jim380

I had not been to this forum for a long time. Surprised and glad to see you posting again Steve.

Blowfish, thanks for your good comments. I had been spending quite a fair amount of time on the T&S in my trading. I believe the T&S give valuable information to what the other participants are trying to achieve. It certain help for to understand what the big money's objective are. But as you put it, different parties have different operation methods so it might not be wise to interpret in only one way.

Steve, glad that you are still around. Just a couple of qns to help me understand the game better. That is if it is fine for you to share 1. I have the impression based on the methodology presented, you or most institutional traders generally do not day trade. You guys have a relatively larger stop and are not looking at a few ticks only. Am I right? 2. Do institutional traders generally earn money on a rising market only? Would they not short the market as well? Instead of defending a certain level, why not push through it and break it for a profit by shorting? 3. Based on my limited experience on the T&S, I do observe that there can be both heavy selling and buying at the same time. Can I deduce big players do fight among themselves and in fact it is more profitable to take the other big guy out instead of the small retailers? 4. Many had mentioned that big players like to take out the stops of retail players, how true is this? Thanks Jim

It will be great if you continue sharing Steve.

Can I verify the above is correct? I had all along thought that if T&S shows 10/12/2010, 10:30:00, 10, 1231.50 They can only be a 10 stop order from a single trader or a 10 limit orders from a single trader. It is not be a consolidation of 10 separated individual orders.

Steve, Does the cash market leads the futures market or is it the opposite? Does these big players play on both sides? My thoughts is these market movers cannot just manipulate the ES without considering the SP500 stocks. Or can they; if the push up the ES, other players will buy up the cash market? How does it work?

I think this is a great thread. There is a few qns which I have about institution traders, I will be glad if some light can be shed on these qns 1. How many total number contracts do these market movers typical trade in ES? 100? 1000? 100,000? What is their inventory level? If they can move the ES, surely we are looking not at just a couple of thousand contracts but in terms multiple of 100K at lest, am I right? 2. How long do they usually hold their position? 3. Do they have stops?

Is it true that day trading used to be easier?