MadMarketScientist

Personally I have not seen or heard of a way to get it reduced to 4. I think the whole 5 decimal is a total gimmick for marketing reasons to make it appear even more razor sharp but think it has no impact personally in the spreads - I'm with you that it just creates more problems than it's worth but it must be effective for marketing. MMS

Was having a discussion with some people from Alpari, one of the forex brokers out there who is growing their U.S. presence. They were talking about the two different ways you can open/fund your account - one would trade through the Metatrader platform, more of the retail variety, and the other would use a pro platform Currenex. It was interesting, because they actually felt up to a certain size, I think about 10 - 15 full size, which is actually quite sizable you'd be better off on the retail platform with the fixed spreads and executions since they rarely see requotes, etc... as long as it stays that size or lower. Perhaps if it extends beyond that the Currenex which goes more directly to a bank feed than a trade desk would be better. Curious if there are any of you who have tried both varieties and have some feedback. I have some experience talking to some money managers who have used Currenex and there are some pros/cons but wondering if anybody else wants to weigh in on that. Thanks. MMS

I always thought MarketWatch.com had some nice news feeds that you can run off their website. Or, a really good app in case you are in the Apple world is the Bloomberg app -- I use it all the time to check the news in all the global markets and domestic. It's really nice and free -- I run the iPad version - I'm not sure if there's an iPhone version. MMS

I do something similar as long as you are ok with paying for the monthly subscription. It's fairly well hidden in Tradestation but as mentioned above you can pay monthly subscription fee (plus data) and then use all the great features of TS, but trade wherever you want. For example, I run Tradestation, I then have Ninja Trader hooked up to it to read my strategies I'm running in Tradestation, and then have Ninja Trader connected to Interactive Brokers to auto-execute my trades. Now, I don't do that for all my trading, most I am taking the trades myself but I have a couple that I run overnight that there's no way I want to be awake for (3am for example!) and I let the automation work. Works well for me. Another hint, if you can fund the minimum account at Tradestation and just make the arbitrary number of trades they require let's say in futures, you can get that platform charge waived -- or at least reduced if you just fund the account. You need to tie up a little capital but it can save you $2K+ a year so something to think about. Hope that helps -great trading! MMS

MetaDavid Welcome to the forums -- we hope you continue to read and participate in the forums -there's no better way to get the most out of it than participate at TL. As for risk management here's my thoughts. In a former life in particular I did a ton of training and would always ask people what the biggest hurdles they are facing. Inevitably would get the usual answers - trade system, time it takes, complexity even a lot that would admit trade psychology but only about 15% would ever say risk management was their issue. However, when we dug deeper these very same people would have wiped out their accounts multiple times. And, when we looked at trades were trading position sizes that made no sense to their account sizes. It's a far bigger issue and challenge than most admit - it's why though even too simplified, the 2% risk rule is a good starting point because most people never honor that - in particular in forex where I've seen the average risk per trade people take is 10% which is crazy. And wipe out city soon follows. With reasonable risk management you'll buy yourself a lot more time to figure out all the other challenges in trading that usually lead to ruin -- I look at it like a video game - you get a lot more health points and stay alive - ideally long enough to figure it out. MMS

maxr - - I'm using a 300 tick chart now on the BP -- I'm trying to capture a little larger move than the person you know who is using the 86 tick -- I did look at 377 tick but felt I needed a bit more frequency and bars to catch some of the quicker moves. Of course some of this depends on your system -- I have another approach that has less trades triggered so on it I'd likely use a 233 tick to get a faster chart and enough trade opportunities.

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Cory, Thanks for the input (and the correction - no worries there) I guess I view it a bit different. 1 full sized EURUSD controls $100,000. With a $10K account you'd be able to purchase that at 10:1. If you lose just 25 pips that's a $250 loss or 2.5%. Not too bad but you can see if your risk was larger, like 40 or 50 pips you'd quickly get high on the risk side to 4% - 5%. And, if as you mention you wanted to trade multiples that could get to double digits. That's why I think 10:1 can work just fine -- it forces you not to let things get out of hand. Not that it's a problem anyway with 25:1 and 50:1 being the numbers so they still have given everyone more than ample opportunity to blowout their accounts quickly Anyway, we're coming at it from the same side -- the key no matter how you slice it is to keep your risk to 1% - 5% (absolute aggressive max) -- which is too easy to break when the leverage given is so high. I can virtually guarantee you people are putting up $1,000 now and trading 10 minis or 1 full size and losing 30% - 40% on their account in a single trade all the time at these brokers. Now they'll just bleed it out a bit slower - which is a good thing.

While I'll will be the first to admit that there is no replacement for live trading with 'real' money, demo trading has tremendous value. The reality is 99% of the traders who start will make dozens of errors and most will quit before even really fairly playing out the system they were taught or picked up. At least if you are disciplined with demo trading you can correct many of the misinterpretations of your strategy. Sure it doesn't put you under the fire of real market conditions, but it will ensure that you at least know your strategy. Almost every trader who tries this never even learns their strategy well enough to trade. This would accomplish that. A rule I have is to make 25 simulated trades 100% correctly (not successful -- I said correctly meaning no mistakes - win or lose) - you do that and you are ready with the smallest position sizing possible to go live. Of course live money conditions will wreck many, since most are not able to handle it psychologically but at least by doing the simulated trading you are giving yourself a chance to fairly find out if you're cut out for this -- the other way you'll never know. Agree with the suggestions above - NinjaTrader, Metatrader, etc.. can be nice for simulated trading. MMS

Personally if I was looking at a 100K job and it was extremely stressful and basically killing me vs. taking an 80K job where I expected it to be far less stressful, and ideally in a better location I'd opt for the latter without even thinking about the trading element. As far as whether you could get to the point of replacing all of this with trading the answer of course is yes, and no. Because it is highly risky and nobody should tell you that you can't, but everyone is likely to tell you that is will not be easy. And you just might find that the stress you're experience in your current job is a walk in the park compared to trying to trade for yourself full-time and pull an income. I'd approach it separately. Decide on the job, your lifestyle and health first, plus the paycut. Then, I'd focus on starting to learn about trading - think just trading north of positive as your objective - forget about steady income part-time or full-time or seeking something that works like a paycheck because in trading it won't. Even when you're very good the earnings won't be smooth -- big months and down months will be the norm. Once your successful. Risk as little as possible, especially if you take the paycut, in the beginning you're going to lose and lose often but if you keep your account size and positions to the absolute minimum it can be highly educational without the huge risks. And, do your research and get some good training -- it's hard to do this totally on your own. Don't fall for the get rich quick systems but there's some solid educational training out there to at least get a foundation. Good luck! MMS

First, well done with your comparison. I think you did a really nice job of laying out the differences. I would agree with your spot FX comparisons, though I think you can feel very secure with US regulated accounts from the main US brokers. There really has never been a problem with those -- it's always been the brokers who were not licensed in the past that had issues. The US does have some additional restrictive rules on the type of trades you can place so that is another difference -security of funds I feel will be similar. Totally agree though on the liquidity and executions. Repricing happens at all these brokers and it can be a problem in fast moving markets - some are much worse than others. Agree on your CME FX assessment so I'll answer your questions. a) Do any of you day and swing trade Mini FX futures successfully? If so, which please? I only trade the full size and so far that has been the BP and EC. I plan on adding the USDJPY to the mix since volume looks good, but so far in all cases feel there seems to be best volumes on the full sized and not the minis but maybe someone else can step in and defend using the Mini FX futures. b) Does anyone here successfully day and swing trade CME Futures cross pairs, e.g. EURJPY or GBPJPY? The ones I trade are mentioned above but have been keeping an eye at expanding this since the volumes really do continue to seem to grow so I could very much see trading the EURJPY futures. c) Do any of you do fast low volume news announcements trades on CME FX futures, if so, on which pairs have you had success please? So far I have focused on trading during the European market hours - I get better results than the US market hours -- US seems more unpredictable and the European seems steadier with the moves -- less whipsaw. Perhaps my favorite block of time is 2am EST - 5am EST. MMS

New realities are setting in as the latest regulations come into effect. Have you been getting emails from your forex brokers? The 50:1 (or lower) leverage is about to take hold here shortly. Funny to think at one time we had 400:1 -- which was completely ridiculous and a marketing gimmick but that has slowly been stripped down. I personally still feel there is more than enough leverage being given, and actually think 10:1 in forex would be perfectly workable for most strategies unless you're doing something more exotic. What about those of you who pushed your accounts outside of the U.S. when the prior round of regulations took away hedging and added that FIFO rule -- many went to the UK offices and others but it appears that the major US brokers are having to bring you back to the U.S. due to the new regulations. Anyone expecting any changes as a result for forex? Personally I think maybe it gets rid of some of the really small players, the ones who open accounts for $25 or $200 hoping to make it rich and usually just wipe that out in a few days. Otherwise I'm not forseeing any real changes to our trading. I've been doing more CME FX Futures of late anyway personally. Good trading to all! MMS

Ok, really who saw that coming on August 31st? The stock market posts its best September in 7 decades? All I remember was tremendous amount of doom and gloom. My inbox was stuffed with market prophets telling me I should prepare for dark days, stock up on water and food for the storm cellar and be prepared to live through a depression. Then September rolls around and defies all odds and expectations and performs really solidly. Out of the woods yet? Most of us laughed, me included when the reports came in that the recession had actually ended some time ago, but that's the way these things work - when there is any economic growth, no matter how slim. Now the question is -- does October continue to defy all the prognosticators or does reality come crashing down? This is one of the reasons why I try to stay away from fundamental analysis of the markets. I find it difficult to predict and do my best to trust the technicals, fully knowing that even those will be wrong 30% - 40% of the time -- the trick is being right the other portion and capitalizing on it. No matter what I'd rather make my money in trading with the markets on the way up, not on the way down -- but I'll short and sell as needed. Good luck to all in October! MMS

After yesterday's big trend up today seems to be having trouble finding a direction -- here's some TF trades attached (Russell emini) and yesterday was a dream -- can't remember the last time on these charts had a trade that went 5 points and 8 points trailing, followed by another long trade that went 5 more points. However today you can see it's a sideways up and down, tried short once so far didn't work. Almost always seems to happen after a big move day prior.

Looks like a news based decline on that one given the spike down - I got in a little late at 1.5533 so had to bailout on the bounce back - you did better catching it before it was more fully developed.

Nice trade - glad to see you giving CRB's a try. Early in my trading career I only day traded with time intervals -- usually 1M, 2M, 3M and 5M. I never made any money. Later I switched to tick bars and things started to turn around for me. Now I tend to oscillate between tick, range bars (CRB) and renko bars. I do much better. Time intervals I now only use when I'm looking for the big picture, maybe a bigger swing trade. I'm sure there are plenty who do just fine on time intervals day trading but I think those work best when you're trading off of support/resistance areas and not off of oscillators -- when you are using oscillators for your indicators and signals I think CRB, tick, etc... work better. At least for me. Thanks for posting the chart. MMS

I'm always curious what you use that helps your trading in some way that you simply could not live without. If you have some you'd like to share - let us know. To get it started here's a few things I use that I wouldn't want to give up: Apple iPad I have been on probably 6 trips throughout the summer and instead of taking a notebook everywhere I took an iPad for the first time. Worked great. All I needed was the LogMeIn App and I could easily connect to my trading computer at the home office and both check on trades, make any changes, etc... It's not like being in the office of course but it also enabled me not to have to duplicate everything on a notebook which was always a pain. Also, with the iPad I just use Gmail and have all of my email "popped" into Gmail. Business, TL emails, etc...then it's super easy to have it all consolidated - and you never have to worry about your Outlook file growing too large. Which used to really drain my trading computer and forced me to use a different computer due to the system resources of Outlook. No longer. Speaking of the iPad I like the Bloomberg app just to give me a quick cross section of the financial news, and fairly easy/fast charting of markets just to get a macro picture. As for tools when I'm back at home base....I use NinjaTrader to manage my trades and connect me into Interactive Brokers but I actually chart on Tradestation and have some automation built in Tradestation that then sends trades through Ninja into IB. Seems like it could go wrong with all those connections but doesn't. A key was having a really small app built that would reconnect Tradestation anytime it went offline. Was having a big problem with it going offline if the internet faltered and not logging back in on its own - a big problem if you are auto-trading. With this small app the second it notices a log off it repeatedly tries to log back in. Problem solved and it was a really BIG one causing me losses. I use a spreadsheet app from NetPicks.com called Ultimate Trade Analyzer. I like to log my trades and over time get some very interesting data that sometimes helps me adjust my trading rules and automation (it has helped me change my start and stop time on several markets to improve results.) There's other tools I use but this is the main stuff that gets utilized every day. MMS

I'm definitely with you on building charts with historic tick data. Always frustrating when you either can't get enough historical data, or they (meaning any vendor not Ninja specific) make a big deal about having all this long history on daily charts or 5 minute charts when in reality many/most really active daytraders are using tick bars, range bars, etc... we need historical going way back on those not just daily or time intervals.

Thanks for the entries so far -- there's still a great chance for you guys to win - very good odds! Apple iPad has an upgraded operating system coming out soon that is going to add a bunch of features (using bluetooth devices, printing, multi-task, etc...) so it gets even better. If you ever travel you can even use Logmein App and connect to your desktop at home -- I do it all the time and continue to trade. MMS

Stock.Jock Just comeback to the TL website and select CHAT from the menu ring you see above. Thanks. MMS

I'm a fan of Ninjatrader. If you've seen my trade reports you'll notice those are Ninja screen shots. I actually don't use the charting on the application but use all the trade management tools and connection into my IB account. I know the charting is good, I just got used to something else but use Ninja everyday regardless. I hadn't heard of the Kinetick data -- for me the whole data question with NinjaTrader is sometimes confusing since it is reliant on other datafeeds, your broker, etc... and there is so much variance on whether your datafeed has historicals, is tick based, etc... I will check out Kinetick -- anyone have anything to say about it in real-time use? MMS

Yep, looking pretty good -- I marked up the chart where the stop and target would be for me. I would tighten stop again but only make a move like that 1x per day -- since this is a swing trade.

Let me take a look at that and seem if I can come up with something. Thanks for letting me know. MMS

Another one I haven't looked at in a while is JPM but looks like it has been trading GREAT. I like for swing trades the 195 minute -- more activity than the daily chart but still very much a multi-day move type chart. Currently in a long which is actually the 4th long since the bounce around 8/27. Maybe pushing our luck a bit given the move could be getting tired at least temporarily. I've noticed the odds drop a bit especially on the 3rd or 4th consecutive for obvious reasons. However, definitely a nicely trading stock -- good for options as well.

Winnie: Good luck on the V trade. I looked at it on my charts and see on my Daily chart time interval the short just stopped at about break-even at $68.28 (was aiming for $62.70 to $64 but did at least go enough to lower stop), while on a faster 195 Minute chart, still very much a swing trade it is long from the break of $69 - target area $71 - $73. Always interesting how different the outlook can be as you change time interval. At any rate, best of success with it. MMS