notouch

Open interest and the CTFC reports are definitely helpful in understanding the market but only as a background to price and volume analysis I find. Open interest can decline for a long time before price starts to reverse and speculative positions can be at extreme levels for a long time before a reversal. Unless you only trade the weekly charts it's difficult to actually use these in your trading.

Great video. Good way of profiting from the up trend. My only question is that when illustrating the tick hooks you put the crosshair right on the low of the tick hook but surely in real time you would only see it was a hook at the close of the next period? For example on that first tick hook you showed you said you may have been stopped out but the tick only actually hooked in the following period - which would have been the perfect entry (corresponding to the bullish hammer on the price chart).

It's the old buy the dips strategy. :p It has been so predictable and successful lately I wonder who exactly is selling at those lows. My guess is that the stops of newbie traders (not just on YM but the underlying stocks too) are being deliberately triggered so the pros can absorb them and sell at higher prices.

Nice strategy. What times do you use for the open? The bond pit opens earlier than the equities at 0720 Chicago time so presumably you use that as the open? Also this strategy would work just as well on the 10 year note (ZN) which is the most liquid contract (2 or 3 times the volume of ZB).

Soultrader, that was definitely a very unusual thing to happen. There was a period this time last year when the bonds started moving 30 seconds before the NFP number. It happened about 3 times and led to a Department of Labor investigation. What happened last Friday was weird because the number was very obviously bullish for bonds but the spike was down. This guy Bonds says there's a rumour that a fund or firm inputted the wrong number into its system which sounds like a likely explanation to me. This is why I always listen to NewsStrike when trading currencies or bonds because bonds especially will always follow the fundamentals.

bakrob99 I don't use trailing stops because they tend to take you out at the worst levels I find. I'm looking for signs of a reveral like an exhaustion spike to start scaling out of my position. I haven't moved my stop so it's currently over 1000 points away.

"Everyone is a genius in a bull market." I don't know who first came up with that one but it has been repeated many times. It's just a little reminder not to get big headed in times like these.

You need to add OSE to your data subscriptions. It's about $10. N225M is the IB symbol for the mini Nikkei. Just google Osaka Securities Exchange for the English website.

I don't know about the simex contract but the OSE contract has very high daily volume - comparable to ES.

That would be interesting. I usually trade straight off of the big economic numbers e.g. last Friday's NFP. There tends to be an initial spike but then it follows through for the rest of the day. Like you say, go with the flow.

Expect the choppiness to continue until FOMC then the market will make a decision to either pullback (or crash) or go up further.

Thanks Soultrader. I'm glad I kept a record of that trade on this forum. One thing I love about this forum is that there's something here for all timeframes. I've benefitted most from the MP and VSA stuff because it suits my preference for the longer timeframes but there's plenty here for intraday traders and scalpers. I'm nervous with YM at these levels - right at the top of long term trend channels. No uptrend lasts forever and profits have to be taken eventually. It's just a question of the market finding the right value then range trading will be back. Any plans to make a video on how you trade the bonds?

The reason is that bad traders (i.e. most traders) like to get out of their bad trades at break even. So traders who sold at resistance only to see the price rise and go against them will buy as soon the price comes back to where they sold. As the bad traders buy to close their bad positions, this creates support where the resistance was. On top of this, good traders understand what's happening and know that the previous resistance will provide support so they buy at that level too.

I've had a YM position for over a month now which has built up 1000 points and I've just been adding to it on pullbacks. I can't imagine trying to day trade the indices right now. It must be so frustrating to see it go up and up if you're just scalping a few points here and there. I also played GBP/USD on the short side and ZB on the days of the big economic releases. I'm loving trading more than ever right now - low stress, low risk, high reward. I'm never going back to scalping again.

I don't use internals at all any more - just support, resistance, price and volume - but out of interest what do you mean by "they need to settle to current market activity"?

NinjaTrader has excellent charting and with IB data is 100% free! Thanks again momentum.

There is no "MP data". You just need a normal data feed. Do your reading and it will all become clear.

We're talking Ensign here, not eSignal. I subscribed fairly recently and didn't find any TPO package.

Very interesting. Thanks momentum. The $250 price tag seems a bit steep but as it's a one-off cost it's the same as about 6 months with Sierra but will last forever.

Ensign doesn't come with MP. It comes with a horizontal price and volume histogram together with POC, VAH and VAL but not with a TPO chart.

Sounds to me like you don't have the right psychology for a scalper. You're like me, looking for bigger moves over a longer period of time. Why not give up scalping and look for swing trading opportunities instead? Then you get the big move and plenty of time to decide when to exit your position.

I used to do that in the currency markets. All you need is a news service with an Excel link (Bloomberg or Reuters) and some programming knowledge. Nowadays you're competing against people with ultra low latency direct links to the exchanges so you'll always be one step behind.

Anything the suggests strong but sustainable economic growth is good for stocks. Anything that suggests inflation is bad. Examples of good news: CPI lower than expected Retail sales higher than expected New Home Sales higher than expected Examples of bad news: PPI higher than expected Durable goods orders lower than expected Existing home sales lower than expected

VSA applies just as much to longer term time frames as shorter term ones so posting daily or hourly charts together with an analysis of what might happen next day is more interesting than an analysis of what's already happened. I appreciate some posters have already done that and didn't mean to offend anyone. I was just a bit cheesed off that no one responded to my "what happens next" YM analysis. Too late now...

No one has the balls for some real time VSA analysis? Hindsight analysis is easy. Foresight analysis separates the men from the boys. Today was interesting from a VSA perspective. Early weakness as expected so you could have picked up 50 points on YM from that. Ultimately though I recall something one of the speakers in the VSA seminar said: you need to filter your trades. In a strongly trending market like the US stock indices right now you need a long-only filter. Intraday VSA would have got you into 2 good trades on YM today.