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how about trading the CL? I'm following along and hope to learn a lot.

I agree and I have a like process but for me I observe then write code, test code and observe the results, then rewite the code observe etc. I find that I can describe things untill the cows come home but you must have a much clearer understanding of the action before you can code it.

I do not have an issue with taking money from someone else (play poker and other things) it is just that it does not motivate me and I have no interest in thinking that way. I have no problem with killing my meat also and have processed a lot of game animals in my day, but just like trading it is not killing for the sake of killing but more along the lines of this is the system and it requires X to survive so you do X as well as possible but in the end there is no animosity toward the other trader or the animal. Sorry not really a good analogy and may upset some to boot. I guess my point is that I try to not look at trading as a zero sum game i.e. the future market allows lots of people to make money, yes some lose money at it but I do not feel that it is a pyramid scam that all the people making money are just taking it from the losers. I see it as X needs to buy 1000 lot of Y in 2 months and needs to know how much it will cost them so that they can make product Z to sell to A in 3 months and know where to set their price to make a profit. They are looking for insurance that they can get 1000 lot of Y and are willing to pay someone else to assume the risk for providing the 1000 lot of Y at a fixed price. In this case there are no inherent losers just business opportunities and winning or losing is totally dependant on how well each does their job.

no not really but I do not think of trading as a competition between me and other traders, more like buying and selling cars at an auction, "buy low sell high" not "I can beat this guy out of his money". it is just that I do not think in those terms, not that I see anything wrong with that mind set, it is just that I do not have that mind set and hope I do not have to have it to be a sucessfull trader. I view futures trading as providing a service and trying to do it as well as possable, the better I do it the more money I make. if I sell a contract it is because someone thinks they will go up or is needing to cover an obligation (the reasons are not my concern) and at the same time I think that the price is going down or I need to take profits etc the same for the reverse position.

I can see that but is it also true that some of the money is coming from institutions that need the futures contract? and infact the trader is providing liquidty to the market? is that not in fact the base purpose of the futures market? and the fact that a lot of traders/speculaters are there is secondary to the purpose/primary volume driver of the market?

feel free to correct any error in the following (please) risk/reward is figured out durring backtesting and as to creating my own system I'm trying not to spend my limited risk capital on buying a system (which have mixed results) but instead researching systems that are explaned on the web and testing the heck out of them.

I'm know that the money (in futures markets) is coming from other speculators and from institurions looking for insurance on outside buisness intrests (like an oil refinery that needs to know what their cost will be for crude in 2 months etc). I know all of this but in my mind i'm competing with the market ie price movement and while one needs to undestand herd mentatility to help predict the price movement I do not think in terms of taking money from other traders.

I agree with most of the above (not that my agreeing means anything more like I understand most of it) but I do not get the taking money from other traders, I do not think that way, do i need to in order to trade well?

ok noob here, but after studying delta volume for a while along with cumulative Delta, wouldn’t the delta volume divided by total volume be more telling after all 500 delta means 1 thing when there are 600 traded and another when 5000 are traded or did I miss something?

definatly working on being a system trader, and I do work on forcing myself to adhear to the plan also but isn't that Backtesting? and I was responding to your post of "Is there anything in particular that you believe helps you to stay out of non-setup trades and stick to your rules?" and the previous post refering to itchie fingers or specificaly not trading when there is no clear setup or before the setup fully completes. for me these are 2 diffrent cases. so to roll these 2 togeather my method is to trade the plan (backtesting) and trade the plan wrong on purpose (anti-backtesting?). for me one of the largest problems is to "sit on my hands" and not take trades untill they are there. in the end sym trading and backtesting are the path but by specificaly concentration on problem areas I feel that I get better results. my untimate goal is to devolope a trading tool to get into the trade with me there to manage the trade once in it (in my 10 year goal) once again I'm not offering any advice just sounding out what I'm going thru.

yes negative feed back of doing it intentionaly and observing the results (in sym only) kind of like learning that this does not work and this is the results. I just put my trading plan in frount of me and not trade it, and observe the results and after many losing days I develope an adversion to taking any trade that is not part of my plan (unless I get lucky or unlucky depending on how you define it and the off plan trade makes money but this is not offten). for me I have to make it clear in my mind that this is not part of my plan and trade it with the proper trade in mind. I will work on taking trades early before the setup is complete or late or some other variation that is tempting for me to take. this not advice from me but just my method of conditioning myself to trade properly and may be very messed up.

I have been learning this part

to be honest some of the bad things creap into my mind like keeping up with the jones/bragging rights etc but I keep working on that part. My defined goal is to become self suficent trading part time with the objective of meeting my financial needs with trading and then move away from current occupation to provide stable secure life that does not keep me away from family. this is a long term goal (10 years) although I would not object to getting there sooner. anyway thanks for the input

first off thanks for taking the time to read my thread, you (and the others) point out some things that are on my radar already except for the part about not being in it to make money I do not know that I agree with that (not that you need me to agree with you or that I'm disagreeing with the point so much), my search is to develop a second income to build into a primary income (already a well paid profesional engineer), I'm not striving to develope something else to take over my life, I enjoy and want to be good at trading, I will put in the work to become good at it, but I do not intend to go thru for a second time in my life having a career be the purpose of my life. so I guess my mission statment would be "trade to live not live to trade", I guess that where my view point differs is that I do not derive my self worth in being a "Better Trader" than someone else (this comes hard for me) and I'm trying to keep it from being an ego thing. Am I off base with that?

this site is great and I have/am learned/learning a lot and have progressed to sym trading a paper account. I'm not the expert here and this post is IMO so take it with a grain of salt. 1. there are a lot of differing openions here with a lot of strong emotions about who is right and who is wrong. one of my aha moments was when I realized that a lot of this is like the 3 blind men describing an elephant they all have valid discriptions of the part that they are describing but are not describing the same part so they all disagree. 2. my progress has been directly linked to time spent learning how to best use the indicator/methology that is in front of me and not looking for new indicators/methods. 3. pratice pratice pratice even when I know what im going to do (or more importantly not do) I do it wrong in the heat of the trade. 4. trades are all over the place so do not try to force a trade it either fits the trading plan to a high degree or pass on it (still working hard on this) 5. write the trading plan down and reread it often, I'm supprised how often I get off track and my trading plans gets mentaly modified durring trading, in the end the plan needs to be revised if and only if the changes have been tested and the results are +. 6. it is about making money not being right so if the trade I just made is not working out the way I planed it and the results are going aginst me, get out and look for a new trade do not hope it will get better. I only need to get a few right to make a lot of money unless I hang onto bad trades hoping they will get better untill they create a hole that I later have to climb out of to have a + day/week/month. 7. how I deal with a loss is going to be a big bridge for me to cross (sym trading currently). 8. it is very important to pick a type of trading that fits with my personality (this was a supprise to me) just random thoughts that some may find helpful or not.

Tams any pointers as to what to look for in the volume?

send me your code, I have a paper account with IB and I would be happy to back/forward/sideways test it for you

I would be interested also

thanks BF i will do that and many thanks to Tams for time spent in helping me understand several things

"future margin is the amount you put up when you initiate the contract." thanks Tams this part i missed i kept looking at the stock margin % and futures margins do not work the same so you have to have cash in the amount of the intraday margin amount in order to trade 1 contract ok another one down which would explane why people are indicating that 5k is enough to trade single car in the fx futures market.

from this http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/24/possible-start-trading-forex-1000-a-84-10.html "I haven't read through all the posts in this thread, but in my opinion you should know what is the lowest starting amount based on your system. For me, I hit between 50% and 60% and I know this because of my trading data, not backtested data. As with any system, the risk of ruin is highest at the starting gate, so I would give yourself enough room to place at least five trades (unless you have a much higher win rate), with the 5th starting at a balance of around $510 if your margin is $500. I know that at some point I will run off a few losers in a row, so this takes into account the chance that it may happen at the start. While my balance is much greater than the $1,000, this is not different than the way I trade everyday. Each time I up the number of contracts I trade, I make sure that always eat 5 losses in a row before I am required downsize due to margin. So to answer the question, if your average loss is around $100-$150 per contract, then yes, you can easily start with around $1,000. At the same time, if you do not use sound money management, you will eventually get crushed. I move cash from my trading account to my bank account each time I double, and I maintain a cash reserve in order to post up more cash for those times when I experience a number of losses in a row which happens a few times a year." this is the kind of thing that confuses me as i calculate it I would need to have about 30k in my acount to trade 1 fx future contract where this post indicates that you can start with 1k ? so again my question is how does margin work for future contracts?

maybe you are correct I will recheck that, also i take it that the $8 per round trip with IB on CME fx future contracts does not sound right? thanks

when did i ask anyone to stop posting I mearly stated that I understand if you do not want to post. I never ask or told you to not respond just stated that I understand if you do not want to respond and on top of that have thanked you in all of my responces to your posts. ontop of that in my mind it is rude to ask a question and not atleast acknowage that someone has taken the time to attempt to answer your question so for me the chosesing to not respond to someone who post to my thread is not an option

frame of refrence question : how does margin work for a futures contract? given assumptions: $10k account, 4 to 1 margin fx futures contract (eurusd for instance) on $125k worth of currency ie how many contracts can I work with at the same time, is there something specific i missed? I really do not know how to be any more specific. Thanks for the help

Thanks for the information and hopefully someone can answer the other questions that i asked