gterps

i believe you can make money by doing the exact opposite of what bob pisani says, same with steve liesman. larry kudlow is always saying the market will go up and now is the time to buy. love rick santelli and pay attention to art cashin's levels.

Phoenix, this is really good advice! Quote: Originally Posted by joshdance » ...Or maybe you are using methods which do not require you to think, and you expect some "system" to give you buy and sell arrows that you could ask a 10 year old to trade and be successful.... ...but ultimately YOU must decide how you want to trade. The knowledge of the markets may lie without, but the success must come from within you, because you must trade in a way that is congruent with YOU. And if so, do you see how you fit the bill pretty well? Just give it a try--open up a 1 minute chart, a 5 minute chart, and a time and sales window of your instrument of choice. On the charts show price, and a volume histogram. Sit in front of the screen as long as you can every single day without fail, and just watch. Do this for 6 months. Don't stop after a week, or a month or two, because you get bored. This is not a "strategy" or a "system" -- you don't need a strategy, you need to learn and observe how markets move. If you feel you need to see more, then put it on your chart. If you don't need volume, take it off. If you need a different time frame, or a volume/tick chart, or a range chart, or any other kind of chart, then add it. But do it because you need to, because your curiosity moves you to; you'll be amazed at what you discover just by observing, and focusing on what you see, and not focusing so much on strategies, indicators, or making money, or what other people say they do to make money.

well its appears you have been given the complete solution for your trading troubles - just put two charts up and watch how the market moves. wow, amazing how simple it all is! which two charts? what time frames? i agree it helps to watch a couple of related charts at the same time. i still compare the es and ym and look for one to diverge from the other. there are several futures and indexes you can compare to get an entry opportunity. yes it is good to watch how the market moves but what is going to determine your entry? the market is like a body of water, ocean, river, or lake. you can stand next to it and it might look one way on the surface but there are undertows, eddys, riptides, a whole lot of stuff that can suck you under. its alot easier to swim with the flow and if you get a chance get in when the flows slows down a little and gives you a chance to pull alittle money out of the market. as a little guy, we wil never tame the ocean, river or lake but we can swim when its safe enough. the big boys might be buying stock but selling options or futures to hedge them and might be buying one market and selling another market to hedge. lots of stuff going on in the global financial market which doesn't seem to make sense at the time. often 2 markets go up and down together but a few months later they trade opposite of each other. find one way you know you can bet your life on that will hold up day in and day out and focus on it. don't get caught up in being some supertrader who can trade any futures market in any time frame. you don't need to be an expert market guru who can tell if the market is going up or down tomorrow. you just need to know how to react once it does. try to know if the market is really going up or down or its being set up for the suckers to get in right when the market turns around. are the bulls or bears getting squeezed? my best to you!

hi, in the book "the outliers" the author writes about needing to spend 10,000 hours to be really good at anything. it does take some time to be able to pull some money out of the market on a regular basis. fortunately, you only need a couple of trades per day or even in a week to make enough money trading. its like walking up to one the great lakes with a 5 gallon bucket. what you need for daily sustenance is just a very small amount of the lake. the amount you need to draw from the world financial markets doesn't even register on it. it is a micro amount even of just the individual index such as the s&p. maybe on a 1 or 3 or 5 minute es chart look for: (step #1) a higher high - (step #2)followed by a higher low (step #3) followed by another higher high - then look to get long as (step #4) completes a higher low. enter when its done making step 4, step 4 is a higher low than the low made by step 2. the bulls are in control and are building. focus on the bar which made the low in step 2, the bottom of that bar made the low in step 2 but now look to enter a tick or two above the top of that bar. there is no guarantee that the market while making step 4 doesn't drop right on past step 2. look to enter as bottom of step 4 is seemingly being made, place a stop order 1 tick above the top of the bar you believe is the low of step 4. try using just one indicator such rsi or _______ and look for regular divergence. as the market is dropping down after step 3 and is working down to the low of step 2, check the rsi. as the price action runs out of gas going down and completing step 4 (with almost a touch of the bottom of step 2) the rsi is not dropping down near as far as what the s&p is creating divergence. what is good about this trade structure is: a) it utilizes elliot wave. b) if its moving in a controlled way such as described step 1, then 2, then 3 then 4 - it shows the market is acting in controlled logical manner vesus chaos. the market makes sense and should act in a predicatable way for a least the next few bars - enough to get make a profit as it makes step 5. c) you aren't fighting the market you are taking advantage of a short term orderly flow. d) not countertrading, although the steps often come right after the market has made a new daily high or low. e) with a five minute chart you should get a couple of trades per day that should make at least a point or two. f) no indicator overload, putting a bunch of them seems to make sense as you build a methodology. in reality lots of indicators can often create a trading fog during the day in real time. nothing seems to make sense during the day because you are getting conflicting signals but when the day is over it and in review it all looks so simple. of course this works for taking shorts in the market too. we'll never outsmart the market and it can be harsh and seemingly cruel at times. fortunately its not perfectly efficient which gives us small guys a shot at getting in and out with a few points, the inefficiencis are what we try to capitalize on. the market is traded by flawed emotional humans or their flawed methods and programs so it gets pushed too far up or too far down, stops are run, bulls and bears get squeezed, these events give us our opportunities. hope this helps!

hi, if this goes through in some form i believe someone will come up with a way to lessen the actual fee per transaction. my intial idea would be to somehow (within the exchange or your broker a transaction wouldn't involve the whole contract. an example would be for you and i to draw up a futures contract to buy/sell a house but because we are short term buyer and short term seller neither of us is going to hold and take delivery of the house. so maybe the seller only "sells" a bedroom not the whole house. transaction fee would be for something like 1/5 of what it would be for the whole house. so with a s&p 500 contract neither of us would buy/sell the whole contract but only a portion of it. we really don't need to buy/sell 1250 points but only a few points, maybe 1 or 2, 5, 10, 20. of the 1250 points i buy 5 of the 1250 and you only sell 5, the broker "holds" "escrows" the other 1245 and they are never sold and never charged the transaction. another idea is we don't buy or sell anything but it would be handled something like shorting a stock. my broker is your broker and we don't actually buy or sell a contract so we don't get charged the fee. the broker loans it to the seller, or leases it or _____it. maybe even at the exchange nothing is bought or sold. it could be some sort of unique option but trades like the futures. the only buy and sell would be if the buyer took delivery at the expiration of the contract, the fee could only be fully charged at that time. last idea is daytraders don't even use the cme anymore but another type of exchange is set up and they are bets. just as etf's are hybreds a "hybred-casino" could be set up or maybe the las vegas casinos could jump in the futures business. they could set up their computers to be a millionthe of a second behind the exchange and we could trade there(actually it would be a bet). binary options are somewhat in the gambling direction. i'm sure there are a host of ideas out there. somehow there will be a way to get around it.