sep34

Two ways to go about it, and both ways are easier (specially option2 ) if you have means of supporting your lifestyle independent of trading incom. option1 For those that are well funded ie have enough dough then they can afford lower performing stratgeis as mentioend by other prior posts( I think it was kiwi ) I didnt have time to read all posts. option2 For those that dont have a lot of dough, its still ok... actually it not a handicap, you will be forced to work harder to find a better edge. Infact for those in this situation, even if its not obvious at the time, you are inherintly in a better position to beome potentially much better traders then those that rely on their larger capital. You will be forced to find an edge that has-- High probability, High profit expectancy, and Low Risk, they do exist. You will have to work harder and give most of your free attention to this cause. I dont see this as problem... as long as you dont have the pressure of supporting your self via trading income. option3 ( I dont recomend this for everyone only for those that have been around the markets long enough to understand them and the risks associated) set aside small amount of money whcih you are 100% ok with losing and using maximum leverage shoot for home runs which can, when you are correct, at minum double your money. do this long enough until you reach your desired capital. keep in mind there is another side to this coin... Once again this is not an option suitable for every person.

Gabe... it's much easier to just Talk a big game. Here is the real truth for anyone looking for genuine mentor. If they accept you they will let you visit them for as many consective days and watch them trade LIVE REAL MONEY and they will show you their past statements. They are very picky about who they take on. They ask a lot of questions prior to accepting someone. They dont advertise, word of mouth is all they need. They are so busy that you will never see them on forums looking for business here or any other forum. And they are primarily Traders and only take on a hand-full of clients per year. They are seeked out ...they dont seek clients.

Ktartarotti, Currently you have a big ad running that will attract all vendors to you. In your OP you did ask them to leave you alone, but that wont stop them. I can see that you have at least one vendor that has responded to you several times. The best way to get the information your looking for is to use the search feature and do a lot of reading and then ask suddle question. you will then get a feel for the different personalities that post here and their motives. Some post here because they are lonely, some are wanabes, some need to vent, and some are here to learn and to share and finally there the few that truely serve other traders and share some very valuable trading knowledge. When your at that point then you will know who is giving you answers that will genuinely help you and who is trying to sell you a service. One last thought... until you can convince your self, independent of others opinions, that trading profitably can be accomplished, you will allways be walking on very shakey ground with respect to trading. Specially in real trading situation where self reliance and confidence is key.

IS, That code by default will break the profile at the date change. No way fo getting around it that I know of other then making some programming changes. Tkae care

IS, That code by default will break the profile at the date change. No way fo getting around it that I know of other then making some programming changes. Tkae care

Your most likely getting an array bound error ... if so Change the compress input in this manor, increas that input by 1 until the profile is ploted. note: by doing that your telling the indicator to combine X ticks as one tick. where x = the number of the compress input your using. Or your using TS costum sessions charts... if so the code as is will not work with costum sessions charts. Take care sep34

Zunaa, I agree ...beyond 10-15m is really to high for daytrading. After all Time is an important variable in daytrading as there is a limited amount of it in each session. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The only difference between a 1m price pattern and 60m price pattern is TIME. That same price dynamic that causes Tweezer pattern or Long hammer line or Inverted Hammer or any other reversal pattern ( too many to list ) has specific dynamic/pattern that can be seen on any interval. no need to limit your self to a specific Interval to see high probability reversals -- at the same time there is nothing wrong with using a 30 or 60m or what ever chart as a confirmation if its needed. For example what is a 60min Tweezer if not a Double Bottom/Top on a lower interval ?? The key piece of the puzzel is where these patterns occur, other wise they are not as high probability.

DD, I don’t post that often but I liked the OP and I felt I understood or could relate… so I figured why not. I didn’t go into more detail, its very hard to go into detail and at same time offer something useful, specially because I don’t know much abut your trading . I only explained the diversification since It’s easy to carry that across as general idea that can be apply to many combination of styles. Trade-management is difficult for most and specially the profit taking, which falls under the trade-management subgroup. What helps me is to my confidence in getting the trend right… or better put the market condition right more often then not and Im not talking about the micro term trend i.e. the 1m or 5m or 15m interval trend etc. I’m referring to the force that causes each day to close above its open… day after day or vice versa. It can be called anything one likes. The key is that its real, it exists and it’s a force that I respect since it affects every facet of my trading. Im referencing the longer-term trend, because the few big moves that occur within each day regardless if the day is Trend-Day or Narrow-Range-Day will always be in the direction of the longer-term trend that is to say the bias will be in the direction of that trend. Therefore having a method of determining the This Longer term trend consistently & accurately is an important element… what you call it is not important. What’s important is to A. realize its effect on ones trading B. recognize it this phase as its occurring. Now every longer-term trend at one point will begin to exhaust, during this phase the bias begins to balance between bears and bulls. This is referred to as ranging, consolidating, MP users call this bracketing or balancing market etc… again the label is not important. A. realizing its affect on ones trading is key B. being able to recognize this phase as its occurring is key. In the beginning stages of the exhaustion phase the bias is on the side of the existing trend, but the bias might change ever slightly as the opposing sides might try to test the waters. Why is A& B important, because a trader can adjust strategy and management of trade accordingly. After this exhaustion phase we will continue the trend or correct the trend or reverse the trend. Up to this point what I have mentioned about trend is nothing new nor ground breaking, so what’s the use in mentioning it. The value can only be realized once a trader can see the affects of this trend i.e. Force on every facet of their trading. If there it is not perceived as valuable then the trader can move on. Obviously if there is value in it then finding a way to define and identify this force becomes necessity and I strongly believe once its perceived as something valuable and proper thought & focus is placed on it, its only a matter of time of being able to accurately recognize and determining the longer-term trend/force). For my style of trading I can’t fathom trading without knowing the bias of this force, I would be lost, not knowing what to do. I would see lots of entries but I wouldn’t know which have the potential of moving considerably. Off course the trend identificationis only part of the whole, but its a big slice of the pie. The next step is entry timing... for another post if time allows. Those who know me beyond these this forum, past trading chat rooms or trading pals Know that all my entries are via a 1m chart, regardless if its day trade, intraday-position-trade, long or short term swing trade. 1m is not an easy interval, it can confuse a trader about the bigger picture. One of the key elements that helps me is my long-term-trend analysis, it give me perspective. Another element is my nightly homework, during this period I figure out more then 50% of my work for the next trading session. The purpose of the nightly homework is to know the following prior to the open. -know which side of the market I will be leaning on before the market opens. -know if I will be Looking to initiate an intraday position trade only and close it before market close or if I need to initiate more contracts because I’m planning to keep the remainder as a swing trade. -know what levels are important to me and how I will react. In short a lot of the details are figures out before the opening, I don’t like to be forced to make fast decisions and the nightly prep is very helpful. By the way I forgot to mention this in my last post… regarding risk. Along side the Diversification of styles, equally as important to me is a max draw-down that is in place at all times. If the max draw-down is reached during any one session I stop trading, no exceptions. Its also worth mentioning that my max drawdown is purposely set a to equal the average profits of one trading minus 1.5 SD. I know if I reach this level in any single session then Im not in sink with the market and I call it a day. It is not very common but its not uncommon either and I don’t mind it one bit, in fact its one of my favorite parts of my risk management and very liberating. It allows me to exercise my right to control the risk of my capital for each session. Last of all, you mentioned Dissatisfaction of trading style, and I would suggest, which I think you are already doing, to look at it as glass half full situation. It precisely these moment in our trading time line that we make the biggest leaps. We have identified what we don’t like therefore we know exactly what we like…which is a good thing because its the beginning of every accomplishment. ~

Simple right... and at the heart of most winning methods, you will find this simple concept as the core of their managment and yet a lot of traders dont realize this. Correct... trying to cheat volatility you will allways lose.

Nice op subject DD, I believe I can relate to what you are pondering, that is to say… I had similar thoughts at some point in my trading. In the past I have used scalping, daytrading, intraday position trading, swing trading strategies. Although I was fortunate to achieve a degree of success with each strategy, There was something unsatisfying about each style in isolation. What eventually satisfied me was a Diversification of strategies, or better put Diversification of trading styles. *To me scalping is when trades are initiated with the goal of taking 1-2 ticks and a scalper will place hundreds of trade in each session and will not hold overnight. *To me daytrading is when trades are initiated with the goal of taking 1-2 points ( ES points for example or 10-20 YM points) with an average 5-10 trade in each session and will not hold overnight. *To me intraday position trading is when trades are initiated with the goal of getting positioned to and capturing the days big move 70-90% of days range, very few trades per session 1-2 trade in each session to get positioned and will not hold overnight. *To me swing trading is when trades are initiated with the goal of capturing the longer time frame swing points (Time frames of 60m or greater). There are short term & longer term swing trades and will hold positions overnight. In the process of achieving a harmony and comfort, I realized the following. -Scalping for me just did not fit my personality so that was Discarded. -Daytrading for me required that I stay glued to the screen, we never know when our trade will form-for those that trade with real money understand that if you miss one profitable trade it can have a big impact on your P&L. 2nd factor, the risk of a daytrade for me is similar to the risk of a Intraday Position trade…the difference is that intraday position trade has the potential of much larger reward. -Intraday Postion trading had most of the criteria’s that satisfied my needs with regard to span of time being in front of the screen, Risk Reward. What was lacking was A. that on some days 10%of time, Im unsure of Price Action which means I cant position myself early, thus missing the proper entry. B. By closing all my trades at session end, I was not able to exploit the positions that were the beginning of a larger multi day move. A and B caused me to combine swing trading into my trade plan. Allowing me to exploit positions that have the quality for multi day continuation. Further more, swingtrading also works as a hedge for me. On days that I fail to get positioned via Intraday postion trade style, more often then not I have swing position on that will cover this missed opportunity. The final addition is Daytrading, when and only when I have a intraday position trade on that has profits locked in I allow my self to look for some day trades. My point from all of this is, in order to for me to be satisfied I had to identify what was the source of my discomfort. Almost in all cases it was some how related with RISK, or better put unnecessary RISK. This kind of risk will cause traders anxiety and no matter how much discipline you have it will not get rid of it. I have found Strategy/Style Diversification to be one of the best ways to manage and hedge RISK. My goal was not talk about myself, and the reason for my writing to continuously reference, “Me, For Me, etc..” is this, I don’t want to make absolute statements of what Im suggesting is right for everyone while anyone trading anything different to that is wrong. I wanted to share my view of trading and managing RISK and at same time being Satisfied and Content, emotionally and mentally with ones Trading Plan/Strategy/Risk management.

Guys I fixed the problem the next day after, 01/04/10, by reformatting and then running a good antivirus software to make sure nothing remained....No big deal, because like I mentioned in my OP, that it was a PC that I use only for browsing the internet. So instead of thanking all of you individualy, I will take care of it here with one big Thanks to all that tryed to help.

I dont know about the "great" part, as that is subjective........ but, indeed like minds do think alike Im enjoying this converstation too, will visit back later to do some lurking. By the way, if you do decide to start over in a new thread, just mention it here in small short post.

Being careful about the type of email and questionable sites is indeed a good strategy, however not applicable to all. For example, I do some consulting with traders, its something I enjoy and takes the edge off the isolation of trading. My clients are all word of mouth and when I get emails from them for the first time I need to open them, even though I dont know who they are yet. I like your suggestion about storing an image of C drive....what Imaging program do you use?

I was able to install it through USB and not CD drive. Still not sure if it will solve my problem, currently Im running scan. I did want to ask this....... Do any of you guys run more then one anti software program on your PC i.e. do you have multiple anti virus software installed on your PC??? as most Anit Virus software recommend to only use one at anytime.

I have not been able to get the PC to accept its installation yet. The irony is... thats what I run on all my PC's, it works great...specially with TS. I had AVAST on the PC that im having issues with...decied to test MS sec.Essntial out.

Tiki ...thanks wil try it. Tams, on the PC Im having the issue I been using MS security essentials...testing it out sorta speak. The problem is that this worm is a bitch....it will not let me go online what-so-ever.

This is a first for me, My PC has been effected severly by a major virus. 1. so far I have not been able to remove it. Its called, Worm Win32Netsky, If anyone has any suggestions im all ears. 2. I also can not do a system restore to a previous date when my PC was healthy. I get a message that "system restore has been turned off contact Domain Admin". Again Im sure im not the first to experience this, if you encounter the same and have a solution let me know. PC information Window XP pro. 32bit Although this my first major PC inffection, this is precisely why I use a seperate PC for browsing the web and email ie I dont use my tradign PC's for anything else other than connecting to my data provider and trading.

Dine, do you ever look at the sector charts of the stock your looking at ?? If yes could you post a chart of BGH sector chart. By the way if and when I hear myself mumbling something like I dont want to short here because I cant tell if the momentum has run out yet, I will usually listen to that because its a red flag. simply my intution/subconscious is telling me to becareful. Normaly I will let that trade pass until Im more clear about the trade. Looking at other instruments that are related to the stock im looking to trade can sometimes give me more clarity....this is why I asked if you ever look at the sector chart as a whole to get a feel for all the stock in that sector.

Hopefuly TLAB will reverse at R and enter the buy zone on my chart....if so then a potential buying opportunity may occur, if not then so be it. I just cant see TLAB moveing too far from the location it stopped and reversed up. If we are to get a meaningful move up to test the 2008 high I believe we have to break one more time before we have strong rally.

Glad to hear that you are Making some profits that is allways fun...I just wanted to touch on IBD with a little more detail. Combining TA and some solid fundamentals can be powerful combination. I will admit that I'm not a high frequincy or active stock trader. In the past What I use to do was very simple, IBD's market research In my observation is excelent, they are the only service that I have ever found to provide some solid value. All the stock I traded were in IBD recommnedation list.... the next step is to watch the main market indices(Dow nasdaq s&p) to make sure you are not intiating any trades durring an exhausition point etc.. and for timing your stocks use what ever TA you are confident in. For me, back several years ago, This is what I was doing and mostly because I didnt want to spend to much time on stock and my main focus has allways been futures. I Took all the oil related stocks from the IBD list and placed them inside a Watch-list. Then I opened a chart for each stock and made my analysis and any notations on the chart and saved the chart. Every night I would look at each chart to see if a trade was near triggering a potential trade--if so I would either place an order right then or make it a priority to watch that stock in the morning to get order placed. This worked out really well for me and I was using some simple TA like buying trendline touch or s/r level nothing complicated. IBD also has a web based scanner which you can use to scan for the stocks that you prefer using their indicators. that is another tool that used and liked very much. In short ,personaly,There are only two types of stocks I would ever trade/invest. 1st. stocks that I understand, i.e. their product makes sense to me as aconsumer and I have strong feeling that its a good product and its a new inovative product just hitting the market. This allows for the stck to have tremendous growth. e.g. Im a big movie fan and when Netflix first started to offer movies being dilevered via US mail, with no late fees possible (context; back then we didnt have naything like On-Demand, only options were to go to the Movie theater or drive and wait in line at the local video rental store and if your late then you have ot pay late fees )- I instantly new this was a company that was going to take off. Netflix is just one example of many. 2nd. The stock has to be in the IBD list, it just makes trading easier. I also tend to stay away from stocks that are too cheap <$5. however, there are allways exceptions, for example buying citigroup around $1 right after the Saudi prince came on CNBC saying that he has increased his holdings in citi and purchsed another several billion dollars of citigroup, Knowing the ties betweent eh Saudi's and the US gov. that was the best clue one will get that the US gov. will net let citigroup go under and buying at around $1 became very attractive investment.

The smple answer...A trading plan should cover every pertinent detail from Entry to Exit for any single trade or any strategy that you are using. A Trading plan will cover and describe the setup it self, covering all imprtant factors. Another part of your plan will cover the trademanagement part of your setup. Another part of your plan might cover seaasonal tendencies or days that the market tends to behave differently for the particualr market you trade e.g. many Index future traders adjust their trading plan for the FOMC and other key market events, Quad Expiration, Winter holidays, Summer and Fall trading etc.. Another part of your trading plan might cover the psychological part of trading and executing you trade plan. off-course this is personal and may or may not be needed, only the individual can answer this....As mentioned before evey pertinent detail can be included in your trading plan as it will help you to be better prepared and to keep you honest. Start a trading plan and As you begin this habit and cover the basics--over time the markets will tell you what other factors are also important to integrate into your trading plan based on your trade style and market experience.

Just to get you started and because Im not a user of either, I would suggest that you wait for some additional responses form those that are hard core users of such or do some searches using the search box at the top right corner. Almost all the traders that I kow that use MP and/or WVAP the majority use the RTH i.e. the pit session time span. For example on the east coast for the Emini's would correspond to 930-1615. On certain occasions, when we have a majore market report at 830 est then they will use both the pitt session and the overnight session charts.

~decided to delete my message~

Waveslider, What you mentioned above, regarding certification and license, I assume you are refering to the US regulations correct? Also you mentioned that there is no need for any type of certification etc.. I, for some reason, thought that in the US one needed to be licensed to manage a fund and solicite money i.e. raise money. It may be that one needs a license to solicit money only...Im just goign on some things I remeber hearing or reading therfore not 100% sure. I am curious as it is something I would be interested in getting more informaiton about.

Some of the previous posts reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend whom traded and also introduced me to trading about more then 11 years ago. One day in a conversation with my friend, the trader mentioned above, the subject of Discipline and its influence on a trader was injected into our conversation by my friend. I too remeber rejecting his claim that discipline is as important of a factor as he claimed. My argument was that if one is confident in his approach then discipline should not be that large of a factor, which at the time I truely believed that I was correct. The problem with that statement is that I automatically assumes that trading is like other endeavors, where infact it is not. I still remeber when I first realized that my friend was indeed correct--However I did not fully appreaciate his comments until I was trading fulltime many years later and had to make money to support my lifstyle. Its also important to mention that when a group of people describe something as important that its importance is relative for different individuals. Generally the more experienced a trader is, disciplin is less important and the more green(new) the trader is the more important discipline is. However disciplin is allways an important ingriedient.