friva

sure, "assume nothing" is what I live by

thank u joshdance, that's a 6,5 rows statement + 3,5 rows of questions that I was never able to answer in a systematic way, at least when it comes to short term market action. Sure if you know how much money the bulls want to spend buying a stock and how much stock the bears are willing to sell in a unit of time you can tell how much the stock will move and in what direction over that time span. That you can try to do if you have enough good friends seeing brokers order flow. Checking volume exchanged won't help much, though. Market Depth Analysis, strangely enough, I find tends to work the opposite way you would expect, at least for DAX and FTSEMIB futures. Like a friend puts it: "if the tossers really want to sell they serve, not show offer". That is a way to "read volume" but it is of limited help, I found. I think one can devise a theory of how volume patterns are a reflection of changing moods, ie of the pace at which bulls change their bullishness relative to how bears change their bearishness, but I do not know how to do that in a workable way, at least for the timespans I am interested in, which most people would find very short. However I guess volume analysis might be more relevant in the medium to long term, meaning weeks or months. The secret is still a secret, I am afraid

Whatever people find useful it is useful for them and I respect that. Personally I never found anything in volume analysis that proved reliable in the long haul. I sure felt excited at times for the like of OBV and other volume related indicators/techniques, however they never proved really reliable in my experience. Money in is always equal to money out at all times in all markets. Anybody out there can make a case for volume analysis using a ten rows statement ? If there is really something true to volume analysis you do not need more than that to explain. best F

Tradewinds, can u pls clarify ? Are you suggesting to use eg the following syntax: tracert-d traderlsaboratory.com ?

also to get to the MS Dos prompt: click start click run type: cmd return

Tradewins, I bet somebody did already. I myself am serirously considering moving to get a better internet connection for trading. Net Index by Ookla says that if I move to a small city 15 km north east the average connection speed there is 4x what I have now.

thank u Tams. I'll read that

thank you Negotiator. Where I can find more about how the set up of my hardware influences lag/latency ? How do I check how good my ISP's hardware is when it comes to lag/latency ?

wrbtrader, it's a connection test of the nearest server my ISP has to me

Hi, what is the minimum internet connection speed you think you need for your trading, and what is your trading style ? I get: ping: 42ms download: 2.59 Mbps upload: 6.86 Mbps (http://www.speedtest.net) and I am comfortable with this I trade discretionary, index futures and stocks. I normally enter a position with limit orders and make less than 20 trades per day. What about you ? FR

hi vienna, good question. I think a FTT has more than 50-50 chances to come. Even a R President in the US might want this. Sarkozy and Merkel are both right wing after all (or so their label reads). The UK said they won't go for it unless the tax is globally charged. That is not a NO. Italy almost passed a 0,15% stamp duty tax on equity/ETF/index futures trading earlier this summer. The Belgian Parliament already approved a FTT, if I remember well 3 years ago, that was meant to automatically become effective as soon a FTT was "globally" approved. I am sure many other countries are ready to join: you can always count on politicians being even impatient to do stupid things. So I think it's unwise not to get prepared. If a FTT is passed I guess one can: 1) trade Contract For Differences or Spread Betting; 2) trade where replica contracts will be launched. I know nothing about (1) and on TL I found close to nothing. Can anybody recommend: a) the best CFD broker in his/her view ? b) any other valuable source of info on CFDs (eg: reliable historical data on the width of bid/ask spreads) ? When it comes to (2) it's almost certain that some country will reject a FTT. Some of them (Dubai?) will probably launch replica futures contracts. Having said that tax payers might be asked to pay a FTT to their tax authorities irrespective of where the trades are effected. If you are happy to report fine, but if you are not it is good if the broker you use manages accounts/servers outside of where you pay taxes. Eg: IB holds european customers money in London. As far as I know it executes orders via its servers in Switzerland. This means that all non-British (and non-Swiss) customers can feel almost 100% safe that IB will not be asked to report their trades to the relevant tax authorities or whether they moved funds offshore. Any other idea ? Best F

Nobody is going histerical with speculators in Italy ... yet. Consob, the italian stock market watchdog, even acknowledged that most of the stock selling is genuine and is not short selling. Politicians just do what most humans do, ie blame others.

bonchi07, it does look helpful, thank u

hi MMS, I am wondering about making the switch for two reasons: a) I wish to spend more time out of town and I find it more practical to have one main machine and two sets of monitors rather than 2 mon-sets + 2 desktops. b) I have the impression laptops are evolving faster than desktops so better get used to the former not to "lose out" in the future. I may be wrong, of course thank u for ur comment best F

hi everybody, my ideal trading setup has been so far a desktop with four screens and I am now curious about using a laptop instead. Can anybody share his/her experience trading with a laptop and multiple screens and what hardware layout you chose ? Has anybody had any experience with the layouts described on BannRonn.com (see: "Dual or Multi-Monitor Laptop for Stock Trading" in the site) ? thank you F