brownsfan019

Good to see you posting dinero! ZS is losing the old contract and we got a nice move there. I know you didn't make money at it, but watching the charts should have felt differently today. I was short into that but got out WAY TOO SOON... bummer. Welcome to posting to the thread!

I see all those pretty lines are back on the charts... :doh: Do you use moving averages to profitably trade? If so, ignore me. If not, hit delete on them.

Are there any other options? Price can go up, down or sideways. I don't believe there's any other options. I think the key is weeding out the chop area. It's fairly easy to trade breakouts/reversals in combination. I think the chop is what can really hurt a system. Work on trying to eliminate that and I think you'll find it a bit easier. As for how, no idea how you trade, what your risk threshold is, etc. etc.

Until OEC releases more historical data, if you need that back data, you will need to use something else for that regard. You can now plug e-Signal data into OEC charts as an option.

Thanks for those links zdo! What is CST? Is that the link you initially provided on this thread or something different?

11-2-09: +$351.88 I guess I'll take it but not where it should be. Missed a few trades and the p/l shows it. Not the best start to the week.

My personal feeling is that you can tweak things as you go but the core method can remain in place. For example, I've done more with risk management than entry method in recent memory. Once I decided that I don't need to catch every single move, I focused on decreasing my risk exposure and increasing my profit potential. With that said, there are more ways to trade than we will ever see in our individual travels. If you want a sample, check some of these charts out. I've mentioned this previously and one day I'll do a writeup of it, but I believe that just about any trading methodology can make money if the proper risk protocols are in place. That will mean different things to different systems, but IMO the risk management is much more important than the actual entry system. If you can finetune your risk to get it to a point where you are comfortable, I would think you could trade that profitably for quite awhile with some adjustments along the way. Even something as simple as loading up when you are hot and backing off when you are cold like we briefly touched on previously. From wikipedia on bet sizes in blackjack when card counting: Ranging bet sizes and the Kelly criterion Between 70% and 90% of the player edge when counting cards comes from placing larger bets when the count is favorable to the player. (The rest of the edge comes from changes to basic strategy based on the count.) [12] A mathematical principle called the Kelly criterion indicates that bet increases should be proportional to the player advantage. In practice, this means that the higher the count, the more a player should bet on each hand in order to take advantage of the player edge. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, the Kelly criterion would demand that a player not bet anything at all when the deck doesn't offer a positive expectation. "Wonging," as shown above, takes advantage of that. Seems so simple, but how many 'load the boat' when they are hot and back off when things are not in their favor vs. trading the same amount each and every time? By doing something as small as this, you could have huge results to your final p/l. Now your winners become bigger (in theory) and your losers become smaller (in theory).

What has the company you will be working for/with said to do? If you haven't asked them, then ask the source. From there, you will probably want to consult an attorney if that's needed.

What kind of entity? If you're not sure what kind, then you need to consult w/ an attorney versed in trading.

I would agree as well - I think this is more of an art than it is a science b/c there's times where I look at charts and wonder why a breakout trade would not have been placed.

I know what you mean - I shoulda just stayed in bed today. But it's the cost of doing business and you take the losses/scratches with the gains and move on. As long as those losses are reasonable, it all works out in the end. Good work on the journal.

10-30-09: -$152.50 Today was a day where missing a couple trades brought me into the negative. Up till today I was able to miss one here and there and be fine. Not today. Missed nice trade on ZF and Russell. End result is a negative day after that chop on the ZS. Volume is still split on the ZS so I'm ready for everyone to be trading the same contract already.

Still split today and it's putting me to sleep...

I appreciate it as I'm not a big fan of taking pills and such.

I have only seen issues after a big upgrade. Other than that, running fine here but I don't trade FGBL or FESX.

OEC has a great platform. It runs fine outside of an blip after upgrades. Other than that, you are not going to beat what they are offering, esp. w/ that October special. There are OEC haters at ET but that placed is filled with haters everywhere. Some firms ONLY count RTH hours as day trade margins and some firms will give you day trade margins as long as you don't hold over that break.

James - does the report button still work? Or did something change on it? I reported someone posting of 5 threads of the exact same thing and didn't see anything on the forums. I thought in the past that a 'dispute' thread would pop up.

POST YOUR QUESTION ONE TIME. WE DON'T NEED THE SAME QUESTION IN 5 THREADS. PS There is no magic software out there just waiting to be had. Also, let us know how your MA system does on a chop day.

I see where you are going w/ that. If you just want to open a $500 account and see what happens, have at it. But long term, I would stick w/ futures. To start, they are regulated and there's no bucketshops. To me, if your broker not only makes a commission (it's called a spread in the fx world even though they advertise as commission free) but also can work trades against you all the while he gets to tell you what the prices are... seems like a losing battle to me. I'm a futures guy through and through b/c of the transparency and regulation. I don't have to wonder if OEC is taking the opposite side of my trade to make even more money off me. They make their commission and that's it.

That's a good point DB - some can analyze like no other but actually placing real trades is another story. Doing this in real-time and with real money is not easy and many can't/won't be able to do it. I'm sure you understand.

Brian - as someone that has tempted playing the forex game, I always come back to just trading futures. There are currency futures and if you are already trading futures, it's a very quick change on your charts to pull up that data. And there's some other reasons to trade futures vs. forex as well, but I don't want to derail your thread too much.

The rollover happens fairly quickly - a few days. And all futures contracts have rollover, but they vary based on what market is being traded. I move to the new contract as soon as the volume there is the same or greater than the old one. I do that simply to make it easy and should I somehow forget to close a trade or something, I'm in a contract that can be closed easily b/c as soon as the volume dies on the old one, it dies big time.

This thread might give you some ideas.

Just glad I thought of it now. But it was apparent today b/c I was sitting there going - come on, what the hell is going on here? I just told these guys on TL that this thing moves and then it's at a standstill. Well, rollover is the one time you may see the movements not be as much. There was still money to be made on the ZS the last 2 days, but the moves are smaller and slower.

dae - I don't follow the recipe exactly... can you lay out it like a regular recipe? Thanks as I got a persistent cough following me around.