thalestrader

Hi folks, First trades of the New Year for my daughter and I have us short EURUSD at 1.3358 and added short EURUSD at 1.3347 ... Happy New Year to All! Best Wishes, Thales

Hi there MMS, Any thoughts on renewing this contest? If not quarterly perhaps you could simply run another pick the year's closing price, but start it now and cut entries off at the end of January. Its one thing to pick the close three months out. It is entirely another to pick it out a whole year. Also, may I suggest that if you do run the contest again, you judge it as suggested by Blowfish in his post above - determine the difference between each guess and the actual close for each individual index, and then add those three numbers together - the lowest number across the board wins. In terms of this years contest, if my math is correct, it actually works out that the closest guess on the total also was closest on each of the three indices, but you could see that it would be easy for someone to be way off on all three, but by an arithmetic accident, nonetheless wins the contest based on the simple total of the his or her three guesses. Best Wishes, Thales

Reminiscences is held in such high esteem by market operators because it is comprehensive in its depiction of Livermore - it is emphatically not one sided. He himself tells us that far and greed lead to ruin, and then throughout the course of the narrative shows how he himself had repeatedly ruined by the very things he advises his readers that they must control. Reminiscences was not a "How to..." type reference book or instruction manual. It does teach, but it does so subtly, in the manner in which a novel or play or Platonic dialogue teaches. That is, one must read "between the lines," so to speak, and interpret the book as one does a piece of literature, which, of course, is not the same as reading it literally as a "do everything JL does here." Especially when he himself is so critical of so much of what he does. Best Wishes, Thales

Well, it is a bull market, you know ... Based on what I spy with my eye, it looks like the bulls were running at TL and have come out on top of the less bullish to downright bearish counts. Happy New Year folks, and don't let anyone tell you that fib's and Stephenson WPTT's are not useful when used within the context of the primary trend. I think that this could make for an interesting quarterly game here at TL, if MMS is amenable to it. Best Wishes, Thales

Break ... but will it be "break and hold" or "break and reverse," aka a 2B buy? Best Wishes, Thales

Testing ... Best Wishes, Thales

Current view of the EURUSD has me looking for a move down to 1.2953 or so if price breaks this morning's low and fails to reverse higher quickly ... Best Wishes, Thales

Not much loss of momentum on each successive new low, so I myself wouldn't view this as a "three push" pattern. That doesn't mean that a bounce is not immanent. But you asked for opinions, and my opinion is that 6E is perhaps mopping up the first of two or three lows before a significant bounce materializes. Of course, that is my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions. In the end, the highs and lows will lead the way ... Best Wishes, Thales

A nice trade nonetheless - we typically have seen very few day traders land more than a handful of ticks here, and it is nice to see your success. 36 ticks on the ES would be 9 points - how many day traders have never once had such a profit on a trade. I'd bet many more have taken 36 tick losses than have ever taken a 36 tick profit. Best Wishes, Thales

I'd like to see some kind of contest, but The Race may have been too compressed and too restrictive. I know MightyMouse had some suggestions. I'd be open to setting up something similar that would run throughout the calendar year instead for only 20 weeks, and I'd perhaps rather than restrict account size, we could open it to anyone wiling to post a balance, and we could have two category winners - one based on % return, and one based upon nominal US Dollars. I guess we should open to the floor for suggestions and to gauge interest. Best Wishes, Thales

Any idea if or when this will be fixed? Most of the threads I check out are in the Trading & the Markets forum, and I'd rather not have to go hunting for them to see if there are new posts. Best Wishes, Thales

You had to make your guess by September 22 or something like that, so you could only use today's numbers if you had guessed them three months ago. Best Wishes, Thales

Hi There MMS, May I ask why posts to threads in the "Trading and the Markets" forum are no longer showing up under the recent posts list on the home page? Thank You. Best Wishes, Thales

This is a test of the "Trading and the Markets" forum ... Edit: Posts to threads in the "Trading and the Markets" forum are not being registered on the home page "recent posts" list.

Hi Folks, I'd like to preface these comments by saying that TL is without a doubt my favorite site on the web, and I spend more time and visit TL more frequently than any other site or forum. I sincerely wish MadMarketScientist well in his continued efforts to build upon and improve what James and the TL community has built over the last four years or so. While my posting at TL has been constrained lately, I still check in several times a day. Lately, I have noticed a few things that have made these visits somewhat aggravating. Rather than keep these to myself, I thought I'd share them here to see if anyone else had similar concerns. And, as I am not the only one with an opinion, I thought why not a general thread where TL users could make suggestions that may make the TL experience even better than it already is. One benefit of having taken a step back from active posting is that I have been able to identify a few things that I feel would make visiting TL more user friendly and/or somewhat less vexing. So, here are my initial "Wish List" items for making TL First, I would like to suggest that the Most Viewed Threads list reside on the homepage - if these are the threads that most folks (including myself) come here to view, why not make sure that they are always and forever easily located and accessed. This way, ifyou are here to check out the latest on the Reading Charts thread, the Price/Volume thread, or Walter's Forex theread, for example, you could easily find it and open the thread right from the home page without having to go searching for it. Second, I would like to be able to turn off the pop-up box advertising the "TL Starter's Kit." I know MMS wants to increase registered viewers and capture new e-mail addresses, but there must be a better way to do it than having a pop up form show up every time I visit TL or chaneg pags at the site. Third, I would like for SureshBajaj, author of the "Daily blah blah blah ..." threads to consolidate his posts into one "The Daily SureshBajaj Outlook" thread. There is no reason that one user should be allowed to clutter the homepage with 7 of 12 recently posted threads, especially when the information in those seven threads is equally useless and lacking in interesting content. So, for now, that is my TL "wish list." I wish you all all the best in the coming New Year! Best Wishes, Thales

I'm still here, and I check in early and often. I have just been in lurker mode. Best Wishes, Thales

Well she made quick work of me now, didn't she? Best Wishes, Thales

Current view of the 6E has me with a sell stop at 3245, stop loss at 3270, and a 3167 profit target ... Best Wishes, Thales

As price approaches and enters our S/R target, stops get tighter and tighter as the likelihood of an immanent reversal rises. On the daily chart below, the area between the hash lines represents the 1.2900-1.300 target level for this move. We were willing to add in case the move would have continued, but we did not want to risk more than 50% of our open profit. Also, when pyramiding, we try to keep margin as a % of equity to 33% or less. As price moves against us, margin as a % of equity rises. If it rises to 33% or higher, we stop ourselves out of at least part of the position to bring margin as a % of equity below 25%, and preferably at 20% or below. Had last week not been Thanksgiving week, we'd have added to our position at much higher levels, and it would have been apparent that we keep our stop much farther away when we anticipate a sizable swing is underway. But as we move closer and closer to S/R, we "ratchet" our stop in - typically moving the stop to the last entry once price is both a) below a break point and 2) 100+ ticks from that entry. We then add to the position with a market order somewhat above the next break low point. For example, our second to last add was at 1.3090. A few hours prior to that, price made a low of 1.3067. From that low, price rallied to 1.3123, pulled back,rallied to 1.3149, and then fell back below 1.31232. We entered short at the market which at the time gave aus a 1.3090 fill. Why add there and not wait for the break of 1.3067? Because this way, when we move our stop to break even, a reaction back to test "support now resistance" should cause a test of 1.3067 +/- a handful of ticks, and our stop should be safe from a shake out on that test. How's that? Best Wishes, Thales

Current view of the EURUSD has us with another additional short at 1.2984, and a stop on the whole "kit and caboodle" at 1.3090, which will yield +623, +190, +114, +0 and -106 ... Best Wishes, Thales

Some patterns are so reliable that if only one could muster the patience to wait for these to develop and only trade such patterns, trading would be easy. Of course, such patience is rare ... Best Wishes, Thales

Current view of the EUZRUSD has us with an additional short at 1.3090 and a stop on the whole "kit and caboodle" at 1.3186, which will yield +527, +94, +18, +0, and -84. For anyone interested, we are using about 20% of total equity as margin on this position. Best Wishes, Thales

That was a quick trip to the lower trend line, followed by a bounce ... Best Wishes, Thales

Current view of 6E reminds me of a post by Marko some time ago - if it channels, it is probably corrective. I drew the lower trend line, coppied it, and slid the copy to the upper position - right now 6E is in a perfect choppy channel, and I'd expect the break to be down. Best Wishes, Thales

EURUSD/6E has reached the 50% retracement of the rally from year low to rally high and is pausing for breath. We'll had another short if the pause breaks to a new low ... Best Wishes, Thales