symmetrics

Totally disagree - i think some points that have been made miss the principle and usefulness of the this significant event. the close is a singular event that can be clearly measured and provide significant detail to the markets position and "intent" 1 - the close whether its electronic or pit is a conclusion to the days trade, the coming together of emotion, analysis and data to an end point in time, it defines the markets position at the end of the furious or lack luster volatility & performance. as the market closes a event takes place, the bias event = the market decides is it positive, negative or undecided ( hedge both ways ) take this example, a stock which has been trending nicely upwards with closes each day in a positive and "biased " fashion, suddenly closes ! down in a negative bias - ok is this a signal - maybe ? the following day a positive again etc.. now that close down triggered a signal to any Bear person or seller there is a change from previous form , not a sell yet but a coming together of uncertainly or doubt! Yes a close at the end has true meaning to the markets position and can hand the smart investor / trader a advantage of an early signal. 2. the close used in the right fashion with a indicators or algorithms to determine where a close signifies change is and does work , for instance in the system i use a close is used and does signify change - 81 % of the time roughly on either direction, daily, weekly, monthly and yes even intra day - time frames are defined mathematically to have a identified reaction which is profitable a close signifies a point in time that if synced to the mainstream / controlling interests in the market will identify a change in direction or a new trend momentum drive. in real experience most systems i have traded use a form or actual close and work to good/ great satisfaction. using a MA to wait for a delayed response with a close will more than likely smash you for being dumb enough to wait for the already clear indicator hope this sheds a different viewpoint.

yes it is possible and yes you can make profitable trades, no system is perfect, for instance some systems fail on sideways market moves , others are built around capturing reversals . hence why one system wont be ideal ... you need a package or 2 or 3 systems running to capture every move that can appreciate profit. Or combine 3 into 1 not easy ... but YEs there rules and mechnaical systems which nail the majority of moves. it sounds a bit like you Wont something that gives you forecasts "I have not seen a "system" where you can say for certain, "if price does this, then I will do that" every time and have it make money. I would venture to say that most traders who have a "system" or "plan", have, as a strong element in that plan, their own intuition. ' You can have something that gives a entry signal and does what it suppose to according to rules, profit is based on the markets movement and direction your system goes with , you have to trust something, where the discretiaonary trade comes in is where you see soemthing change visually or market shows you something based on exp. or rules you use for allocation etc... e..g weekly indicator changes on a wednesday and thursday confirms ,then your position is agianst the change you may lighten your position in expectation of a sudden reversal ... or market news is so different that it becomes indecisive .. BUT ive never had a an occasion where news comes out and i havnt been facing the wrong way ! anyway hope this helps

bottom line, JUST DO IT... effectively your instinc is to not fail and protect- your heart says one thing your mind the other... THINK WITH YOUR HEAD NOT HEART. the lump in your throught goes away and you can focus on your plan. the entry comes up say aloud thats a GO ! and press that damn button... then your focus is on stops and levels for exit... hell you should be able to get up and walk around grab a coffee etc.. relax and let your system do the work... you must realize you cannot do anything you must allow the market to give to you or take ... good management and allocations will provide you with sound exits and entries good luck

if you think the market is fractual good luck with that, volume does not always show show trend, volume can and does lessen in strong trend moves just the same as high volume no price. thanks

I just bactest a strategy that runs on the intraday forex unit time 15 minutes. Without optimization, this strategy shows a profit factor of 5 over the period tested. I optimized one of the parameters, which improved the profit factor to 7. ok, you have really got mixed up here ... wtf is profit factor 5 ot 7 ? explain most backtests are prototype ! not real systems to trade with, you have to understand this you cannot rely on a backtest to determone real life simulation - i have a backtest that produces a 700% return but its limited by other factors which when "simulated " as real only gives 15% return - pa ( per annum) you have to explain yourself and detials on the backtest. you must know , risk, contract/shares , stops, alocation , money management etc... basically the concept is to work out how to test your system by understanding the losses , dont focus on just profits you must understand what brings a backtest togther to form a simualtion , a simulation allows you to test in a real life scenerio and give you a real look at the system your using, also theonly thing you cant really measure is slippage , yes you can estimate but its only when you actually trade then and only then can say i have _ve slippage or +ve slipage and i loose xxx per trade or i gain xxxx what time frames new period of data? , what did u did with changes ? books well there are some books but its difficult to understadn what you want to do vs. what book to advise you on u need to go simple 1st like a backtest on MA above and below - then ull see the problems with stops and testing it in real life .... anyway add some detials and exlain what your doing so ppl canhelp or at least try

sound slike sour grapes to me , plus you still didnt answer the question - did Joe tell you this or youmade it up ?

what are you on about , ts is the worse. please back up your facts. neoticker , ninja trader both have far superior platforms for testing, implemenation and running algorithms. TS may have one advantgae better data handling in intraday , thats all Secondly i think you need to understand the difference between backtesting VS. simualtion really you need to simulate before trading NOt backtest - backtest only proofs your system basics, it doesnt allow for real life trading issues and management as such. you need to read the specs on each platform and work out what you need to do with your plan.... in my exp TS is the worse for seriosu trading

ok brokerage and slippage needs to be defined , your focus on profits is not the only thing to take into the equation so here goes - ideally as said before data needs to be sited thru periods of up and down markets. that said the your question on the options of trades is this. traders need to focus on risk to reward and drawdowns , your profit is really irrellavant to trades as soem factors such as leverage, brokergae rates should be extremely low, so your greatest factor wil be slippage ( positive or negative ) your risk on the trade ( stops or no stops ) and profit vs. drawdowns. volitilty is a important factor too as knowing when to now allaocate alot to mininal amounts your question is too broad as in one way as your system needs to accomadate managment of funds and when to pile onthe contracts and when not too i guess to have a fair assesment id need to measure some of these factors, management of tades is jsut as important as profit , at the end of the day oyu can the most profitbale system yet loose the lot on alaoction or bad management of it , look at larry wiliams 87 trades he really made 4mill plus but gave it up in the last 3 mnths due to bad management , yes he still did 10,000% but wiped 300 % in 3 mnths - so the bottom line trades dont matter much, serious traders pay next to nothing for brokerage so id go with profit , low draw downs and many trades. ( in this case basedon whay limited detials ive seen) thanks :missy:

you may also need to get data where you can use intraday 1min to convert to a daily , where you time frame you mentioned can be manipulated to a trading day i have done this due to the overnight time contraints , pivots have many types of claculations, i think you also need to specifiy what platform your trying to program up in too OR are you programming it yourself ? there are forums which will have done alot of work already in certain platforms . e.g tradestation miriads of free work indicators already done. anyway i think what some fo the guys are askign for is place soemthing in the fourms which help others, you may be talented IT person, so maybe post somethign on computer systems, hardware etc.... anyway good luck

agreed min 6mnths testing , i prefer 2 years or 5 and make sure you have a bull move and bear move , period , otherwise when your system falls apart on a given change your system goes out the window , then so do you so to speak :crap:

mmhh an interesting question . time frames are not easy. there are many approaches however from how ive been taught and actually trading it, there are several good time frames. the key to the time frames is the system , stratedy your using. i dont trade ticks , generally i will trade in minutes time frames and gnerally sue multiple time frames to fully gear my positions short term. so mu suggestion is work out some basics, 1 can you simualate your strategy 2. can you test it ? and there fore can you test in different time frames 3. you must work out your risk to positions and useof stops involved vs. your allocation. 4 once you have this , you can find time frames which work well, above all you MUST know what your daily and weekly trend / direction is !! coz if you are short term and you are trading against the daily trend YOU WILL LOOSE YOUR MONEY .... im not giving you my time frames , traders dont give out tiimefrmaes that work : ) what i can say is shorter time frames are generally above 4 mins per bar in the dax / stoxx good luck