brownsfan019

I agree - good catch!

IWM - Russell ETF

Hey guys, I decided to take a look at these w/ daily charts as I have been so focused w/ intraday trading that I've done very little w/ swing trading. I didn't want to take this thread off track, so I started a thread here. Feel free to stop by!

It's not too often that something grabs my attention on forums, but I've always enjoyed Thales' posts and once he dissected his trading with pictures I wanted to see how it looks on daily charts. I started the thread here b/c I plan to look at candles and might end up w/ my own spin on it so I didn't want to take his thread off track. Idea here is that I'll use freestockcharts.com and look at some daily charts as time permits and see what I can find. My interest in this would be for swing trading as my daytrading style doesn't really mesh with swing trading that well. I'm very much an intraday trader and it's been awhile since I've looked at daily charts. If you're not sure what analysis will be used, go to this thread and start reading. If you want the shortcut, read this post. Feel free to join along if you are using the same analysis as Thales has presented. The only difference I am adding (at this point) is seeing how the candles look as well on the daily.

How about when your opponent also controls price swings b/c they make the quotes? That's what you are missing here -- futures are centralized, fx is up to each broker to report their numbers. Anyways, a couple good articles and it shows another story of the fx world which simply doesn't exist in futures.

Dinero - I'm glad you are sim trading and learning these new markets. Being stuck in a position in grains after the RTH close is just asking for a heart attack. So lesson learned, but I have to ask - how late were you trading this that you still had a position this late? I suggested it before and I stick by it - be done w/ this market by Noon EST. I know moves can occur later, but as you've seen that first 1.5 hours provides plenty of movements to make money. I know it doesn't seem like long, but 1.5 hours on the ZS can feel like hours on the indexes w/ the movements. As for the CL, it's not for the faint of heart and requires some practice. It also can move quickly w/o waiting for you. It will take some practice to trade this market and if it's not for you, no biggie - there's plenty of other markets out there.

B/c the quotes are centralized. When I trade futures, Open ECry doesn't get to dictate where prices go and what prices to report. They must report what the CME reports. They can trade against me, but the ultimate prices being reported are not dictated by them; whereas in FX it's like playing poker against an opponent that knows your hand. If your opponent knows where you will give up on the trade, think they could use that to their advantage?

I read articles like that and it just reinforces why I don't head into the FX shark infested waters.

The $100bn FX hustle The $100bn FX hustle Posted by Paul Murphy on Nov 02 19:11. $100bn — that’s the daily figure for trading volume in the retail foreign exchange market, where amateur plungers play the dollar and the like. The IPO prospectus for Gain Capital, one of the scores of firms tapping into this area of explosive growth, sets out the juicy business on offer (emphasis FT Alphaville’s): Foreign exchange, or forex, trading is one of the fastest growing areas of retail trading in the financial services industry. According to its most recent report, the Aite Group, a financial services industry market research firm, reported that by the end of 2008, average daily trading volume in the retail forex market reached approximately $100.0 billion, a 900% increase from 2001. Our total annual customer trading volume, which is based on the U.S. Dollar equivalent of notional amounts traded, grew from $120.3 billion in 2004 to $1.49 trillion in 2008, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 87.6%. Our annual customer trading volume from customers residing outside of China grew from $114.3 billion in 2004 to $1.32 trillion in 2008, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 84.3%. Compound annual growth of almost 88 per cent? ALARM BELLS PLEASE! We should state at the outset here that to our knowledge Gain Capital, better known as FOREX.com, are neither better nor worse than any other retail FX trading service provider. But my, isn’t Gain profitable: net income has multiplied from $7.1m in 2004 to $231m in 2008, representing compound annual growth of 138 per cent. But at whose cost? Step forward would-be FX speculators drawn from retail clients the world over. The FOREX.com website, like the firm’s IPO prospectus, contains lots of warm words about enabling ordinary people to gain access to markets that were once the preserve of the professionals. There’s a stress on things like “education”,”managing risk in real time,” and other such intangibles. The site also warns — in small print at the bottom of the page — that “forex trading involves significant risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors” and that “increasing leverage increases risk”. There’s also a separate page warning of the risks inherent to forex trading and the additional dangers of using an Internet-based platform. Go to any of these sites — FXCM.com, Global Futures & Forex, Oanda.com, etc — and you will get the distinct impression that you are dealing with a warm-hearted, professional broker, where your interests are paramount. But in many cases the exact opposite is the case. Note this line from the Gain prospectus: The majority of our revenue is derived from our activities as a market-maker to our retail customers, where we act as the counterparty to our customers’ trades. We would also highlight, in abstract, these two statements from the ‘risk factors’ section of the IPO doc: Our customer base is primarily comprised of individual retail customers who generally trade in the forex market with us for short periods… …If we are unable to maintain or increase our customer retention rates or generate a substantial number of new customers in a cost-effective manner, our business, financial condition and results of operations and cash flows would likely be adversely affected. For the year ended December 31, 2008, we incurred sales and marketing expenses of $29.3 million. And then deeper into the prospectus: As a market-maker, we take an equal and opposite position to our customers when executing a trade. We believe it is neither economically optimal nor necessary from a risk perspective to hedge all of our customers’ trades on a one-to-one basis… …Trading revenue is our largest source of revenue and is derived from gains, offset by losses, from our trading positions and our revenue resulting from dealing spreads on customer transactions where we earn the difference between the retail price quoted to our customers and the wholesale price received from our wholesale forex trading partners… …We offer both standard and mini accounts, which allow customers 100-to-1 and 200-to-1 margin… We could go on. The 150 page FOREX.com prospectus provides dozens of talking points. But let’s concentrate on the core issue here: how do those operating retail FX punting services make so much money? —— Here’s how it works. Our Madcap Speculator (MS), having been lured by an advert or other promotion, puts up $500 to “play the dollar.” He thinks the dollar is going to 1.75 versus the Euro — and he may well be right, given that we’ve already moved from 1.25 to 1.50 in the past six months or so. FXhustle.com offers the Madcap Speculator 200x leverage on his initial margin deposit of $500. That allows the client to go long the euro and short the dollar to the tune of $100,000. Now, either because he’s cautious or because FXhustle have insisted he do so, our MS places a stop loss on his trade — limiting his total possible losses to $1,000. Which is where FXhustle becomes the near-certain winner and Madcap Speculator becomes the likely loser. MS might be right about dollar/euro going to $1.75, but even if it does, we can be absolutely certain that it will NOT do so in a straight line. And, because he’s levered 200 times, our little speculator cannot sustain much volatility without being stopped out. FXhustle, on the other hand, acting as MS’s counterparty, can endure much greater price divergence — even without having a view on the future of the dollar. In its role as counterparty, the firm is taking bets from tens of thousands of customers across dozens of currency pairs. It can maintain a neutral market position while banking the spread between wholesale FX rates and the quotes it offers the Speculators of this world. But it then sweeps up as soon as a client hits a stop loss — which the volatility in FX markets, together with excess leverage, makes a certainty. With a simple algorithm covering market volatility and the leveraged state of clients, FXhustle can make near-certain returns — in just the same way that a casino takes a pre-defined cut at the roulette wheel. The only trouble for FXhustle is that it needs to keep finding new Madcap Speculators willing to lose their money in this way. —— Returning to our real life example in the form of Gain Capital and FOREX.com, we can see that the firm currently has around 33,000 active customers collectively betting a nominal $1,200bn annually. For every $1m wagered by its clients, FOREX.com generated revenue of $122. The firm does not appear to have divulged a figure for client churn, so it is difficult to know how many customers might be getting burnt on a monthly basis. What we do know is that advertising and promotion spending is running at $30m a year at Gain Capital, ranking second only to staff costs. FOREX.com, like others in the same business, is regulated to the n-th degree — both from a capital adequacy perspective and from the advertising/promotion/consumer protection side. But do the National Futures Association in the US and the FSA in the UK actually understand the hardwired hustle going on here? If not, it’s about time they did.

Retail Currency Brokers Earn 'Near-Certain' Returns Trading Against Their Own Clients The latest IPO prospectus for Gain Capital, a retail currency trading brokerage, reminds us again just how awfully disadvantaged retail currency traders are. The word surely needs to get out more, since as it stands Gain Capital has grown its customer trading volume by an absurd 88% per year on average from 2004 - 2008. FTAlphaville nicely highlights the most shocking aspect of the whole business - these companies are essentially trading against you as a counterparty. They don't even appear too concerned about hedging currency exposure given that their business model offers 'near-certain' returns trading against their customers. FTAlphaville: Here’s how it works. Our Madcap Speculator (MS), having been lured by an advert or other promotion, puts up $500 to “play the dollar.” He thinks the dollar is going to 1.75 versus the Euro — and he may well be right, given that we’ve already moved from 1.25 to 1.50 in the past six months or so. FXhustle.com offers the Madcap Speculator 200x leverage on his initial margin deposit of $500. That allows the client to go long the euro and short the dollar to the tune of $100,000. Now, either because he’s cautious or because FXhustle have insisted he do so, our MS places a stop loss on his trade — limiting his total possible losses to $1,000. Which is where FXhustle becomes the near-certain winner and Madcap Speculator becomes the likely loser. MS might be right about dollar/euro going to $1.75, but even if it does, we can be absolutely certain that it will NOT do so in a straight line. And, because he’s levered 200 times, our little speculator cannot sustain much volatility without being stopped out. FXhustle, on the other hand, acting as MS’s counterparty, can endure much greater price divergence — even without having a view on the future of the dollar. In its role as counterparty, the firm is taking bets from tens of thousands of customers across dozens of currency pairs. It can maintain a neutral market position while banking the spread between wholesale FX rates and the quotes it offers the Speculators of this world. But it then sweeps up as soon as a client hits a stop loss — which the volatility in FX markets, together with excess leverage, makes a certainty. With a simple algorithm covering market volatility and the leveraged state of clients, FXhustle can make near-certain returns — in just the same way that a casino takes a pre-defined cut at the roulette wheel.

Personally, I love reversal trades. Your chart is a great example of one at work. IMO it's just a matter of whether or not your S/R is reliable. In this thread though it's about taking that short below the previous low.

If you look at previous charts, we've seen everything from a 1 minute to 240 minute chart. I've actually looked at a few daily charts for swing trades w/ this premise.

Great questions sub. Here's the deal -- while I'm posting decent profits on most days, I am missing what 'should' have been done by quite a bit on some days. Example: today's perfect p/l: +$1500 // my result: +$417.50 // Difference of $1082.50 So on my end I'm looking at what did happen vs. what should have happened and I let over $1000 PER CONTRACT go today. Keep in mind I'm posting from an account trading 1 contract, but that is not all that I trade. I track these results closely and lately a few days have been like today where it's been way off. And if I make $1000 today and lose $200 tomorrow, no biggie. But losing $200 after making $400 is nothing to get excited about. In my end of day review, I see where I should have been vs. actual and if it's close, I can live with it. But days like today are very unacceptable when the system cranked out very nice profits. And easy profits - I think the ZF was the only market w/ a losing trade and that should have turned into a winner... If nothing else, maybe this will give an idea or two for others to use... 1) Track your actual p/l vs. your perfect p/l. 2) If you are consistently below your perfect, try to dissect why. 3) If that doesn't work, train a monkey or kid to do it. Basically the same thing.

All kidding aside if I can't get this ship turned in the right direction I'm going to have to do something radically different. It's tough when you are making money to get mad, but I have to kill it on the days where it's there b/c there's plenty of losing/scratch days. I can't make 400 bucks today and lose 200 tomorrow. That's no good. Might be easier to just find someone w/ a ton of money, train them and tell them to send me 50% of the profits. Anyways, not happy w/ results recently if you can't tell. Thanks for reading my rant.

11-3-09: +$417.50 I think I just need to train a monkey to do this and then just pick up the check. If I told you guys what I should be doing you probably wouldn't believe me. I don't know what my problem is here lately w/ focus. If I keep this up I won't have much hair left to pull out... And yes, I could try to automate it but having a monkey seems like a pretty cool option.

Good stuff guys, thanks for all this & keep it coming.

The reason I asked was that some of their videos show exercises using your own body weight as the main tool, which is what I'd like to focus on after Insanity. I'll let you know if I pursue it further. Thanks again.

Thales - great charts. As a lurker here, up until you showed charts w/ those labels, it didn't really click for me. Now it does and if you can get this simple mind around this, just about everyone here has some hope. If post of the month was still going, you'd have my vote hands down. Question: have you tried to automate those H, L labels? Seems like something that could be done. Maybe you have already...

Tams - do you know much about this program or did you stumble on the video? I started clicking around and ended up all over the place. Thanks for any info you can share.

zdo - that's great, thanks for sharing. It was also a bit intimidating. If you were to direct me to a 'starter' program, where would you suggest I go? I have to admit, the one nice thing about the beachbody program is that they are plug n play for the most part. For me, simple/condense is what keeps my interest. For example, if I am interested in: 1) Using body weight for exercises (not looking to purchase more equipment) 2) Stretching 3) Entire body workout Where would you suggest I start w/ the program you are using? Thanks!

While I'm sure there's holes in p90x and Insanity for that matter, it is something (which is better than nothing). I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a guru on this by any stretch, so I kinda go w/ what works for me and what looks like something I could do regularly. By doing p90x and now doing Insanity, there's a few things that I've enjoyed: 1) Doing some body weight only exercises (no weights, etc.) 2) Stretching I'm not sure what will be after Insanity, but I would like to see more info on what zdo posted.

Rick Santelli is the 'live broadcast'? :rofl: That's just funny. Whoever wrote that initial article was desperate for information.

And there's no guarantee that if you can paper trade successfully that it will translate to real money profits. I'm sure there are some great paper traders out there that have trouble when real money is on the line. There's an entire level of psychology that is not present on paper trading. Some can overcome that hurdle and move on to trading with real money and others get stuck and have to paper trade or give up. Some even give the illusion of actually trading when it's quite the opposite.

As with just about anything w/ trading, what works for 1 person may not work for another. Personally I find paper trading moderately useful. It can help w/ confidence and helps work out kinks in a system. But I also think since it lacks any real conviction behind it (money) it can only do so much. It has serious limitations. I wouldn't suggest paper trading for 2 years (what genius suggested that?) but I also wouldn't dive right in w/ real money w/o paper trading for a little bit; if nothing else to get accustomed to the software you will be using.

I've never heard of that before... maybe it's a closed circuit type thing and only available to seat holders? I have no idea, just guessing.