johnw

Exactly ..... I completely agree with you Tim

It is not just individuals who are lost and completely adrift, but entire Countries have sought to deceive themselves with fictitious accounting presentations and ridiculous short term remedies to long term problems. This sort of gov. direction creates a playing field in which weak easily seduced people become caught within a web of their own avarice. In a well managed society, they are less able to succumb to their own self deceit, but never the less, it lurks just below the surface waiting for a weakness to appear. Now more than ever it is important for Individuals to take control of their own lives and this is going to demand self honesty, courage and what at first appears to be sacrifice. Retail Trading is a portal to a new life, but relatively few will make the total commitment and accept the changes necessary to pass through the door.

You are very good ... must come from doing this for a living

All comes back to "feelings" Try this advert for Wilson tennis rackets ...tell me the parallel with trading [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSSTK9bfz7c&feature=related]YouTube - Wilson BLX Feel More 1 with Roger Federer- Court Couch- Wilson Tennis[/ame]

VAH, VAL and POC are the only volume based items I have any interest in, apart from the occasional volume spike.... ES trading Included in monthly, weekly and daily charts they help in defining supply and demand lines. If you are running these lines or indeed if you are running the entire MP behind your bars on an intra day chart, you may care to give some thought to splicing today's values to yesterday's values for a more dynamic picture. In my mind, if you are going to swallow the mantra "volume leads price" then you must believe "the egg leads the chicken". Personally I follow interdependency rather than lineal thinking ... but that is just me

Personally I don't feel disposed to form an opinion, but I am interested to read more about this Client if Rande cares to continue.

Distressing times indeed Rande. Was this your former Client's first taste of major financial success.

I am obliged to believe that ALL Posters are operating to their fullest extent of "knowing what they are doing" IF they are growing their competence then "knowing what they are doing" will grow with them. And this is the second part of obligation to belief that I hold.

No it does not. The difference being that a half arsed attempt will get you through a lot of socialised ventures in life, but the ones that really matter require 120% or more every day. If you are not playing outside your skin every working day, then you are not trying hard enough.

"SELF DECEPTION" is not what I had in mind when I wrote ... "In fact we are seldom who we think we are, which is limiting to say the least." I am referring to people who are so tightly wrapped that they are unaware of who they are and therefore how they function. It is our daily duty to unwrap ourselves and stay unwrapped. This action alone will do more for our appreciation of Retail trading than anything else.

1 ...It is a stop placed with no thought given to the direction and strength of the upcoming momentum. 2 ...It is a stop that is carefully hidden in an obvious place # 1 will negate # 2

Very well put FXGirl.... the inputs are essentially common to both successful Business people and to successful Traders, but how they are called upon is quite different ....well to me they are at least. A successful Trader [or Professional Sports Person] will place certain skills to one side for the duration of the event and at the same time, ramp up other disciplines [skills] One is not at the expense of the other IMO, but the priorities of skills in play are reassigned and over time we change the nature of our character. It all sounds theoretical mumbo jumbo I am sure, but in reality it is just second nature to do the obvious. And then there is the matter of duration. Business [and you can include RE], is on a long cycle. This is due mainly to the fixed capital and cashflow demands of the business. Trading [not investing] is on a short to very short duration cycle and requires more intense bursts of human input. Most sport is no different to trading. What is difficult for People entering the world of Trading, is to fully appreciate just how much they must commit themselves to change, in order to become seriously successful. Mostly it seems, People are prepared to bend, but they are not prepared to break anything in order to rebuild themselves. The fear of letting go is underwritten by fear of the Unknown, which is the sum of all fears ...well to me it is. And yet we fail to appreciate the sheer size of the Unknown in our lives and how it shapes and determines our destiny. In fact we are seldom who we think we are, which is limiting to say the least.

Please do that .. I am sure people are looking forward to you starting a tape reading thread.

The Egg leads the Chicken. Always. And without exception.

I quite agree Rande. Curiously enough, success from ventures in a previous life can slow down success at trading to a remarkable degree. Perhaps it is because we tend to view successful behaviour in it's entirety, rather than being the sum of the parts. Coming into trading from previous business success's really requires a complete audit of skills ... the applicable few are keep and polished and the others such as people skills are parked to one side. That is why I regard trading more like a professional one man sport [golf for instance] rather than a business. I know this flies in the face of popular opinion, but so be it....

The stage for a meltdown was set when Dick Nixon said "I will not pay for a war that I didn't start" and released the dollar from what little was left of the gold standard. The second bullet was fired a couple of decades latter by the famous statement "Deficits don't matter." And you are quite right MM, the Coup de grace was fired by Greenspan when he tried to correct the .dot com bubble by destroying interest rates ... a very childish reaction to a comparatively straight forward problem. Since stupidity is not a crime, Greenspan cannot go to jail. But it does make you wonder about the caliber of the People who appointed him. Mind you, George served two full terms and it looks like this current fellow is heading in the same direction. NEVER TRY TO SOLVE A PROBLEM WITH ANOTHER PROBLEM because you will wind up with the multiple compounding effects of both, plus all the unintended consequences ... which is where we are right now.

Try to remember the golden rule ... IF YOU CANNOT SEE IT IN PRICE AND IT ADDS TO YOUR DECISION MAKING, THEN INCLUDE IT ON YOUR SCREEN. If it is in the price but you decide to add it anyway THEN LEARN TO READ PRICE Trust me, this is the best path. There are not many many ways to trade. There is the best way and then there are other ways ...and so this is yet another leap of faith. You will not know this until it happens to you within the circle of understanding. LESS IS MORE

I couldn't agree more. I am just highlighting the point that the ES has been parked in a congested zone rather than out in the open for the FED statement and by the time cum delta tells it's story, the price will be long gone. Of course I could be wrong, but either way I can't see delta helping me

The time is 14.27 EST and I am on the ES Right now we have VAH, minor and major resistance, yesterday's high, RTH open, all crowded into 1346.25 - 47.00. The short cum delta is positive.... so what value would you assign to this. The breakout will come via MOs.

hello Blow, Much is made of having a Trading Plan, but what happens when an imperfect Plan is perfectly traded. Structure ..... that is what this game requires. I agree with everything in your last post, but I think that instincts need to be contained within the structure, otherwise they can run around like a free range chicken. I am a firm believer in graphically drawing my structures rather than writing them. It helps me with the big picture and I find it easier to tune up. I used to find that I would need to redraw the whole thing every few days to clean up the mess. Gradually, the changes slowed down and now it is more about fine tuning. This approach has made a mockery of many of the things that I have read in books, in forums, videos, posted charts etc. Incidentally, I believe that good Instincts are structured thoughts, arising from deeper thought then is normally associated with observation. That is why we can sense that price will turn just before it does ... the little wheels are spinning at a far deeper level than normal observation affords, as information previously stored in the recesses of our brain is pieced together. Until recently, I imagined this process was too complex for me to code, but now it is gradually coming together and I can smell success in the air.

Hi Blow, It is not that I accept Neg's statement per se, but that I have been down the same path and there is more to contract summation at the bid/ ask than the usual delta stuff, and I mentioned this plus an interesting exercise ... well interesting to me. I appreciate posts from people who put in the extra miles and extend themselves to establish what makes this game work and The Neg was picking up on something that flies under most people's radar. I ask Posters to provide evidence or proof to back up their statements. Either I have my own or I will produce it for myself. In the same vain, I offer nothing other than a reflection of my views of the market in my Posts. Those Readers requiring charts and empirical substance from me will be sorely disappointed, because either they can follow where I am coming from, or they are too far out on the Circle of Understanding and it will lead to frustration.

I am not a regular contributor here at TL, but just lately I have had the time and the urge to put a few lines together and they are more about who I am than trying to convince the Readers of anything. It is the smorgsbord of life really ... take what you want and move on leaving something for the next guy. Now, just a few more scribblings, following on from my last post. Yes, I am dedicated to stabilising everything over which I have some control, leaving Price as the moving target. When we first arrive at trading, we arrive on the circumference of a circle with Price at the bullseye. We don't know it yet as we stand at the circumference, but each step towards stabilising everything other than Price, moves us a step deeper into the circle. I call this the circle of understanding and it tells me where other Posters are in the journey, but the real purpose is to keep me locked into the bullseye. Ever morning I mull this over to keep me focused and prevent me from becoming lost. As you know there are three possibilities when entering a trade a] ... trade goes your way quickly [ congratulations] b] ... trade dithers around [ wiggle out after n bars or x minutes] c] ... trade goes quickly against you [ avoid c at all costs] Mostly when we start out, we become entangled with TA and of course we may join TL and meet other entangled people. Both TA and TL have an inbuilt propensity to revert to 50/50 and if we are not careful we are already setting our objectives lower than they should be, by virtue of thought transfer. In this game we need overwhelming odds and we can create them and thereby apply them to our advantage. All that is required is overwhelming commitment which in turn demands total passion and a will to let go and change. Let us return to c] for a moment. A Poster wrote here that he doesn't bother with Passive Inventory. Well, I do, because when I enter a trade I want huge Passive Inventory covering my 6 [my back] to reduce the odds of c] occurring and I don't want to see equally big chunks of PI in front of me for obvious reasons. Much is made of TA and it has a place. For example I do not sit all day in front of the screen. Instead I have an alarmed Alert that calls me back to the screen when a Buy/ Sell zone is entered. The Alert is a piece of code that is both crude and unintelligent as it's sole purpose is to return me to the screen. Then I go through my check list to determine the Market mood and Market position before deciding upon my stop placement ... from this stop I enter a bracket OCO 'n' tics from my stop. When I am filled I toogle the two limits around the DOM until I take profit and am flattened out... I never open my stop. Anyway, that is how I use intraday delta. On a daily basis it becomes more reliable as a means to see into the market. Overwhelming odds require overwhelming commitment. If you have played or performed outside you skin in some other venture you will have carried this through with you into trading. If you THINK you have, then the odds are you most probably haven't, but you are aware and therefore on your journey. And ...If I have offended you in anyway, then just ignore me and my posts.

We start off in this game with attitudes imported from other unrelated ventures. We don't know this at the time because it is just the way we are and it is the sum total of our experiences in the outside world. A turning point arises when we come to understand that this game requires a fresh approach, mentally, physically and spiritually. Another turning point arises when we come to understand that we must try to stabilise as many variables as we can [including ourselves], leaving Price as the main variable. After all is not trading Price the name of the game. Another turning point arises when we come to understand that elimination is a logical step. The more inputs we can eliminate, then the more stable we become. The trick is to know what is essential and what can be eliminated. By this stage, our mechanical inputs are stable and our trading abilities as Individuals are becoming more stable and solid week by week. As the market squirms and twists in it's usual manner, our % accuracy and reward/ risk ratio remain within stable bands ... what does change is the number of trades taken each day .... trend days require fewer trades than compression days. As our mind and our coordination stabilise, it becomes apparent that any other Trader achieving stable results, views the price pretty much as we do, since it is the only thing moving. Arguments and heavy discussions on TL arise when Traders have differences of opinion... this is a healthy state in most ventures where the outcome is determined by emotional and expressive means. However in trading, it very much defines the level of emotional stability of the Trader Everything that we do as Traders must take it's lead from Price. The litmus test is always to remove the input to gauge the effect, but this can only work when the Trader is in a stable state. Frankly, I don't believe this is all that difficult to achieve. Just eliminate everything except price bars, then ask yourself who decided what size and type bar frame you are watching. If the answer is anything other than YOU then that is your starting point. If the answer is YOU but you do not understand order Flow, then your starting point is SELF DECEPTION and how to remove it. All it takes is passion and never ending commitment

It is a joy to read an intelligent comment, rather than the hit and miss guesswork that seems to have attached itself to this thread.

I couldn't agree more with you Neg. Futures trading is a Thinking man's game ... beyond preconceived ideas, beyond ego, and into the essence of why and how a few Large Traders successfully place the bulk of the contracts into and out of the market.