brownsfan019

I'm not worried about the commission discounts. If they need adjusted, they need adjusted. Of course, I'll prolong that as long as possible. Not moving to Columbus though, that's for sure. Not about to leave everything in Cleveland just to work somewhere that is to help kill the time.

I wanted to mention something in case there's a question or two on the chart I posted. Looking closer at the recent action: #1 and #2 provided trading opportunities in our zone here. I would have preferred though if #1 at least made it back to the 50 SMA or even the upper yellow line. I was hoping we would see that but since the day before #1 was a bearish day, it would have taken a lot to get that #1 trade up to the SMA. I would have liked to see #2 get to the low of our zone (lower yellow line). Again, it did not this time. So the question anyone trading this would have to ask is did these entries meet YOUR criteria. I'm not excited about them, but there was potential profit there as well. On this new long, I'd like to see it test the 50 SMA and/or upper yellow zone (see a pattern?). And the flip side to this is if you can find the well established zones, you could anticipate that and place resting orders to buy or sell based on those levels. This is a tad more tricky and requires some finesse in my opinion as you have to be willing to buy into an down move and sell into an up move. And stop placement is critical as well. Just an idea to toss out there.

I agree - it will need to break this zone to get some momentum going again. However, as we wait, there are possible trades available. The 80 pt move on the YM wasn't much, but I'll take $400/contract while I 'wait' for the momentum to appear again.

Everyone look - the new guy is a smart ass. How cute. :hmpf: Just kiddin :evil tongue:

I'm not seeing a convincing bear control here. I'm seeing a range bound movement where no one is really in charge. It's back and forth until the bulls or bears say enough (could be news/econ related).

James, In terms of swing trading, there are many possibilities - the ETF's, options and futures. I've traded stocks/etf's and options before and while that is an option, the best bang for your buck is on the futures no doubt. Of course, like you said, that's a catch 22 as well.

James, I hear ya. I am the same way. I think I have ADD to be honest. All over the place sometimes. And thanks to our discussions, I posted this little revelation tonight. It's a delicate situation to stay focused on your charts, all day, when nothing is happening. You either drift (and provide some nice artwork for us here on TL) or you miss a trade, which makes you feel terrible then. It's not easy, that's for sure. Others may say just focus and shut up, but for those of us with actual or possible ADD, it's a struggle. I think that's why I got down to a 2000 VBC to be honest. I would get the trading area isolated from the rest of the house for sure. From there, you have to keep yourself focused as best as possible. Just an idea - there is a TL chat function here, maybe a few people could get that interest going again so there's a place to go to keep your brain occupied, but still stay focused on your charts. Or someone could start a PalTalk room if that's easier. Just an idea to help b/c I've been there.

:doh: I think the point Fulcrum was that to blindly follow ANY system where you have NO IDEA how things are being constructed is a TERRIBLE way to try to trade. To rely 100% on a person, such as Roger that has a history of up and leaving (see TI and that other place he went to afterwards), is a recipe for disaster. Point being that any trader that is serious about trading and making it, should avoid sites like Felton's at all costs. There's no benefit to joining a service where you are 100% dependent on one person and their magical indicators (which you can get for free anyways). Eventually, Roger will leave. That's what he does. One day, all that magical stuff will be gone. Then what? And there within lies the problem with these type of sites... Once someone leaves, you have to hope they come back sooner or later. And until then, good luck!

Just wanted to provide a little update on this topic from my point of view... Ever since conversing in the Candlestick Corner, esp with James_gsx, I've really taken a step back to take a birds eye view of my trading and see where I want it to go the rest of this year and into next. And after conversing with James and looking at some charts, I have to wonder why at times I put myself through the ringer of day-trading. What I mean is, some of these daily charts look clear as day to me. Granted, this is all in hindsight and I've been watching the daily's closer now to see how I would play them if just using those. I don't know what it is, but swing trading futures is a tough pill for me to swallow as I've told myself for years that the advantage of day-trading was no overnight risk. And that's very true, esp in the futures markets where things can get moving around 3am EST some days. The biggest advantages I see of going to higher timeframes (in comparison to a quick 5000 VBC) are: 1) Time to plan and map out the trades. 2) Can catch more of the moves, with less trades (and less commissions). 3) Can play MANY more markets, which opens up some great possibilities. For example, in this thread and this thread, I am discussing the tighter range the YM and ES are in currently. But if you look at a CL chart - you'll see a pretty impressive up-trend going on right now. It's quite a realization however to sit here and think - I could be making more, by trading less. And by less, I literally mean doing some work from about 4:30pm - 6:30pm (if that long), plan the trades out, place the orders and let it be. It's almost like trying to kick an addiction really. I've never really been addicted to something to the point of not being able to walk away, but this could be my crutch. To go from taking over 100 trades PER DAY at one point, to a few trades per week would be a massive adjustment. And one that would require some serious work on my end. I honestly do not know what I would even do with my time during the day! I'd have to get a job or something just to have something to do! Maybe I can go to work for the Browns or something... do something that I would love doing. I digress. For anyone interested or following my little realization journey here, I am currently on 15 minute charts with the ES. That's not a typo. I love VBC's and I sometimes throw one up for the sake of it, but this realization that less can be more (and quite a bit more) has sunk in for me. The 15 minute gives me plenty of time to map out trades and to execute that plan. I'm looking at up to 10 trades per day roughly and 10 is on the high side. So, I am currently on the 15 minute and maybe in a few weeks you'll see me post about going to the 30, then the 60 and then it's off to the daily's. I guess I also think about the fund managers that have made some serious money - when you read interviews with the big boys, you rarely find one that fires off a ton of trades each day. It's more of gathering a position at a good price and then letting it work for days/weeks. And the more I look, the more I see that, esp when you catch a monster move like we have seen in the CL. There is some SERIOUS money being made on the CL with that giant up-trend. The most frustrating part for me is saying to myself ... why didn't I see this sooner? And the answer is that I got so wrapped up in actively trading each and every day that the bigger picture was never considered. And as that focus got more and more intense, I got to the point of trading off a chart that could literally produce candles in under 10 seconds (2000 VBC on the ES). Talk about stress and being forced to make a decision in seconds... :hmmmm: I realize that TL and other sites discuss active trading mostly, but I may have to find a new home for position / swing traders. I wonder if there are forums that cater to that type of 'trader'. If that's even being a 'trader' at all. :rofl: Maybe there would be some interest here and James can open up a Position / Swing Trading area for those that aren't interested in playing the intra-day gyrations (and I don't blame you now).

Dog, Well this ES chart is just not that pretty right now for a candle trader. I did a YM analysis here and the ES is pretty much the same. So, the candle short I mentioned provided some profit, but nothing to get excited about. While in this tighter range, we have to accept these smaller moves or wait for a break in one direction.

James (and others following)... Here's how that YM chart looks now. I am using charts from http://www.quote.com as I found stockcharts to be too clunky and cumbersome for what I needed here. At this point, you can see we are a tad range bound here. We have some support around the 13,000 level (note nice, even number) and some resistance around the 13,400 level. I say 'around' as I view these areas more as zones vs. hard numbers. We had a spinning top that if shorted should have made some profit. Depends on how and where you exited. If we assume that we stayed in that trade until a reversal appeared, we got a nice spinning top on Monday, which was confirmed today. So, if short @ 13,300 (approx) and now long @ 13,220 (approx), our short yielded approx 80 YM pts = $400/contract. Not bad for being in the trade for 3 days. As for the current long, I would just be cautious that on a nice up day today, we may need to cover this position fairly soon. I see some resistance around 13,400 just glancing at the candles going back 3-4 months, so hopefully you can see that too. As we approach this area, I'd love to see a bust through this level on good volume to keep this long going or give me another reason to short again. We'll see how the next couple days unfold.

Like I said, you can say that Felton, who was a TI employee and teacher there, has different stuff but it's the same junk in a new shiny box. Are you also over at ET trying to help others? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=102485&perpage=6&pagenumber=4 I guess Felton has the newbies out there pushing his divergence trading system. Allow me to ask this - does Roger trade with real money or does he still trade just on a simulator?

Jim, I think you'll find most here trade the ES or YM as opposed to the SPY or DIA.

Fulcrum - are you going to be the subtle feltontrading spammer here? I can't help but notice the very few posts you have and the times you keep mentioning Roger's version of Traders International. I'll save everyone a few bucks - TI and Felton just use a divergence stochastics and MACD. Now, both will claim that their version is the 'best' and it's not straight divergence b/c they alter the settings just enough to make it their own. DO NOT waste your money at either place. The CME and CBOT websites have MUCH BETTER and FREE programs there.

Dog, Here's my take as a candle trader. I don't use or even know what some of the things are you have referenced, but we'll see what kind of discussion this can create.

James, Couple things: 1) First, you have to remember that candle patterns WILL fail and you should EXPECT them to throughout the day. If they were bulletproof, everyone would use them. 2) If you can better annotate the charts, that would help as I am a tad confused on exact entries, exits, etc.

Some software that comes with printers has different functions to not print a color background. I would check the printer software out first James so you don't have to keep altering your TS chart to print.

My brackets are fine Cooter, so I didn't ask. If it's that big of a concern, then shop around and see what's out there. There's plenty of FCM's and IB's to trade through; however, I wonder how many would step up AND take responsibility like OEC has done.

You said it. Words mean nothing to me if you can't back them up. OEC obviously talks the talk and walks the walk. I stand by my ringing endorsement of OEC as the ONE futures firm that you SHOULD be trading at.

Per your requests... A brief break-down of the issue on Friday: The CME servers (as a standard practice) send out a "heartbeat" request to all of their incoming connections at regular intervals. If the CME doesn't not receive a response back within specified parameters, it will effectively disable that connection to the exchange. At 10:26AM the response from OEC to the CME was not received and our connection was disabled by the exchange. At 10:35AM the connection was restored but was not performing as expected. Our tech team made a decision to resolve the issue but resetting the connection at 11:42AM. The particular issue has been isolated and addressed. We take great pride in our up-time and reliability and go to pretty extensive lengths to strive for 100% uptime. I will also note that we went to great length on Friday to address any reported customer issues. If a customer reported an issue, we did some verification and agreed to do a full refund (not too many other firms do this...and I don't think we get much (any) credit for the way we handle such issues) ----------------------------- Here's my take - sh*t happens. It happens at most/all brokers at some point. What counts is how the broker handles it. While at TradeStation, if something like this happened and I requested any type of refund or reimbursement, they would have laughed and said 'read the agreement you signed'. Same thing at ProActive. Same thing when I was a stockbroker - if a system went down, oh well, tough luck. So, if OEC is willing to back their stuff up with MONEY, that works for me.

James, Trade looks good and you followed your plan, that's what is key right now. Well done.

The black background forces your eyes to focus on the other colors, regardless if bright or not. It's just the way our eyes operate and it's how we've trained them - for many years, you've trained them to look for a light/white background and black text. Same theory holds for the charts that you stare at for many hours each day.

I have to agree with Reaver on this one. When I first watched Loose Change, it definitely stirred up some emotion. And like Reaver said, it does seem possible on paper. But pulling this off in real life would be difficult with so many people needing to be involved AND then not one soul saying a word since. It's just hard to believe that it could have been planned out so perfectly and that there would not be at least one whistle blower.

You can't be serious. Have you bothered to read any of the other threads in General Discussion? Any of them? :doh: This is the first thread in recent memory to fall under the 'conspiracy nut' discussion. This is the first thread that could actually stir some debate on this forum. Next time take a look around before posting your remarks.

One note James (and I realize you are younger) - a dark background will create more stress on your eyes over time. I liked the look of the black background as well, but quickly found out from the eye doc that's not such a good idea. The dark background forces your eyes to focus more and creates unnecessary strain. And that extra focus is not a good thing. That does not equate to being more focused on your trades, it just creates more stress on your eyes to watch your charts. I don't use white, just a very faint/light blue. I wasn't convinced at first, but after reading up on it, it makes sense - just about everything you read (magazines, books, websites, etc.) all have a white or light background. It's easier on the eyes and your eyes have been trained to be able to read easily with that background. Now, when an advertiser wants to attract your eyes, they can do so w/ a dark background b/c it forces your eyes to pause and focus on the object. Just an FYI.