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dalby
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Stolen Content From Traders Laboratory
dalby replied to Soultrader's topic in Announcements and Support
you should verbally state "copyright..." in every video similarly, in posts you want to copyright... merely writing copyright on your text with date and name is sufficient under the law to establish copyright i am not sure what the law says about audio, but saying copyright 2007 John Doe could not hurt -
I have 10 too. Ime (limited as it is), I have found that the sizes on the bid/ask are bogus a great percentage of the time. It's mostly to try to fool people. I will look at the sizes as to where to place orders sometimes, but never to try to predict market direction. Tape doesn't lie. the order book does
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yes when i am teaching traders, i emphasize the business plan and risk management aspects first and foremost. most traders (retail/non-professionals) do not TREAT their trading like a business, and are thus not professional. Every trade decision is a business decision. People who trade impulsively or without stops, are not being professionals. They are being gamblers, imo. (as a semantical distinction). Trading is SO simple to do - fund an account with a few thousand, and then press buttons. But that is not how a professional approaches it. Most businesses require much greater capital investment to start, and much more extensive hoops to jump through. I think this (as much as i hate govt. regulation btw) does give most business owners at least the proper mindset to some extent before they enter. Another thing is that professionals keep RECORDS. They go over their past activity to see how they can improve, what they did wrong etc. Non-professionals do not analyze their past trades in detail and usually do not keep extensive data on their activities.
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I kind of agree. I make the analogy between a car salesman and a race car driver. A licensed person doesn't necessarily know the first thing about trading, and he may not even trade himself. It's a necessary credential to be a salesman. Just cause you sell stocks (or futes etc.) doesn't make you a trader, let alone a professional trader. The distinction between who is and isn't a "professional" trader is largely semantical of course. One could argue that even a trader who trades very small size and has a full time job, but is methodical in his execution and has a solid, written out business plan , is being a professional trader. Certainly I think one who makes a living trading is a professional, regardless of cert's or lack thereof.
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good point, bear. myself- i TRADE futures, but most of investments are stocks (and a smattering of commodities) futures for me are for speculation. in my trading account. to generate income stocks are ownership of good companies in order to build longterm wealth i take profits from my trading account, and put them into longterm stuff - stocks, bonds, gold, etc. i think many traders eschew futures because they don't understand them, don't want to understand them, and feel more comfortable with a known entity. and also, as mentioned - one needs to differentiate between investors and traders. a relatively high %age of traders use futures. a VERY small %age of investors do.
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thanx. i have (to quote a columbian proverb) "learned with blood" in terms of trying to pick tops and bottoms. been there, done that. I do like to go countertrend with option spreads that are cheap. That is much more profitable ime, as premium gets oversold moreso than price and can improve with volatility.
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i took a short in YM @ that 67 level i mentioned this weekend, and a short in ES on its test of its naked POC @ 1393.50 area. so far, im sticking with the downtrend until i see some reason to believe its over.
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i have a very extensive set of rules for gap downs. i love gaps. i learne a lot about them from john carter's videos and added a little on my own. i haven't found a way necessarily to mess them with MP in many circ's
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i use USO for my IRA i will sometimes trade QM (the mini) in my trading account
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i've been a steady accumulator of oil on all weakness i really see the downside risk in oil as much smaller than the upside potential and i like its disconnect from the equities markets. also, a little geopolitical strife could send it soaring. interestingly, on a longterm basis (decades), oil prices are POSITIVELY correlated with equity prices, however, the inverse is/was true in the much more recent past, which has led a lot of traders to falsely believe that lower oil helps equities, and higher oil hurts them
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i have a lot of oil in in my IRA. i occasionally trade it. my understanding (and I got this from a pit trader) is that a big part of the decline in oil was a cascading effect caused by MASSIVE hedge fund forced liquidation.
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the SOES bandits were exploiting arbitrage opp's i was distinguishing between the time it takes the market to adjust to arb opp's vs. just general setups. arb opp's are much more prone to dilution and extinction than a system trend following is a system that has (generally) ceased to work in stocks even over the recent bull run. The market has morphed from a "trendy" market to a "regress to the mean" market. Trend following funds have done pretty terrible over this last bull market cause they are stuck applying a 90's paradigm to a different market.
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i am of the belief that all the "trend followers" in the 90's helped lead to the eventual market adaptation that has caused trend following funds, etc. to be such serious losers. i could give out my setups (not that i would) to 1000 traders and it would have next to zero effect on the dow. of that, I agree
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I am kind of in the same boat. Right now, I am running a PC with 2 20" monitors, and two laptops. I am debating getting two more monitors and a PCI card for my primary desktop (I am currently running the two monitors off a PCI-E card), or just getting a second computer with two monitors.
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to some extent... yes. an edge that is widely exploited ceases to exist. the market is the sum total of all trader decisions. it's a much quicker adjustment to arbitrage opp's than more general setups. remember the SOES bandits? But in general, an edge exploited and widely disseminated faces dilution or extinction.
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yes. i agree. i have that single print area filled in from thur as well. is that investor R/T's Market profile? I am currently using MarketDelta's, but looked at their website per the recommendation (thanx) and see that they use the EXACT same format, one even licensing the same to the other. Im probably switching to Investor RT for my MP next week. Ill get TS to use the tickdelta indicator here . I think that is pretty robust in replicating the data in MD's footprint charts. I do a lot of replay function in my MP charts, and I agree that single prints are to be noted. Even if you don't use one for an entry, they are often logical place to set price targets if already in a trade and price is stampeding towards that level.
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Thanks . I don't have a hard and fast rule about how close a price level has to be to another to be confluent, but I will take notice if it is within 10 pts on the dow. as volatility has risen these last few days, my response has/will be to ratchet down size and increase stop size somewhat, to compensate for the greater range. the price levels i use are very basic - single prints, globex low, globex hi, daily low, daily high, val, vah, poc and floor trader pivots (day, week, month). it is a bonus if i can get some added confluence on price action, like a tick extreme on a relatively neutral day, into an area of resistance and seeing some follow through with heavy selling on the bid. another example would be when price makes new highs into a resistance area, but the Adv/Decl is not making new highs.
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One of the things i look for is confluence - key price areas that are important on several timeframes and/or with different methodologies (market profile, floor trader pivots. etc. I have attached a 2 day MP chart with the key price level 12167 highlighted. This is the VPOC (Volume based POC) from Friday. It is also the daily floor trader pivot level for Monday. The time based POC is just below it at 12159. If we make a composite chart of the new balance area since our big selloff, we also see that 12160 area is the lower edge of the volume based value area. And when I draw a time based value area on that composite, I get the exact same #'s What this says to me is pay attention to this level. If price does not gap above it on monday, I will be looking for shorts as price approaches this level, if consistent with market internals (bid/ask pressure, tape, etc.) Just my thoughts
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nope. I am an IB user (also AMTD) and am in the process of signing up for TS. I didn't realize other brokerages didn't have it
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I think the mini nikkei is a great idea. I've played around with it before, and at 1/5 the size of the SGX contract, it's MUCH more manageable for beginners. If you have over 25k in the account, then you can daytrade the DIA as a proxy for the YM. It's an ETF and every 100 shares = $1 per dow point, so you can trade much smaller size than the dow minis, and still get the same market exposure the problem is that you will violate pattern daytrader regs if you daytrade it with less than 25k DIA also has inferior fills compared to YM (at least in my experience), so if you can make your strategy(s) work on DIA, you will be well equipped for YM.
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zero sum game was a term invented under the umbrella of game theory and it has very specific meaning the futures market IS zero sum. it HAS to be. the structure of the market determines that the cash market is NOT zero sum. it cannot be. the structure of the market again determines that. it is true that spy moves in concert with ES. But one MARKET is not zero sum. The other is. I came to trading with a love of game theory. What you have to understand about the term zero sum is it refers to the SYSTEM as a whole, not an individual traders experience. That is key. If you are trading Spy, you are not trading within a zero sum game system. If you are trading ES you are. This says nothing about YOUR trading. It merely is a description of the structure of the system.
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I trade almost exclusively price action, internals, MP etc. Iow, i don't use lagging indicators. The squeeze indicator is the one exception. I have found it's robust on the 5 min. timeframe, but I do filter trades. For example, if a long squeeze fires above an obvious support level (floor trader pivot) that makes it much more likely i'll take the signal. On the other hand, I won't take it if it is firing long right into a congestion zone or obvious resistance level. I've watched some of the trade the market videos, learned about the indicator, and programmed one into the Quotetracker paintbars. I use it with the understanding that there is no holy grail, and it must be used in conjunction with logical analysis of support/resistance/ and price action. It is true that volatility is much more cyclical and there is more serial correlation in regards to volatility, than price. I think that basic reality is why this indicator works, at least for me
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i have found that using fair value divergence (difference between futes and cash index) is a much better indicator for program buys and sells triggering
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Soultrader's YM Workspace for Tradestation
dalby replied to Soultrader's topic in Brokers and Data Feeds
ive been checking out investor RT for $59 it will give me all the mp i use, and i did notice its the same as market delta i don't need footprint, since i can use that tick delta indicator for tradestation (once i sign up) ill get TS for free with the 10 contracts per months, so you guys just saved me $120 per month . i am still on the MD trial, but it would cost me $180 so i can get the same thing for 60 thanks tingull and soultrader -
Soultrader's YM Workspace for Tradestation
dalby replied to Soultrader's topic in Brokers and Data Feeds
thanks. i like MD but for $180 a month, if i can get the same basic functionality using your indicator, it's clearly a better buy. Basically, I am just looking for confirmation/divergence between price action and bid/sell volume. I also like to use MD to chart (for example) only the 20 lot plus order going through the ES which helps me understand the actions of institutional traders. if TS allows charting of composite MP charts then Im all set, otherwise, I will contact Tingull. I like to set up a 20 day MP up to the current date, a 10 day, and the previous 10 day and then the last 5 days. to compare development.