Soultrader

I wish that function was available with the system. Unfortunately it wont be possible at the moment. Im working on adding a small feature with new thread postings so we can limit the amount of repetitive questions on the board. Or I can start making a glossary of posts soon.

This is the attachment button: It is not available on the quick reply so you will need to use the Post Reply button. As for signatures they are only available for premium members in order to avoid spam links. Thanks

Here is an interesting chart from todays session. Notice new lows with lower volume. Hopefully some of you YM traders were able to capture the reversal movement.

Yea I saw it last night. The fighting scenes are amazing.. notice they played the same theme song at the end from Gladiator? Good song by the way. Check out the history channel version of 300. Goes into the history of it more accurately.

Cool. Thanks weiwei.

Welcome Blowfish Good to have you on board. There is a VSA webinar we hosted by TradeGuider.com recently and is posted in the Webinar section on the left hand column. You might want to check that out. James

Here is my input. I have tried both exits techniques of all-out and scaling out. I have been scaling out the majority of the time but now have chosen to go all-out. Let's say you have a profit target of 30 YM points a day. I would scale out half at +10, quarter at +20, and last quarter discretionary. Let's say you use a 10 point stop per trade. First trade is a winner: +10 on half, +20 on quarter, and +30 on final quarter. This averages out to 17.5 YM points on the entire position. Now the second trader is a loser: -10 pts on full position. The net here is +7.5 YM points. Even though you had a 30pt trade with only one losing trade of 10 points, youre net is 7.5pts. For me this led to more trades or even sticking around until the close to capture my daily target. I have started using 15-20pt stops on a slightly higher timeframe to capture at least 20-30pts on half. (depends on the trade and market condition) Now all I really needed was 1-2 good setups a day. I rely heavily on tape making my trades extremely short term. Now, I am focusing more on candles or simply moving stop to break even to let trades ride. With scaling out, the homerun trades will not offer optimal net profit. But can limit your losses with alot of scratch trades or -5pt trades. I personally do not aim for homerun trades.. if they happen great. But I think its really based on your daily goals, position sizes, risk tolerance. If your daily goal is $2,000 and trading 20 dow contracts, all you need is 20 points. If you are trading 10 contracts with a $2,000 daily goal then you will need 40 points. I prefer to use points as a daily goal instead of monetary gains. Account size, position size, style of trading, etc... needs to be incorporated in order to find what is optimal for you.

Hi weiwei, What does this indicator do? Thanks

I opened the premium members section to the public. But am limiting new threads and posts to members with posts counts of over 100. If you are currently a premium trader status this will not apply. Added a little search feature when posting new threads as well. I may remove this for a different idea. (still debating) Would you guys like to see any new forums or sub categories?

Hi PivotProfiler, I did scalp one more time on the way up. Personally the 1500v chart is something I found powerful but needs patience for actual triggers to develop. I feel its similar to a 5min on the YM but slightly more reliable in terms of candle patterns. Sometimes I will take trades based on the charts... other times I trade off tape at key pivots without even looking at my price chart. I do miss seeing volume on the lower panel which is why I still have my 5min,15min, 30min charts but the volume candles do a good job really showing me the fight between the bulls and bears.

You bring up some good points Kiwi and Brownsfan. This is the first trading board I am a part of... I actually did not find out about ET until late 2006 and T2W until after I created this board. Ive seen a number of boards of different genre and did alot of research on them. There is definitely an atmosphere in each board. I think we have a good atmoshphere here at TL... the hardest will be trying to seek balance, maintaining the attitude, and yet keeping it educational. (like Kiwi pointed) I definitely want to create a private section for the veteran members on the board and perhaps make this either accessible based on user activity or even through referral only. The conflict between experienced vs new is definitely something I have in mind. It is not a problem UNTIL the experienced traders find themselves answering the same questions over and over again. So a seperate section where they can interact without repetitive arguements may be useful. I monitor strictly on rants, fights, abuse, etc.. in the threads. If a member has nothing to contribute but just criticism and negativity... I tend to ban them without any warning. This is not to say I ban anyone who becomes heated. NO. A heated arguement is healthy in my opinion. But the obvious posts that attacks a poster for pure self satisfaction is something I do not tolerate. Whether experienced or new to trading, each opinion/post must be respected. Any off-topic discussions should go into General Discussions. I also move any unrelated topics to the appropiate category or may even pm a member to try to stay on topic. Content should always be number one on this board. As the board grows, I am positive that I will encounter new problems and will need to come up with solutions accordingly. If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know guys. I am pretty much going with the flow... just adjusting things as new problems appear. But I make sure any slight problem gets fixed asap.. its the little things that matter.

Thank you for the comments Brownsfan I have a few plans in mind at the moment in maintaining the atmosphere of TL even with further growth. I added a premium members forum which I plan to grow. I plan to make premium membership based on user activity, number of posts, quality of content, etc... This can provide a seperate forum section for those who prefer to interact in a smaller environement. I am also looking into possibilities of members able to open private discussion threads. So perhaps trader can enjoy interacting in various smaller groups. I have a few other things in mind which I am working on at the moment. I am also open to suggestions as to features members would like to have on the boards. Just one thing I am scrict with the board is keeping it clean. I prefer it to be a good discussion board instead of a board focused on just shoutouts. While we have a few educators, brokers, analysts on board with us I try to avoid conflict with members interest. I am looking at a more educational point of view even with the member/sponsor/educator interaction.

No problem Don.. just post them if it is useful for traders. I only remove spam posts.

Good point Tin. The chat room has some limitations due to the system of 25 simultaneous users at once. The emini room usually has anywhere from 15-20 ppl daily and with the Forex room.... that might be the problem. Until I decide to upgrade or move to a different system there will be a room limitations. Try entering during non market hours to see if there is still a problem. If you would like to be a regular on the chat rooms, please pm me as well. Thanks

Interesting thread. I use WRB's as an exit especially if it occurs near a pivot. Sometimes full and at sometimes half my position depending on the current market environment. I personally like to wait until the close of the WRB and then stare at tape to see sellers. Profit taking will occur regardless but what I am trying to spot on tape is the additional shorts that may come in to reverse price. If not, the markets usually form a doji... may retrace a little and then take off again. The reason why I like WBR is because of my entry. I like to enter in narrow range bars. Not necessarily the first one in the move but I enter based on price levels and to minimize my risk I focus hard on entries. (thought I find exits harder) WBR to me means that those buying it are chasing the markets. The late comers are extremely frustrated to watch price move without them that they rush in to buy. Now, knowing that 5% make money trading futures... my take is that the 5% are the ones that bought/sold in the previous narrow range bars. The WBR offers a good exit signal to sell into strength. I rely heavily on the tape to cut my last portion loose or hold. Something which is impossible for me to explain in words... I am not candlestick expert so would love to hear from more experienced candle traders.

Hi RDT, We use a seperate system for the chat room which is also on a third party database, server, and domain. There is really nothing I can think of that may be causing this problem. The chat room does not run on java or any fancy stuff.. it is extremely simple. Can you try upgrading to the latest IE 7.0? Or perhaps can you try to see if Firefox or other browsers are working? It may be an issue with your IE. Also please try clearing cookies to see if that does the trick. Disable any popup blockers as well. If it still does not work please let me know and I will try to ask the guys in the chat for any solutions. Thanks Regards, James

Range is the high minus the low. I personally just use the %TREND. With value area, I simply watch whether the value area is overlapping or not. Walterw, can you pm me your email... I can send you a simple spreadsheat that I use. It has data going back to May of 2006.

Hi RussellDaytrade, Which browser do you currently use? I will need to test this out with your browser. Are you receiving an error message or a white page? Thanks Soultrader

I made a seperate thread for it here: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/trend-calculations-1478.html#post8228

%TREND: Absolute value of (CLOSE - OPEN) / RANGE This calculation tells us whether or not the trading day was a trend day or nontrend day. It the close was at the upper or lower range, we will get %TREND reading close to 100%. If market direction was relatively unchanged and the markets closed near the open, we will get a %TREND reading closer to 0%. A high %TREND informs us of market imbalance. The markets usually take breather and will consolidate after a high %TREND day. Therefore, the %TREND helps us anticipate what type of day we are likely to have.

Traders use pivots differently but I personally do not use midpoints. I see no signficance in them. The ONLY midpoint I MAY watch is the midpoiint between PP and S1 and PP and R1 only when the distance is great.

I keep a data of %TREND everyday. Low %TREND tends to be followed by higher %TREND days and vice versa. This is not exact science. BUT anytime we have a %TREND below 15% we are likely to see a %TREND above 40% the following day. If we continue to see a low %TREND two days in a row, the third day has a chance of a %TREND greater than 40% as well. March 5, 2007 had a %TREND of 3.98% on the YM. The folllowing day the %TREND was 55.09%. Couple examples: 2/28/07: 12.89% 3/1/07: 42.54% 2/14/07: 9.71% 2/15/07: 27.91% 2/16/07: 44.83% 2/06/07: 1.82% 2/7/07: 6.67% 2/8/07: 5.71% 2/9/07: 45.45% 2/12/07: 42.25% 2/13/07: 62.14% 1/29/07: 1.23% 1/30/07: 60.66% 1/16/07: 19.35% 1/17/07: 40.30% Identifying trend vs range is a concept market profile focuses strongly on. It takes into account two brackets: value low to value high and previous day low to previous day high. Where there is balance between buyers and sellers, the markets will remain in equilibrium and a rangebound market. This is represnted by price traveling within the value area. When one side shows more confidence an imbalance occurs in supply vs demand. Thus, there is one sided domination forcing price to leave value and find a new level of equilibrium. An imbalance in supply vs demand causes the markets to trend. This can be seen by one-timing auctions on a 15minute or 30minute chart for example. One-timing meaning that the markets never trade below the low of the previous 15min or 30min bar and continues to make new highs. You may say, "Okay.... if the markets are one-timing the first 90minutes, cant it still reverse?" Yes it can. But like I mentioned earlier the previous days range is extremely important to me to judge a trend vs range. When the markets break out of the previous days high AND finds price acceptance, it will either trend upwards or find equilibrium right above the previous day high. So what you will see is a opening hour breakout and then rangebound the rest of the day. But this can clearly be detected early in the trading session as volume dissapears within 30-60mins. When price breaks out of the previous days high and finds price acceptance and volume remains active, we are likely to trend in the direction of the breakout. In real-time... I do rely on the tape alot to watch for the flow of tape and price action. 30minute charts help me see a potential trend day if I am unable to spot it early. Previous day high/low must be violated for a trend to occur in my trading. There are a few things that I have trouble explaining it in words... but I do get this "feel" that a trend day may develop during the first 15minutes. Its a different atmosphere in the markets at the open on trend days. For those using pit noise, a full pit also helps confirm this.

Started using 5min and 1500v charts. Im trying to capture a bigger move using a slightly higher timeframe.

Hi Robert, The arrows on the volume panel is showing the low volume rallies followed by high volume sell offs. Good volume on a red bar indicates alot of contracts exchanging hands. Do not mistaken this with a reversal. The markets can still decline even after a volume spike. The key is to watch for the next bar after the volume spike. If the next sell bar occurs on lower volume, this indicates supply getting cut off. Hence you can expect to see a reversal. The basics of volume teach us that volume should increase in the direction of the trend and decrease on the pullbacks/retracement. You can see this in action through the attached charts. We have high volume selling followed by lower volume pullbacks. This indicates big boys are not interested yet and have more to sell. I also tend to play the short side around 70% of the time. Why? Not sure but money tends to be made faster on the decline than the rally.

Same problem with TS here... charts froze up on me and start delaying 20-30secs. However the tape was running fine. I dont clear with them so I was able to get my trades in today. One advice is to disable the MP indicator during the trading day. This does make the platform extremely heavy leading to lag and freezing. I recently added another 1gb in RAM hoping to fix this problem but still no good.