brownsfan019

What are you talking about 'hidden' costs? If you trade live and with real money, the platform plus data is FREE. You get the platform, charts and as much data as you could possibly ever want for FREE. Now if you have to pay $24.95/mo for demo, which also includes data, that's still a bargain. Call up DTN and ask how much data would be if you wanted US indexes, bonds, Eurex indexes, Eurex bonds, oil, gold, and whatever else you might want. See how much that costs and then let us know if $24.95/mo is a bad deal. Note - I could be wrong, but I believe they charge $24.95/mo to those that aren't trading live. In other words, if you aren't generating any commissions for them, then yeah, they might charge you a tiny fee for demo trading. And that is still an incredible bargain. Also - you get a 2 week trail by default (for free) and if you need longer, then ask nicely and they might extend that out for you.

I realized that I have a post on bonds and grains but nothing on oil or gold, so here we go. OIL Simple enough to understand that in today's time a lot of people are watching oil and there's a number of futures contracts to trade here. Characteristics of the oil markets: Variety of times to trade based on where you are at - can get a jumpstart on your trading day before the indexes even open Can be uncorrelated to the indexes 3 possible contracts to trade When in play, oil will move There's 3 contracts that I trade and watch: GCL NSEA QM Note - your broker may have different symbols, I am going off my OEC charts. As always, perform your own due diligence before trading here. Pull up a few charts and see if you like what you see. IMPORTANT: Every Wed @ 10:30AM EST is the oil inventory report. DO NOT HOLD TRADES INTO THIS OR EXECUTE TRADES INTO THIS REPORT UNTIL YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE. Econoday has this listed as "EIA Petroleum Status Report''. I have my gmail calendar setup with a reminder every Wed to trigger at 10:20AM to exit all positions soon if I am in one. Forget this one time and you could pay dearly. GOLD Gold is actually very similar to oil so that's why I'm including here. This is also a hot topic lately and there is 1 main futures contract that I will trade here. Characteristics of gold: Variety of times to trade based on where you are at - can get a jumpstart on your trading day before the indexes even open Uncorrelated to the indexes When in play, gold will move Contracts to trade: GGC - this is the contract I trade as there is good volume here. Mini-Gold - for whatever reason, this has never attracted volume so I wouldn't touch this thing. As you can see, there are some similarities between oil and gold but they are 2 different markets that could compliment your trading.

I appreciate the assistance. When I find something that shows how to use volume w/ a consistent result, I'll consider it. Till then, I'm going to have to accept it as is b/c I'm sure not going to be drawing crazy lines all over my charts or coloring different stacks of volume with crazy lines on those as well...

I disagree. Just wondering if all those pretty lines everywhere actually make real money. A simple question really. Anyone can draw lines after the fact and post pretty charts after the fact, but that doesn't mean much if it can't work in real-time.

I'm the same way Brian. As the account sizes grow, I incrementally add to my contracts traded. No need to start looking for more trades, just trade more size. The particular account being highlighted in the p/l thread is a smaller one, so I'm keeping that at 1 contract basically for now. If all goes as planned and I'm still posting, I'll add size later. IMO the way BR trades is an excellent way to trade when you find 1-2 setups per day that you can count on. He's trading the ES, so you can take on substantial size w/o affecting the outcome which is nice.

Are you able to use that in real-time trading to make money?

Got a question Urma - do you guys ever post blotters showing how you use this in your trading w/ cash on the line? Just curious what kind of actual, real-money results are done w/ the software you guys have programmed.

10-9-09: +$657.50 Nice morning, missed a gorgeous ZN sell near the open. I had to take the NSEA trade (oil traded @ ICE) on a different computer when my alert triggered. If you set alerts and will be roaming the house or office, sometimes handy to have a laptop here and there. And to answer the question - why NSEA? B/c that market triggered my sell alert and the GCL did not today. So it was advantageous to have 2 identical markets up side-by-side and get the trade done on the market where it triggered. That's one nice thing about the NSEA/GCL/QM combo - those are all trading oil but sometimes one can give the setup you want and the others do not.

I pretty much focus on trading the first 30 mins or so of the ZS being open, so I'm not looking at any grain reports and what not. I'm in, out and wait till the next day to do it again. With that said, if you swing trade this and/or invest in this, then I would do some serious homework on these markets before putting any real money at risk.

How/why does someone dig up a post 6 months old? I have never understood that about forums.

Here's what I really enjoyed about your stock charts - the simplicity in which you trade them. Don't get me wrong, the futures/fx stuff is good, but IMO there's a serious degree of practice and learning involved to trade as you do there; whereas, your stock trading was much simpler (in my eyes) and was consistently profitable. That's why I asked you at one point if this thread derailed you from your bread-and-butter stock trades b/c that's what we saw from you for awhile. But that's just me and my

Those charts w/ the commercial selling/buying highlighted could make someone a multi-millionaire overnight. The pinpoint accuracy we've seen w/ them is amazing. Too bad no one has been able to successfully replicate these charts... at least to our knowledge.

Chris - here's how the OEC dom handles those type of situations, I like how it's laid out for quick and easy use:

To the OP - whatever you decide to do, make sure the person giving you advice actually is a consistent and profitable trader. Anyone can come on here or PM and say - I'll help you for $10k, just send to my paypal. For example, there's a handful (small) that post in the P/L thread with blotters screenshotted. For an anonymous forum, that's about as best as you are going to get. Point is that anyone can hop on here and claim they actually do this for a living but very, very few EVER show ANY evidence of ACTUALLY doing it. For example, there's a few parts on this forum where discussions take place about trading ideas and a guru or two will lead the way for the followers, yet there's never been any evidence that this self-imposed 'guru' does any real money trading. Food for thought.

Most of my stuff is in the candlestick corner.

10-8-09: N/A Nothing today as I was up late doing a few things. Got to the computers too late today, but man some nice setups were there. I just hate trading when tired so the snooze button was used today. :sleep:

Personally I like seeing the stock charts better b/c I don't trade them right now and always nice to see them. And if you look back at when Thales arrived on the scene, he was posting stocks and stocks only for quite awhile.

Assuming Win7 becomes the next standard (like XP) I'll eventually upgrade all the computers to Win7. I did not upgrade any to Vista and glad now that I didn't. I typically just get new computers when upgrading the OS. So once Win7 passes the tests (maybe even wait till service pack 1) then I'll look at doing the upgrades.

I'm not offended at all, sorry it came across that way. I just have a reservation about dissecting my trades to the point where entries can be zero'd in on. Call it old school or ego, just don't want all that out there freely. It's my issue to work with, not yours.

10-7-09: -$203.12 Just not there today. But the ZN helped me out, so that was nice to see again.

I'm too much of a control freak to do that Brian! LOL. I would have a hard time setting up my trade then going to bed. Don't think I would be able to sleep.

1) GCL = oil, ZN = 10 yr bond, ZS = soybeans. When in doubt, use the CME website as a reference tool. 2) JKLM made an inference as to where I entered based on the blotter. The exact trade setup is not outlined on TL. Couple other things... ... JKLM brought to my attention that even though the time stamp is removed, it's not terribly difficult pinpointing where I entered and exited. I'm not sure that is what I want at this point so I may be blurring out prices or using a condensed p/l that just shows end of day results, not broken out per trade. ... While the exact setup isn't laid out in 1,2,3 steps, you might find a good bit of info in the Candlestick Corner which I started here on TL.

Do p90x Brian! You won't be disappointed if you follow the plan - workout and diet. Nice job wjr! Another success story w/ p90x. This thing is pretty amazing. It works if you put forth the effort.

I agree, insanity starts next Monday. Taking this week as a breather. Great to hear TOG. Seems you are 1 step ahead of me, which is awesome to get real-time feedback. If you have any other tips, please post here or PM me. Thanks

UPDATE: finished my first round w/ p90x and real happy w/ the results. A few results for the numbers guys: Weight: down 7% Body fat: down 17.9% Flexibility: up massively Muscle gain: moderate results (biggest development was abdominal area) The program did what I wanted - which was to drop weight and body fat. That was my primary goal heading into it and I'm happy w/ the results. The biggest surprise for me was how flexible I now am! With the amount of stretching and holds you do in this program, you increase flexibility quite a bit. I just feel 'looser' and not as tense. Overall, I'd highly recommend this. It's a 90 day program, which isn't much to ask IMO. And if insanity hadn't come out, I would be doing another cycle of p90x. Next up: Insanity And from what I've heard, p90x is a warmup compared to this program. I'm looking forward to giving it a go.