brownsfan019

How do you trade less than 1 lot? You have a valid question and I don't know what the answer is. To get a whole bunch of guys on forum about trading to tell how many lots they trade would be a stretch at best. And even those #'s would not be accurate - kind of like when you ask a girl how many guys she's slept with - the rule is multiply what they say by 3, right? Same idea here, but probably need to divide.

I think James is right in terms of this being a straddle. It's been a few years since I traded options. This makes sense Reav playing around volatility - esp earnings. Basically you are saying I think this is going up big or down big, I don't know which one, so I'll own a call and put and as long as prices moves, one will be worth quite a bit and one will be worthless. From there, the key is knowing when to liquidate the winner. If playing earnings and volatility, you need some good timing on the exits - sometimes you need to exit right after the announcement and other times you could hold for weeks. The straddle is a fairly simple strategy and you'd do well to paper trade it first. One piece of advice with options - you now have market makers involved. And it's not as simple as just saying - go long. You have to find the right option at the right price with good Greeks, etc. etc. Long story short - you can buy a call and the price of the stock goes up and you still lose money. Talk about being slapped around. All of your analysis could be correct and you'd still lose money due to implied volatility, etc. It takes a lot of work to take on an options position in my opinion.

darth, That's why I am wondering as well. I know OEC has DDE Excel functionality, so that may be an option as well, but how you quantify and when is something I am not sure of.

The one thing I found is that you can get caught up in the excitement of the action from the announcer's voice and that's not good. You want to feel like you are in the pits, since it sounds like you are, and if the announcer is yelling that Merrill is buying heavy, you want to buy with Merrill! Well, as you can imagine, that type of trading is a quick way to blow your account out. I remember one day about the squawk - I was talking with a trader friend thru instant messenger and he had just gotten the squawk thinking it was a needed tool. I was doing my trading and he IM's me saying buy es! Big buyer! Merrill Lynch! About 30 seconds later price dropped hard. I asked how that long went. Well, you know what his reply was. So we all know trading is hard enough, but here's how that quick 60 seconds or so played out with the squawk: :rofl: :hmpf: :doh: :crap: Point being that I found the squawk to mess with your emotions way too easily, esp in the beginning. It's a new toy and when you hear the guy yelling that Merrill and UBS are buying, you want in! The problem is that you have no idea what they are buying, when they are buying and if they even got filled to begin with.

Fulcrum, Tell me what you think of this - perhaps ACV could be used for position entry and/or position exit strategies. What I mean is, you trade the way you do now (I like candlestick analysis) and when a trade appears, you check the DOM to see how the ACV looks. If it's in your favor, you take the trade and based on how much in your favor, you could position size off of that - something like 1 to 1 = regular size, 2 to 1 = double, etc. Or some function of that. It's late and after my Browns had a heart breaking loss, I could be looking at this incorrectly, so let me know what you think since it appears you use this in your trading. I'm thinking that this could add a quick and easy filter for me in terms of my current setup, just helping with entries and/or exits. My only concern is how to implement this in real-time. For example, if I get a long at 10:00am, right at that moment do I check the ACV (which for me would simply be looking at the OEC dom, which does have the ability to total the bid/ask columns) and if it passes, great and if not, just wait or not trade it at all. I'm just trying to visualize how this works in real-time. Another example with numbers: I get a long with price at 1500.00. Right at that moment, the ACV is even = bid/ask basically the same. Can go long at 1500. 30 seconds later, the ACV is now bullish, but price is 1500.50. Do you now take the trade b/c the ACV is bullish or are you already in the trade b/c your entry already appeared and just feel good that the ACV is behind you? And then once in the trade do you remain in the trade while the ACV is in your favor and if so, for how long? How often do you watch the ACV develop? In other words, if I am long at 1500.50 and the ACV is nice while price is rising and for a blip the ACV is not bullish, do you flatten or wait to see if it was temporary? As you can tell, this has my interest as I've referred to the idea of price gravitating towards the heavier volume as the 'magnet' - price is like metal and the heavier volume is the magnet. I guess it all sounds great in theory, but as you can tell, I'm trying to see how this would play out in real-time. I think I'll at least put the numbers up on my OEC dom tomorrow and just see how it looks.

Fulcrum, Can you elaborate on the 'ACV'? Maybe it's in the et thread that I didn't see and wondering if that's a standard charting platform thing or not. Where is this commonly found in charting platforms? I'm curious to see how this looks in real-time as it's always been something in the back of my mind saying - looks like price is gravitating to that level, but then there's plenty of times when it does not as well. So I think just 'eying it up' is not a good idea.

Welcome Billy. I suggest you spend some time here on TL and research as much as possible and then use google. Here's the snapshot of what you are asking - the holy grail does not exist. In other words, sometimes some indicators work and sometimes they don't. Most people will not give them a chance to work. If you come here to find that magical software that prints money like an ATM, I think you may have come to the wrong place. Most here are here to trade on their own w/o relying on some program or software package. Most of those type of programs will die a quick and painful death sooner or later. If it was as easy to just turn it on and walk away, would you sell it? Trading is another full-time job and then some. I'm sure some days after construction you feel physically tired and beat up. Trading will do the same - but on your brain and emotions.

Interesting Fulcrum, thanks for sharing. If you have info to add, please do. It would be interesting to be able to break this down more to be able to use it meaningfully. As I said, the bid/ask totals change so quickly that I find it hard to read but haven't done much with it. If you have some guidelines or rules to share, that would be great.

Abe, I suggest you study and study some more on how to use this in your trading, if at all. In my casual glances at it, as I've suggested in this thread, there's so many games being played that trying to use that info to trade off of is dangerous in my opinion. Again, I have not done nearly as much research on this as other things, so there could be some good stuff there. Let us know what you find out, if anything, about trading with the dom #'s. FYI - what could be of help to you is the OEC dom. They have a total bid/ask thing in the settings where the dom will constantly add up the bids and the asks that you see at the bottom. It's interesting to watch, but it fluctuates so much that I didn't get much from it.

I never cared for it. Tried it and found it to be a distraction.

James, My observation of price gravitating towards these was just that - an observation. I could be wrong. This is not something I've studied or looked at with any regularity, so who knows. It is interesting to watch and if there's a way to make money from it, I'm sure someone is doing it. I've personally never seen a profitable system or trader do this, but it would be neat to watch if done successfully. If nothing else, this thread should serve as a reminder to everyone, esp newbies, that many, many games are played on the DOM's in the US markets.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aXmEYFPmjYPY&refer=news Good article - check out the 33 yr old BILLIONAIRE. That's incredible. I find it interesting that some hedge fund guys made the list as you always hear, esp at elitetrader, that you never read about traders making it on a list like this. Well, here we go.

We'll see how today goes James. Thus far in pre-market the YM is up, so no fill on our short (yet). There's not much on tap today for econ news and it's quadruple witching, so we'll see how the futures react today.

If Steve does, I haven't seen it. I've visited his main site - http://www.candlecharts.com/ which is not one giant page.

I love websites that are just one massive page. That's red flag number one for me. I've never seen a legit site that has one main page that seems to last forever. Taking a step back, it's humorous to see stuff like this. You have to wonder who is buying this and should there be more oversight and regulation over stuff like this? I know that's not the doc's point, but it is a consideration. I guess when you start and are looking for the grail, you'll give anything some consideration till you realize that grail does not exist. We've all been there or will be there and it's just part of the process. You have to realize for yourself that there is no magical grail out there, it takes hard work and dedication. Just like most other things in life worth doing.

James, Here's my take on the 6E/EC: As you can see, we have a candle cluster at #1, right at a s/r level. There's 3 or so hammers there to take a long. If we go long on #1, we have to be conscious of the overhead resistance, which we then see breaks through. #2 is a more conservative trade where you wait for that level to break and then enter on the hammer. As you see later, the new support (old resistance) level was tested 3 times and then bam - the upmove you want when long. So, in hindsight, should be long at least at #2 and possibly #1 as well. Good trades there and nice $$$$.

Today was an interesting day. I was curious to see if that YM short filled. If you traded during the day, you know it moved up a little and then down. It moved a little heavier down towards the end of the day, so I was curious to see if our resting sell stop would have been triggered. Here's the chart: I posted the closing numbers on today's trading to verify that our resting sell stop was not filled today. The low of today was 837 and our sell stop is 829 - 8 pts away. So based on our chart, #1 long is still working in some capacity - whether it's a full boat of contracts or a trimmed down amount. Based on today's numbers, we could take a short based on the red spinning top type candle with a sell stop @ 836 or lower, so our sell stop level has been raised based on today's candle. You could also leave the sell stop based on the other order as well, which would be a more conservative play. Again, keep in mind that there's a support level highlighted in yellow on the chart. The conservative play would be to wait for that level to be broken before taking a short. I like a little risk, so I'm ok with this current possible short knowing that it could stop out or provide a small gain (in context of some of our others here). If we get filled short, I would just be looking to see a close below that level to feel better about the trade. What I'll be watching to see is how much action takes place when that low is taken out. We are taking a short based on candle patterns. Others may simply place a sell stop based on the low of the candle. That's fine with us b/c the more momentum, the better. Here's an example of taking a trade knowing that there is s/r level close by and you watch to see how it develops: So what we have here is two possible reasons to go long at #1 and #2. Hopefully it's easy to see the nice setups there - a hammer at each, both at the 50 SMA. Now, when taking these longs though, you have to see some possible resistance just above (yellow line). As you can see, when that level was to be tested, it just busted through and said see ya. That's what I would be watching on this possible short - we know there's a possible support level close by that could cause us to go long again rather quickly, but we'll take that short and be conscious of this level.

http://cgi.ebay.com/TaylorMade-Rescue-Mid-Fairway-Wood-Golf-Club_W0QQitemZ120164016210QQihZ002QQcategoryZ115280QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem If you want a good laugh, read this Ebay auction. WOW.

Good stuff Tin, I will take a look at closer after the close. Thanks for sharing. The quality of the posts on the forum here recently have really gone up in my opinion. :thumbs up:

Walter, I wish I knew where you had all this energy to create some of these posts. This is the kind of stuff that makes TL an attractive forum to people - your threads are always worth viewing, I think the Candlestick Corner is a nice little spot and even Dogpile has some good stuff going now!!! With all this good stuff on here, the question won't be is it worth visiting TL, the question is where is your time best spent!

Interesting charts James. As you know, I like trading off the candlesticks and these fat/skinny guys look funny to me. :o It would take some getting used to, but I could see the value here, esp if volume is an integral part of your decision making.

Interesting chart feb. I've never done much with the hard futures - grains, coffee, etc. Do you find these tradable intra-day or more of a swing trading vehicle?

nis - there's all sorts of ways to create watchlists for what you are looking for. The key is toying with the components and seeing what works best for you. I would probably suggest TradeStation or eSignal for something like this. Again, it's a matter of setting up the parameters to meet what you are looking for.

Reav - that 5% interest you are talking about is ANNUALLY. I doubt there's many brokers paying 5% monthly. So, if you risk 5% per month and let's say lose in 1 month, the ANNUAL interest will cover some of it. Keep in mind that since that 5% is paid annually, it is paid on the revolving balance - if the balance goes down, so does your interest. As a side note, very few futures brokers pay you interest on money parked with them.

Here's my take on the YM: What I see is that our initial long is still rockin and rollin, so that's good. We now have an inverted hammer / shooting star, aka bearish type candle, near a possible support/old resistance zone. This is a tad concerning. The options at this point are: 1) Exit our long at the market tomorrow. 2) Exit our long IF this bearish candle confirms. 3) Exit our long AND initiate a short position IF the candle confirms. For the candle to 'confirm', I would be looking for price to go below the low of today's candle, which is approx 13,830. Therefore, a sell stop could be placed at 13,829 or lower to either close the long trade or close the long trade and go short. Based on the candles, I would consider that short; HOWEVER, there is a possible support zone around 13,750. So this could be a quick pop type trade - if the short fills, I would watch closely to see if that level could be broken. If that 13,750 level can break, I would feel good about the short.