Tradewinds

That's a good point. I'm still not convinced that TICK readings less than 400 should be disregarded though. Personally, I haven't worked through what those lower TICK readings should really mean or not, but I'm leaving some space in my brain cells to be open to some further clarification.

Yes, I have seen that definition that you are using. I trade intraday, one minute chart, and the advancers and decliners are different on every bar. One thing I have often seen, is that definitions are given in terms of day to day. But it's really an issue of bar to bar. Otherwise, the $ADVN - $DECN on an intraday chart would be the same value all day long. But it isn't. It changes from minute to minute.

Good point. And I think it's a very important point. I think that also ties into being "mindless", or really understanding what is going on. Looking for that deeper understanding, is why I put almost all my emphasis in trading on market internals, and the news.

No, I don't check the "Remember Me" box when I log in. I am in the habit of intentionally not doing that for security reasons. And I don't really want to change that. But even if I did check the "Remember Me" box, if the website uses cookies to keep track of that setting, then it won't work, because I have my browser delete all cookies every time the browser is closed.

I have never been one to eat a huge meal. I eat 3 regular meals at set times, but I've never eaten huge amounts at a meal. I think that is important. I do eat in between meals, but I'm one of those people who just doesn't gain any weight.

Learn - Something very few of us actually do. To some degree, I think of myself, and the human race as just robots. We can be so mindless. And if we are not mindless, we know what we shouldn't do, but then we go ahead and do it anyway. So what's the answer? I'm not sure what the answer is. I need to be "re-programed". As someone who does a lot of programing, and looks at human behavior, I think a lot of our behavior is "programmed" into our DNA, and it's difficult to overcome. Issues like this are why I'm interested in "trading psychology", which isn't really trading psychology, it's just psychology, period. But where does psychology meet will power? At some point I just need to move out of the comfort zone, and reprogram those brain cells. I don't do meditation, but I'd be interested in using it to retrain my brainwashed mind into actually doing what works.

Yes, I'm doing the same thing. I use the combination of keys, "Ctrl + A" to select my whole msg, then I use "Ctrl + C" to copy my msg into the memory buffer. It it's a long post, I actually, paste my post into Word Pad just in case something really goes wrong. At one point I thought there was a User option to determine what the timing was for how much time passed before the website automatically logged me out. But I don't see an option for that anywhere. If there was an option, I would lengthen the time, or get rid of the automatic log out.

So if an uptick requires an actual transaction, but an advancer does not require an actual transaction, then an increase in the NYSE $TICK could mean that there is REAL buying going on at a higher price, as opposed to a higher price that no-one was willing to buy. The price could be going up, (advancer) but no-one is willing to buy the higher price (NYSE $TICK going down). Demand at the higher prices is drying up, . . . price peaks. How does that sound for logic? Does that make sense? I'd like to know what people think.

Here is a link to a definition of an uptick: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/uptick.asp

I just found some info about Advancers and Decliners that define an Advancer or Decliner as a stock that is trading higher or lower than the previous CLOSE. So I'm wondering if the difference between an uptick and an advancer is whether there was an actual transaction or not. The price of a stock could go higher without any real transaction, that could be an Advancer. So regardless of whether a particular stock was actually bought or sold, the price could change. But with the $TICK, maybe you can not get an uptick unless there was actually a transaction. Can anyone verify this, or refute it? Or provide a reference for clarification?

uptick - last transaction is at a higher price than the previous transaction. downtick - last transaction is at a lower price than the previous transaction. Neutral tick - last transaction is at the same price as the previous one, this is a zero tick. An uptick for purposes of calculating the $TICK is a transaction at a higher price. But what is an Advancer? I notice that Advancers and Decliners are talked about in terms of ISSUES. I don't know what the difference is between an uptick for the $TICK and an Advancer. They can't be the same, or an uptick minus a downtick would be the same as an Advancer minus a Decliner. But they are not the same. In fact, the $TICK can be going up while the $ADVN - $DECN is going down. I have searched the internet, but I can't find a definition of what an advancing issue is.

I am constantly getting automatically logged out, or something, before I complete making a post. This has been going on for months, and it's really getting aggravating. I'm in the middle of making a post, I submit it, and a screen comes up telling me that I need to log in to make the post. Well, I already logged in. When I then log in AGAIN I get a message that I'm already a registered member, it the page won't let me do anything. Then I have to log out, log back in again, find the thread I was replying to, and type in my post all over again. Something is very wrong here.

Trading is a very sedentary lifestyle. I have started running up and down the stairs to get my heart rate up during the day, and increasing my fitness. My problem with exercise is that it becomes a chore that I don't want to do. So I'm focusing on keeping it quick and simple. No sweat, no clothing change, no need to shower afterward. I have been surprised at the increase in my endurance and cardiovascular health from doing stair climbing. I don't need to go outdoors. It is fast and convenient. I do a certain number of reps up and down the stairs, then take a short break. If you are not in good shape, just walk up and down the stairs. Just do what you can, and don't worry about it. I am always pushing myself harder and harder, but with exercise, it just doesn't work for me. I just give up after while. I actually like doing the stair climbing. I can feel myself getting stronger, and I see the progress very quickly. I'm impatient, so I want to see results, or I loose interest. I'm not going to tell you how many times I run up and down the stairs, or how many cycles I do, because there is no correct number. Actually, I wasn't feeling well for a while, so I backed off for a while until I got over my viral infection. Again, my problem is that I push myself to hard, and too quickly, then it's more pain than it's worth. So I had to change my attitude. My goal is just to get my heart rate up during the day. If my strength increases, fine, I do a little more, but if I start dreaming about being in such good shape that I could run a marathon, then I "bite off more than I can chew", and then I just quit. I run up and down the stairs, then walk around the house for a minute of two until my heart rate goes down. If I feel like doing another round, then I do another round.

I eat a lot of peanut butter. I only eat natural peanut butter. Look at the ingredients. If it states anything other than peanuts, and/or salt, then I don't buy it. It's protien, so it helps stabilize your blood sugar swings. Natural peanut butter will have oil on the top when you buy it, just stir it up, then refrigerate it so the oil won't separate out. Plus I eat yogurt, bananas, and oatmeal.

For health and nutritional information, I suggest the website: mercola.com They cover many topics like exercise, supplements, food and water quality and lifestyle. I have personally benefited from their probiotics, after dealing with digestion problems. I don't work for them, and I have absolutely no connection to them except as a satisfied customer.

When I first looked at a Zig-Zag study, I thought I was seeing a miracle. When looking at historical data, the Zig-Zag study was showing perfect peaks and bottoms. Then I found out that the Zig-Zag is delayed. It is possible to write a trading script that shows perfect entry and exit points if you are delaying the output. This is typically done with indexes that theoretically use price bars that are "in the future". But it is impossible to see into the future, so effectively what happens, is the plot is delayed. It is possible to find leading indicators that tell you the price is about to turn. But it's always a matter of how probable it is. Working with historical data is very different than trading live. The typical situation I like to point out is a bar or candle at a peak or bottom with a long tail on it. If you watch live trading, those long tails often happen so fast, that you have no opportunity to catch them unless you have an order in ahead of time. So the price did go to those price levels, but it happened in a matter of a second or two, and that is literally all the time you would have had to get a fill. So for practical purposes, it's very improbable that you could react fast enough. Again, if you had an order in ahead of time, and get lucky, then it works. So, if your setups are not delayed, . . if they truly are leading indicators, and if there was enough time, and enough price movement to get a fill, those are the thing that make it actually trade-able.

This member: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/44508-zerodivision/ has made 5 posts, and they have a "Trader IQ" bar that is at 5%. So the trader IQ bar can't be only available to people who have made 150 posts. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/showthread.php?p=97258#post97258 Ok, what is weird, is that I just clicked on that link, and sometimes that Trader IQ bar shows up, and sometimes it doesn't. After thinking about it, I really don't want that Trader IQ bar. I mean, the amount of posts that someone has made doesn't necessarily increase your IQ. That's really not a very accurate measure of a trader's ability or knowledge of trading. Trader's Laboratory should have a trading contest type of thing.

I wish there was a good way of proving to new traders what the key issues are. There probably is a good way, but I don't know what it is. A new trader does not know who to trust, or what standards to use in sorting through all the information. That would be an interesting topic, . . . what are the filters and standards for evaluating the worth of a trading plan, indicator, advice, or mentor. Eventually, we need to narrow everything down, and focus. I have been through the phase, where I just had to make a decision about what 4 or 5 things are the most helpful, accurate, and needed, and them dump everything else. I don't know of any good way around this process for new traders. Even if we had the perfect answers right up front, would we listen to them? Again, the issue is, who do you trust, and how do you know if someone has good answers or they don't? What is the process? What is the standard? How do you or I know if someone actually has good advice or not?

Ok, . . . well, at least I know the answer now. Thank you. I knew about the 150 posts thing for becoming a premium member. I like to make well thought out posts. Here is something to think about. What if someone made 150 posts, but they had never been thanked. And what if a person made 20 posts and had been thanked 40 times. The point I'm making is about the quality of the posts. That might be something to think about also.

Here is a list of trading considerations in a spreadsheet. Feel free to modify it and re-post it. Considerations.xls

When I click, "Edit Signature", I get the message: Sorry, you are not permitted to have a signature.

I'm a perfectionist, so my standard of having something "nailed" is quite high. I'll put it this way, . . . I have the hammer, . . I have the nails, . . . I'm afraid of pounding my finger. The psychological/fear part is the final nail. The psychological part is another category to look at. I'm a perfectionist, and got caught up in trying to find the perfect trading indicator. Then it became an excuse not to trade. The good part of being afraid to trade is that I didn't blow up my account. The bad part is that I haven't made money trading, when I have the skills to do it. I didn't know about the failure rate of traders when I started. It was quite a while before I heard anything about that. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from trading. I believe that the market needs small retail traders. Just understand that many traders may run out of time and money before you get the skills to be successful. But that is the case with starting any business. I spent a lot of time, energy and resources nailing down all of those 11 categories. The most important thing is the strategy and product. Another category I would add is psychology. That's the final nail to drive for me. I'm working on that now. My personality is to attempt to create something that nobody else has. I tend to think that I can come up with a better answer than other people have. So I'm very independent, creative and believe in my abilities. I have programmed my own custom trading indicators and have written hundreds of custom indicators, so I am deep into programing. I don't know what the typical trader personality is, or if there is one, but that is my personality and my perspective. As far as the computer setup, internet connection, broker, and platform. Those things can kind of work themselves out over time as you are deciding what product to trade and what time frame. When I first started, I spent massive amounts of time searching the internet for good information. Probably 98% of the trading information, websites, and products out there I wouldn't give two cents for. (And thankfully I didn't) I believe in learning price behavior, but I made it to complicated. When I just started focusing on things like support, resistance, new high's, and new low's things got a lot simpler. I don't like indicators based on price. The only thing I look at based on price is price levels, support/resistance. I would like to state, that a big part of my learning was helping out other people with what I am good at. I helped people answer programing questions, and that exposed me to a lot of ideas and information that I would not have known about. So becoming part of a group, and contributing was a big part of my journey. I helped people, but I also learned things that I might never have been exposed to. So it's good to get involved, and contribute. You get something back from it.

1-Why. I want to trade as a career. It did not start out that way. Originally, I just wanted to manage my own retirement account. I came out of the manufacturing and construction industries. I don't want to go back into either industry, and I don't see any way I can get work in either industry. I'm looking for a way of life and a career. I don't feel that the U.S. economy has anything to offer me. I don't feel like I have any other good options. I caution anyone wanting to go into trading as a profession. I don't have a family to support, or any real expenses, so that has been critical to my being able to put the time in to learn trading. 2-Commitment. I have committed a little over 3 years now. Probably 2 to 2 1/2 years full time, every day. 3-Timeframe and method. I guess I'd call myself a swingtrade scalper. I hate trend lines, and do not use them. I wasted a lot of time on trend lines. I only use price levels, support and resistance on my price chart. Then I use mostly the Advancers / Decliners for the general trend direction. I do not use multi-time frame charts. I only use a one minute chart. For me, something like a 133 Tick chart is just information overload, and takes my focus off the longer trend. I will be making up to hundreds of trades a day. 4-Account/investment size. I expect to eventually make $800 to $1000 dollars a day. If I had a $100,000 account, I'd want to make $5,000 dollars a day. I've gone through about $25,000 dollars of expenses for bare bones living, and I have no rent, mortgage, heat or food expenses. Right now I have $10,000 in a trading account. 5-Money management. I have a reasonable trading method that I have proven will make money. But it's taken over 3 years to get to this point. I've made all the typical mistakes that traders make. Let my losses run, take profit to early, etc. 6-Product. All I trade is the ES e-mini futures contracts. Originally I looked at stocks. I consider stocks to be to much of a hassle, to much research, to difficult. I don't see any reason to trade anything else. My focus is to totally master what I do to an extremely profession level. 7-Broker. I've only used a couple of brokers. This is an interesting topic. It takes a lot of time to get set up with a broker, and learn their platform. Just that alone could take months. It's a chore to determine what broker you want to use. 8-Platform. By chance, I choose a broker that has very good charting. I believe that this is critical. After all, it's all about reading the chart. If you can't do that, then what's the point? Make sure that whatever platform you are using, you can navigate the charts without getting confused. 9-News source. I looked into buying a subscription to a news service, but the expense was way more than I wanted to spend. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. News is very important, but trying to react instantly to the news is a game I would never try to play. I did go down that road of looking a earnings reports for about 6 months, and then decided that it's way to difficult, and I'm glad that I gave up on it. Don't get me wrong, I always check when the news releases are and make sure that I'm not trading when it comes out. Then I take a look at what the news is. I put a lot of time into figuring out how to interpret the news. That's an art form. But I don't trade the news, I trade the market internals and support/resistance. 10-Computer. I've gone through 3 computers. One custom built myself. (Nightmare, that I don't recommend. But I'd probably do it again.) I like my laptop with an external screen attached. As with any product, the high end products are sometimes worse than the mid range quality. I bought a high end gaming laptop that I had to return twice, and then bought something else. 11-Internet Connection. I live in a rural area and started with a local wireless company. It wasn't really good enough for trading. Luckily, during my learning phase, a cable company installed high speed on my road. I have a back up wireless connection through my cell phone company.

In trading it is important to be in the state of mind to, "take what the market is willing to give you". So I would say, one of our goals should be to take what the market is willing to give. The other side of the coin, is to understand that we can't force the market to do anything. The market does what the market does, and as a small retail trader, I can not make the price move by shear willpower. My point is, that setting goals can be a "double edged sword". As you stated, they must be reasonable and adjustable. I have made the mistake at times of not having a "plan B" if my goals are not met. And "Plan B" is to "take what the market gives me", and accept it if my goal isn't met.

I've been thinking about trading as a business (it is) and that I simply need to execute my business plan. (Which is what I need to do.) To view my trading as a business that I have a responsibility to, and must do, appeals to me. I think the appeal of being very "business like", is that it disassociates the trading from my personal life. If I tell myself, "It's just a job", then the trading becomes impersonal. It's not that I want to be a cold, impersonal person, but trading needs to be very "machine like", in the sense that you don't want the emotions of fear and greed sabotaging you. If I take the attitude, that I have a job description, and the job description is to trade this strategy that you've been given, I can relate to that. It's gives a whole new meaning to the saying, "I am my own boss" LOL. The boss tells me what to do, and I must do it. (But in this case, the boss and myself are the same) :rofl: So I'm bossing myself around. It's giving myself permission to take charge of my own destiny.