brownsfan019

Abe, If you are trading real money, you will NOT be charged any monthly fees. As for having an account, but not actually trading in it, you'll have to contact OEC.

Abe, I agree, the OEC package is nice. The fact that it's free is just even more reason for any trader to consider doing business there. I totally forgot about trading from the chart b/c I do not use that, but you are right - that's a very nice feature if it fits your style of trading. Glad you like it and see some potential there. As I said, there should be no reason in today's technology to have problems managing your trades due to a software issue. That's not acceptable to me.

Abe, How do you like those Open ECry charts and software? I think the charts could use some work, but the DOM is what I mainly use it for.

Glad you enjoy them Nick.

Good trading Abe. I am taking a good part of this week off, but I'll try to stop in and see how things are going.

Here's the follow up thread I referenced earlier - http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f104/step-3-putting-it-all-together-2279.html

In Step 1 and Step 2, we discussed some of the basics of using candlestick analysis in your trading. The next step is putting it all together. Before we get into this, I should preface it by saying there are many, many schools of thought on this part of candlestick analysis. There are many schools of thought on how to trade individual patterns as well. I obviously can't go into detail on every single pattern out there, so we'll discuss them as there are questions. In taking a trade, recognizing a possible trade is only a small part of the equation. You then need to know where your ENTRY, STOP LOSS AND PROFIT TARGET(S) will be. PROFIT TARGET(S) I will start with profit targets b/c it's easy - there's so many different ways to exit, I can't possibly list them here. In regards to candlestick analysis, Steve Nison has said many times that candlestick analysis does not provide possible profit target(s). Some other form of your trading plan will have to fill in here. This is of course an incredibly important part of your trading plan since it can make the difference between a profitable trade and a losing one. Just keep in mind that candlestick analysis will provide very clear possible entry points, but does not lay out an easy-to-use exit strategy. I personally will usually use a set profit target or stay in a trade until a reversal pattern appears. CANDLESTICK ENTRY Some might be thinking the entry is easy - see a hammer and go long at the market. And that's one option, but there are more. The options to enter on a candle pattern are: 1) Enter @ market at close of the candlestick pattern. 2) Enter somewhere on the next candle. 3) Enter after there is some bullish/bearish confirmation of the candle pattern. CANDLESTICK STOP LOSS PLACEMENT In the most traditional sense, placing a stop loss is rather simple - place at/near the high/low of the candlestick pattern. Will explain with some chart screenshots. Let's look at an example... Here's a nice looking hammer on the weekly DJIA chart. I borrowed this from James_gsx's thread. So in this example, we have decisions to make. ENTRY: In this example you can enter in 3 ways: 1) As soon as the hammer closes, you go long @ the market to ensure a fill. 2) Since it's not uncommon for the low of a hammer to be tested, you can wait and go long after price drops. 3) You can wait for 'bullish confirmation' and go long once the HIGH of the hammer line is traded through. There's good and bad of each setup... 1) As soon as the hammer closes, you go long @ the market to ensure a fill. GOOD: You get in @ the market and there's no concern of 'missing' the trade. BAD: Since we know hammers can be tested, you could see a quick stop out and/or take some heat on the trade immediately. Discipline would be key here. 2) Since it's not uncommon for the low of a hammer to be tested, you can wait and go long after price drops. GOOD: If price comes down, you can get a 'better price'. Also, if you do take a stop loss, it will be much smaller than the other entry methods. BAD: I have a real hard time wanting price to go DOWN for you to go LONG. To me, that's counterintuitive. Again, discipline is key to be able to say 'I want price to drop, get me long and then snap back up'. 3) You can wait for 'bullish confirmation' and go long once the HIGH of the hammer line is traded through. GOOD: You want to see the bulls take the price and drive it up through the high of the hammer. If going long, it adds some additional confirmation to see price go UP. BAD: Depending on stop loss placement, you could have a large stop on some trades and this hammer is a good example. If you place a buy stop above the candle high and then a stop loss below the bottom of the hammer, you can see there's some risk involved in the trade. So as you can see, you have a very big decision to make on how you will enter the trade. Note - if you find yourself thinking - I did not know that it's uncommon for a hammer's low to be retested, then you have quite a bit more studying to do before even thinking about Step 3. You just need to know this information about this pattern and any others you may trade. This comes from studying the patterns yourself, reading candlestick books and studying some more. STOP LOSS PLACEMENT Again, the most traditional candlestick analysis says to place your stop somewhere below the low of that hammer b/c you know that it can easily be retested. The last thing you want is to be long, get stopped out and then look back and think - if my stop was just placed better, I could have stayed in a winning trade vs. taking a loss. Exactly where to place that stop is up to you. I suggest just a few tick(s) or price level(s) from that low. I mainly trade the ES, so most of my stops are near the low of that hammer as I know that area can be heavily defended. Again, it comes down to knowing how particular candle patterns work on your particular market(s). Make no mistake, this is not as easy as just going 'hammer hunting' w/o first knowing how hammers react on that particular market or stock. In other words, you have to KNOW how hammers react on your market/stock BEFORE considering a trade. If I see any charts of 'why didn't this hammer work', I am going to ask what your analysis has shown before we even discuss the chart. PROFIT TARGETS As I mentioned above, how/where/why you exit this trade is something that you need to develop on your own. There's plenty of resources on TL and other websites about possible exit scenarios. In this current volatility however, I would suggest considering staying in trades longer than you might during periods of low volatility. ------------------- So there's an analysis on a hammer. What you have to decide is - what are my actions taken, if any on this? And why? What would cause you take this trade and what would cause you to not take this trade? Let's see if we can get some discussion going here on this 'real' setup - take a look at a weekly DJIA chart and see what you see and what play you would make if trading off the weekly. Here's a link if you need a reference point - http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui

James, My view is this - there was a really nice looking shooting star to go short about 5 candles back and now we have a large hammer, which appears to be a possible pullback to the SMA as well. In TRADITIONAL candlestick analysis, there is a possible buy here. The next step is to decide how/when to play this, which we'll discuss in another thread when I get a chance to put the thread together. PS I have one favor to ask - when posting charts, can you zoom in on the price action you are referring to? See my screenshot for an example. Reason is that I had trouble viewing your screenshot to see the price action that you were asking about so I had to hop over to stockcharts to get the chart. It just makes it more convenient for everyone if we can just view your chart easily. If you need a free version of SnagIt, check this thread out - http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f18/free-snagit-7-a-2170.html

Interesting development. This is called 'we have to increase the margins b/c too many retards are over leveraged'. :rolleyes: The question becomes is this a temporary 'fix' to the increased volatility or is this going to be the standard... time will tell.

See what you can find out. When I was there, I went through many levels of customer service and programmers and was finally told that 'that's the way we do it'. So, I no longer conduct business there.

Just keep in mind Abe that if you go to TS and plan to use VBC's, they will not be accurate at all. See the thread I referenced earlier about this. It's important you understand that if you plan to use VBC's in your trading.

I'm stuck cooter until MC gets the OEC upgrade done. :sad:

Abe, From my look at them, the Sierra charts are what I call 'TradeStation' VBC's, which means that the volume threshold you set is more of an approximation. What I mean is that on your 1250 VBC, a couple things could be happening: 1) The actual amount of contracts traded in that candle are 1250 OR higher. 2) The amount of trades and contracts that is actually taking place is not what is being reported on the chart for some reason. #1 occurs on some charting platforms, like TradeStation, where they do not break trades up to construct the candle. So if your setting is 1250 and when your candle is at 1249, if an order for 300 comes through, your candle is actually 1549 (1249 + 300). More info in this thread - http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f32/volume-based-charts-request-for-help-1630.html #2 is a little trickier, but in a nutshell, my 5000 VBC on Sierra isn't anywhere close to a 5000 VBC on Open ECry's charts. I tried to use an add-on that Kiwi in the Sierra chart forum designed, but it's not working in the sense of capping each candle at 5000 and then starting a new one. I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, but when compared to the OEC chart, it's not even close. I have now seen this at TradeStation and Sierra. I'm surprised that neither offers a workaround, but I guess constant volume charts are not significant enough for them to design the fix. As of now, MultiCharts still appears to offer one of the most comprehensive charting packages I have seen, which includes pure VBC's - whatever level you set your threshold at, that's where the candles start/end. No guessing.

Tin, I am curious - where was your entry and stop on that one? That's something we'll have to discuss in the candlestick corner as the actual entry and stop are critical, yet can have very different variants.

Abe, Are you using Sierra charts for your VBC's? Reason I ask is that I have been testing Sierra this week and it appears there VBC's are NOT pure VBC's. I'll explain more if you are using Sierra.

And the other side of that coin Ed is that if Trader A starts the day in the red and gives up and would have come out ahead if he just stuck with his plan. That's not very wise is it? So I completely disagree. If you KNOW your setups make money, you take every single one of them. Why? B/c some days you will cash in BIG time and you NEED those to offset the days where it is just not happening. I think it's common practice among new traders to cap their gains and maybe cap their losses. Seems awfully backwards to me, but it's the result of fear - fear of 'giving money back' as you've illustrated here and fear of losing more. That is why most new traders will never see a monster PLUS day and will routinely see monster MINUS days.

Correct James, you can churn it till the cows come home. :p Just kiddin. No PDT in futures.

Abe, when I say 'too late to the party' what that is trying to tell you is that during intra-day moves, you simply cannot get in too late. The reason is that with a hard stop set, you'll get taken out too often if you are too late. Rarely do you see an intra-day chart that is in one direction - up or down - in a perfect line. You just don't see it. And since we know markets trend about 20% of the time, you have to be able to make money during the other 80%. That requires seeing possible moves as they are developing, not after they've developed. I hope that makes sense. I just wanted to explain what I mean by 'too late to the party'.

Abe, Here's my thoughts on the chart that Tin annotated as well. I see 6 possible setups, resulting in 4 winners and 2 stop outs. The end result of whether you make money or not depends on where you exited the profitable trades at. One thing to note however... you could have easily stayed in the winners until a reversal appeared... idea...

Abe, It's time to get a new platform for trading. What you have is inadequate for what you want to do apparently. There's a few reviews on this site, and I would suggest Open ECry.

Nice risk to reward there! :thumbs up:

Nice looking chart Tin. Almost seems to easy at times...

Good trading today Abe! I'll be watching to see if there's some consistency in something starting to be built the rest of the week.

James - I asked in a previous thread, but you may have missed - what exactly are you up to now? You were a die hard YM guy and now you are not trading futures apparently. What's going on over there?

Cooter - not sure on those questions, you'll have to ask OEC directly.