brownsfan019

For future reference, anytime you direct quote someone or a website, you should really cite your source as well. At the very least, we should give credit where credit is due.

Very good points Dog!! I never correlated tilt to trading, but you are right on. As a novice poker player myself, I often find tilt coming into play and have to control it. It's very easy to get out of hand in poker, esp in live face-to-face games. And it's great when you are in control and recognize that as well. That's something I've learned playing here recently too - capitalize on the players that get into a strong tilt.

Nick, Wow, I thought I was behind the times here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format) It's a way to get info from your fave websites into one program. Instead of clicking around 10 sites to see what's going on, you 'download' the RSS into your reader and you can view the snippits of the stories and decide from there if you want to read the entire thing.

Today I finally joined the RSS feed world and downloaded FeedDemon. So far, it's pretty sharp. I've been meaning to do this for sometime and finally got around to it tonight. Anyways, I was hoping we could compile a list of websites that you frequent for market info - whether that be blogs, news sites, etc. I am looking to compile my trading folder in FeedDemon. Here's some starters of ones I found today in no particular order: http://www.marketpsych.com/blog/blogger.html http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/ http://traderpsychology.blogspot.com/ I know that's not much to start, so if you have others, please share. Thanks!

For anyone using Acronis True Image 11 Home - if you could provide a few steps on how to use this thing, that would be great. All I need right now is a way to back up a computer and then use that when need be. The manual is a tad intimidating at first, so any help is appreciated.

Here's a free one mal - http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f18/free-snagit-7-a-2170.html Not sure if it's still working or not, but give it a try if you don't mind having version 7.

I agree Tin - at times, there's something to consider here. Again it's about turning it into a tradeable, profitable system. As much as it interests me, I've never found the combination or rules to be able to trade these setups.

You got it Darth - there's just too much that works against you with funds and having sold them myself, I've seen the mess they can create: > High fees - fees you see and fees you don't. > Conflicts of interest - often, the brokerage firm and brokers are given incentives to sell certain funds. > If you are lucky, the manager will come close to what the underlying index he is competing against did. In other words, you pay more in fees hoping your broker is not selling you a fund b/c it's the fund of the month and then hope your broker found the small handful of funds that will actually beat the market after all the fees. Good luck. Signed, A Repenting Broker :embarassed:

Good points Nick. Funds are expensive down under! That's why I tell everyone I meet now that just buy some good ETF's and let it ride. You'll do just as well, if not better, than the professional managed funds and not have to worry about behind-the-scenes stuff going on. The risk/reward is just not there anymore in mutual funds.

ptop - it's a good idea, give it a whirl and see how you like it. It's a great way to see and hear your trading day. Couple that with your SnagIt chart annotations and that's a good digital journal in my opinion.

Darth and others - so let's say I wanted to learn more about building a computer, any suggestions of books, websites, etc?

Darth, I need to ask you to stop posting sweet looking, fun new 'toys' for me or April is going to want to have a word with you. :o

Thanks for the suggestions Abe. When the time comes, I'll let you guys know how the building of the computer goes. I'm tempted to do a cheap one just to try it out. I get some email ads from TigerDirect that occasionally are about building a system from the ground up. Here's a question - how hard/easy is to build a laptop? I don't see much about that, so is that just a completely different animal that is not advisable for the do-it-yourselfer?

Doc - in a theoretical sense, I agree that there really isn't anything to trading as the position has a 50/50 chance of working when you take the trade. The problem arises when that human emotion kicks in and/or if you let intuition take over in my opinion. I'm sure there are some trading savants out there that we will never know of, but since this is such a rarity is why the rest of us look for those reliable, repeatable patterns that you mentioned. I think most traders do this simply b/c we know our intuition in and of itself is just not enough. From there, it's simply a matter of finding that 'edge' and exploiting it.

While many here are/will be full-time traders and we invest in ourselves and our business, there's always going to be a market for managed money funds, with mutual funds being the most common. I pulled the attached PDF from a post at elitetrader and this is a great presentation about trying to find outperforming managers. Whether you have money in funds or not, I think this is a good read coming from a reputable school with numbers to support the discussion. I always find things like this interesting b/c when I was a broker, we were taught to sell those mutual funds. The commissions and fees that are built-in or hidden in those funds is just amazing. When you factor all the costs, see page 5 of the PDF, you see where your money really goes. And that's assuming the fund makes money... Finding Outperfoming Money Managers - Harvard Bus School 2007.pdf

Thanks darth, I appreciate the advice. The Ghost thing is brilliant since I've never thought of that before! Instead of doing a hard reformat that can take hours with windows updates and stuff, just do it once! I love it!

Good idea with Ghost Darth. I never thought of using it like that - get it perfect - windows updates, etc. - and then use Ghost. I guess that would make reformatting a tad easier. :thumbs up: I would like to learn how to build my own to be honest. The local college has a beginner class, so maybe one day I'll do it. I HATE being reliant on others for stuff like this but unless I do it initially, I am stuck at times. And it's not even about money, I just like knowing that if my stuff takes a crap on Sat night that I can spend Sun getting it ready.

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f18/free-snagit-7-a-2170.html

No hardware changes Abe recently on this machine. OEC did an upgrade recently and while I am to think that may be the issue, the machine is still spiking when I have OEC closed down and running internet explorer.

Good points guys - it's a fine line between dumping money into this and just starting over. My concern at this point is that I need a system that can handle 6 monitors and I had to custom order this one I have now. I went locally to have this one made and that shop is out of business. There's another shop close by that I used before and was reasonably priced.

Computer guys, need your advice - one of my computers that just runs charting (currently OEC charts) recently started slowing down to the point that I really noticed. After checking it out today, it looks like something is causing the CPU Usage to spike massively - pushing 100% OFTEN. If I am doing nothing with no programs open, it runs at 0-2%. As soon as I do anything - open a browser windows, etc. - it spikes all over the place and pushes 100% no problem. The tech guy at OEC said possibly a hardware or 'system' issue. Problem is that I have no idea what to check for and how. How do you try to test your system yourself to find the problem? Or I am just wasting time and should take it up to the local repair shop? Thanks!

I think that's the key darth - being able to take the dom with whatever other analysis you have and quantifying it into something that can be traded. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

Doc - I personally never found much use of following your intuition since the majority of the time the crowd mentality is wrong. Unless you are able to discern the difference between when the crowd is wrong and right, it's a losing proposition in my opinion. Here's what I mean - give a trader access to a dom and that's it. Tell them to trade their gut and I think more often than not you'll find the account down substantially at some point. I"m sure there are some that can trade from their gut and do well, but I would think that more often than not it's a losing proposition. For anyone interested in testing this out, open up your simulation dom and have at it. Of course once you are learned in different tech analysis, you will always 'see' certain things even if you try not to. Once your eyes and brain have been trained to find certain patterns or formations, you will search them out even if you try to fight it.

Richard - the volume will show on the DOM when it's within 'view'. On the ES for example, most DOM's show 5 levels of bids and asks. Other markets like the bonds show 10 or more. So the large orders you are referring to will appear when they are viewable on the DOM platform that you are using.

I got Halo 3 and so far, it's pretty good. There's nothing like a stressful day of trading followed up with a shoot em up game!