TheDude

with the exception of market profile (which isnt really technical analysis), ive never met a single trader who made money from charts. never. not one. they may use a chart as a guide from time to time, but they dont base their trading from one.

most of the points made are relevant to any market, not just fx. the difficulty with fx is that there is: 1. no centralised order book, but an array of execution venues 2. the same counter party on every trade - i.e. your broker 3. little regulation this all amounts to larger spreads and of course a quote which will be determined by your position if trading against a broker. this implies that the best way to trade fx isn't really to day trade, but to take overnight positions. this is because you will need larger moves to cover higher transaction costs. transaction costs are usually the no 1 killer of any retail trader over time. People will say 'but a 2-3 pip spread on a 20 pip move is manageable' because not every trade makes 20 pips. even if you did, its still 10%-15% of the gain, or 20%-40% if your win rate is 50% the best way for a retail trader to trade fx markets is undoubtably through the futures market on the cme. if you cant afford to do that, then you shouldnt seriously expect to be a success as the odds are simply stacked too high against you. you're better off at the roulette wheel. retail fx is undoubtably the easiest and quickest way to take money of gullible gamblers. the only better way is spread betting in the uk.

forget it. evrooom has shown everyone her colours already. she starts this thread asking people for help, argues against everyone who offers help, then starts a thread apparently about some tiered old system sold widely on the internet - well thats what i assume it is. im too busy to look at any such drivel in depth. my guess is that shes a vendor waiting to spring a rehash system on the terminally stupid.

I think reading stuff like that article is the biggest habit of ineffective traders. From my own experience, focusing on positives and strengths is how we develop, not by focusing on trying to avoid mistakes. A winner has the mind set of always looking to win. A loser has the mindset of trying to avoid losing. There's a massive difference in those 2 mindsets.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn

Hey JD. I like your new avatar/icon. A picture of some nice price action! sweet! :crap:

I was speaking to a bank trader the other day. His desk is called the 'alpha tx trading' desk. its even on his business card (no joke). I asked what alpha tx trading was. he said it's just prop trading with a silly name to fool the regulators - ahead of the volker rule & dodd frank!

Hey, I was wondering, do you have any ideas for what sort of PRICE ACTION a system should use? You know, the sort of PRICE ACTION made for a good SET UP? Just asking

well you see its not the governments who are calling the shots - its the banks who are in turn controlled by central banks (like fed, imf, world bank) who are controlled by....wait for it....the banks. jp morgan, gs, ubs, and of course the rothschilds. just look at gw bush. he never had the brains to run a campaign, fight a war, or even string a meaningful sentence together. how the hell did he get in the whitehouse? you cant tell me there arent people behind the scenes calling the real shots. war is very profitable you see. the banks lend money to governments to buy weapons and pay the troops. so the banks fund both sides. they operate as a cartel. the winning side of any war (if there is such a thing) has to pay off the debts of the loser. so the banks win either way. they get their loans paid back on both sides. so the banks always finance the candidates who they feel will borrow most - and any war needs a lot of borrowing.

given the time frame you are trading, you need to first determine how you define a trend. this should be based on structure, not an indicator which is only an abstraction of your creation. you then exit the trade when you notice the market is trending counter to your trade. in the long run, this method will ALWAYS out perform trailing stops. i dont believe trailing stops to lock in profit are the way to go if profit maximisation is the goal. if psychological well being is the goal, then use trailing stops. theres nothing wrong with aiming for psychological comfort over profit maximisation. after all, scared money is lost money. which would you rather have out of 100 trades - 30 that make 50 ticks each, or 2 that make 1500 each? issues arise in testing when those 2 trades are considered outliers, black swans, luck, or other labels and disregarded as they are way out side the realm of normal behaviour.

The Negotiator is correct. As for the reason for the 30min periods, well my *guess* is that an institutional trader is more likely to look at a 30min chart than a 5 min chart which will be considered noise. Especially given the days when the pits were open and a 5min wouldnt be as accurate or available as a 30 min. the floor i used to trade on used to have time codes for each 15min block of time. each 15min period had its own time code like 'AF'. These codes were supposed to be written up on trade cards to help trade matching. maybe the chicago floors used 30min sessions not 15min?

eeer i think it was by jim cramer - may have been jim rogers. could have been jim urma blume. maybe it was steve nisson? anyway, the good news: im selling my copy of the book. remember its out of print so you cant get it on amazon. how much will you be willing to pay for my book? remember it hash a detailed working system, back tested results as proof, the authors audited brokerage statements, and remember it still works today. put your bids here.....

it wasnt really unlucky timing, it was just stupidity! also, i was hedging the position - delta neutral mostly. straddles tend to be farirly delta neutral by their structure, but i had 1000's of them so you do get some delta you need to hedge from the inherent gamma - its been a long time since i traded options. even if youre perfectly hedged in any asset, the very nature of an extreme event causes all products to behave irrationally as some would say. it dont do you much good when you cant get out and the other leg/hedge is badly mispriced also. as for your q, the clearing house will cover any loss to your counterparty, the clearing house will take the money from your fcm, and your fcm will file a law suit against you to get their money back if you cant pay. i did have the money - but not much left afterwards.

sure - it's quite straight forward. i was a dumb ass. i was selling straddles when i was on the floor like there was no tomorrow. this i thought was sure and easy money given everyone knew the market would be low vol for the next few months due to fundamentals. 2 years of profit wiped out in 20 minutes in one economic release. i had only been trading professionally for 2 years at that point. that was over 10 years ago now. i never stopped to think why the paper/upstairs kept buying. why would i? i was young and a genius. ho hum. you live and learn.

cheese beyond belief - but a trip down memory lane..... http://youtu.be/eThl2OayKRw

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well as long as your 'broker' gives you access to the interbank market on a platform like ebs, currenext or autobahn then yes. this is because you'll need to see the full aggregated order book so you can spoof accordingly. you'll also need an agreement that says you can throw in a few yards of size (thats BILLIONS of DOLLARS), and be able to cover if hit. having said that, if you meet the criteria above, then you're not really retail and wouldnt have an oanda account or similar. not only that, the fragmentation of the interbank market would make scalping almost impossible as arbs come in pretty quickly. banks may scalp a few ticks here and there, but of course they have customer flow to trade against - you dont - the average reatl fx trader is sitting in his kitchen in his PJ's trying to trade against his broker from a lap top dreaming of hot girls and a ferrari......one day....... scalping is about reading the order book and anticipating the next few ticks - and having the patience (as ever) to wait for the right spot. it isnt about reading support or an ma on a chart - that support only exits in the eye of the beholder. its the order book that will determine when a prize zone/level will hold and when it will break

i see what you mean i thinks - im sorry, very tiered at the mo. screen fatigue..... im not a big fan of stops - hard stops in a market i mean. mental stops fine. we all need an out. that out imo should be a scenario, not noise like market printing a price once. ok so you have 999/1000 chance of making $1. You have 1/1000 chance of losing $2,000. it's tempting to keep at the game, but eventually you know where you'll end up. kind of like people who say 90% of options expire worthless so I'll sell options for a career. it kind of ignores the fact that the 10% that dont expire worthless can really do something special. if you're on the wrong side of that 10% you could well be history - trust me - ive been there unfortunately. probability and expectancy go together. you cant just look at one of them and ignore the other. kind of why scalpers dont approach it with stops and especially targets. its a high volume game where 50-80% of trades may scratch, 20% may lose, so just like any trend following idea (on a micro scale), when you hit gold, you wanna stay in for a ride, not say ''hey i'm a scalper so i can only take 1-2 tiks''

you cant scalp with a retail fx platform. if you find success doing this, you are just being fooled by randomness. this will be temporary. as is having a 'target' less than a 'stop'. understanding outcome expectancy with probability makes this a losing proposition. anyway, neither stops or targets are used in scalping (or any real trading program). you exit when the flow dries up. if it doesnt come in the first place you scratch. you dont need a stop in the market when you have understanding and discipline. the concept of a stop was invented by retail brokers to earn commission more quickly. period. theres a never ending line of people willing to try their hand at trading. since 1900's reading wyckoff in fact. scalping is about much more than nicking a few ticks and being the fastest to get the front of the queue. all most firms do anyway is load up the order book before the rth open to get priority. a lot is also to do with reading the order book, placing size in the book, and pulling the size to create the impression of strength or weakness to trick other participants. if you trade stirs which work on pro rate not fifo, then youre not even so worried about speed so much - speed is only considered on pulling orders. on the subject of speed, remember the cost of fpga's are falling. technologies like those offered by fixnetix etc are almost commodity items these days, yet 5 years ago were bleeding edge costing millions. thats why urma blame isnt round much these days. guess hes blown up thinking his tradestation app could compete.

Take you're wallet - dont they charge for their 'training'?

Exactly! But I do know the largest energy traders on the earth (vitoil, totsa, bp, etc) have rooms full of guys doing this exact type of trade day in day out - and we havent even mentioned hedge funds and prop firms like getco, citadel etc so how come this trade still exists??? Look at the attachment. Pay attention to the outrights June and August, then look at the spread market of NGM2-NGQ2 and see where you can make easy money!

So, there I am looking round the markets for opportunity/ideas on Friday as ES dried up..... Natural Gas: The Globex spread market is consistently tighter than the spread implied (in) from the outrights. I would have thought the implied in-out mechanism would have made both so tight that opportunity wouldnt be so great. In other words, the June-Sep spread can be purchased at a better price if bought as the June-Sep spread, where as the same spread traded as 2 legs (ie buy the June contract, then sell the Sep contract separately) in the outright market is considerably wider. I cant believe this is the easiest arb on the earth, as I know there are people out there with faster computers and brains than I!!! I was watching the scenario pretty much all day and it was constant. Anyone know why this state exists?

why does the west let israel have nukes, but not iran? thats the bottom line. you cant say 'because Ahmadinejad is a nutter' because in my view, israel is also, if not more mad. remember that israel has more human rights violations in its name than iran. iran doesnt kill 2 year old children for being of the wrong religion as israel does. ok iran still stones women to death, but the israeli state also purposefully murder women and children too. perhaps we should nuke both iran and israel. then there really would be a glimpse of world peace. :bang head:

Here's my routine: Weekend: At some point I jog for 45 min. I do around 6-7 miles in that time. I would do more - I'd kind of like the thought of it, but if Im honest, its a real struggle to do what I do as it is. Its only discipline that makes me do it. Im always glad I did it afterwards. kind of like a mental re-boot for the week. Every trading day: I take a walk for at least 20 min, just to get outside and some fresh air. I often do this at lunch or before the day starts. Most morinings I try and do some pushups. Im pretty slack at this. I dont bother if Ive got a hangover if ive been out on the town the night before. I can do 40, I used to be able to do 60. I know a bank trader in his 60's, He does 100 without fail EVERY DAY. I find press ups good for the back/posture that some here have complained of. 'Trying' to keep a healthy diet and less booze is also helps.

Sure. I dont have any experience training others so really cant comment on that. i just remember when i started many years back - a few weeks in I was short BP futures. My boss told me to hang on if it broke support - it did. i'll never forget that high i experienced of watching my PnL start to tick up like a stop watch with a 100's of a second counter! I was hooked! (FX futures werent that liquid then, so when you hit a liquidity vacuum, you were in for a real treat!) you could have put a gun to my head and told me to exit on a target - no way would i have done it. i remember it like it was yesterday. i made 20k that week and i was 26 years old.