wsam29

if you use tradestation at work, there is an indicator that plots the pivots for you based on your inputs, really handy, sure beats draw line by line by hand. you'll do fine as long as you learn to sit on your hands and wait for your trades. even include volume. There are many ways to skin the cat so to speak, but when I was trading stocks, I would also include the sector index in which it may be part of. ie trade INTC, watch $SOX and plot pivots on it as well. That way you can also guage whether your stock you are trading is leading or lagging for the day. Just some ideas, get your creative juices flowing once more. look under "forum jump" indicators.

seems to me like you know what you are doing in terms of level 2, now just apply those skills you've acquired and apply them to reading the tape for say the YM what ever market you decide to trade. You'll notice patterns within the tape. Me personaly I DO NOT use technical indicators liek MACD or RSI when it comes to trading the YM, they are too slow. Try Souls strategy with pivots, sit on your hands and wait till prices reaches a pivot and then decide, that is when you implement your tape reading skills/level 2 to see how the market is acting to that level. Even watching how the market reacts to a daily high/low, previous day high/low is something you can look into without using technical indicators. How did I get my head out, I knew if I picked up on that skill and required their execution platform to make a living, I would be stuck with a prop. firm for the rest of my life. Your ideal goal is to trade with your own capital and keep all profits to yourself. Mind you exection is important so you will need to find a good broker that has a decent platform for the way you intend to trade. I'll elaborate some more, I need to get going now.

I have no clue where to find the actual ELD file to upload and I have no clue how to do that either.

What about HS??? He kills me, when I was down in Austin for the mentorship, I asked how the two meet...HS reponse "Gay chat room" Their honesty and openess is what got my attention.

Soul, I noticed your pivots are slightly calculated differently...any reason why you decided to use the range rather than the normal classic calculations of highs and lows?

I must be blind, where is this indicator forum? nevermind I found it. :o

interesting so if I had some idea of an indicator which I needed some help with or possibly even have them type it up? ever think of an auto pivot point indicator? just enter the high, low, close and voila, PP, S1, R1, etc. plotted on the price chart. The Auto-Pivots Indicator

Are you saying there is an Easy Language programmer here???

I have something like that, I'll post a screen shot of it in action and you tell me if that is what you are looking for. it even plots an average of volume but you can take it out if yuo don't like it.

I hope you're using that book for something good then, door stop maybe?

We share a very similar view towards analysis, what through me off today was that choppy action back and forth PP of 12533. I was considering shorting the market when YM touched R1 of 12571, ER2 made new high, NQ did not confirm, ES did the same as YM so in hind site, that was a very good trade since the other indicators all lined up, divergence on ticks and if you follow candle sticks, a hammer I think it is called? or all I care about is a long upper shadow or wick, which ever its called. the thing that prevented me from taking that trade was volume, there was not much on the break of that 5 minute hammer. I would have surely taken that trade if there was a token print above 12571, for sure! having been screwed on many 1 tick higher going long trades, I know what it feel like when the whole market does not agree with you.

oh the dreaded stage of learning about every indicator out there to find the one that is perfect, winner everytime. I remember those times, then you go from 2 indicators to 10, then you try 5, then none at all, then back to 1, all on the same screen to the point its a indicator sandwich with a pickle on top...oh wait, price chart on top. If and when that does happen, its time to look in the mirror and address the real problem. Any trader out there denying they never went through that phase I would say are lying or have never traded before in their life. I'm guilty of the offense.

how do most of you interprete pivot points? that is one reason I don't really use them but I tried it on 30 jan 07 and I had mixed reviews about it. take for instance, the price is trading back and forth over and under the PP, what good is it if price action "ignores" it. What steps to take to avoid over trading the chop? From my understanding of pivots, above PP, look to buy the test and sell at R1. of even buy the moment it crosses above PP for "aggressive" trading. What happens if price does not reach R1 but stops a few ticks short on two attempts, market saying weaker than it really is and a decline in possible? Or is it a handful of discretionary indications as well? oh the joys of market information perception. I used arrows to plot potential entries and exits based on my criteria, made one trade for the day +11 and then tested my "methology" in real time to see how my judgement did.

Which CBOT membership were you looking at? there are different classes. I think you are implying the B4 IDEM class right? If that is the case, according to Hubert's math, you need 7 round turns per day to break even from cost of application fee and fees to be worth while, any more contracts is money saved. if you do not consider the $1500 one time application fee as part of business and only the fees, then its 3 round turns a day to break even for the cost of the monthly membership fee. the B4 IDEM class was meant for individual ownership/control so you cannot use anyother entity to lease or purchase other than your personal name.

are you talking about those lucky cats (chinese thing I think) or a real cat? :p

They teach you how to scalp stocks because it requires a lot of margin to make any decent money, by doing so they retain your talent/skill so you don't run off and trade your own capital. They preach volume, in and out, in and out, 1 tick here, 1 tick there, its almost a game of bingo if you ask me. you don't get a general feel of the bigger moves when your micro-nano scalping. But yeah, it is all random that us why you feel you really have no clue what you are doing. I felt like that I made my first $10,000 day trading the SP. What ever I did I could not repeat because it was just going with order flow, but what were my entry criterias? (currently working on some that I can live with and trade day in dayout) What was the reason for that large order being pulled and seeing a large print on the tape? Its the games they play on level two. Only super fast execution order entry can you play those games which are suited towards prop. firms. As for attempting to apply strategies and ideas to your prop. firm it will not fly with them because they have a tried and true system, why mess with a good thing when you are making money for them? they also see it as, why risk 0.10 on 1000 shares when you can swing a 10,000 share trade and risk or make 0.01? Even though I was only prop. trading for a couple months, it took a while to readjust to sitting back and letting the trade work rather than in, out, in, out, because commissions alone will chew you up! That is where you may have troubles adjusting because they got you so "brain" washed so to speak. The reason I switched was the leverage, you need lots of capital to trade stocks for a living, even if you get more favourable margin rates. not to mention knowing what type of execution platforms that are out there, really big disadvantage when you think about it if you are trying to trade like they are. having also experianced trying to trade with level 2, I would say tape reading and scalping the e-minis would be a good start since you are able to make lightning quick decisions and your eyes are already accustumed to seeing numbers fly by, just be mindful of the commissions and fees invloved that will chew into your profits or increase your loses. the rest as to where to enter, exit, is really your personality and temperment. meaning are you the type to sit and wait for a test of the pivot point? resistance 1? Or in my case a simple price/tick/volume divergence is good enough for an entry for me. There are many ways to skin the cat, you just need to kind the right knife now to get the job done consistantly.

oh no, I poke fun at my own analysis. I was referring to if my analysis does not work out, out comes the magic 8 ball.:p

Here's my two cent quick analysis outlined with arrows on the chart. My crystal ball says lower and when that fails, I pull out the good old magic 8 ball and give it a shake. OPPS, I should read these topics, this is a market profile analysis thread. :o

You can lease the seat and still trade from where you are. If you wanted to visit the exchange you would need clearance even if you are a member. THe only benefits of being a member are lower fees and margin requirements, other than that being a member does not have any special market knowledge advantage or information. From what I read, pit trading is more visual and audio of reading other traders. In essence it really is a game of big stakes poker in the pits.

Here's a good thing to do testing out a strategy in real time when the markets are open and not hind site entry exit. use the up down arrows and plot them are the bars in which you had a thought about entry or exit. Let me rephrase that so it does not sound like impulse trading. Plot the arrows because conditions have meet your entry/exit criteria.

in my opinion, price, volume and TICKs. I'll also compare all 4 markets with each other to see who is leading and lagging for the day. Along with VIX index. TRIN and put/call, I have it up but they are always in conflict with me, so I just use what best suits me even though they offer clues on its own, I just cannot interpret it to make it profitable for me. everything else lags because its a mathematical calculation. I'd suggest understanding the psychology of trading first because no amount of indicators will help if you don't understand yourself and how you'll fit into the trading environment. Not to be discouraging but its taken me 8 years to understand myself and the trading environment. A whole wack of money along with pain and emotional suffering. The size of your account helps to survive but it is a right of passage to make it in this type of business. If you give up, you'll never succeed at this business. Once you get that, its just a matter of working out the kinks to come up with a trading plan that fits your temperment and personality. You might not even be suited to intraday trade .

I've tried the demo before, I like it. I'm just getting the paper work ready to open an account right now. But I also agree with you on that one, regarding +5, +10. I'm just gonna have to play around with it with real money.

liquidity...just think 3X3 on the bid/offer 3 ticks wide so if you wanted to trade size, its gonna be tricky. its mostly 1 lot trades here and there. DD would be lucky to get 100 lots traded for the day. But like all new products being introduced, it takes time for the trading community to accept and trade the product. When the SP was first introduced, it had the same problems like the DD, not much volume and the spreads were wide and to make matters worse, it had no other index to track because it was the first of its kind.

Part of it has to do with the execution platform in my opinion. To constantly adjust orders and readjust still requires some amount of brain power that is wasted because of that. I just may have to open up that account with Infinity to find out if execution platform is playing a role in my trading. Tradestaion and IB are too time consuming when it comes to bracketing orders and then readjusting after. I had this in mind regarding scaling out. stop -10 exit half +6 profit move stop to -5, now the trade becomes risk free and only cost of commission, but done automatically thanks to the execution platform. let the last half run and see what happens. But I do agree my exits are wishy washy, I'm trying to be flexible on my exits and strict with my entries.

For some reason, I do worse using 1 minute time frame, whether that be ticks or price. All those tick hooks, no idea which one to take and be consistant. I find that 5 minutes gives me a good idea of the overall situation which may lead to a larger move. Had I not called it a day after 4 trades, I don't know if I would have caught the move lower. The ER2 was giving hints about a lower market as I was watching it out the corner of my eye so to speak. That is besides the point with hind site trading. Its when this "larger" move does not happen that messes me up mentally, especially when I see a price/tick divergence and I am long. Train of thought, exit the whole position, or exit half and let the other half ride and have a BE stop. That is something I seriously need to do is sit down and come up with a plan which I can follow day in day out. I have a habbit of wanthing to trade. I've gotten over the hard part of trading which is the psychological part, now I need to figure out the plan I need to implement. I got all night to think about this while at work...yeah, it sucks but I need to pay my dues. *sigh*