Soultrader

Hello Brownsfan, Reaver, and Tingull, Thank you very much for posting this thread. The incident over at ET was certainly inappropiate and highly unprofessional. To be honest, I am quite disapointed this has happened but not too concerned as the person who made these inappropiate comments is only ruining his own reputation and whoever he represents. In my views, he simply blew up his own grenade. Regarding lurkers, I do not want to limit or restrict this forum to members who only contribute. I am extremely thankful for all the contributing members. However, there are numerous members here that are still relatively new to trading and are learning as they read. When the time comes, those who have absorbed the educational material here can contribute as they gain enough insights and knowledge on their own. It would do no good to restrict content from members with zero posts who are here to really learn. Regarding the spammers and posters that provide negativity, the best we can do is to ban them immediately and have a zero-tolerance policy towards such posts. The integrity of the forum is created by the respect of members towards other members. I believe this is what makes this forum extremely special and have attracted a great group of traders that can openly share, dicuss and learn from each other. There will always be the few that try to ruin such community. This is expected. I believe myself and the great team of moderators here can preserve the integrity of this forum by taking appropiate actions. In order to prevent spammers, our system has a new thread/post approval system in place. All first time posters are placed in que on new posts and threads that contain links. We have eliminated many spams through this system. Every now and then, I also do a run through on all new members in order to see if anyone is registered using a common spam mail domain or spam-like username. When found, they are banned. The premium forum is open for premium members. I initially created for the purpose of creating a 100% clean section on the forums. Perhaps I will work on ways to get this arena more active. The balance between integriy and allowing vendors is a very difficult topic. Please note that Dr. Janice is not a sponsor but a partner of the site. I have invited her to add value to the site from an educational perspective by allowing her own section on the forums. The costs of running this board is not significant. However, expenses increase with more registered members and registration rates have doubled the past 2 months. Almost 90% of all revenue from the site is dumped back into the site. I am willing to operate the site freely as long as expenses are not coming out of my own personal income (from prop trading). Many members have asked me why I would put in the time to run such a site for free? Very simple. I absolutely enjoy it and learn a great deal from reading through various posts. I have learned a great deal just through sharing through feedbacks, comments, etc... My goal is to create a top class environment for traders but at the same time becoming the best trader I can be. This community has been the perfect environment in doing so. In terms of future plans, I have been thinking of one option. To make this forum entirely by subcription like Tingull mentioned above. However, this is extremely risky in terms of attracting members and from a business model perspective. This is an idea I may want to implement in the future when the member base crosses over 20,000 - 30,000. I think with the current member base, it is small enough to diffuse alot of problems on the spot. (if you think subscription based will work with such a small memberbase, please post your thoughts) New concerns and issues may arise as the community becomes larger. However, I do not want to limit the forum for specific groups of members. I want this place to be an open place forum that welcomes anyone. I am open to ideas and suggestions and welcome the help. Please feel free to address your thoughts. I have been running this site alone and with the help of great moderators on the board so will do my best to listen to member comments. Thanks.

hmm.. really? I tend to need to stay in the game always or else I am completely off. Everyday the markets illustrates a roadmap for the following day. Without understanding the price action from the past sessions, I find it difficult to design a trading plan. Maybe its just my style of trading as I tend to look at certain levels and read the tape to determine direction. Good to have you back James. I hope things are good with your personal life as well as trading life. Good luck! PS: regarding blogs... I am debating whether to install a newer blogging system for the site. However its been highly unpopular lol. Perhaps wordpress is best suited for individuals.

Its not exact science but I tend to memorize the lot sizes and the approx big lot traders that came across the tape on the decline. I am also looking to see orders getting hit at the ask towards the end of an decline or around a key support level. This will be the first sign of short covering. You will then see people scattering to cover as the tape which as all getting hit at the bid now is getting hit at the ask. This takes time and experience to feel the tape and to recognize such behavior. Also ask yourself, if you were short from above where would you most likely cover?

I dont follow US politics as much as before since moving to Japan. But it is pretty interesting that there is a possibility to see the first African American or female president of the United States. I am very supportive of this so would like to see either Obama or Clinton win.

Hey Georgetui, Welcome aboard! I hope so!:yes sir:

hmmm.... I dont know what happened to that link, perhaps I may have accidently deleted it. Cattus, if you would like please let me know of any questions you have regarding price action. (please try to be specific) I will do my best to see if I can help answer them. Although price action seems like a specific topic, I tend to classify price action into pattern recognition, tape reading, TA, Level 2, etc...

No problem Torero, I will go ahead and update the eld file.

A snapshot will just plot the time of sale again. Which is why you are seeing a double print. This is not seperate transaction but the same one. I a similar problem when trying to view time of sale on excel through Reuters because all it does it takes a 1.0 sec snapshot. Time of sale seems to be a lacking element in many data and platform vendors. Tradestation offered great time of sale but I do not have it anymore. I am looking into esignal data and charting to see if their TAS can be modified to filter out big lots like Tradestation.

Yea dont use IE. I use Opera always. If you need a free antivirus software, try AVG free (google it). Its great, free, and it works.

Hi Ryker, Thank you for your reply. I am actually interested in a day by day profile as well. Right now I do this manually which is not a problem but wanted to see if this could be done automatically. Also, I would like to be able to plot a MP chart anytime I want. In other words, if the cells are not filled the MP button will give me an error. Is there anyway for me to fix this as I want to be able to plot a MP chart throughout the day instead of end of day only. By a composite profile, I am interested in plotting a combination of the past sessions. So instead of TPO counts of just one day, a composite profile would plot a combined TPO print of the past x trading days. So you will get one fat profile consisting of x days. Thanks Ryker.

You probably have spyware Tin... go to microsoft.com and download their free windows defender and run a scan. Thats the only software I used on my XP and it helped keep my comp clean. Just make sure you dont download unnecessary things on your trading PC or visit malicious sites. If your comp is running slow and cant seem to fix it, I suggest installing a fresh clean copy of XP and deleting everything. Make sure to save your data first somewhere. I absolutely hate spyware and junk so now I keep all data on an external HD and if I ever run into problems with my pc, I just run a fresh install.

Hi Ryker, I actually just had a look at your spreadsheet. (Im out of date) I am extremely impressed and have no clue how you managed to do this. I trade the Nikkei so will need to tweak this accordingly. Is there a way to plot a composite profile? Or save day by day profiles on the same sheet? Thank you very much for this.

Oh wow... this is sweet. Do you know if the last price column is a necessity? Also, I am assuming a composite profile is not possible?

Is there a way for a data feed to plot the letters automatically or is this a manual process? Also, how would you program excel to calculate the actual value area when volume is not included in the spreadsheet? I should of participated closer in the MP for Excel thread. I used to have a MP charting package so didnt think it would be necessary but without one its been quite a pain in the ass.

I dont have access to a market profile charting package with the prop desk so I draw them manually on excel and calculate the volume at price. Then I just take the most volume price level and reorder them in order to get 70% of volume, hence value area. I do this twice a day, one after the morning session and one after the afternoon. I do not recommend this procedure as it is time consuming so best to pay for a third party market profile vendor. I have thoroughly searched the net for any value area numbers available but the only site that has it is the link provided by Blu. Im sure there is a way to program your excel and connect it with your current data feed vendor in order to get these values.

This is probably going to be a vague answer but my exits are done off tape. First I have a target point in mind where I look to scale out half. This is automatic. Previous day high/low, POC, VAH, VAL are all good target points. However, with futures a rotation puts the odds in your favor significantly compared to momentum based breakout strategies. (yes I have ben burnt many times playing breakouts) Therefore, I have a fixed target based on the tendency for price to move by a certain amount before profit taking or retracements. This is different across all markets. For example, I expect the Nikkei to move by at least 4-5 ticks upon entry. Hence, this is my first target point where I scale out half automatically. If price can not meet this target and meets resistance off the tape I will exit immediately. Second half is discretionary based on tape. If price meets resistance but I am seeing buying interest step right back in on the bid, I will hold my second half. If buying interest is not sufficient to take out the ask, (sellers keep stepping on the ask) I will exit right as the bid gets thin. I want to make sure to be able to exit as the bid instead of waiting for the bid to become the ask. This is because the tick size on the big Nikkei is big. Now, this observation and technique is only valid when bid/ask is thick and tick value is big. Might be a good way to determine selling and buying pressure on the S&P but not the mini Dow. The trick is to understand how to identify support and resistance levels. What are significant levels? I think new traders struggle to understand this basic analysis method. These sort of bid/ask action doesnt take place at random levels but key levels. What makes traders attracted to these levels? Why are these levels so important? etc...

I have found pivots to work in the YM (not sure about the ES) but absolutely useless in the Nikkei. The only reason why it works is because floor traders still use them and electronic traders have picked it up as a handy tool to determine S&R. Other than that, it makes absolutely no sense to determine S&R by a simple mathematical equation. For fixed targets, I use other significant levels such as high/low, high volume node, value high/low, etc...

Thanks mcichocki. It appears like there is a bug in our system in which it displays the latest threads. Apparently the url's to your charts are expanding our column. Do you think you can save the chart and then use the attachment feature for now until I find a fix to this? Sorry about this.

What platform are you using?

Hi mcichocki, You should invest in real-time data. Timing is so important in this game that practicing with delayed data with give you alot of trouble when adjusting.

Its a good free book for beginners but I found it a little elementary. Did Steidelmeyer write that?

Have anyone here been able to spot automated program trading on tape? On the Nikkei especially, the number of market participants is minimal compared to other markets. Though volume may be there, the actual number of traders is low. Hence, rangebound/choppy markets are controlled mainly by program buy/sell. I know arbitrage exists between the Singapore Nikkei and Osaka Nikkei but lately I have seen some other form of program trading. This... I suspect some major insitution is taking advantage of this by trading in lumps of 300+ contracts. (approx $27gran a tick) They like to take out the ask and let price run up by 2-3 ticks and then dump right back. This takes place at random price levels making it extra hard for technical based traders. I am guessing this program buy/sell occurs on some formula using the SGX Nikkei and OSE Nikkei contract. Hence, on these days I try to stay away from the markets. Any US or international traders notice this sort of behavior on the tape? Perhaps take a look at some of your losses that was based on breakouts or momentum. It may be that these program buy/sell is fooling you completely. Note: This observation comes only from the Index futures.

Hey Mike, Welcome aboard and thanks for helping moderate the site. Sorry I didnt notice this thread earlier but glad to have you with us. Regards, James

Yes, what I am describing is a straddle. I think what you are referring to is a bull and bear spread strategy.

What you are describing there sounds like a straddle in which you purchase a put and a call where both options have the same exercise price and expiration. Since both put and call are purchased you are long a straddle. While if you sold both put and call options you are short the straddle. A long straddle has limited risk and unlimited profit potential as long as the markets move in either direction. The markets must move sharply in order to realize large gains and is a strategy used when you think the markets will move but unsure of which way. If the markets remain flat, you lose the premium paid for on both the put and call. This strategy involves the assumption that volatility will pick up or is high in order to profit from such moves. Also keep in mind that your gain is the exercise price minus the premium you paid for.