notouch

How did you miss the big move? I think you're taking way too many trades in the first hour and missing the "big picture". How much profit would you have made if you take into account broker commissions? Also have you considered keeping all your logs in single thread because every time I check for unread posts about half the threads are yours!

I was tempted to trade YM today. I was looking at it on a 5 minute chart with two EMAs thinking "there's a short, there's another one, there goes another one". I probably could have made as much profit in one day as I made in a month by holding a long position (which I liquidated earlier this week). A couple of years ago I would have been distraught at having missed "the Big Move" but now I'm pleased with myself for being disciplined enough not to care. The key thing is to find yourself a market and a strategy and stick to it, not to flounder from one market and strategy to the next as the market conditions change.

You're probably right. Most retail traders like to use heavy leverage and can't keep their eyes off the screen when they have a position open. Their tight stops and margin calls provide intraday liquidity for the big boys who hold positions for longer. Of course there are many scalpers and intraday traders who succeed (such as yourself) but there are even more who fail. Personally I find I can make more money using smaller contracts and aiming for bigger moves.

684 contracts traded tonight on YM so far. That doesn't seem unusually high. Of course with the general increase in volume and volatility over the past few days you would expect more trading at all times of the day.

I wouldn't say they were day trading vehicles. Just look at the open interest and you can see that a lot of contracts are held overnight. Big moves like today are caused by longer term traders liquidating not by scalpers (who are active every day). Of the day traders I think a large proportion must be people who just make one or two trades per day. I would agree though that if you actively day trade a single market you don't want to be running away from volatility. You need to learn how to trade it.

We've had this argument before brownsfan and I've got to disagree with you again. It depends totally on your trading style. If you want to microtrade a single market then of course that market needs your undivided attention. If on the other hand you like to swing trade a few markets or just look for one or two set ups per day per market then you're better off looking at different markets. You need to stop thinking "my way of trading is the right way of trading" if you don't mind me saying.

Mini-gold is fine if you just want to trade one or two $5 a tick contracts to test out some strategies. There's not much volume but due to arbitrage there's always enough bids and offers for a 1-3 tick spread. I haven't traded it for a while but that was my experience about a year ago. Watch out for the 666 pivot.

What timeframe are you thinking of in terms of breakouts and trends in soybeans? Daily, hourly, 5 minutes?

I made 1 pip today on GBP futures = $$$ Come on!!!

ES wiped out 3 months of gains today and closed below the June lows. YM is still 250 points above the June lows.

I bet you're a bit annoyed at choosing this time of all times to do your paper trading. I feel the same - I decided to focus on GBP/USD today. The result? 1 pip profit! At least I wasn't buying YM...

We hear a lot about CBOT ags but does anyone trade CME ags on Globex? Live Cattle seems to be the big one but I know very little about it apart from what I've seen in technical analysis books. Volume seems light to say the least. I know the CME website has the contract specs but I wonder if anyone can shed any more light on the subject.

Here a weekly chart of the VIX. You can see that volatility has peaks and troughs in a fairly predictable manner over time. The current YM choppiness is just a symptom of that. It's currently near what has been the past a peak of volatility.

YM has been volatile lately but probably less so than ES. I don't think it's anything to do with traders switching from ER to YM. It's a result of a mixed earnings season and the volatility of stocks in general. VIX is reaching levels not seen for years. The money that goes into YM is a tiny fraction of the money that flows into stocks. Expect more volatility throughout earnings season. After hours today, for example, we have Apple earnings which will create volatility in Apple shares which will affect other tech shares and the market in general. I think you need to stand back and look at the big picture. Also the rules relating to short sales of stocks were recently changed so short trades can be made on down ticks which has increased volatility.

In whipsawing markets (like we have at the moment) they would tend to fill but in strongly trending markets they wouldn't. I would advise looking back over the value areas over several months before coming to any conclusions.

I think it's a bit more complex than some people here are trying to present. There is a fair value for YM based on not only the DJIA but also dividends and interest. That's why the further from expiry, the bigger the gap between YM and DJIA. Once the future has expired it settles at the DJIA cash price. YM never diverges far from fair value because arbitrageurs step in and move it back to fair value.

They mostly recruit university graduates into their graduate training programmes. It's VERY competitive to get in (do you have a first class degree in maths from Oxford or Harvard?). Alternatively you could get some lower level admin position and work your way up.

The spread is usually no more than one tick and there's plenty of bids and offers so if you want in or out you can get in or out at a reasonable cost. I will be moving to CL though once I'm more confident about the long term profitability of my set ups.

There's enough liquidity to trade QM with 1 or 2 contracts no problem. If you're trading more than that then it's cheaper to trade CL. Oil definitely responds well to bread and butter technical analysis. The Wednesday inventory numbers are read out on NewsStrike which is always useful. I should think most retail brokers will automatically close out your position for you before expiry.

The Bear, from some of the posts you've made in the past it doesn't surprise me that you smoke cannabis. You seem not quite with it at times. E.g. your desire to trade the Big Dow because "bigger is better" even though people kept telling you it would be better to just trade multiple YM contracts shows you lack logical reasoning and perspective, which is typical of someone who smokes cannabis.

Do you keep an eye on the DJIA? You entered the trade as it broke above 14,000 for the first time ever. It usually takes a while to get through these psychologically significant big round numbers.

There is an option in Sierra to save the screen image as a jpg. I can't remember exactly how. Just look at the menus for something like "Save as image".

What do you think of the poker bots that are around? You need programming skills to program them to play a winning strategy but it strikes me that any relatively competent programmer could program a strategy to clean up on the tables. I know the online poker rooms try to ban them but there are ways round. Do these bots take away your edge? Also what do you think of the legitimate software around? There are odds calculators and programs that keep track of other players. Can you incorporate these into a winning poker strategy?

Do you mind other people posting in your log or is it just for you? Anyway I was interested why you didn't take those bullish hammers earlier.

When you say mkp do you mean Market Profile? "True" MP can only use the 30 minute TPOs, not range bars or any other bars. I tried MarketDelta with range bars and didn't like them. All I saw was a lot of noise so I found it difficult to identify new trends early as I can with time-based candlesticks.