gandalf33

For all the beginners with options out there (like me), from people I trust, I've heard that: 1. certain methods of option trading take 20 minutes once per month to set up positions, and then 2 minutes per day to check the positions, if this is true, then we cannot talk about anything time consuming here as you can work in a regular work and trade options at the same time, unlike intraday trading of futures markets 2. there are strategies profitable 9-11 months from a year 3. you can profit from a chop, the price doesn't have to move As I have only theoretical knowledge at the moment, I cannot stand 100% for what I am claiming here - as I'vem mentioned, yet. Of course, the endless hours of study and paper trading from point 1 are not counted and of course, I might go broke. But for the hell of it, I'm gonna give it a fair try, eager to learn as much as it gets and try the stuff out on paper - this never hurts. One trade that doesn't work out isn't going to abandon this subject in my life. I *might* post my situation a couple of months from now, maybe I will curse the day I first said the word "option", who knows But from the uplifting articles I've read about options, I don't want to die without knowing if they'd work for me or not.

Trade Your Way to Wealth, by Bill Kraft - sadly, this book's most helpful low-rated comment on Amazon is criticizing it's "value" for option traders I am personally new to options so I cannot recommend a book on them as I've not read any (although I've read a lot of books on trading). I'd suggest to learn the very basic and most known option trading methods first - IronCondor, straddle/strangle, seasonals, etc.

I might have some insight in the future as I'm learning to program in Ninja Script, unfortunately I have no idea yet what you mean by current price set, not what an attached OCO set means. Can you explain this to me, I'll see if there's any code I can search in the help for or (try to) prepare myself.

I've been involved in programming since I was 12 (I'm 28), I have a masters degree in informatics, had 5 years of programming + math. While I know nothing about CQG, if you're looking for a completely free option, I'd share my experience: Ninja Trader + Zen-Fire data. Ninja Script is nothing but C#, which is an object-oriented language. OOP is used by large already and it's the type of programming language of the future, until someone comes out with another breakthrough, so it's advisable to start to learn what's IN at the moment, if there's an easy way. And you bet there is. NT prepares all the objects you need for you, so in a pre-written code, you write the actions you want to happen, pascal-style is you want to. You can grab methods of pre-built objects and get into the OOP world, which requires a really a different mindset as was mentioned here before. But you can leave that for later and write a simple, deterministic step-by-step code. My advice would be: 1. don't waste time reading books on advanced programming; on the net, there is plenty of sites showing the basics in 1-2 articles instead of 1st half of the book 2. don't waste time installing a programming environment for a language you want to learn, compile, run it, build an .exe etc and then be searching for ways how to use it for trading, start with NT and see your results in graphs immediately 3. start with the simplest thing possible, e.g. your first trading system should be something like: if I was not in a trade for 20 last bars, enter on MARKET, exit 10 bars after entering, on MARKET - and gradually build up. This example might sound complex first but it's two extremely, extremely easy-to-understand lines of code, nothing more. The example stated here servers as the "Hello world" in trading system programming. After you've done the 1st example, add more thoughtful ideas, add indicators, etc.. one thing at a time, make it work, save the code for later reference, reward yourself with a snack and you can move on - add another bit to it. 4. if you have no previous programming experience, inputting two very simple lines of code, almost copied from help, and pressing a button to see their effect on the graphs, is the way to go. You will understand immediately how this code works and adding variables to store information to be used a few ticks later, will come naturally to you as you add to your code - every new logic principle you implement for the first time, you will remember it til the rest of your life and use it A quick recap: Sure, getting yourself several books on programming IS a way to go. But in today's world where time is one of the most highly priced commodities, I'd recommend to throw yourself into water, you will learn to swim in a way useful for you in the quickest time. That's my opinion and I believe with this approach, anyone can create their first simple automated trading system (for testing purposes I presume) within 1 single 8-hour day. Let me know if you'd want to - I can prepare a set of steps for you so you can create your first strategy in NT in less than 10 minutes instead of figuring out what & where for yourself (you always have time for this later).

Ninja Trader with data from Zen-Fire - completely free and extremely sophisticated. Might take a while to master NT but it's worth it.

Weighting the votes sounds interesting. For some reason, I still don't think it will work. Maybe I've read too much of warnings that any chatroom tips, "guru" advices, etc. etc. will lead a trader to doom. It will be interesting to watch the progress of this site though. Thanks

Well, a quick counter-example would be betting on S/R breakouts. You don't care if you're at the historic low of an index when you bet on support breakout and it works out and you make a profit. This doesn't fit in your theory if buying low and selling high, does it (in thise case selling high and buying low). It all depends what's buying low and selling high means to us. For me, it's not the example in the above paragraph, for you, it might be. As long as you make profit and I make profit, we can talk about it til infinity. And, I'd like you to present to me here a trading system with which you won't miss a trend and be profitable long-term. Show me the holy grail I'll send you 50% of my every monthly equity curve growth.

It's nice to see a parallel guy to me working it out on a demo account. I personally have read zillions of trading books and advices, know pretty much everything mentioned here and in other threads already, have large files of my system exact descriptions of what & when & how, lot of excels with everything planned, a large excel of very detailed trading diary with an extra column for how I felt about the trade, turning $5000 into $10300 in 2 weeks of backtesting following the rules precisely. I imagine it's real money when the next ticks of market unfolds, and after 13 losers, I felt like jumping out of the balcony. And this is backtesting! Should I have an ambulance nearby when going live? The demo account is the 3rd big step in my trader development (I'm on step 1). Jugador, I'd like to see some threads/posts in you from the future to know how it worked out for you in the next weeks of sim and of course, live. And do a comparison of sim to live - maybe you could post your first 3 days on live as well Fingers crossed for you. Well, not crossed - that would mean luck and trading is not about luck. I wish you profit.

Exactly! By the way, how do you traders manage the maximum risk on a trade? Don't you have all fixed stop-losses or if not fixed, but e.g. ATR multiplied by something, in what way do you ensure it's never more than 2% of the trade? Do you experience your SLs getting bigger as your equity curve raises? I'm asking because I have a fixed SL (so far). Meaning when profitable, I'm risking less and less with every trade. Does your position sizing formula do the job?

Well, it's pretty easy. Most of the beginners (like me at the moment) can hardly swallow seeing a rally/decline with them not being a part of the ride. Thoughts of 'is my system good? shouldn't I change my indicators?' arise and they are all wrong. Just a thought that searching for an approach to buy low and sell high every time is looking for the holy grail (=leads to the grave) - you don't have to be on every ride to be (highly) profitable, that's what I meant. Any further questions, hit me.

Considering that 80% traders are losing money, I don't think the "large numbers of participants" will "predict" the movements correctly.

I agree with 86834. A proper system is needed which delivers profits long-term, and self-training about seing markets make nice trends without you. Joining every wave is not the point (and very probably not possible). As for the original post, if the author has observed this fact many times in the past (not 2) and is sure it will repeat, let him trade.

Greetings. Being a new trader who has't traded live yet, my following thoughts only describe what I think is a good approach - and has worked for me and has the potential to work for everyone. I've spent almost a year reading all kinds of trading books and sites about trading psychology, repeating over and over again the rules for which most traders fail, at my first backtest of TF 08Z, I've encountered almost everything I've read of and this was yet a backtest! I've got 13 losing trades in a row - I was immediately dissatisfied, felt the urge to search for new, "better" indicators, change my trading system, etc. But having read about this phenomena 1000 times, knowing that if there are losers, winners will come for sure, I kept on trading following the rules exactly and in a two weeks backtest period, I've despite the losing trades, I've managed to turn $5000 into $10300. If half of this will be true in live trading, I will be satisfied. The key is actively following everything you read about - money management, psychological factors, everything. After many losing trades, I wanted to skip a trade or two when I received entry signals - I've pushed thru the feeling and entered the trade, to see a nice trend develop in my direction, making a profit which washed away several losing trades. I could continue to name further situations but I don't want to make this post longer - it's already long enough. Enjoy and keep up the rules however simple they might sound - if great traders say those are the keys, then they are.