Soultrader

You can use the continuous contract: symbol @YM for your charts and time of sales. But in your matrix you will need to use the current contract symbol. (YMH07) I tend to use both market and limit orders. For the opening play, I use all market orders. In a slow market I may decide to set a limit order below/above the trading price. It depends on my trading setup.

Thank you Robert.

Nope... doesnt apply to futures. Everything gets calculated at the end of the day. So lets say your account goes below $2438. However, by the close you have profited enough to raise it above $2500. Since futures are calculated at the end of day... you are still good to go.

There is no pattern day trading rule for eminis. You can open a TS futures account with the account minimum at $5,000 and day trade all you want. Also do you plan to day trade or hold overnight positions?

Robert, I get the weekly high,low,close and monthly high,low,close straight from the weekly and monthly charts. Do you have an indicator that takes these values and plots them on the charts automatically? I also want the option to switch the colors for the pivots as well as the option to enable and disable midpoints. If you have this it would be very helpful. Thanks

Noal, That is initially what I had in mind also. But the thing I dont understand is how can one claim that the longer term buyer bought above the POC. How can one prove this? I guess if you stared at tape all day long you might be able to spot big lot buyers above the POC but this is not 100% guaranteed. There are plenty of big short term traders as well. This whole section in the .pdf file is very unclear to me.

keymoo, If you set your buy limit at 800 flat.. you will get either a partial or full fill at 800 exact. If you get filled half of your position at 800.... but your other half never gets through, the half position will never be filled. This protects you from getting filled let's say a point away from your market order.

Robert, the $2,438 simply means that is the amount you need in your account to trade 1 contract. So a $5000 account would be able to trade 2 contracts. (which I highly do not recommend) For intraday trades, you can simply trade 2 contracts all day long as long as your account never dips below $4876 ($2438 + $2438). The maintence margin is the amount you need in your account minimum before your broker will give you a call and say please deposit more funds.

Hi MrPaul, I have the following: High: 12689 Low: 12405 Close: 12660 R3 13048.3 R2 12868.7 R1 12764.3 PP 12584.7 S1 12480.3 S2 12300.7 S3 12196.3 Also keep in mind that I use a slightly different formula for the S3 and R3 pivot.

Here you go Robert: http://www.tradestation.com/Futures_Margin/report.pdf

I spent some time thinking about that one... and honestly I was like "what???" over and over again. Did Steidlmayer write the packet? Because the writing is very unclear and hard to interpret. From my own interpretation, I believe the author is saying that the majority of transactions take place among short term traders and floor traders intraday. Transactions or activity is different from volume. Which is why I believe when the author mentions activity, I think he is referring to transactions. Because these short term traders place most of the activity between price levels where the market is in value, the side with the most activity represents short term traders. The side with the least activity represents long term traders because their perception of value is different from short term traders. While a short term trader may see the value area as a price region of fair value, a longer term trader may see it as a bargain or overvalued. Of course this is not to say I agree with the author. I do not fully understand why the author would need to include such a phrase in the book.. it seems to just confuse the heck out of me. It also seems extremely irrelevant in my opinion. Maybe someone can clear this up for us.

Hi Noal, At first I had trouble understanding it. Partly because I had always pictured insititutional traders or funds to be super traders and were never wrong. Well they may be right, but intraday traders who focus on small price movements certainly focus alot more on getting a better fill. While I may use a 10 pt stop on the dow minis these insitution can use a larger stop because of their holding period. I'm pretty sure I have comprehended the page correctly but not 100% sure of this. Let me begin with a market profile chart below: The chart above illustrates the value area, poc, and TPO count for the emini Russell contract. We have a TPO count of 183/193 slightly favoring the buyers. Now for an intraday or short term trader the value area is what we perceive to be fair. However, for an longer term buyer if he decides to buy in this value area he is buying because he thinks the market is going up. In other words from his perspective he is buying low because he is focused on the longer term holding period. If he decides to sell in this value area he is selling because he thinks the market is going down. In his perspective he is selling high in relation to his longer term market perspective. Hence the statement: Now, the author also states that the side with the most activity has to be short-term activity.... in other words no one is giving up and edge there. Basically short term traders perceive price to be fair inside the value area. Day traders, swing traders, pit traders, etc... view this area as fair and balanced. So the most activity is found amongst this crowd who perceive price to be fair at value. On the other hand, the longer term market participant views the value area differently. He does not view it as fair or balanced, a longer term buyer would view the same value area as a bargain. A longer term seller would view the same value area as too high. Therefore the area with the smaller activity indicates the longer term market participant. This concept is a little ackward for me to grasp... since I believe the author is referring to the chart on the .pdf file. Now there is still one line which I can not fully understand. Is this indicating that the longer term buyer is buying enough contracts to expand the value area?

Sure go ahead and paste. I dont mind reading it... I may have something new to learn myself. Short term buyers/sellers are traders like myself whose holding time is fairly short. In MP books, longer term buyers/sellers are usually referred to as the funds and insitutions.

Hello Richard, Sounds like an interesting research paper you are working on there. I have done extensive research on online communities and forum prior to making this one. Probably the biggest misconception forum owners have is that once its built...its a matter of time before it takes off. This is not true. The majority of forums fail. Similar to the 95% traders failure rate. You can simply check the amount of forums that exist by just googling it. On the other hand I do think forums dedicated to trading is rare. Majority of them are started off with forum owners with the intention of monetizing of them. This is the absolutely wrong approach and I am pretty sure the majority of them are not traders as well. In the admin world.. they say the first 1000 members is the biggest challenge. However, I did not have that problem with Traders Laboratory at all. We are well on our way to 2,000 within approx 6 months. Now in the information world, content is king. There is alot of websites dedicated to trading but only a few of which I found to be credible. Alot of sites were misleading hence the biggest reason why I decided to launch Traders Laboratory. I wanted to focus on the highest quality educational website for traders. I also get the great opportunity to learn from many other traders here as well. I think a majority of forums loses its touch simply because the admin or owner loses passion or the genre he started was simply not his specialty. I do love running this website and feel very fortunate to attract a group of friendly and great members from all trading level. We have an excellent group of dedicated moderators as well help keeping the site top notch. Feel free to email me Richard if you have anymore questions. I will be glad to help you on your paper. James

Hello Noal, Let me try to do my best to answer your questions. I am sure other MP traders can help you out as well. Regarding TPO count, a TPO count of 70/89 means 70 above the POC and 89 below the POC. This indicates buyer dominance or buying control. The TPO count above the POC represents sellers willing to short above value while a TPO count below the POC represents buyers willing to buy below value. Buyers below POC view the markets as undervalued while sellers above the POC view the markets as overvalued. Imbalance is created when there is more demand over supply or vice versa. In other words the bulls or bears express more confidence. A market trading inside value is a balanced market. A market that trades above/below value is imbalanced and seeks balance. I am still unclear about the long-term, short-term activity. I would need to read the entire section from the pdf file. Value area is simply an area where both buyers and sellers agree on market value. It is equilibrium. Is the author referring to activity as volume or the number of transactions? EDIT: made a slight error regarding seller vs buying control. Fixed now

wow... that is insanity. Im very used to calm contracts, I guess the currencies are extremely wild compared to contracts such as the dow minis. That is one thing I will avoid 100% of the time.. trading before news. I prefer to rely more on the technicals. Regarding the previous chart, a stop above the Frankfurt high is approx 15 pips? This is a very reasonable stop placement in terms of risk. ($93.75 per contract) A fair 1:3 or 1:4 risk reward ratio. Very interesting

Very interesting notouch. The 50% fib retracement took place before the London open? Would you recommend this pair for intraday trades? That is quite a move in terms of P&L just in 1 hour. I am quite amazed. Also how many ticks do you normally use for a stop loss placement? Thanks

Thank you very much notouch. Looks like I found the right contract: symbol @BP. At $6.25 a tick I can tolerate the potential risk. It seems to be somewhat in between the YM and ER in terms of volatility. What time zones is this contract most active in? You mentioned the London open... is this the most ideal time to be trading this? Here is an interesting technical setup for the @BP.

Thanks notouch. I will look into the British Pound futures. Would it be possible to post a chart of it? I'm just having some serious issues finding the correct contract so would love to compare it with your charts.

Okay so basically you recommend I stick with Forex and not currency futures? From my understanding Forex brokers charge free commision because they are ripping you off the spreads to begin with. Wouldnt currency futures provide me with a more equal level playing field?

Torero, I can't seem to find the right symbols for TS. I tried PJYH07 for the British Pound/Yen for TS but it is not giving me historical data. I cant seem to find the USDJPY symbol as well. grrr... I hate being a newb.

Good tip there keymoo. Stop-limit is probably the wiser decision under these circumstances. I'll keep that in mind for the next Bernie momo trade.

Thank you for the reply notouch. I am looking to trade a pair during my Tokyo Hours. I prefer to focus on the eminis during the US hours. For currency futures traded on the CME, is the most liquidity found during US and London hours only? I prefer to trade something with minimal slippage. Do you know the symbol for the British Pound futures? Thank you.

Hello guys and gals, I am complete newbie when it comes to Forex and currency futures. I decided to start watching a few pairs to get a hang of it and perhaps find some good opportunities in the near future to trade. I have a few questions. First I would prefer to trade currency futures. What pairs are recommended and what are the symbols for Tradestation? I pulled up a Japanese Yen chart with the symbol @JY. On the cme website it states that 1 point is equivalent to $12.50 per contract. Would a move from 0.84 to 0.841 be equivalane to 10 points or $125.00 per contract? I noticed that the liquidit is extremely low for the @JY and just entering would lead to serious slippage. Im starting off with simple observation and strategies using trendlines for perhaps a 1-3 day swing opportunity. (wont be trading them yet though) Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

"I am tired," he said, "of hearing the public and the papers blame Wall Street for parting fools from their money. Take the biggest losers. They are not the piker suckers, who only lose what they risk-pennies. It's the successful business man, the shrewd merchant, who is the biggest sucker of the lot. He has made a fortune in his own line? How? By being on the job for years; by learning all there was to know about it; by taking reasonable chances; by utilizing his knowledge and experience to anticipate probabilities. He wants to increase that fortune at a faster rate and with less effort. He decides to make his money work for him - at high wages. He assures himself that as he is taking the risk of losing every cent he puts up it is only fair to make more than his usual profit. Why, that man doesn't lose his money in Wall Street. He loses it in his own office. It isn't the game that beats him; he beats himself. Am I right?" - page 11, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator -