities of winning with such a small stack? In a heads up tourney, chip count = power. Once you are down to 600 or less... the odds of winning decreases significantly. (against a good player... not those typical all-in type amatuers) Presevation of capital is number one. There is no need to risk your house on one hand or trade. As long as I have chips in front of me, I am confident in winning. Why? Because I rely on skill in poker... one must have an edge. This should be the same in trading. Keep your losses small and push on a winning trade. One losing trade should not ruin your day and your psychology. Be mentally prepared to win and lose. As long as you have an edge in trading, your account size will grow with time. Never let any trade get out of hand.

Hey guys, Over the weekend I fixed up a slight coding in the core system of the forum. Ive been testing it out and it seems to run 2-3x faster now. Is it just me or is everyone experiencing faster loading time?

I personally have alot of my trading setups based on the TICK for the YM. However, I do use it to judge internals when trading the Russell as well. Im still new to the ER2 so I'll need some more observation to judge correctly. However, there was an interesting setup on the ER2 the other day. Notice the chart below: The chart shows a strategy based on TICK. The basic concept is that in an uptrend, an extreme reading of +1000 or more indicates strength and a continuation of the trend. Price will usually pop for another move. My entry signal is usually on a price pullback after an extreme +1000 reading with timing on a TICK hook.

I did a quick search in the TS forums. The Scalper Buy/Sell indicator is based off 3 consectives higher highs or lows. However, the signal is triggered when the 4th bar falls below the 3rd high or lifts above the 3rd low. Unfortunately the indicator in the TS forums are coded differently that the trigger point is off. Also... the indicator itself is not too reliable in my opinion. Try doing a search with "3 higher closes" in the TS forums.. and you should see it.

Internet Explorer has issues sometimes. Try using Firefox. Thanks for the comments

I think its all about how one trader uses market profile and applies it to his trading. I have heard many debates on market profile.. some claim they do not work while others rely on it heavily. It really depends on how you design your trading setups off market profile. Not every trader can profit from a specific methodology. One needs to be good at it.

Position sizing is one of the key elements of money management and trading. Here are some models used to determine size. 1. Fixed Size: The number of contracts you trade is fixed at each trade. For example, 2 contracts per trade. 2. Fixed Dollar Amount Of Equity: The number of contracts you trade is determined by the amount of your trading capital. For example, you choose to trade 1 contract per $10,000. 3. Fixed Risk: Your position size depends on the percentage you are willing to risk. For example, if you are willing to risk 2% per trade on a $10,000 account, this is $200. This can be 4 YM contracts using a 10 point stop per trade or 2 YM contracts using a 20 point stop. 4. Generalized Ratio: This changes the rate of increase in the number of contracts or shares with increasing profits. The latter 3 methods increases size as profit or account size increases. This is known as the antimartingale method. The antimartingale method takes advantage of a winning system or methodology. Any trader with an edge and a winning setup should use a antimartingale method. A martingale method is a gamblers method. Decreasing the amount of risk after a win and increasing risk after a loss. Gamblers will tend to double up their betting stakes after a loss to break even. Traders should use a antimartingale method in their trading.

One of the top trading secrets is money management. All traders have heard of it and some may think they actually know it. But how many traders practice sound money management? Most traders lose mony because they lack money management, do not have enough knowledge of the market they trade, do not have a sound trading methodology, and trades a market that does not fit their style. If the average win per trade is greater than the average loss per trade, a 50% winning trading setup can make you money. But excess risk, greed, poor psychology, and the failure to understand probabiltiies can take an account with a 60% winning methodology to ruins. There are several money mangement models. In this thread, Im going to discuss just the basics of account sizing and peek-to-trough drawdown. Alot of new traders fail get into the trading business hoping to make a million by the end of the year with a $5,000 to $10,000 account day trading. This is an unrealistic goal. Day trading is a business of grinding profits everyday. Consistency is the key to survivial and learning to ring the register often. One of the main reasons why new traders go bust is their account size. A $5,000 to $10,000 is too small to practice sound money management. A 10 point YM loss is equivalent to $50 per contract. $50 is 1% for a $5,000 account. 3 losses a day and a trader has just lost 3% of his account. Now 3% may not sound like a big deal but take a look at the data below: The percentages really start to change after a 30% drawdwn. A 50% drawdown requires a trader to double up just to break even. A gambler mentality tells a trader to double up his position to make back a loss. This is one of the worst habits a trader can have. Frustration and lack of emotional control will cause a trader to double his size on the next trade in hopes to break even. At first this may work, but it leads to bad habits and will lead to bust. Peek-to-trough Drawdowns Let's say you are a fund manager managing other peoples money. Your initial fund size is $500,000. In the first month, you managed to increase the $500,000 to $750,000 for an impressive 50% gain. Now the next month you dont have any good trading signals. However, your portfolio goes down to $600,000 in value. You have not made a single trade that month, however your accout has gone down from $750,000 to $600,000. the peak-to-trough drawdown would be (peak = $750,000 and trough = $600,000) $150,000 or 20%. This has occured without a single losing trade that month. Your clients are only concerned about this 20% drawdown. If they simply withdrew their money the month before, they would of been $150,000 richer. The third month, your $600,000 account goes down to $525,000. Thus the peek-to-trough drawdown is now $225,000 or 30%. From industry standard, your annual rate of return of is 5% (up only $25,000) with a 30% peek-to-trough drawdown. This data will label you as a terrible money manager. In calculating risk vs reward, we need to look at the peek-to-trough percentage. If your annual rate of return is 5% a year with a 30% peek-to-trough drawdown, your risk-to-reward ratio would be 5/30 or 0.166. This is a terrible ratio. Make sure to keep this in mind when day trading. Although at the end of the day you may have been up, what was your drawdown? If you are trading with a $5,000 account and your account goes back and forth from $4,500 to $5,100, are you practicing good money management? Do you have good trading strategies and setups? Is it worth the stress of seeing your account fluctuate to $4,500 just to make $100? I hope this makes sense. Money management is everything in trading. We are in the business of risk. Happy trading

I am interested in building an indicator based off a time of sales and tick chart. The basic concept is this: I want an easier way to read the tape and to watch for supply vs demand. What I want is an indicator that plots a histogram of the difference between the number of contracts at the ask vs the number of contracts at the bid. I want this difference taken from a tick chart of choice. For example: If the tick chart settings were set to 233 tick chart, the histogram will plot the difference between the number of contracts at the ask minus the number of contracts at the bid off one 233 tick bar. The parameters for the tick chart settings can be changed to whatever. If anyone can help me with this it would be appreciated. I have no knowledge of EL or coding. Thanks

it sounds very similar to how the futures react on fed days. 1-2-3 move. One big move, a reaction, and then the correct move. Im not too familiar with stocks as I hardly ever traded them but for what reasons would a stock halt? Company fundamentals? Exchange issues? Thanks

Here's an interesting insight from William D Gann in this book, Truth Of The Stock Tape. What can we expect on Mondays? The markets are sepereated into two types of market participants. The sharks and the sheeps. I refer to the sharks as the professionals and the sheeps to the general public who buy or sell on based on news. The sheep are usually the late comers; buying after a rally or shorting after a decline. In his book, Truth of The Stock Tape, Gann mentions that a market that has been strong all week and closes strong on Friday has a good chance to rally at the open on Monday. This is due to public buying and orders placed at the market based on the weekend news of a bullish market. Hence, the market will tend to rally for the first hour. However, as soon as the demand is supplied the professionals or sharks will start selling causing a market reaction. The key here is to wait for the dips after the first hour. In a declining market that has been weak the entire week and closes weak on Friday, the market has a good chance to sell off in the first 30 -60 minutes of the trading session. After the public selling pressure is gone, the professionals will start buying causing a rally. Therefore the key is to buy after the reaction. In relation to this concept above, Gann also describes the attitude of a typical sheep. A losing trader may receive a margin call early in the day. The trader must liquidate his position by market close or put up more money for margin. The losing trader will tend to hold throughout the day hoping for a correction. However, the correction never comes and he is forced to liquidate his position at the last hour. This causes the markets to weaken as plenty of other traders are doing the same. Once the supply is gone the market corrects itself. A little interesting piece of information. Thought I'de share it with you all

Here is another fib retracement setup on the ER2. Unfortunately I did not see if until after the move Great 61.8% retracement setup. Also on this day, 1/26/07... the TICK's started hitting 1000+ readings multiple times creating the impressive afternoon rally.

Weekly pivots work nicely at times. Its been working on the ER2 lately as well. But there are also times when the markets pay no respect to it. I tend to like the cluster pivots... my favorite type of S&R based on pivots.

Stop by the chat room. Maybe someone can help.

I have 797.2 for VAH and 790.7 for VAL on the ER2. I dont trade ES so I dont have the values for it.

Thought it might be of interest to give a brief history of how I met the tape and fell in love with it. One book I owe to my first contact with the tape is Tape Reading and Market Tactics by Humphrey Neill. As a new trader this book was my bible in trading. I also studied the works of Jesse Livermore and Richard Wyckoff. What got me interested in tape was that all three traders had one thing in common. They were great tape readers. Back then.. the tape was the ticker tape. In Reminiscence Of A Stock Operator, Jesse Livermore learned to read tape at a young age working in a bucket shop. He would simply stare at price numbers and take notes. Eventually he started seeing patterns and support and resistance points off the tape. This gave him a tremendous edge as a trader. The story of Jesse Livermore was a true inspiration for me. Tape reading books are very limited... but I went on a mission to learn everything I could about the tape. I then decided to program my brain to seek patterns in tape. I used a simple real-time bar chart with a time of sale only and stared at it for months after months. For the first month or two... I was completely clueless. I had no idea what the tape was telling me and I was completely conviced it was impossible to trade off the tape. At that time it was too fast to read and wondered how anyone can keep track with all those prints. By the third and fourth month I started seeing little clues in the tape. I started seeing big lots getting bought and then being sold a few ticks later. This was fascinating to me because I was now seeing other traders hand. For example, I would see a 100 lot bought at the ask and then sold 3 ticks later on the bid. I then assumed that this 100 lot trader might think he is wrong hence the reason for selling. I was amazed to see price reverse from this piece of information only. I then started following big lots. I assumed that these big traders knew what they were doing and decided that I can profit if I can simply follow their footsteps. Within half a year, I was able to identify many different types of clues on the tape. I started focusing on tape to time my entries and exits. I also started seeing the personality of the market through tape and the trader pyschology off the tape. A mixture of green and red (bid and ask) on the tape indicated a lack of conviction which led to a choppy market. In a trending market, the tape showed more green or more red. I started paying attention to the flow of the tape as well. In a trend, the tape will roll fast. Once the tape starts to halt, the markets will usually halt or even reverse at times. I then applied the famous Nicholas Darvas' box theory into tape reading. Sounds weird but the box theory is very similar to market profile with higher/lower value placements. The box theory simply shows how price will travel in a range or box... once it breaks, it will enter a new box or value area. What you dont want to see is for price to breakout of a box and then return into the previous box. With tape, I would look for price rejection or what some traders refer to as the "token". The token became the upper point in the box and the lower point in the box. This was strictly short term. (short term as in seconds) If the tape broke above the token, I did not want to see prints back in the previous bracket. This concept became a key element in my tape reading skills. In 2006... I read John Carter's book, Mastering The Trade. I enjoyed it especially because I was a pivot point based trader. I decided to check out his website and took the free trial for a week. That was the first time I heard of Hubert Senters who was also a great tape reader. I had the opportunity to watch some of this tape reading videos. (they are great by the way) I applied some of his techniques into my tape reading skills such as: watching for a base and closer observation of the flow of the tape. I also got the idea of seperating the tape into two columns to filter out the small traders from big traders. (extremely useful in my opinion) Its been over 3 years now since I started using tape. It took me a while to really understand it but I truly believe tape reading offers a tremendous edge in trading. Even in my 3rd year as a tape reader I have learned new things off the tape such as identifying false breakouts. I have also made it a habit to take mental snap shots of the tape and then recall if there were more buyers or sellers. This helps me understand supply vs demand, hence market direction. Happy Trading