TheNegotiator

They don't want those 85's to go I reckon.

Why did you buy at 84 if you don't mind me asking?

How did you get on yesterday Josh? I didn't trade the 86.25 the first time. Nor the 81's took the 87's trade(less a tick) for 3.5 and that was it.

Good morning everyone! Gap close attempt and failure at 81's has me looking above today. Tested well higher after Spanish did well with their bond auction earlier. But Retail Sales has put a bit of a dampener on the mood. On balance, I'd expect tests in both directions with a bias higher. Obviously that could change on open if we bolt in one direction. Despite the small ranges recently, there are still some decent moves to be taken so long as you aren't expecting 20 odd points!(by decent I mean fit into expected behaviour). Anyway, here's my chart for a quick peak. Good luck!

Yup, pretty balanced. I only took a short at 73 to 69.50 today based on OD type. That was it for me though.

Well NFP came out higher and unemployment lower, but the previous figs had revisionslower and higher respectively. The figure also is being suggested to being high due to seasonal blah blah blah. What matters though is what the market does do. In my experience, it's best to not second guess it. See what actually happens. As much as some people wanna sell off that knowledge, what about the likelihood of QE3 if jobs don't improve fast? What would QE3 do for price? Good luck and see what happens!

Or is it that you can't make it work? I often see that the focus of posts is on how and why a strategy wins rather than the profitable application of a winning strategy. This may be for a multitude of different reasons which I'll leave to your imagination. But let me ask this question. Is the real key to a trader's success based on their system's potential for profit? If it is, then why is it that the occurrence of traders who fail to make money, jumping from system to system which have been used profitably by other traders past and present, is so frequent and persistent? Logical well thought through strategies of course are a prerequisite, but it is my contention that they are not the defining factor on a trader's road to success. A really important aspect to the success or failure of a strategy is to many what is the 'peripheral' information. How to make a good system work. Most of you will have heard the trading adage or a variation of it that "No system can win all of the time". Think about this for a minute. Why is that? All things equal, couldn't there be a system that wins all of the time? No. All things aren't equal and the trading landscape is constantly changing and undulating. This is also why markets aren't random as some suggest. Here are a few important 'peripheral' factors to the success or failure of your system:- Time What time of day/week/month are you trading? Economic Events/Releases Before and after key economic releases, markets can behave very differently which can of course impact your system. Current conditions Is the market trending or bracketing? Is it moving up or down? How volatile is it? Is it within recent activity or exploring new prices? Phase Location Where in the current trend or bracket is the market trading? For example, are you attempting to execute a trend strategy in a dwindling trend? Stop Type Selection What is your stop based on and how big is it? Is it fixed by number of prices, based on s/r levels or volatility based using say a channel or even an ATR method? Market Selection Which markets are you applying the strategy to? Knowing that different markets have different participant bases, you can more appropriately apply techniques to markets with more beneficial characteristics. To be a profitable trader, you need to step it up and be a pro in the way you approach your work.

I don't think there's a standard answer to that question. If you want an average time over a specific period for a particular product, you need to download the data and do some work in excel. However, I'm not sure that the average would give you a particularly useful metric.

Nice the way it's reacting to 64's so far today.

Sorry forgot to remind that 10am fig ISM non-Man is due.

This is my chart today with a few thoughts:-

Good plan RD. I hope you have a plan on how to improve, but the first step is recognition. Psychological aspects in particular take time and effort to learn and master. I think actually this is a great point about the reason why often other resolutions fail. Half-arsed efforts without any real plan or knowledge of what is involved and expectations of immediate success.

The markets are more than just current price though. They are a sum of current holdings plus perception of value plus motivation to trade. I wouldn't say a market shouldn't move up on low volume, but somewhere down the line, it could perhaps more easily topple and retrace the move. Either way, today we are currently higher but still not at yesterday's highs. Might we get there? Maybe. But the chances are pretty decent that it could close back in the IB.

127.2 IB on the flipside! Quelle surprise!

Yeah maybe. I don't think it's a universal truth though. Depends why it's low volume, who's already got what etc.

Btw, apart from being 1 tick short off yesterday's close, did anyone notice anything else about the 1272's?

Sorry I forgot to mention it's pretty easy to export the data(in either platform) into text format etc if that's something you want to look at. Mypivots has a free calc but you need to input the data.

Yeah quite possibly. Although don't force it either. Potential on these kind of days is for the market to catch a few people out before moving in direction originally traded for. Just that volume is pretty low. Supportive information clearly showing no conviction.

I think with TD Ameritrade you can connect to Ninjatrader with is totally free but you will need to do programming(or pay for an add-on) or the one I'd go for is Sierrachart which already has very nice profile tools built in plus I think the programming is meant to be good on it too. The only thing is, sierra with MP (plus loads more) is $45 a month but they do a 1month free trial. Ninja is free but you wouldn't be able to live trade through it unless you went through your broker(not sure if you could with your setup).

Volume to 1pm et is short of yesterday's by just shy of 50k.

I'm not sure it's possible right now. If you want to make the suggestion in the support centre by all means do so. A useful thing to do though is go into whichever forum interests you, the click on the views/replies to sort the threads by most viewed or replied to. This way, you'll get to see some interesting stuff. Hope this helps.

If this is to make new highs, I wouldn't want to see it take out 1266.00.

69.50 is low volume on the long term profile. That's the real level even if the low yesterday didn't quite get there. Not all levels are hit to the tick every single time I'm afraid! Depends on competition for the area and how much traders are willing to give up to get a fill. 70.25 high was just checking that low.

Possibly. I did mention targetting 1300 in my first post today, but also I'd caution thinking about that yet. It could do 1262.75-1272.75 today 1269.50-1259.50 tomorrow then anyone's guess for Friday. I think for the us to get excited about 1300's, we need to get into yeterday's range, build, test 83.50(prior major swing high) then show strength above. So there's still a fair bit to be done and with NFP due so soon people won't want to commit(that is unless someone gets the nod beforehand). Edit:1277 is a nice short term res level too from yesterday which would need to be taken out first.

Not sure actually. Are you looking for a specific posts or just browsing?