brownsfan019

I was curious to what the weekly looked like. Not so good right now for our hammer. It would not be surprising to see the hammer's low tested, which would coincide with our daily dow short. The daily dow could test the SMA, which would be in the same zone as the weekly hammer.

James, Here's my take on the dow daily. It's late or I would look at some other charts, but off to bed for the trading day on Monday.

WOW, dogpile nailed it on the head as far as I am concerned. That pretty much outlined my journey in trading. Here's one thing that I did one day and have stuck with it (and wish I started it earlier) - I have a template in Word where I document whatever setup(s) I am playing at that moment in time. I've found that it's nice to have for future references instead of saying - geeze, this looks familiar but I'm not sure why... It can save a lot of time and hassle. I've attached a screenshot of the general look and feel of what I use. It's nothing fancy, I just like having a reference sheet for whatever I've done in my trading. I use this ANY time there's ANY change - no matter how minor that change is. Again, I want to be able to look back and see what I was using and why I changed.

momentom - thanks for that but what I need is to take that MKV file and turn it into a format that can be burnt to a DVD. The file as an MKV will not play in a normal DVD player so there has to be some sort of conversion. I didn't get around to it today, so later this week I'll have to dive into it.

What contract(s) hanz? And explain the slippage being received on a limit order. Provide an actual trade so we can see what happened.

I will let you know how it goes today, thanks for the help!

I found a tv show I was looking for with the help of some on the forum. I now have a follow up question - the format of the file is MKV. I've been all over google the last couple days trying to figure out how to turn this file into something that can be burnt to a DVD. I was hoping with the computer folks we have here that someone could help out. Here's what I found so far... Main MKV site - http://www.matroska.org/index.html The problem is there doesn't appear to be one easy-to-use program that I can plug these MKV files into and be done. You would think so, but nothing that I have found. It doesn't help that there's dead links on their website. Thanks!!!!!

And exactly what are we supposed to be looking at?

Uhhh... guys... I suggest you check when the original post came from the doc before digging this old post up and posting in it. Her post was from June and she's been on the forum recently. It's now Sept. There's a good chance that little summer vacation is over.

mojo - I agree 100%. Changing the look and feel of your charts can affect your decision making easily. If nothing else, your brain is trying to decipher the new look and for some (myself included) that can cause disruptions. My candle charts are blue and red candles. Why? Well, blue is my fave color and red is standard bearish candles. Red and blue work well together in my opinion. I've had it that way since I can remember. Going back to green and red would just be 'weird' to me. I'll add this as well - in addition to the coloring of your charts, the size of the candles, the length of the X and Y axis, etc. can also produce different pictures for me, even though it's the same info! I've actually found that having large monitors can HURT my view and trading b/c everything looks so exaggerated. And then when I see that it's just a 3 tick candle, things change. This is actually important, esp for newbies to trading, to understand. How your charts look and are setup can impact your trading, whether you are conscious of this or not. Here's a quick example: ES CHART #1 (15 MIN CHART) ES CHART #2 (SAME 15 MIN CHART) Believe it or not, those are IDENTICAL charts, just different Y axis.

James, The key right now is to learn. You've paid for this education, so do not put it to waste. You need to understand what happened, why it happened, when it happened, what caused this to happen, etc. so that you attempt to not repeat these events again. And you need to document this stuff NOW. Not next week or later this weekend. Everything is fresh right NOW. You've started a little bit of it here, but the meat and potatoes of what really went on is still floating in your head. Get it on paper. Save it for later. When you need a wake up call, read it. To be perfectly honest, I am shocked that after all the great analysis you do in our candlestick threads that you would wing it today on the YM. That doesn't add up to me. There's a reason you didn't trust your regular analysis and just kind of shot from the hip. It's one thing to just have a bad day or week after your following your plan as that will happen. But it's another thing to just kind of throw mud on the wall and see what sticks in real-time with real money. Take some time now to document it.

Thanks for sharing nick. That was actually a pretty good read. I have an idea after reading it... we'll see how it looks.

This ATR thing may need it's own thread to be honest, but I appreciate the help momentom. I honestly have never used it or really looked at it, so any help and guidance is appreciated. Here's a thread dedicated to ATR and I hope momentom can stop by: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/average-true-range-atr-2412.html#post18491

In this thread, momentom brought up using the ATR as a trailing stop function and since I know literally 0 about the ATR and it's use, I thought we could have a discussion here about it and not clutter up the other thread. Hopefully momentom can provide us some examples and I will do my best to interact as well. Right now my questions would be what settings to set your ATR at, what number (if any) to multiply that number by (and why) and then how to use that in your trading? In my personal use, I am interested in using this as a trailing stop idea, but I'd like to hear if any are using this as a tool for entering trades as well.

No idea, we'll have to wait for momentom's response.

My suggestion Tin is to give the trade room to work then.

Bare with me if you will - I put a 10 ATR on my ES chart now. The value is 1.625. That x3 = 4.875. Now, what does that specific number tell me? Again, sorry for the simple question but I've never gotten into ATR and would like to see how it operates as a trailing stop function.

James - you got it, all longs should be exited and a short could have possibly been taken there. I'll try to take a look at the charts this weekend.

OK, so we are back to the discussion of using a hard stop or not. Obviously, by this response, you do not use hard stops. Hard stops mean just that - they are hard and do not change. That's not to say it's wrong, but I was having a hard time understanding how a trader could say 'I use a hard stop' followed up with 'but sometimes that hard stop is moved or not even on the DOM'. That's not a hard stop.

momentom - I've never done much with the ATR. Could you explain further what you use here and how it's used. When I threw what I found on MultiCharts (Study > Average True Range) I was given the option for the ATRLength and AlertLength. I assume the Alert is just some sort of alert when a certain level is reached. And the default setting is a line at the bottom of the chart, similar to a stochastics type line. Just curious how you use this for trailing stop purposes as I am always looking to improve on this part of my trading.

So what you are saying is that you will have a hard stop on your dom, assuming that's a market order, and if another signal is possibly forming, you'll pull that 'hard' stop in case another signal appears? What I am saying is that if your hard stop is at 1500 and price is approaching 1500, it could very well tip 1500 before another signal would appear. Point being that calling something a 'hard' stop when it can be moved or overridden is not a hard stop. That's more of a fluffy, soft stop.

The links I provided are to the bond futures, which can be traded for as little as $5000 (maybe even lower). As for individual corporate bonds, I would recommend doing quite a bit of homework before thinking about trying to daytrade them. Even some of the most liquid issues can have trouble selling on the market. It's not as easy as stocks or futures. Your broker has to go find a willing buyer at the price you are asking and it can take DAYS to fill.

rex - you trade with a hard stop, but also forgo the stop? That seems more like a 'soft' stop.

Tin, Funny you bring this up as it was something I was looking at today as well. Here's my take - I'm terrible at trailing manually. I know that just 'eye balling it' doesn't work for me, so some sort of mechanical system is needed. Here's the options as I see it in no particular order: * Trailing Stop * Fixed Profit Target * Some sort of combo of these two options I think everything is really a function of those three options. Either you say I am going for +10 and sit there with a limit order or you say I am going to wait and take myself out (manually or rule based). So for me, obviously a fixed target is easy; however - it really sucks in a big move. If you get a trade that ends up going for +50 and you are out at +10, you can sit there and scratch your head for awhile. Of course the argument is you can re-enter, but let's say that doesn't happen. And a trail is a touchy thing as you've illustrated here. My belief is that the trail needs to be aggressive or loose. I'm not a big fan of the move the stop to break-even or around there simply b/c it creates a 'risk free' trade. Well, you tell me - how did your 'risk free' trade work out? :doh: Exactly. Point being that if you had an aggressive trail, you would not have caught the +50, but I would guess that you could have got more than +1. And a loose trail could very well catch the +50. Of course, there's plenty of times where that aggressive trail and/or break-even trail will 'save' you from a loss. I think it comes down to one thing - what are you trying to play or catch - smaller moves during the day repeatedly or a couple trades per day trying to catch the larger move (assuming there is one that day)... The reason I ask that is I don't think it's easy (or possible) to do both - trying to time the perfect exit each and every time just won't happen with any consistency. You either have to make a conscious choice to go for the larger moves knowing that when it doesn't have the momentum, you'll take a loss or small gain or go for smaller moves knowing that it's more likely to be taken out, but you may be watching monster moves from the sidelines. And you can alter your method based on volatility as well.

I've never had much luck with them. I think it's b/c they seem to move SO slow. There is plenty of liquidity daily to be daytraded if they work for you. More info: http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1462,00.html http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1642,00.html http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1265,00.html http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1631,00.html Looks like the 10 yr has the most daily volume when I glanced at the pages.