TheNegotiator

Trading is a microcosm of life. It often exposes our biggest weaknesses and then slaps us silly with a rather large halibut just to really rub it in. But for those who are willing to listen it doesn't have to all be bad. Traders who are able to accept their own mortal failings and adapt, not only become better off financially for it but usually become better people too. If you deal with things quickly, maturely and comprehensively by planning and self-awareness, you stand a much better chance of mastering your weaknesses and adapting to future (not futures) markets. If you don't, making the same mistake over and over can be pretty darn costly not only to your account but to your emotions too. :doh: :crap: :puke: :bang head: :thumbs down: :coffee: :sleep: is how the emotional roller-coaster goes if you don't address your weaknesses and that ain't great at the best of times. Personally, I know I used to over trade. Not that I was necessarily trading too much, but too long. If I didn't make money early on, I would trade and trade through chop and nothing markets. But I was so engrossed in the markets that I never stopped to think what I was doing. What it did to me was drain me and leave me in a mesmerized state so that when the move did happen, I was usually late to get on it. Ultimately I just stopped trading when it was slow. I'm not sure what clicked exactly on that one though, but it did teach me that there's a time for everything and not to get too obsessed with trading when conditions aren't right. If only I'd known then what I know now, right? I wouldn't have wasted so much time. But to know how to fix a problem you have to what you're doing of course. What does that come back to? Journalling. I didn't do this at that time, so it took me a while to really figure it out. I realise that it probably sounds like I should have noticed, but when you get locked into the market to try to make money (especially make money back), events become blurred in retrospect. Anyway, I'd like anyone to share any of their personal failings so others might see something which helps them too. Kind of a trading AA maybe. If some of the TL vets want to pitch in I'm absolutely positive that seeing that all traders have weaknesses would be a great help to newer traders (and those who are still disinclined to journal).

Considering the much better consumer conf and on balance bullish releases, do we think that the market is reacting as expected?

Not much sign of any otf at the minute and given 10am figure release and draghi talking and where we are in the balance, that's not too surprising.

So I'm looking at the market thinking that the longer we go on without finding some new buyers, the more the singles/low volume tail from fed day looks like it could be tested further. Not to say it will be just that it's there. Overall my view is still to test that overhead high vol at 1479.00. 1464.25 could be a hurdle though if you take it as an extreme of a development (as drawn in cyan). Having said that, it was already broken last Friday and sellers stepped in to reverse us back down. The current action is helping to better define the long-term profile between ~44-64. Along with housing data today we have Consumer confidence at 10am which has the potential to move the markets. Spanish bond auction results weren't fantastic although if the market expects them to ask for a BO then it could ignore this entirely. In fact it could be that bad news is good news. There was also talk of legality of ecb bond buying earlier I believe. Anyway, here's a chart:-

Thank you goodoboy. Just remember to do your best to post your reasons for taking trades. Afterwards is okay too if you don't have time to post them whilst you have a trade on.

We've not exactly seen fireworks so far today and given how fridays seem to trade these days I'm not entirely surprised. However, it is trip-witching and the move higher overnight gives us more price potential so to speak. So we could still see some decent moves but not sure whether they'll be clean or not. As I'm typing this we have finally got to that 56.75!!

Watching cumulative delta for a third push here. Wouldn't be keen on chances lower if we were to push back above the vpoc (and really above 60.50).

Looks like they are trying to close the gap (responsive) and below 56.75 (naked vpoc/balance vpoc/lt high vol) they probably will.

Okay today is trip-witching (or quad if u like) day so we'll have to see what happens. Yesterday rejected a test lower into the singles although possibly would have liked to see it try a few more ticks. Never mind. The key is it did what it did and not to get too hung up on the price it did it at. Back in the body of the short-term consolidation now and would think a test higher could be on. But who really knows, ach. I would also like to thank everyone on the thread who contributes their knowledge and of course those who ask questions and are inquisitive! I would just like to remind people though that it's important to explain your actions rather than just post "got long at x" or "made a packet on that one" or whatever else. The point of the thread is to help others who read the thread by what is written and explained on the thread. Good luck today and here's a chart:-

The order book is smoke and mirrors these days. There was once a time you could "lean" on the book, but even in products like the euribor, that stopped a while ago. If you look at what trades, where and how, you can get a pretty good idea of what the "otf" are up to. If there's not a lot going on, maybe otf are still present to some extent, maybe they're not. But it doesn't matter that much. As far as what we're going to do for the next few months goes, well there is another thread for that. However, I would like to point out that the Fed have just committed to another round of dollar dilution. Perhaps we can see a short-term top at the moment, perhaps it's just that the big guns haven't acted yet. I mean, you look at where we were before FOMC and have to question the logic in blindly buying right now. There are still uncertainties from europe etc. so why not wait to see what it's got first and look for that pullback before buying? Either way, you have to ask yourself the question. For the moment, is it wise to be fading both the Fed and the ECB? my guess is no. But really I don't care too much for the purposes of day trading.

Aren't we still talking about supply and demand (and changes to it)?

Overnight we've seen a test of that area below I mentioned I was watching just above 45. The 45.25 is a long-term high volume peak and the 45.75 was the end of a single print. Much below this and a failure to get back above 49.50/50.00 and hold, I'd think a bigger flush could be on the cards, but who knows. There is newsflow on Greece right now and we have Philly Fed + Leading Indicators @10am. Plus there are a bunch of Fed speakers throughout the session. Here are a couple of charts:- Btw, note the 'poor' MP high from yesterday @59.00

Yeah this has been my overall view for a while, but still I wonder what could be done. I know IRT is quite powerful in what it can do and I think Sierra (which I believe you use) is too. On the audible alerts - there used to be a guy in my office who had just one. "New high oil" it chirped. This wouldn't have been such a bad thing considering oil was a big market driver at the time, but it was fairly poorly configured imo. It went off every few seconds when oil was rallying and frankly this just became a bit of a distraction. Still, he liked it.

As they dilute the dollar, everyone else dilutes their own currency. If the dollar collapses it could be all paper currency.

I can definitely see how price alerts would be useful if you were to trade multiple products such as a trader might if they trade fx. Then those who trade many different individual stocks rather than focusing on just a few, I'm certain must find alerts very useful.

Thanks for the explanation Slick. It certainly seems possible that we get some sort of retrace given the rejection at 1468.00. If we were to start dropping into the 'naked' part of the 9/13 profile then a test down to 1428.25 would look to be on the cards. Then similarly with the below 18.75 into the 'naked' part of the 9/6 profile, there might be a further flush lower. Below is a session gap to 1396.75 and this is 1 tick short of the balance profile VPOC at 1396.50. The market does tend to leave these kind of markers for future tests (by its very nature). This is right in the middle of a not so clean development on the long-term profile between 1386.00 and 1409.00 ish so somewhere around 90 would make sense if we were to move down.

I've always thought I should probably try to utilize my charting platform's capability more than I currently do. I'm currently on IRT but have used others in the past too. IRT really does seem to have a fantastic level of flexibility. One thing which I have always thought about doing is using alerts. Now I'm not sure that it's entirely necessary although I think with some creativity it could be pretty useful. If we're looking at multiple markets for example, having volume and price alerts to only draw attention to anything making big moves could be useful right? I guess a lot of the time it will be that all markets will be moving more but like over the last few days in crude for example, did everyone spot it was making some decent moves lower? My guess is not. Then what about highly correlated markets like the e-minis? If you are into profiling and use concepts such as initial balance, are you aware of how all of them are behaving at once or could some sort of alert be useful for keeping a gauge on the broader feel of the markets? I suppose the overall value of any alert is proportional to the methodology and the quality of its design. Anyway, if you use alerts then I'd certainly like to hear how you do so, especially if you do so creatively.

Why do you think we could get a large retrace from 1472.00?

Yuck. What a lame market. At least we had a couple of decent moves earlier and I'm guessing when we break out of this consolidation from the past few days, we could get a decent move.

I would add one thing on your original remark Bob about price being determined by value rather than supply and demand. I think PT is saying this too. Value is about perception. But then perception of value across different tf's creates supply & demand which in turn determines price. Do you need to know value to anticipate supply and demand? Yeah it certainly helps. But without seeing the changes to supply and demand, you won't know which perception of value will win out in your tf. Anyway.

Yup. Sometimes you have to find a way to make things work for you with the tools you have rather than trying to directly improve those tools. It's gotta be what works for you.

Well, the truth is we never really know what has moved the markets with absolute certainty. With this in mind, I think it's important to embrace the uncertainty as a trader and not try to dissect things too much. Analysis paralysis is not good. If you see what the market is doing regardless of why it is doing it, it's possible to make money if you have a good plan with solid money management rules. You don't even have to be 'right' to make money in fact.

You can buy it from various places as just the data. However, if you took iqfeed for a month, you'd get accurate historical data at a pretty reasonable price. Broker feeds won't go that far back. Plus if you're backtesting you'll want something accurate. You could of course take a free trial at a broker and see if you get enough data.

One thing that I'd point out and to be absolutely clear, I'm not say we won't go higher first, is that the current rth and overnight lows are not especially strong. Now, you could say that actually nothing is especially strong anyway as there's not a lot going on, but still the overnight and rth lows were not well rejected. This could mean at some point we will retest them.

Possibly, but it's currently a more appealing to go watch some paint dry! The danger I find in markets like these is when it does break against you it's sooooo slow that you feel cheated somehow and hold a bit longer than you really should.