joshdance

Just bought 59.75, so far a good reaction off of the shown local POC. Good volume support and mini double bottom low at 59.25. It coincides with an SPX trendline as well that many may be watching, though that's only secondary confluence.

Big order flow shift about 2 mins ago.. And attached is a cash 30m chart, showing good location for a buy if current activity supports it. Don't know if it will continue, certainly needs to breach 65 and into 69s with aggressiveness to have a shot at getting above 71s. Depends on news coming up here of course.

Not showing any participation from OTF yet ... opened within range and pivoting around y-low right now. The market may need to wait for the ISM number at 10am.

Overnight the market has already tested 60.50, which as your chart shows is a nice low volume area on the lower end of this upper balance area, which happens to be resembling a nice bell. The market has bought this, but a test lower again in RTH may happen and from there who knows.

Certainly a viable strategy BH, and no doubt what many people do. I did it on Friday, but it was because I had to leave the house, and it missed my stop by one tick and turned out to be a good one, but quite lucky really. The big risk here is of course, that if you're way wrong, and you wind up getting totally run over by fading what turns out to be a strong move. Using simple metrics, I think it's possible to have a reasonable guess as to the range and behavior for the day, before the open, or very early into the session. Nothing fancy, just basic stuff that's out there available. I usually have a pretty decent idea of what is likely; in other words, given the criteria I look at, it's pretty probable that the market will stay within a certain range, or will trend throughout the rest of the day, or whatever else. Should I expect 10 handles on this trade, or should I get out with 3 and run?, for example. The danger with what you mention above is that if I'm wrong, it could be a monstrous loss. That's the problem with these kinds of things: the market will once in a while do the very unexpected, go further than anyone thinks it can, and the like, so that no one is allowed to ever have a risk free guess. For example, people who have kept thinking that the rally since early October is way overextended and have been shorting into it... the market must go on improbable runs every so often so that no one can ever reliably do Martingale, for example. I have found that when I have a good idea about the low or high, that in most cases I will get about the same price, or even price improvement, when I wait for others to set the pace and then follow, versus when I just put the order in and choose to take the role of an early adopter. Sometimes by being an early adopter (read: top and bottom picker) I will gain an entry price which is never touched again and the market just goes. But the amount I make doing that is probably less than the amount I have lost by doing the same thing.

Let's state the obvious: of course some people buy the low tick and sell the high tick; somebody has to right? So, it's not only possible, but necessary by definition. However, many others try in vain, and fail. And, the ones who happen to do it do not consistently do it. 1 out of 100 do it, but no one does it consistently (with a 65% accuracy rate, as you claim). Now, if the market is in one-timeframe mode it can be quite clear within a tick or two when a retracement will either succeed or fail. You said earlier that you're talking about intraday scalping. Perhaps you could show a chart or just give an example of a trade you took this past week; I don't know what instrument you trade, or what your target is per trade, or anything; maybe you're shooting for 3 ticks, and saying you'll take no heat, in which case it would very much change my perspective on what you're talking about. Nothing to chill here I'm afraid; I'm just pointing out that the path to failure in trading, if one does not have extremely high capital to actually hold the market, is guessing tops and bottoms. Once in a while it will work, but a much more sound strategy is to follow those who make the tops and bottoms. I don't know what "profitable heh?" means, but I assume you mean that I'm not profitable because I'm saying it can't be done consistently. I don't think there's a correlation there, but all I can say is, post the tick where the market will make its move at least one minute in advance, 3 times out of 5, and you'll be proven correct. Otherwise, you're yet another forum guy who has said he can predict the future, but can strangely not prove it. There are enough of those already here.

For every person who sells the high tick or buys the low tick, there are 100 others who try and fail. And the one who succeeds is probably just another losing guesser the next day. Sell the "smart money" crap to the gullibles who think that the future can so easily be predicted.

Impossible, and the perpetual loser's quest, to determine reversals in advance, and the consistent promise of the trading vendor, to.provide the secret answer.

What is volfix? .....

Look where the market struggled to break through... SPX 2011 high, almost to the penny Market has been rotating around this point all week, and a hold and new highs could really put an exclamation mark on this rally and show the market's intention of where it wants to go. Just one possibility.

I would never take an entry at a MP-defined VAL or VAH ... too arbitrary of a calculation IMO. Besides, my chart says 69.00 is the VAL, and 68.25 is the open, so only 3 ticks difference anyway. 68.25 was the open, and was breached slightly for about 5 minutes during the news release at 10, and 68 was the area where the market auctioned yesterday late to find buyers below value before the push into the close. So, all those things combined, I'd say 68 is a logical place for the market to find buyers. I think the fact that the market gave 68 significance ALL DAY yesterday is important, not just that it opened there. Check out the SPX chart as well for yesterday..

Hmm, sounds a lot like this: But if you were to profile one minute bars like I did just a second ago, you will find that the distributions based on just averaging like you did will be far enough off that you will probably not want to use it. One idea is give less weight to the high and low tick of the bars. I know that estimation can be done because I have software that profiles using one minute data (no tick data), and supposedly is about 95% accurate to the tick data. But no doubt it's being calculated using well-tested data, which you do not have access to. Particularly since you are talking about comparing this with TPOs, I don't see the point of this... what did you hope to find again, if volume was high in an area, and a time-based profile showed that it was not there for a long time? You can get this same data much more easily by looking at a simple volume histogram, and look for high volume per time bar, no need to calculate an inaccurate volume profile and then do a difference with a market profile. Why not just get tick data? MetaTrader must be the most bare bones software out there, and I understand the desire to get stuff cheap, but why not just get the tools you need? You are working on a project which can only yield inaccurate output. I'm not trying to burst your bubble, but just being real as to what you can expect. If you go through with this, I'll be happy to post an actual volume profile so you can compare yours for accuracy.

Thanks steve -- I do not usually look at the "value area" as it's typically calculated and my VAH for yesterday is a bit above that, so I thought maybe you were using some other metric for that.

Steve, in your chart posted, I count 28 ticks of shaded blue 'supply and demand nodes' and 25 ticks not shaded. With so many places to potentially buy and sell, doesn't that get confusing? Also, you said that the market tested "value" at 71.25 just after the open-- what is this based on?

Hmm, first post on this forum and you're plugging a vendor. But I digress. That's just it -- it doesn't signify that at all. It only tells you that within a predefined time frame (say, from 10:00 to 10:15), that the market traded down, and then at 10:15 it is basically trading at the same price it was at 10:00. Now, you may attach some interpretation to it, that selling has reached its end, or that buying is pouring in, but that of course does not make it so. I will plug my thread I started called "The Close of a Bar is Meaningless" -- search TL for it if you'd like, where members discuss items related to opening and closing prices of intraday bars, and this certainly affects how you view your candlesticks. This is a very good attitude to have -- question everything you hear, especially from someone selling something. I think so, absolutely.

FWIW, Bernanke wasn't given the floor until at least 10 or 15 minutes after 10am, if I recall... had to listen to two senators get a jab or two in first. By the time Bernanke opened his mouth, the market had already sold off from the high print. What really did it was the nasdaq. Dow opens above 13K, buy buy buy--but the target was 3K on the nasdaq... 3000.11 printed, and immediately it was down from there. No coincidence.

Steve, did you miss post 1906 above? No answer required just asking. For those interested, we are at 14.25 range, with a 20d median of 9.75, and we are 45% above 20d median volume at this point in the day. Premarket volume of about 340K was a good indicator of the potential for a higher volume day today.

Thanks N -- I already have a good econ calendar I use, so those above will not give me anything I don't already have. I'm not looking for a stock calendar, but rather significant events to place on my own calendar. Each day I will pull up the calendar as I want to know the number after it comes out anyway; but I'm looking for significant, monthly/quarterly type of news. For example, I have printed and on my wall a monthly view, and I have next week's rollover and NFP, and the following week's fed day, and 4x opex Friday. Thanks for the suggestion about ECB events, will consider some of those for the calendar.

What time based pivot gave 64.50 significance? I also bought 65.50, and got out on the news jump at 70.50.

I'm working on my 2012 trading calendar, and I would like to put the major news releases on a monthly view so that I can print each month. As far as economic reports go, the ones that come to mind that are the most important are: *NFP (next March 9) *FOMC statement (next on March 13) * Advance GDP (next April 27) <-- not really sure about this, anyone? Though I've traded through a few, should I include FOMC meeting minutes, or the quarterly "Economic Projection" by the fed (next on Mar 13 along with the statement)? Also, advance GDP is the earliest GDP release, and is ahead of the prelim GDP, so that's why I thought perhaps the Advance GDP would be the best GDP number to look at, and of course the final GDP is the least shocking number. I will also likely include Jackson Hole which is in August. Of course I do not wish to include consumer confidence, PPI, weekly unemployment claims, etc., to a calendar which contains mostly monthly or less often events. To be clear of course, I will have the daily reports at hand so I know when they are, but I'm looking for the potential "game changer" kind of reports such as fed days and NFP days. So am I missing anything noteworthy?

I see where you're coming from now, I think. We could define "liquidity" generally as limit orders and market orders resting above and below the market, also orders that are not resting on the book for a long time that are placed quickly. It could be the case that a tick below the low of the day, there were many buy limit orders that were not filled. In this case, there was quite a lot of available liquidity; perhaps more than at any other price in the vicinity. However, there were not enough sell market orders to push the market there, so in that sense there is a lack of liquidity. I use the auction model generally; that is, the market auctions to where the most volume business (volume) can be facilitated. This generally matches what you are saying, I think. Would you agree with the above, generally speaking?

:hmmmm: ...............

Have not tried, but using Chrome, and it has always worked before now...

Just tried it with a completely different site and image, and still same result.

Acceptance of higher prices..