bobajob

I would like to plot charts using multiple profiles in a day - with 1 minute data - does anyone know if there is software out there to do this? I have ninja trader with opentick feed currently. I have asked if fin-alg has this functionality but it doesn't. I have looked into programming this in excel or ninja-trader but both are a nightmare for my lazy programming skills. Regards, Nic

Hi guys thanks for the feedback - I've actually got two different versions of my software now. The most refined version uses buttons to automate the process, but it is a learning tool. Therefore it does not use realtime data. The program essentially allows you to replay the day to see how the profile is developing. The idea is that you can teach yourself to recognise patterns in the market. It is really trying to give you years of market experience in a very short time. I have had some success with this but it seems my trades are very short term - usually involving trading at the extreme of a bell distribution and closing the trade at the centre of the distribution. This kind of trade happens low risk over and over again in a day. I was hoping to sell that spreedsheet for a very small price - but I would be happy for a few people to try it out. Therefore if you PM me I will send a few copies out - provided i get some feedback. The next version is my realtime one. As I have mentioned previously my version updates from Quote.com. The reason the one you guys have doesn't is that it will access my account and obviously I can't send that out to people. I love that you guys are modding it to do other things - that's great. I have previously done implementations with volume but can't for the life of my get reliable volume signals for trading. If someone could explain some I would be grateful. Regards

Nice one milind_pol - I'll use that in my VBA script

Right - in quote.com you can export data to webpage. If you do this you get a webpage full of data. Turns out that the webpage is always there at the same address -it just updates. So you can go into any excel spreedsheet and go to Data - Import External data - new web query. Then type or copy the address of this webpage with the data. You can then select the data from the page that you wan to import. It will take a few seconds and then appear in the sheet. Then you can refer to this data for your own purposes. You do have to update the sheet yourself - although I'm sure with VBA you can write a script to do this. I haven't myself yet but I will soon. I would give you mine but it is linked to my quote.com account for which I pay for, so I'm not giving that away.

I look forward to it Bramble

well, well The Bramble - of Trade2Win shame. Still don't know what happened there -just saw you were struck off the register. I seem to remember you had some enlightening ideas - at least to me!

As I said in my post you can get a real-time import of data into excel from a web page - this is how I do my real-time charts

Agora - thanks for the kind words - it's funny how we all have our own methods that we like to work with. I am not quite sure how to DDE with another program. The way I update is to reference a web page from excel. With Quote.com you can access a web page of current data. I update in excel from that address which does the trick. The formatting is a bit of a pain though. I am currently working on improving that. Obviously this technique only works for data stored as a webpage though. I have a book about accessing dynamic data exchanges to create your own trading software - even for automated trading - but it's pretty intense. Best Regards, Boba

As I've put in previous post -I just look at price in the form of shorter time-frame profiles. This shows when an unfair area is rejected and time to take the trade. Takes time to develop though.

Ok I will try and answer you lengthy questions. First point - when I referred to value I meant the POC not 70% value area. I consider this the most important price. I mean sell above the most traded area and buy below this level. Next point - you have to trade where you want not where the market tells you. So you want to gain an advantage - if price develops a large volume at a certain level you want to sell above that level - obvious stuff. This way you have your edge. Never break this simple rule and sell below the POC. But this is only true if price stays in its developing bell curve. Once price moves out of this bell curve you want to go with the move. But if price retraces to the POC you may be able to get the trade in a more advantageous price. Once again trading where you want not just jumping in. The example on page 1 of the pdf - the market finally breaks down towards the end of the day - so the curve has been broken. The best place to sell the market is in the A period in the penultimate half hour - but you do get other opportunities in E period and even F for less gains. This price is techncally below value for the day but a new curve is developing - right? My next point - all comments are made after I did my learning/trading - they are in hinesight, they help me see what I should have done. If I see the same messages repeated maybe they will become second nature. Next point comparing trades day 1 and 3 - there are very little differences at the beginning of the day - right? They both open slightly below the POC so could show weakness. Don't, here, confuse my comments on what I should have done with what I actually did. On both days I shorted the market to make profits. To me that is because, as I said, the days looked the same. I saw where the market stalled and sold the reversal. However, the difference with day 3 is that I bought the market when it moved lower - as it showed strength that was not shown in day 1. We broke out of the distrubution and so the odds were with us that there would be support under that level. On day 3 by the end of the day we have 3 distributions and I bought at the point of distribution 1. The whole point of my method is just to look for bell curve distributions and trade off acceptance or rejection of these previously developed areas. The market tends to get trapped into distributions that it was currently in - a bit like an old memory - maybe the same traders trade in those old locations - not sure. The above explanation of day 1 and 3 should explain what I mean when I say I cannot do the break trade. What I mean is that on day 3 the market broke higher. Most of the profit was in the directional move higher - yet my method only allowed me to short the reversal - luckily it was an OK move down - but if there was increased strength I would have been stopped - right? Luckily the market always rotates a bit every day - so there is always a little profit in fading a directional move. Hope this clarified a bit.

MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service The pdf attached has 4 days trading - not consecutive. Lets start with page 1: So the chart shows the price on the left, it's the ES by the way - 2004 in January. Then there are 4 profiles of the previous days. On the right are 5 minute bars in a profile. They are gradually updated as the page goes to the right. Each profile is a half hour addition. I use this to see if I can identify patterns. I will share some features of what I look for here. The previous day had touched the highs of a few days previously but could not trade higher and in fact built a balance area below these highs creating a relative tail. Notice that a tail should not be just single print TPOs. So the market on our day opens up below the high volume area. Another point to weakness. So you would think that we are looking to short the market - ideally at the highs that could not be breached, but it might not get that high of course. So next I look at how the day starts to develop. That means I tend not to look for trades early in the day, there is not enough profile to base my decisions on. The main point to remember with all these trades is always to buy below value and sell above value - unless the distribution has been broken - in that event you can very often trade at the POC as this becomes the final tipping point that starts a trend move. On this day you can see I marked a short trade in the second peroid (the shaded area). I would set a stop for this very close to my trade (1 point in the ES). This is because I would rather reassess the market and get in again if need be. My studies show that this creates consistent profits for me. You can see how the market fattens at the lower area - this is just asking for the market to test lower. It is a sight that I don't think you see often as a profile trader. The market does however trade higher. I place another short because this is such a golden opportunity to short the market. This time I take profits on my first trade when the market heads back towards the POC - insurance if all goes wrong - remember prediction is only guessing at the end of the day. The dashed lines show the extremes of that period of trading and help me identify ideal trade location after the day is over. The market continues to fatten and then breaks as expected. The next problem is where to liquidate the short. Watch the previous distrubution areas for this. With hinesight we can all see where I should have liquidated - however I got a bit greedy. The market started to develop so I had to take a lower profit. This is why reviewing the day is so important - it matches what you did with what you should have done. So that day would have made 8 points without commission. No bad. The other days should be self-explanatory given my notes - The first trade was stopped out and the next was a small profit. You may see that my trading at the moment catches reversals well - but the break trade is still a problem. I must work on that as it will offer the most profit in the end. I hope this helps a bit and I am happy to explain any other features of what I uploaded.

I'm certainly not a pro - but I think that certainly the stuff in the book was just confirming my own thoughts and experience. I've just been relooking at the book and have to say I'm probably being harsh. It does give some great things to start looking at with profiles. The best way to learn to trade I have found is to take this book and the first and a few other bits of input - from myself and maybe somebody else - and to just look at how the market develops every day. As I said in a previous post I want to put together a manual to describe this process - specifically with the MP process in mind. I will however post a few pdfs showing my views on market development.

Humberto - I am not looking to swing trade - the trades I take - (not actual trades at this stage I must add - just theory) are all day trades. I am trying to put together a manual of my trading techniques. Unfortunately I feel I may have to ask a small price for this info - I have put alot of effort into it - and I will bundle it with an automated version of my MP learning tool. That is nowhere near ready yet however. I will post a pdfs of a few charts that highlight how you can trade without a value area. The main point is that the entire bell curve is either an acceptance level or it is rejected - that is about as specific as MP can get. I believe if you try to employ the 70% rule you will come unstuck. My opinion of course. You have to look for very high probability trades. You may want to look for a guy called Frank Butera at BalanceTrader. He has a video course that is quick cheap all things considered. I was a little disappointed at first with the depth of the course but with retrospect I think his actually focusses on the inportant points of MP and discards the esoteric. Take a look. It is worth it.

OK TinGull I agree - all my point was is that you probably had to change how you thought by your own trading - not because it was written in the book. But I suppose that is good for more inexperienced traders with MP

Insightful stuff PivotProfiler - more of the same if you could

Watching value area movement is fine in a trend but pretty useless in a choppy market. What specific information did you get from this that you didn't get from the first book. Sorry to go on but it reflects my frustration of the book. Give me just one concrete thing. If the main point of the book is to think of MP in a more generic form than a rule based system than that should be clear after trying to trade with MP.

I have the VSA book. It is good. The problem is that the methods need a few more examples for me to understand them. Would be really good if someone could just walk through a few more charts with thoughts on VSA methods.

i'm just having a laugh with ya dalby - problem with forums is you can't get over subtle points. No really no offence just kidding. Pivots work because people watch them - I understand that.

I don't care what you say though - adding the high low and close and dividing by 3 is arbitrary!

To clear this all up I will retract the statement - pivot points are arbitrary. Sorry for the offence.

by the way ryker - i'd be interested in your sheet too - it looks very impressive

Ok dalby - first to your point - you're right maybe I should keep my trap shut with regard to pivots - but I must add that I give no credence to the 70% value area either. Go with what you know. That is why - gomes - you will not find any value area on my chart. Plus they are a nightmare do mechanically. Also gomes the first sheet is just data, that's it there should be nothing else. In my sheet that will update from quote.com - I have to add that ryker's sheet looks far better than mine in plotting MP. My sheet is for MP training offline and can be used to determine how the trading day is developing. I have used it for pattern recognition of MP instead of bar charts.

Guys - just out of interest. Which parts of M in P did you find so enlightening. I have to say that after waiting for it I was very disappointed. I have been looking at MP for a number of years. I really wanted there to be something concrete that I could incorporate into my work. Unfortunatley I found that it did not build on the previous work, in fact it was a shadow of the previous work. Could you help me out with the good bits - maybe I just missed them?

Out of interest for all of you to be converted from pivot points to Market Profile I have attached a file showing the high and the low only of each day. The red lines on the left side show the pivot levels. The market on the left are the same days as on the right, but on the right they are market profile. You can clearly see the support and resistance at work instead of the arbitrary pivot numbers. Regards MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

small point lads - there is a slight error in the code - you will have to download it again I'm afraid. the small problem is that the bottom tick of the 5 minute profile did not show. I have corrected this. MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service Obviously if you want help on how to use this tool just give me a shout. I'm glad it's helpful. Regards