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TheNegotiator
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Everything posted by TheNegotiator
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Okay so after the failure at 57, target of the top of the balance area was quite clear. It's not quite turned properly yet but it could easily. Not to say it will. The point is that using the auction over the last 3 days gave a very clear indication of market intent after its failure to break 57.
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Gap fill? Depending on your interpretation of 'gap' fill, it would be 57.00/58.75. Unless of course you're talking about testing a low volume area(which really is 57 anyway)?
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You like those pivots huh?
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Quick chart for you before the open:-
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This is the most important statement you'll probably ever read on a forum (or be told by a mentor if you're lucky enough to find a good one). What you must understand however, is just because the suggestion is that trading is simple once you find the 'key', it doesn't mean that there is no effort involved in reproducing results each day. If someone says otherwise, I'd be very suspicious. This 'key' or 'holy grail' often leads to newer traders searching for a method that just works. They don't understand the probability aspect of trading properly and so they focus their efforts on finding this one method. This leads into the second part of the statement. Something many would claim is they do know what they are looking at. But then is this how they determine the specifics of their strategy? Are they really forming their strategy from a starting point of a particular trait of a market they wish to capitalise on, or are they trying to take trades when the ichimoku super triple backflip wave reader pro (patent pending) does something in particular without really knowing what that is? The people who do well in trading (and life in general) are often those who's approach to their work is good. They do the work they need to do, when they need to do it. They question ideas properly and they are decisive. In the interests of simplicity, after you have addressed your methodology as Db suggests, I would contemplate the following:- Preparation; ability to accept uncertainty; focus. From what you mention, it sounds a little to me like you haven't fully committed yourself to becoming the trader you hope to be. I could be wrong though. But trading is a serious game and people are prepared to work hard to take your money from you. If they are going to, why don't you make them work hard to do that?
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IBL = initial balance low. The initial balance is generally the first hour of trading. The idea is that a lot of OTF (other time frame = big longer term players) will execute within the first hour of trade. So it's a useful reference for the day. It doesn't always work in fairness. But when it does it does. It's pretty obvious when it's more likely to work as the intraday profile lines up. i.e. the IBH/IBL remain low volume areas. Low volume means that price is not seen as fair there. So either it's likely to reject fairly quickly and reverse or it might run through quickly and not trade lots of volume again. Obviously this depends on context. Just because there is a high or low volume area it doesn't mean that automatically it will always precipitate one of the mentioned responses.
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Gentlemen, enough already! As much as we are all are entitled to our own opinions, there is a line. Disagreement and debate is fine. In fact, it is good so long as we consider each others' ideas rather than just try to 'win' the debate. Thus far, I'm pretty interested in what has been said. I can't remember where I saw it but for those interested in HFT etc, it might be worth searching for the recent DTN webinar on youtube (hosted by BMT I believe).
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Okay, 1st off did anyone say that solely identifying areas of high and low volume is sufficient to trade off? I absolutely agree with you that context is critical. If the short sellers were hitting institutional buy limit orders on the pullbacks, why all of a sudden do you suspect a break lower?
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Yes pretty much if you are talking about the area I have highlighted on the chart:-
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You are welcome to your opinions and that is good. I am pleased you are sharing them. Why if you had success with each technical method were you trying different ones out all the time? Proponents of market profile don't try to claim that it is a trading method just as you pointed out. I'd also say that most of the profiles which are posted here are volume profiles and thus have little to do with the original market profile. Mostly, I use volume profiling to identify areas of balance/imbalance, acceptance/rejection and so likely good levels and also profile shapes again to determine balance or lack thereof. Simple mp principles can be very important in some cases and not very important in others. Like for example open type. If a level is tested followed by a strong directional move, that tells me something. As does a movement back and forth through the opening print. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater if you like, but these are not just mp principles, they are auction principles. An example of something which is a bit less useful is the value area. I don't especially like it or find it useful in the majority of cases with how I trade. Something which seems rather less sensible but nevertheless works, is the principle of single prints. Why should the 30 min TPO's be more useful here than anywhere else? They shouldn't. But when looking for a strong directional move in a given day which doesn't get retested, it shows the move very clearly in general. If you look at it, it works. Should I care why it works? Maybe. But the main thing is that the market I trade shows me regularly that it is interested in the extremities of these prices (in a spike). So my recommendation goodoboy is look for yourself and see if it resonates with you and shows you what you need to know to trade the markets successfully. Predictor has his opinions and methods, Bakrob has his, I have mine. What I know is that in the hands of a trading god, a moving average is the golden goose, while in the hands of an idiot, the holy grail is a sure fire way to lose everything. There's more than one way to skin a cat, so just try to find yours
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Pretty much. High volume can be seen as accepted price and low volume is rejected price. Put that together with auction context, experience and monitoring of what happens at these prices (amongst others) and you find that often you'll be picking some pretty nice areas to trade.
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Okay, but so you know and like I mentioned to Ronin, this thread is for explaining/discussing trading ideas specifically and generally so others might benefit. If you can only share "I bought here, I sold there", this is not the thread for you. Thanks.
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Okay, ask yourself this. What does high volume mean and what does low volume mean? Still trying lower. Just not enough buying interest to kick off and move up. Clearly it showed that the reversal was possible though.
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Lot's of other stuff going on and trading focus don't tend to mix well! Hope you carry on posting regardless though.
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Plus the vwap held on a retest and didn't even manage to test the mid-point... but we'll have to see.
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This looked to me like your 'basing' type pattern. Although I would say that despite turning from just above the 30.25 level, I would have thought the proximity of yesterday's close and vpoc would have pulled the market down just a tad more.
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Not exactly sure what you are doing as such. I think learning is important, but given there's never any certainty about how well you will take to any specific 'method', be wary of paying lots of money to people to learn. Not that they necessarily have nothing to offer. I do think it's useful to see the things that good traders are doing, so you get a better idea of what's involved. So get good at spotting bs and what is really good. There is a great deal of excellent stuff on TL and the net in general, but even more rubbish unfortunately. This is just the same as everything else on the net. Statistically likely to be rubbish rather than good. Plus if you're just learning then you're not really in the position to judge whether it's good or not. Rooms/training who refuse to offer a free trial or reveal anything about their methods you should just walk. No, run. As most good traders and teachers should know, it takes a hell of a lot more than just giving someone the blueprints for them to go out and build the skyscraper. This even really applies to those offering a short trial. Anyway. There's nothing wrong with mentoring if it's a good fit/the mentor is sensible enough to not force their own ideals on you. Each trader is different hence the saying "find a style that fits your personality". This leads to what's probably the most important aspect of trading. Your own psychology. That and risk management. You have to more or less nail these down and have failsafes in place to prevent catastrophe and really maximise your every day trading. Really, you should look to find something decent technically that works (easy to say, know- but you have the e-mini thread ) and then spend your time on your psychology and risk. Well it's back to what I mentioned before. It's good to see what good traders are doing and get ideas. But yes, it's important to mold the things you find useful into a strategy you feel comfortable with.
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That's a big load of complicated questions for what we actually know about you!! You need to start a new thread and answer some questions for us if we're to give you some good advice.
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Clearly we want another crack at the 40.25 area today, judging by overnight action. Although this might be better suited to the bigger picture discussion thread, I'll mention it here for now. These levels are important right now either way, but what strikes me about action over the last couple of months is that we just don't have enough of a reason to trade either way with any conviction right now. European fixes seem to be crawling along at snail pace, qe3 is still at the 'will they, won't they' stage, elections are not too far off and frankly, I think that quite a few market movers will have gone on holiday. The fact is though, markets are moving and therefore testing good levels frequently = good for day traders. Anyway, here's an non-annotated chart for all those interested:-
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search for posts containing "algo,bot" by steve46 in "Day Trading the E-mini Futures" returned 6 results:- search query results
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There's a great deal of info out there on MP/VP but I don't believe it's all useful. The basics of what you need to know are:- Auctions/day types; opening types; balance/imbalance; high/low volume; confidence/conviction; quality of extremes. Just a few there but the principles are important and if you know them and apply them well they're more than enough to make a great living on imho.
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In the interests of accuracy, the chart is simply a bar chart. Lol. BUT it has various volume profiles (not market profiles) attached to it. First of all it's important to note that this is a back-adjusted chart meaning that all trades on previous contract expiries are adjusted by their roll premium. It does make sense to do this and more importantly it does work. The second point is that the chart is regular trading hours (RTH) only. This is 09:30-16:15 EST. This is when the most volume is done because the NYSE is open and the last 15mins is the follow through of that activity. You could add in overnight volume if you wanted to but it's not enough to drastically change things in most cases. If you particularly need to look at overnight due to europe, you can look at the overnight profile separately without making a long term profile. You can do anything you want in fairness, just make sure you have appropriate reasons for looking at what you are looking at. The big orange profile accounts for all the volume traded since the beginning of the chart. My start date at the moment is 3/6/9. This is the beginning of the entire move up. I.e. the March '09 low. I could have used a different date but I want to see how the move is changing. The red and the blue profile are manual balance profiles. They are attempting to show volume distribution for when the markets are showing a degree of balance. Sometimes, it's more obvious where to draw these than other times. But generally, I try to weight near-term volume more than long-term volume. So they are useful in revealing this too. If the profiles line up that is even better, but if they don't it also says something about the intention of the market. The green and red lines are high and low volume peaks as drawn by the charting platform (linnsoft IRT). They are auto peaks but you can adjust the sensitivity. It's probably just laziness, but I added them to give you reference on the price scale. These lines can be added for any profile. Lastly if you see a different colour on a specific price, they are the highest volume (VPOC) and value area (VA= ~70% of all volume traded in profile) prices. Don't worry too much about the VA in these profiles. I probably should turn them off. They can be useful in a more normal distribution. The VPOC is useful though. Keep an eye on it and how price often reacts there. Hope that helps and if there's anything else, just ask.
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We moved from one development to the other yesterday straddling the important 40.25 low volume area. If we develop above it today, that could give bulls confidence. If we fail and fall back below/develop lower, bears could take hold. I'm not saying it will or it won't move a lot. I'm saying from a profile point of view, today could be important. In fairness, we could range slightly lower or higher and then tomorrow or later in the week we could decide to make a move.
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You mean one like this?
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Pretty much, yes .
