marytee

Hi Mitsubishi-- good questions you ask. 1.Between the XLTs and protrader-- approximately $30K. Yes, this is the only vendor I have used. 2. This question is tougher-- I think it's both yes and no, unfortunately....not to avoid answering but because it's tough to tell. For example, Sam Seiden does a monthly webinar on FXStreet. The only "cost" to you is time. You can get the general gist of Sam's approach and it won't cost you a penny. But it is the frequency of the XLT trade rooms (which cost money, of course) that help drive home the points and strategy for me. That is two hours/day, three to four days a week per XLT. Given my impulsiveness, I am not sure I could have done it by myself. 3. Most definitely, Valasquez takes live trades, as does Volmering, Wang does, as does Farley. I have seen them get stopped out, too. But not often. I don't doubt for a second that these guys are the real deal. 4, Yes, I think it's possible for the same reason that Tom Kelly was able to manage the Minnesota Twins to a world series championship in 1987 and 1991 while being only a mediocre player himself. I also suspect that some excellent traders would not make good teachers.They are two different skill sets and some people are blessed to have both. 5. The market is a brutal teacher. Given what I know about myself, I doubt it--but others' mileage may vary. I have a bit of a gunslinger mentality to me and getting that under control was a challenge. Then I erred to the other side and now finally reached the balance point "When my setup appears I will take the trade" Its in my trading plan. Thanks and have a good rest of your day.

I thought I would weigh in on the OTA discussion because I am a student/customer of theirs, including some XLTs. IMHO, any OTA student who "fails" does so for one or more of three reasons: 1. He or she does not have a solid trading plan with specifics (or they don't follow their plan--see #2). As an example, I ran spoke with a fellow student whom I have known for over a year and asked him about his plan. He still did not have a trading plan in place! 2. He or she has not developed the discipline to control impulsiveness. 3. They are not "cut out" for it--you have to be willing to pull the trigger. (The person should have known that beforehand, but even if trading is not a comfortable thing to do, mastering the first two will help overcome this obstacle, I think) Over the last three years, I can say that I suffered from #1, and #2.-- I had a trading plan that I did not regularly review or particularly follow, it was too complex, etc, etc. I also had a problem waiting for the trade to come to me. :crap: To make a long story short, I was brutally honest with myself, stopped trading for several months, and simplified a whole bunch of things, including reducing the number of OTA instructors I follow. Although OTA has a core strategy, instructors have their nuances and the sheer wealth of information was counter-productive to my development. My fav instructors are: Evans, Krebs, Vollmering, Seiden. From Wang I took a specific chart parameter that resonated with me, and finally from Valasquez I took his approach to the larger time frame. etc. Don't get me wrong--they are all good but you must go with the ones whose approach feels right to you. By focusing on only those instructors AND spending the time in front of the charts, and simplifying my plan--I now have a strategy the works for me. (approx 4 setups/week) I plan to leave my day job by September 2014 and be doing this full time. To paraphrase one of the OTA instructors I follow: When your set-up is there you have to take the trade! Thanks for letting me share. i hope this info helps someone. PS: I trade only these markets now: 6a, 6b, 6j, 6e, nq (I will add more later)

umfan92-- you don't have to learn everything. And I would say that books on the trader mind-set are much more important than books about markets, strategies, and indicators The Mark Douglas books are good. I also found High Probability Trading (Marcel Link) to be valuable in discussing the things a trader needs to be successful. Van Tharp's book also may be helpful. Keep it simple. Have it written down. Follow it religiously. Easier said than done.

Bob-- you might be interested to know an updated edition of Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar is supposed to be released sometime this year. As you noted, it's a helpful book. I also found it helpful but it's a tough read due in part to run-on sentences, etc. Al Brooks acknowledged the fact and that is one of the reasons why the book is being re-released.

Enigmatics-- I did not see a reference to a trading plan. Do you have a written plan with your set-ups, exits, and trade/money management? If you do--and the strategies in it have been back-tested--are you following the rules religiously? Do you have your fear and greed under control? I am no expert but I found that once I sat down and spent the screen time--both writing and testing my plan and set-ups--it made a significant difference in my trading. Plus I quit trading for six months in order to get my psychology under control--I now wait for my set ups. FYI--I don't trade equities; I trade currency futures for the most part. Hope this helps.

If I were to use an indicator I would use the Commodity Channel Index, CCI. General rules: Don't take the over-bought signal in an uptrend. Don't take the over-sold in a downtrend. In other words, trade with the trend. Wait until price crosses the 100 line toward the center zone as a method to confirm the entry. Personally I use a few moving averages to help frame price action and support resistance.

In the real world (at least as I understand it), your order goes into the queue and it's executed in the order it comes in. In a real trade, you could see some slippage entering the trade versus sim where you probably don't. I used to see this all the time. Then I changed my strategy to get away from scalping where I now use limit orders (set it and "almost" forget it) at previous levels where I expect price to turn--just so I can get my order in ahead the crowd. Made a HUGE difference on fills for me. The best test is to try it in a real trade. That will give you great insight to the viability of your strategy. Good luck--hope it works for you!

Are those recordings you made or the packaged DVDs?

I noted that Brett Steenbarger's blog was included above. In addition, this page on his web site contains a wealth of articles about the psychological side of trading:

Please reread my post--the Thinkorswim indicator that closely approximates Miner's DTosc is the StochRSI. If the settings are changed per my original post, you'll essentially have the DTosc on your screen. As for the name 'detrended oscillator' I found it during my research and simply repeated it for anyone who wondered what "dtosc" meant.

Based on my research, the DTosc (Detrended oscillator) for thinkorswim can be approximated by using the StocRSI and adjusting it to match the numbers seen in the charts in the book. For example, these settings based on those seen on page 38 of Miner's book High Probability Trading Strategies : RSI length=21 OB = 75 OS = 25 RSI choice = RSI EMA RSI price = close k period = 13 d period = 8 slowing period = 8 smoothing type = ema produced a very similar pattern to the DTOSC below the SPX daily chart on page 38. Experiment with it and see if it works for you.