KeyToTheCastle

Hmm...I'm not sure if we're talking about the same place....I've always ordered them online and installed the external video adapters myself. The actual installation entails loading the software driver, then plugging the monitor into the adapter and the adapter into the usb port. So easy even I can do it. ( Word to the wise: there's always a risk with refurbs but I've bought quite a few and have never had an issue.)

You can spend thousands or.... go to tigerdirect and buy a refurb with 6 megs for $379 that has 2 video ports, add up to 4 external video cards that plug right into your usb ports for $50 a piece, and you've got a machine that will run 6 monitors perfectly fine for under $600. Can't beat that IMHO.

There are tons of different ways to measure order flow. Personally I'm very visual...I don't want to watch the dome, time and sales or foot print charts. I track trades going off at the bid as a sell and on the offer as a buy, organized in a visual, cumulative fashion. In futures I organize this info in 2 ways; one to read inventory levels like a real time open interest, and the other as a real time buy pressure/sell pressure gauge. In FX I only use the buy pressure/sell pressure gauge. So effectively when the market is making a new low into a previous area of demand imbalance and I can see that real time sell pressure (supply) is diminishing, as buy pressure is picking up, I have a potential opportunity setting up. In effect what's occurring as the market is selling off is sell stops are getting hit... longs are capitulating, and by watching the order flow I can see when that supply is drying up and demand is picking up. The demand comes in from shorts taking profit and new longs initiating. Then the same cycle repeats at the other end.

There's been some great input here....I agree with several of the different points that have been made the last couple of days. "Volume and time together define value." When I first started with MP it was with 30 min TPO charts that I hand drew on graph paper so I respect TPO based value zones having spent a long time using them. The overall value area created by time and volume will often be quite similar so I've found tracking both to be redundant. Personally I've evolved into just using volume based profiles after noticing that volume profiles give me better reference points . "However, it appears that most traders use it to trade off of, like fading the value area and single prints, which is far easier than using it for its intended purpose." For me it's not a matter of being easier but more so a matter of effectiveness. Focusing in on previous value zones and single prints as possible areas to conduct future business is the main reason I use Profile charts. Not to imply I blindly look to fade these areas, but these areas are where I look for the most obvious areas of supply / demand imbalance. Imbalance that occurred in the past within these areas and imbalance in the present , as displayed in the real time order flow, when the market comes back into these areas. Being able to identify the area where change in the order flow (the imbalance) occurred in the past and is occurring now , real time as the market re visits the area, is huge. These price zones are where change in auction is likely to occur.... and where change in auction occurs is where a trader has the most opportunity, the biggest reward potential with the smallest amount of risk. "When short-term traders dominate the market, traditional technical analysis will work a lot better because the dominant timeframe uses technical analysis themselves. But if the longer timeframe is dominating the market, that's another story. The longer timeframe does not care about day timeframe references, and the longer timeframe will always trump the shorter timeframes. It's quite empowering as a trader to understand what the market is doing many times and then waiting for good trade location to align yourself with the market context Agree 110% with that. Context of the higher time frame is king. Probabilities go higher when observing zones that are showing up on both the FG (fore ground) and the BG ( back ground)....areas of price where multiple timeframes get involved, not just day traders. This translates to bigger reward potential. By using a higher timeframe to frame trade ideas it becomes easier to operate on the smaller time frame and distinguish between what conditions provide opportunity and what conditions produce random noise. Not to say I won't scalp off of an intra day based opportunity, but when I do I'm well aware of the longer time frame context and the fact that my best trades occur when my own time frame is in line with the time frame currently in control of the market at that point.

Here's an intraday chart of GBP/USD from this afternoon. It shows the market coming down into a previously defined value zone ( created using volume profile) which also represented an area of demand imbalance. Rather then using the zone as an area to initiate a long position, I used it instead to close out remaining short inventory from an overnight short position. Either way the same principles apply. 1) Identify previous area of demand imbalance. 2) Use dynamic value channel to confirm wholesale pricing levels. 3) Monitor real time order flow for a shift in supply/demand for trade entry confirmation

The KISS way I think about fractals is that essentially the market is fractal in nature, made up of waves within waves within waves. Whichever patterns or organizing principles you use to make sense of the market....they're occurring on every time frame or chart periodicity possible. The reason why the smaller timeframes can look chaotic at times is that these occurrences are obviously happening a lot more frequently on say a 1 minute then they are on a weekly chart. DBphoenix posted this quote a few years ago.....it describes the fractal nature of the markets perfectly: "Every upward or downward swing in the market, whether it amounts to many points, only a few points, or fractions of a point, consists of numerous buying and selling waves. These have a certain duration; they run just so long as they can attract a following. When the stops get exhausted and all the losing traders have bailed, the move is exhausted for the time being, that wave comes to an end and a contrary wave sets in."

Every now and then I see a subject that I'd like to respond to but just don't have the time or the need to get into a pissing match, cause we all know thats where it seems many threads wind up going. Hopefully this thread doesn't follow suit. Anyway, I don't know if it's a case of MP/VP being out dated as much as it is the fact that traders try to turn MP/VP into a system. (btw personally I prefer to use volume based profiles vs. TPO's and time based profiles) I've been there...early on in my career, when I first came across MP, I tried to use it as a system. I read most of the books and I tried every which way I could to develop an edge based on the IB, day type, tpo counts, the 80% rule, etc..... but I was never able to find anything robust that worked for me. I eventually came to the realization that VP is best utilized solely as a way to organize and present market information, just like the purpose of any other chart. Specifically I use VP to help me to shape value and observe price discovery (acceptance and rejection.) This in turn allows me to quickly identify previous areas of supply/demand imbalance which is where most of my focus lies. Sometimes these areas come from low volume points, other times they come from within high volume areas of balance (value areas). I know there are traders who say volume is unimportant and therefore a volume based value zone doesn't confirm much and in a general sense I agree . On the same token I realize that imbalance can form anywhere and at any time....in areas of low volume or high volume. Yes, imbalance is usually more visually obvious in low volume areas where price was swiftly rejected. But within any previous high volume value zone, or area of balance, there had to be a period of imbalance at some point otherwise price would have never left the balance area in the first place. I keep my trading as simple as possible. My first priority is to identify previous areas of supply/demand imbalance. Then, as price comes back into these areas, I monitor the real time order flow for a shift in supply/demand which will confirm a trading opportunity. One other important piece of info I use is a real time dynamic value channel which serves as a filter to confirm that I'm buying wholesale levels and selling retail levels (relevant to the time frame I'm trading on). I'll post a chart from today illustrating some of what I look at in a bit.

Yes, I'll post some charts this coming week. In another post you had mentioned something about passive buyers or sellers. Personally I'm not interested in passive limit orders. I use CD and other order flow studies to track trades going off at the bid or ask. What I'm measuring is the difference between active buyers and sellers of the market. These are traders that want to get in or out of the market right now with a market order, instead of passively working a limit order and waiting to see if they get filled. These traders tend to have more conviction...maybe they're losing traders, capitulating, bailing on positions, or winning traders taking profit or perhaps they're initiating new positions. So to be clear I'm tracking a trade at the bid price as a sell and a trade at the offer as a buy. Sometimes I'm organizing this information to track actual inventory, other times I'm organizing it into more of a buy pressure vs sell pressure scenario.

I'm thankful that I came upon VSA back when I did. It opened my eyes and helped me become more aware of supply/demand principles at work in the market such as climactic activity and the condition of no demand or supply. Personally, using it on its own I found no edge and don’t currently utilize VSA concepts directly in my trading but it did lead me to looking further into order flow and supply demand principles. I’ve come to find CD to be a highly effective way to gauge supply and demand pressure and to track inventory in the market. There's very useful information to be gained by monitoring the order flow at key price levels and in certain context. It allows you to look inside a normal vertical price bar and form a logical conclusion on what's occurring in the order flow....losers capitulating, winners taking profit, new trades being initiated. Personally I find it very useful for confirming trades in previous zones of supply/demand imbalance. The thing is most retail traders are trying to find the one best way to enter and exit the market mechanically with hard and fast rules, looking for something that will show them exact turning points in price with no regard for the context of the market at the present time or being able to adapt to changing supply and demand conditions. My goal as a trader is to identify the high probability, low risk price zones ahead of time and know what I want to see happen at these key areas when price comes into them in order to take the trade. But I also have to be willing to change my mind at the last minute if the market tells me something different and be able to adapt to changing real time order flow conditions. Realize that just because CD is showing divergence, ie no demand at a high, this doesn't mean that 30 seconds from now demand can't come back in and cause that divergence to disappear (more so on a smaller time frame). Does that mean I get out of my short...maybe....maybe not. Maybe I'll see that it's just a few nervous shorts covering out and as soon as the little bit of new demand they create diminishes then supply will come in and the market will start to drop. Or, maybe the little bit of demand will make more shorts bail which in turn causes new stops to get hit which causes the market to cycle to new highs. Either way I manage it dynamically.

I know I dropped the ball on keeping up with posting charts but there just never seems to be enough hours in the day. Between trading and other business ventures I often find myself behind on my to - do list. I'm going to give it another shot. My goal is to post charts in a timely fashion, if not ahead of time, at least very close to real time. Maybe even morph into some kind of daily morning preview of the day. We'll see, but for now there are multiple opportunities setting up across different markets today. Here are a couple of which I am actively trading right now. I'll post now and comment more later. Both of these views are on my longer time frame....the "background view" chart 1 usd/cad coming into a long catch zone chart 2 aud/usd coming into a short catch zone

Actually the store owner could also mark down the price. What if his customers aren't crazy about his peanut butter and he finds himself with a load of inventory that he needs to sell before the peanut butter expires....then he might be forced to have a sale and lower his price just to move the inventory. Walmart does it all the time....

Please forgive my intrusion but I can't resist a discussion on supply & demand. Think of motivation in terms of aggressiveness. The buyer who is buying at the ask price is a more aggressive participant then the seller who is selling at the ask. The buyer is more motivated to get filled....he is getting in with a market order. As the buyers continue to be aggressive they will eat through the unaggressive sellers at the ask. If aggressive sellers come in and start to sell at the bid then the market is in temporary balance with buyers and sellers cancelling each other out. But if there are more aggressive buyers then aggressive sellers, and all the passive sellers who were selling at the ask get taken out then the offer will lift and price will move up. The only thing that causes price to move is an imbalance between buyers and sellers, plain and simple.

That statement right there probably sums up a lot of the reason why most traders find very little success in trading. One of the most common misconceptions of the retail trader: "I am a trader there fore I should be in the market any time it moves" Randomness is one of the biggest enemies of the retail trader. If you are trading with an edge then your obvious goal is to wait for the market to be in an area where you want to conduct business and for all of your conditions for entry to line up.....everything else is just noise. (Unless you're gambling of course...then go ahead and trade every move) Just because a move might look obvious after the fact (don't they all) doesn't mean that before the fact it was nothing more then a 50/50 proposition. As Jimmy Rogers said " I wait for the money to be sitting in the corner and all i have to do is walk over and pick it up"

Very true indeed sir...but at least after being taught an edge all the turtles had an opportunity to become successful whereas if they didn't have that guidance pointing them to a viable edge they would have been doomed before they began. I also wonder if the turtles who were successful had a deeper understanding of their edge then the turtles who weren't successful.

Current ES view of catch zones. We are already in the Current support zone but it is still a valid zone until completely breached. Remember...I use these zones in the direction of my bias. If I am bullish...I am using support zones to enter and resistance zones to scale out profit and vice versa. If I don't have a bias I'm use them to monitor market action. No shame in being flat...flat is a position too. There is always an opportunity setting up somewhere...no need to force anything in a market where I don't have a bias.

Hey Jedi..I will follow up on your post a little later...a lot harder time wise to keep up on posting then I realized. As far as Ricky he pm'd me then we wound up communicating further by skype. I will do my best to keep up here as best I can but I'm finding it hard to even post charts real time like I planned on. Will post ES update in a bit.

I’m glad we agree that successful traders have to have both edge and psychological savvy. Can we also agree that those two component some together in different ways for different people? Hello FxGirl...been a very busy Sunday open so far. I wanted to quickly respond and maybe follow up with how my winning mindset evolved at a later date. I speak mostly out of my own personal trading experience and the transition that I went through as a trader. A process, I must say, that took me a very long time. Again...the place that I started from was that of a consistently unsuccessful trader with no edge, no consistent results, no mentor... obsessing over one indicator then the next, looking for the holy grail while blowing through account after account so I think I started from a place familiar to most typical retail traders. And...forgot to mention...trading with scared money. (I can easily go in many directions here but whether someone starts trading with scared money or not, sooner or later they get to that frame of mind of trading with scared money as they blow through any financial cushion they had.) We agree on most basic points. The thing I am adamant about, (again personal experience) is that no matter the amount of psychological help I had available to me it wouldn't have helped me until I got to a point of having an edge and understanding the dynamics behind that edge. It's only at that point did I start to trade from a mindset of a successful trader...started to think, act, feel like a successful trader and become comfortable in the market, whether taking heat in a trade or riding a big winner. (Acceptance of risk) Yes, from that point on is where I think the psychology started to come into play and help me advance as a trader but at that point (at least for me) the psychology started to fall into place on its own. And obviously trade management had to be learned and improved upon but at least I had my base in which to build on. I sound like I'm rambling so we'll pick this up again I'm sure.

"Acceptance of risk – a psychological issue if every there was one." Absolutely agree 100% with that statement....but my point is only by the conditioning and repetition of seeing your edge play out will that psychological acceptance come. I take it that some would suggest that psychological exercises will get you to that acceptance and that is what I disagree with. "It’s easy to use our own experience in moving through the process of becoming a successful trader as a template for others. Perhaps you came to trading with a well-developed set of strategies for managing emotions. If so, your journey may best have been undertaken by concentrating on finding your edge. That isn’t necessarily the case for others. For some, the emotional components of trading are a real stumbling block that will prevent them from being successful even if they develop a great edge." I have to agree partly with that...I am speaking only from my own experience and the experience of watching a small sample of other traders closely. But I also have to say that psychologically I was a trading wreck for about 9 years on and off. Blowing through accounts, going from one indicator to the next, never comfortable being in a trade. And why? Because I never had the confidence that I had the odds in my favor when I entered a trade. During that time I never sought out live psychological help but I do own 4 of the most popular books on the subject and did a lot of reading and research about it. And none of it helped me. Until I started to realize my edge. And even after that it still took me months of repetition and conditioning before becoming profitable. My mindset slowly shifted from one dominated by the thoughts of a losing trader to those of a winning trader. I dont know what else to say except that once I started trading from a winning mindset...thinking, acting and feeling like a winning trader did I start to do the things that winning traders do. Anyway, the whole issue of edge versus trading psychology is a silly argument. Any careful observer can see that you can’t become a consistently profitable trader without mastering both. The important discussion is about how you make them work together so you get to mastery. I don't think its silly at all....especially on a traders website. I guess we both agree that obviously there are elements of edge and trading psychology that make up a successful trader but my point is that realizing your edge opens up the door to making advancements in the psychology department and not vice versa. Great weekend all!

Hmm...where do I begin sir? ” up the middle’ – where every edge advance is utilized to inner Q&A its simultaneous integration issue, and vice versa… So basically you agree that edge comes first but take it further by saying that ....wait a minute what exactly are you saying? It seems like you are agreeing with me on some level by saying that edge does come first. Then you state that edge advancement comes by asking proper questions....yes I think that would be logical, after recognizing and utilizing your edge, improvement on that edge is always the preferable option. "Published literature also heavily favors the first way. I can think of only one work that structurally takes a 'trading virtues first' approach... But, particularly in trading, it’s always a good idea to at least question the majority view, so…" I don'k know that published literature agrees with my viewt. But whether the majority of traders agree with my view or not it doesn't change the fact that as motivated as most people are in finding their edge 1)they still aren't trading with a viable edge and 2) and if they are trading with an edge they don't fully understand the dynamics that make their edge/setup work and therefore don't fully, in a psychological sense, accept the risk they are taking on. “If you don’t have any of these problems, they don’t exist” This statement I agree with and to some degree may be guilty as charged as I am only speaking from my experience and the experience of watching a few handfuls of traders pretty closely.

ES update. The low today in ES occurred as the high was being made in usdcad and the low was being made in the euro. Correlation across several markets is often a clue that a bigger swing can be at hand. I was most active in the ES and usdcad today and observed the same order flow conditions setting up in both instruments as price was in areas of interest on both at the same time. Plus on both instruments we had longer time frame areas of interest coming into play as well. The more conditions I have setting up the higher the probability and quality of the opportunity at hand.

Hello fxgirl..not sure about your last statement there. If you are referring to having an edge then I agree. But I respectfully disagree with the traditional way in which people try to use psychology to become better traders. I am not a psychologist but rather speaking from my personal experience as well as observing other traders. Everyone seems to lean on psychology as a crutch for their unsuccessful trading. Traders should concentrate on finding their edge first. But more importantly...not only having an edge and being able to implement it but fully understanding the underlying dynamics that cause your edge to work and tilt probabilities in your favor on a consistent basis. It's one thing to have an edge and being able to notice situations and patterns that produce the edge but it's not until you reach the point of understanding the underlying reasons beneath the surface that are making the situation play out in a certain way do you begin to take your trading to a whole new level where you accept risk and make decisions based on market derived information not some arbitrary stop or profit level. Having and understanding an edge = Acceptance of risk = beginning to think,act,trade like a successful trader. Can psychology help someone after that point....maybe....but until a trader is at the point of trading with an edge then the psychology only serves to temporarily make them feel better until they begin to trade and start losing again. The conditioning and repetition of seeing and experiencing your edge play out real time in the market is the 1st step to success. Edge first then the psychology can fall into place.

Zone 4 was breached, zone 1 from my post earlier contained price. Important distinction in regard to how I use these zone: It's always relative to the back ground condition of the market. The zones are used as entry zones to either initiate or add to positions, used as target zones for exits, or just used as a line in the sand to monitor strength of the order flow in a particular area. As noted earlier, I am playing the usdcad to the short side. In doing so I am entering trades in resistance zones and scaling out of profit at support zones. As long as the original back ground condition in order flow that got me into the trade is still in effect I am will continuously cycle portions of my position on and off , trading around a core position, until price eventually makes an extended run in my intended direction and heads toward deeper targets. Essentially I am scalping around a core position, in the direction of my core position, until the market breaks in my direction.

Updated USDCAD zones. Creating, understanding, and using these zones to pinpoint value is step 1 of my trading plan. The first step for me is always to determine if a particular instrument is in an area in which I want to do business. These zones, on both intra day time frames and multi day time frames, alert me to those areas.

We just went through a period of some very trade-able volatility across the board right there. Will update es momentarily....actively trading so as zones get breached there will obviously be a gap in time b4 I come back on here to update. I also wanted to show a view of a currency pair I have been actively trading to the short side the past few days.....the usdcad. This screen shot depicts the zones as they stood b4 7am est. you can see zone 1 supported lows yesterday. IN that zone 1 we also had confluence from a support zone created on longer time frame charts. then as price rebounded up overnight zone 2 was effective at catching price several times b4 price broke through and up to zone 3 a 1/2 hour ago. After posting this chart I will also post an updated view of the usdcad.