Colonel B

what is with all the x's and o's on your chart??? LOL

yep they ran some stops into areas that are trader areas. This is one of those days where you get whacked a few times and foolishly hold on to make it up.

short wrong short wrong short wrong short wrong all the way up. no rotation for 5 points good times

The 3 indicators I use if you want to call them indicators are: 1. Correlated markets. 2. Market Structure based on volume. 3. Bid/Ask PNF I attempted to post 1 of my 4 screens. This will show you how I look at a market. You will see on my screen market profile. Its logical to think I am a market profile trader. Not so much. This simply helps with opens, highs, lows and that kind of stuff. It also helps give me and idea where the retail guys is going to enter. I mostly keep my eyes glued to the footprint. These are just 2 of the 5-6 markets I look at or watch. This pic was taken earlier but you can see it was taken real time at the time. I took the trade on the bonds and I am out. You can see on the blue chart shorts getting trapped in that yellow bar. Then you can see large buyers step in. So when the market is going down I look for a level or a number or some excuse for it to bounce. Considering there is a 20 tick range and it is trading in yesterdays range there are tons of reasons for it to bounce. Could be that green line, yellow line, or yesterdays whatever. The magic is when it breaks down and sellers get aggressive with no follow through. Look at how red that is. Buyers INC. When I can see retail get trapped so clearly with plenty time to react the only thing I worry about is getting filled. If you need more detail go ahead and pst me so I can keep this novel shorter then the last. :p

I wasn't going to comment on this one and answer a previous post on what I use but there is so much that I absolutely agree with and deserves repeating or appears incorrect that I figure it needed clarifying. Great!!!! Now please explain how you calculated a fast and slow stochastic on the fly in the pit? I don't know a good slow and fast speed so just use ones you used in the pit you traded. What speed MA did you use? How did you calculate it? o.O? The main point to what I was trying to say was that either you use them no matter what anyone says or you don't no matter what anyone says. With no admittance that there are flaws on either side of the argument. Especially the ones I have mentioned. I don't think you have to love them or hate them. Clearly they are situational for you and that is fine. Or you have found something superior. I think this shows what I was suggesting. Totally!!! With out question. Would you agree that more indicators then reduce your chances? Or at some point they don't increase probability and become ineffective? Since nothing can be certain. Yes math based indicators are based on past market data. I totally agree that they are not random or arbitrary. Its not that they are arbitrary but rather give you no edge. Any edge you think you are getting from these things is not what is actually considered an edge. Yes there are some indicators that are not math based. The ones I am targeting are the ones that strictly use math. An example of a math based indicator is MA, Stochastic, Fibs, MACD, Bollinger bands, CCI, Woodies CCI, RSI, and even the popular VWAP. None of the aspects measured with these indicators is going to tell you when buyers/sellers are getting trapped. Its all past data so if they do show an over bought/sold signal its only after they are trapped and the damage is done not before or leading up too. I will even go further to say that some of these things will trap you and cause you to be short in the hole. Actually no math based indicator that I recognize in this whole thread will exclusivity lead any person to know what is actually making the market work. Or how a market moves. Or when it will move. Or what it will take to move it. If they did explain then you would have more informative conversations and less of "the robots are in control" explanations I see in other threads. None of these indicators will teach a trader where the longs or shorts are going to puke or if they are puking right now. Actually these indicators if used exclusively will actually convince you that the opposite is happening. Now with that being said does price bounce off of MAs? Yea sure. I am not so blind to see that it has happened. But to me its not the MA that makes it bounce but rather other things at work. I consider it a correlation fallacy. Most of what they measure is not inaccurate. I think it has very little relevance to what is actually important. FINALLY!!!! This was the question I asked in my first post. You and I may not agree. Or maybe we agree I just didn't read what you wrote correctly. But yes there is more to "indicators" then just the math stuff that comes in every charting package. I think the nature of the OP and consequently most of the following posts overlooks this idea that charts are indicators. I am going to put up another post with charts so I wont go into it too much. How about looking at correlated markets? Is that an "indicator"? I can see on the 30 year when the 10 year is over bought or over sold. So far no one suggested these concepts. There maybe more then one way to trade. And in other posts I have admitted that I have been disappointed with math based indicators. However if you can make a living on them then I applaud you and anyone else who can. I will be honest and say that I can't. Is this a bad thing? No. I believe failure with them allowed me to find something better.

Oh totally Mr. President. I would say that is accurate. I think this is one of the main obstacles with retail trading now a days. Almost everyone starts out with some sort of math based indicator. Are they inherently bad? No just not that great. They have tons of flaws. Now if you can look past them or figure out a way to make them work for you then that is great. I mentioned the 5 minute thing because most folks seem to use something like that or similar. I don't use anything like that.

Yes that is true. I should of clarified. I have not had much success with them. Its quite possible that I wasn't shown or taught how to use them correctly. But while I am clarifying I forgot to mention Fibs. I don't believe in them as well for the same reasons. And that could vary well be that I don't know where to Fib from. But so far I find it hard to find accurate information that trades real time and has decent rules to follow that uses exclusively just math based indicators. In back testing this stuff works awesome and its amazing. The problem is that I haven't found a broker that will allow me to place a trade into a position that happens 10+ minutes ago. Usually the retail market eats this up because of the back testing aspect. I am still hard pressed to find some one who is making decent money that watches 1 market in 3-5 different time frames with all math based indicators. The folks I know that make decent money watch 3-5 markets on 0-1 time frame and don't use any math based indicators. Again this is just me and my experience and I still hold to the fact that they give you no edge as far as where buyer/seller can, may, and will step in. But hey if you are making money contrary to what I said doesn't work then by all means you think of me when you are sitting on the beach drinking drinks out of those pineapple things. At least you will get a laugh out of it.

I will explain why I don't like math based indicators. It really boils down to they don't work. They don't give a trader any edge what so ever. When they do work they create more risk instead of less risk. Anyone who has ever tried to trade off of moving averages or some indicator that works off of them will know that they are not static. There is nothing better then having a signal at one point and then have it go away after the candle closes. MAs, stochastics, and MACDs are great for back testers. You can look back over the last 20 years and see all the money you would of made had you of just went off the indicators because its so clear. When you try to replicate that with real time on even a 5 min. chart you have situations where you get a signal and by the time the candle closes its gone away. If you trade this way you are forced to wait. This can also create another type of situation where price reaches the MA and the MA moves. This is all math based indicators and not just the few I mentioned. You really have no edge with these indicators as well. They don't tell you when or where buyers or sellers may, can, or will step in. They don't in any way help you to limit the traders stop out. They can help you determine the direction of the market but a 10 year old can do that. They for sure don't help a person to understand why or how a market works. Can you make money with them? Yea sure maybe. But don't quit your day job. They simply are not a stand alone way to trade. The math based indicator argument is really broken and divided into two groups. One group that believes similar to me. And the other group swears by them. Since so far I haven't heard a compelling argument to resolve the obvious flaws. This is really a bad thing because this suggests that the traders that swear by them I doubt are making money and are only looking at them in the past or in back testing.

Do types of charts count and trading concepts or does it have to be P.O.S. math based indicators?

yea it bounced off the 1.5 IB but man you are killing me with this range.

I think we are going to have a day that is opposite then yesterday notes and bonds are strong and so is the spoo

no heads up on the house speaker speaking

yea I use Trade the news too. They dropped the ball today. I dont know of another resource out there

So is where they trap shorts and go higher? Starting to look trappy

bloomberg is too rich for my blood I got a resting order at 04s you can buy them if you want

what are you guys using for news sources?

I don't think you can purchase options on Forex pairs is what I meant in my previous post. I know you can purchase option on Futures currency pairs. So I guess you are buying 6E options to protect a losing Forex EUR/USD trade. That seriously smells like fail. Now there could be a chance that you can buy EUR/USD options. I wasn't aware you could do that. It would have to be proportionate to the cost in the Forex market. Meaning that if you were trading at 1/10 or 1/100 you need your option price to be the same. If you are using 6E options for an EUR/USD trade it doesn't make sense. It will cost a few thousand to cover the cost of a 6E option and to spend that kind of capital to protect a few hundred dollars in a Forex trade doesn't make sense. Just close the trade and admit you were wrong. This could be an even better strat for losing your money even better then adding to a loser.

I can't believe it but I mostly agree with the flying rat on this one. I guess politics make strange bed fellows. I think 3 or 4 solid semesters of Econ would clear up most of the arguments. The fact is that the government can spend and tax like this forever with out making any major changes. The problem is it would take about 15-25 years to level out. As far as the Greece and Spain thing that is turning out to be the biggest turning point in history for them. The biggest POSITIVE that is. Once these countries come into the 21s century they are poised to become powerhouses. Isn't that bad for America? NO not at all. It means even more cheep goods. Seriously, no one took econ when they went to college? I understand why people think and believe the way that they do. Its because the only sources of information available are ones that use logic and simplicity to explain outcomes of complex problems. I am not going to argue with the fact that the way the media makes it sound is not logical or factual. Just like its logical and simple to widen a busy road to release traffic congestion. The same forces and thinking are at work here. Econ Macro 1010 has the Law of Unintended Consequences and Comparative advantages in macro economies. Every one talks about stats but no one talks about the science behind money. Oh well I guess stats makes every english/art/history major a market pro.

Well I am totally relieved that this is a Forex strat and not a Futures strat. I honestly didn't know there were options for Forex. I know that there are options for Futures. What is the relative difference in price at the market between the two?

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Do you mean... Who uses those bull @#$^ volatility indicators that every one gets for free included in every major charting package like Ninja Trader? Or are you looking for people who look at ranges like Highs and lows and opens and closes and then try to place meaning to them? I use ranges but I don't use retarded indicators that the retail market uses and swears by. I am not sure if the definition is the same thing because the retail market clearly uses a different context to volatility then other traders. There are traders that think that the speed of a market is what determines the volatility. That is the tempo. This is not a huge concern because most of the time they go hand in hand. Often times the market will pick up speed and I will see some one say that the volatility went up. That could be true however its usually not. Chances are we are just trading in the same crummy range we have been for over the last 3 weeks. So speed or range? Retail or other? I am going with range in response to the question. Volatility Definition | Investopedia That is for all the QQ I am not sure by what you mean by "random movements" in the futures markets. This is yet again another misconception of the retail market. I can hear the retail voices coming out already so I better clarify. Yes its true NO ONE can predict what will happen next all the time every time. There I said it. I agree with what retail believes concerning that. However just because no one can predict all the time doesn't automatically mean the opposite. It doesn't mean that they are totally random. I am sure at least 1 person will QQ and attempt to dispute it. Now that is out of the way. What do I use? I use a 2 P&F for the bonds and notes, 4 for the ES, and 6 for the 6E. I also use 30 min standard Market Profile charts. Just from these types of charts you can see that I am mostly looking at ranges. I wouldn't say its the heart and soul of my operation but its inherently built in at its core. Besides the 30 min Market Profile charts I don't think I use or look at a time based chart. Who knows maybe ill switch to all volume profile charts. So all the charts I use are range charts. The over all range of the day is sometimes irrelevant to the amount of rotations in a given day. I find that no matter the range of the day that these markets still hold to the size of the rotations. Obviously large and major sudden news events will drive a market. Generally speaking scheduled news events will act as a catalyst to cause the market to do what it was already trying to do. A discussion in regards to using Volatility in trend prediction... I think that Volatility the way its defined so far is the biggest key in determining trend prediction. If nothing else you can get a huge heads up. Consider you are at a weekly low. First off you need to know what the range of the week is. Hence the weekly low. I wonder how many retail traders even know where the highs and lows are and the settles and closes are for the previous day and previous week. Why is it a low in the first place? Maybe because there was a big buyer down there. Are they there the next test down? Is the weekly low the top of another range? If it is the top of another range and if the buyer isn't there then rest assured that chances are you will go down and test the low of the previous range. Just knowing these details help you to know what to look for when you get to that area and just takes out so much of the randomness. Your mind already starts to look for buyers collecting shorts. When I see the shorts get collected I get long and once that rejection happens it leaves a mark on every ones chart. Sometimes a little battle at a specific price sets the whole tone for the whole week. :boxing:If you collect a few shorts at an important price and then shove it right back in their face and down their throats they will think twice about testing it again. It doesn't take a ton of them either. On the 6E its really about 300-500 and sometimes less in range and sometimes more. Today so far it was 305 and 346. Yesterdays V.A.L. is a place where tons of short term traders trade. Just like the example above... Price is coming down into an area that has meaning. You have to know that some one is going to have interest in buying there. Evey profile guy and his mom wants to get long at these prices. Is this the reason to get long too? NO!!! But when you see shorts getting collecting you have to know some one is going to get whacked. :puke: When they puked out it set the direction for a little while. It stayed in that direction till it hit the high of the day and sellers put a lid on it. It 1 time framed all the way up till the lid. Where did it turn around? Yesterdays high. Same situation in reverse. Longs got collected at the amount of 312, 346, and 600-700 farther down. Who gets long the previous days high on a day like today? Or better yet who gets long 7 ticks BEFORE yesterdays high? Tons of folks I guess. Guess its "part of the plan they created that fits them" folks that I see all over the place. At least they have a day job. :shrug: So hopefully that gives some explanation on a few ways I use what I consider to be volatility (ranges). I look for areas that I know will be battle areas and watch to see who is most likely going to win and try to get on the winning side.

WOW front page press on this one. Next big thing??? :rofl: Honestly I was expecting some sort of volume profile system or some sort of evolution away from the useless crap indicators I see all over the place. I expected some profound new exciting discovery into the very stuff that has worked for hundreds of years and rediscovered now. Why is this crap front page??? I am not as cynical as everyone else on how some one goes about selling a product as every one else is. I think if its a good product and you have a gorgeous half dressed super model advertising for it I don't look down on it. Sex sells and in the world of trading education this system sells. I will admit that from the previous posts there appears to be a bit of history here that I am not aware of so I can't really comment on that. I think I am a bit more cynical on the actual trading then every one else. I looked at everything I could because I knew after 5 minutes after I was directed here that it was going to be a total waste of time and I decided to write something about it. I couldn't watch the movie because the session already expired. I read the whole .pdf file and the front page of the websight. I could tell in about 5 minutes that this guy isn't a trader and most likely doesn't even trade. Why is this crap front page? Is it to mock these clowns? This isn't a serious topic is all I could come up with. Its not April 1st. This must be the trading equivalent to getting Rick Rolled or Trolololooloed. There wasn't even a ho ho ho ho or a derp derpity derp on the page. Oh well lets pretend its real just in case. Ok you have been trading for several years? How is that working out for you? Making tons in sim are ya? How is that back testing account going for ya? If what you are doing worked you could come out and say it worked, but you and I both know that this crap doesn't work. It wont work for you and it wont work for me and guess what it wont work for others as well. Why? Because this is not the way real traders trade. Maybe you don't know that so don't take this the wrong way. My opinion is to stop all payments and any future payments and discontinue any and all further and future business. And that goes for everyone. I would and will challenge any and all claims made on the actual profitability of this "system" and any like it. I would bet that there is no realized rate of return except from profits made from sales and NOT from actual trading. The fact is that everything works to some degree in back testing. I might go as far to say that everything works in back testing if you go back far enough. This is not the way real traders trade with large amounts of back testing. If you have been trading for years dump this because it doesn't give you any edge or give you anyway to really understand how markets work. I have been actually trading for years and I can give and objective opinion.

Sorry I had to wait till today to get an example REAL TIME so I could show you. So this is what was going on before the ES open. Let me decifer the bones/charts. The one on the far left is the bonds 30 year. The middle one is the 10 year notes and the right is the ES. The ES chart is a SPLIT chart so that means that the profile you see is the overnight action on the ES. The profile next to it yesterdays action. The bonds and notes are both RTH (Real Time Hours). So no over night action on them. The notes and bonds open at 6:20 my time and the ES opens at 7:30 my time as well. The "A" period on the bonds and notes is set for 10 mins not the usual 30 mins So the bonds/note opened and in the first 10 mins went up then down. You can CLEARLY see that the 30 years get into yesterdays range and the notes did not. Divergence!!! But which way? Hard to say but so far they are both going back up to the open. So far it looks like rejection off of yesterdays high and we are moving back up. Now look at the ES and you will notice that its trading near its over night highs. Well not close per say. You can see its at 1407 and the high is 1411. There is no gap in the ES signaling some rally. But the bonds might rally today. If they reject off yesterdays highs and go up all day then that means the ES will go... DOWN ALL DAY. I am willing to bet (and I did) that folks will come in JUST LOOKING AT THE ES and get long!!!!! If you just look at the ES it looks like rejection over night and there are folks going to get long first thing. The information they are looking at is old and the bonds are telling a different story. My guess was at the open we go higher. My plan was to start shorting every level I have up above till either the bonds look like they are going lower or till something sticks in the ES. Took me 2 shots. So far that black line at 11.50 is the HOD. My guess is down and we look below 1400. Watch for folks to get long there and crushed all day long. Does this mean we go down for the next few months?? Does this mean that Obama is a sure winner??? Does this mean that the Mayan calendar is correct and expect the word to end on the 21st of December??? Stay tuned. Just from what I see today my bias is to the down side. Here are my trades the blue one is a buy at 1/2 size. I didn't want to get caught with a full boat with all ores in the water. Second was a short and it got hit full size. The third was a winner. Moved over the box so you can see the volume. But the bottom of the red box is my entry and the top of the blue is my entry there. Look at what the notes are doing there. Dumping volume and getting ready to go up a bit. So that means all the folks in the ES that are on the blue side are about to be trapped. And there is alot of blue up there. Hope this gives a clearer picture of what I was talking about.