joshdance

You apparently don't get my point--no need to watch different markets (though some do find it helpful), no need to worry about your entry, or your exit, or anything. I suggested one thing: watch the market move ... your reply to me, and your post in this thread, are perfect examples of why people get so confused by so much crap. I didn't say it was EASY. But it doesn't have to be complex. This is my point, though ironically you repeated it only in your sarcasm.

Another brief IRT question N How do you so cleanly shade the poc and VAH and VAL? My VAH and VAL are shaded but the lines extend beyond the histogram bar to cover the full width of the profile...

The premise was that if 49 could not hold, that the move up from consolidation could be "false", but I thought for sure that if 48 was touched (below the poc) that the chances were even slimmer. Well, the market humbles those who think they know But boy do I ever wish I had held the second trade. I was underwater for most of the duration of the trade, yet I gave it room to work, then as soon as it showed some profit I was WAY too quick to get out, probably grateful that I would not have another loser. Mathematically stupid, emotionally sound at the time. Yesterday, I bought 43, just after it moved up from the bottom, and got out at 47.25 ... how's that for an early exit? (though not as bad as today's)

I did take the 49.50, and was stopped out at 48 -- then I re-entered long 50.25, but took it off at 52.25. I try to think of the first trade as not a "mistake" but just as a loss which happens. However, given the strength of the thrust down at 12:49, perhaps buying the IB high and putting the stop completely under the consolidation would have been a smarter move, though of course we have no way of knowing these things at the time. The real mistake was cutting the winner short at 52.25, when I could have moved my stop to 51.75, and then closed at 54, which was my original idea. Actually, my ORIGINAL trade had the target at 58, but as we come up to new highs I get quite nervous about losing the profit. As it stands, 58 is looking quite realistic at the moment.

Yes, sorry for distracting you from your trading Will "sign off" for now and talk later, good luck my friend

I will buy 49.50, stop 48 to 48.50 edit: as of this moment it looks strong enough that it may not come back that far, but if it does, I'm in

Thanks, that did the trick -- had it set to compute only 1 (current). Duh!

Yes but in my case, this does not move the profile-- tell you what, can you post a screen shot of your profile configuration? Mine is also set to 3 period like yours, but yours is acting like my other profiles which are already completed, whereas mine is acting like the "current" profile. I'm sure this makes no sense, but would you mind just posting a shot of the profile config? I would greatly appreciate it

here you go.. notice how the "Open" at the bottom and "PP" are overlapping the profile.

Is that a 3 minute chart N? An IRT question N: how do you get the current profile in IRT to display to the left of the little triangle which is the right edge boundary? Mine shows flush against the price column and overlaps with my reference line boundaries. For example, your "Open" is to the right of the profile, whereas mine is on top. Edit: on a trading note, I was also waiting to see reaction at IBH. Broke below, yet a bit hard to read overall for me at the moment.

To the OP: sorry to say, there is really nothing of value in this thread except for Negotiator's and wrbtrader's posts--I just read it and can't believe the ridiculousness. You don't need to go to a trading room, you don't need to waste 1 second of your life reading the "price/volume relationship" mumbo jumbo thread. You don't need to wait for RSI and MA crossovers and enter on a bar close. You don't need to read "Outliers" or any trading book (though there are some good ones out there). You sure as heck don't need to know when Goldman is buying or selling. What you DO need to do is open a chart or two, and just sit and watch the market move. Don't think about entering or being involved. Just look--how does it move? And, at any given point, would you rather be long, short, or flat? It's amazing how many times I have seen a chart and thought that I may be wrong on my trade but stupidly proceeded with it anyway. And how many times I had a great idea because of what I see happening, and don't take the trade. Sometimes we know what to do, and just do the opposite. Other times, we have no freaking clue what we are doing. If you have been trading a long time with not a good result, you may be stuck in indicator hell, or you have just seen so many different ways to approach trading that you have not stuck with one long enough to make it work. Or maybe you are using methods which do not require you to think, and you expect some "system" to give you buy and sell arrows that you could ask a 10 year old to trade and be successful. I don't know, but I echo wrb's advice to post some charts, post some of your trades, and let traders who actually traded that day explain why they did or did not take a particular trade, for example. Get some feedback, but ultimately YOU must decide how you want to trade. The knowledge of the markets may lie without, but the success must come from within you, because you must trade in a way that is congruent with YOU.

You obviously don't trade ES. Did you look at October? Friday and Monday being exceptions, most days for the past 2 weeks even, which has been consolidation relative to October, have provided very directional moves and not a lot of choppiness. You advised to switch to another instrument. If you are losing money trading, then stop trading and approach it with fresh eyes and a new plan, but switching from ES to another instrument will not solve the problem. You basically advised him to go bang his head on another wall. See if that will hurt less.

I actually tried a long at 52 for -3 ticks a few mins ago btw I think given the nature of how the day has gone so far (range), that it's to be expected that any push down will be countered... looks to me like consolidation before another try

Ah yes, well ETH and RTH profiles are similar but the RTH profile is as you mentioned almost a perfect normal distribution--I was looking at ETH profile.

Well it has a very nice bell shape though slightly skewed to the downside. What are you noticing N?

I also use delta, yes.

This is perhaps where our approach differs -- once we get to 1308, I don't give a rat's you-know-what about who did what at 1313. It's done, and analysis at this point is only an exercise in ego inflation. People do it all the time -- they call what happened AFTER it happened... well, it doesn't take a genius to do that. The question is, what do you do when price gets to 1313? How do you know it "peaks" as you say? Again, an actual chart is the only way here to really talk about this situation. I would need to see a chart as your scenario is a bit general and vague, but as I was reading it, when it gets to 1311-1310 with lower volume, I would be possibly looking to get long. After all, we're in what appears to be a strong up trend, we have broken to the upside after consolidation at 1311, and the sellers do not as of yet on the return to 1311 or 1310 appear to be pushing it hard. Classic low volume retracement on a strong up trend. If it breaks down from what you describe as "sideways" consolidation at 1311 and gets too far below, and THEN the volume picks up as it's going down, then I would consider a short. So much in analysis for me personally requires actually watching the charts, getting a feel for what's happening on the tape, being there in the moment as the day unfolds. I can't just sit down 3 hours after open and take a well-placed trade. I need to be there in the trenches to be able to read market sentiment, and even then it can be challenging. But like everyone else in the trading world, I can offer great hindsight analysis by looking at a chart with price and volume (intraday only, I don't do daily charts). Show me something, and I'll do my best.

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas

#4 -- if she's selling thousands below the current price, and price has moved against her, I'd say she's ineffective so far, so I would feel pretty darn good about taking a side against her. Of course it depends on what happens next, but she has not held the market so far. At some point she may feel just enough pain to bail and this would send the market quite well in my direction. NTM, my point is this. All of those factors that you mention here, such as others taking the other side of the order, size of the order, and so on, can be important. But that's why I watch volume, and note price's reaction. Why does it matter WHO is buying or selling? So, two big trading entities are trading with each other here. Knowing who is doing what helps me NONE. I can see just as clearly through my time and sales on the globex market, no external knowledge of identities or intention required. I think it can be quite helpful to put oneself in the shoes of a generic buyer or seller -- would I rather be long or short here? Who has the most to lose? Who will bail and fuel a move? That can be helpful--but chasing this rainbow with no end regarding smart money and big banks and all that crap has no benefit to me. If you can point to a place where I can see live trades you've taken using the information you posted here, then I'm open to changing my mind. This matters because GS can call you on the telephone and tell you all the trades they are taking as they happen, but unless you can reach some conclusion about market direction from that information, then it's useless. So, until you can demonstrate that you have a way to produce a trade idea from this as it happens (not an after-the-fact chart with theories attached to it, and conjecture on why so-and-so happened), then this will go under the seemingly infinite internet forums file of "just another lame trading theory."

Then how is it useful information, if you have no idea, by your own admission, as to the intent of the order? This is my whole point.

I only took one trade this day, a small 1 handle profit, but I did not buy the open because I looked left on my chart and saw that globex produced a massive move down -- this caused me to not buy; it did not require knowledge of what any "800 pounders" were doing. I saw clearly the selling on the tape and did not want to step in front of it. Do you know what the S&P futures pit volume is in a day? Seriously, just take a guess. OK I'll just go ahead and tell you. Less than 10,000. Globex volume for the emini contract is 2,500,000 on the low end. You think a few hundred contracts traded in the dead S&P pit in Chicago did anything to the market? Yes, the big S&P contract is worth 5x as much as the emini. But the volume per day is typically about 300x less. Open outcry trading is dead. Regarding the reversal at 1236, there was very little market buying at that level. If you watched the action as it happened, it was quite quiet at that point--not a whole lot of selling interest, what you would expect following such a massive selloff the night before. The buying did not come in until news if I recall correctly, but it was pretty weak at the bottom there. I'm talking about the ES contract. Finally, in the insignificant S&P pit, for every 800 pounder who places a huge order, there's another 1000 pounder taking the other side. My point is not that the arrows are random. My point is that following the arrows is not a reliable way to make money. You and many others seem infatuated with what the "smart money" and "big boys" are doing. Attempting to identify groups of traders in the market and place labels on them will only distract you in my humble opinion. When you see a big 500 lot print on the tape on ES, there are two VERY big entities who just took opposing positions. The fact that an entity has the millions of dollars of margin required to place such a large trade means nothing about that entity's "correctness" in the direction the market will move next. If for no other reason, you have no idea WHY they placed the trade. Maybe it's a hedge against a larger position, or an order they must fill for a large client, or maybe it's because they got bored and wanted to push price by a tick. You don't even know if the goal was to "make money" on that trade. You're attempting to assign intentions to a trade when you have no basis for doing so, and it's a wild goose chase.

Where were the trades as they were posted in real time? What is "TS NET"?

N, missed your daily commentary this morning, I guess you are still not feeling well. Hope you are feeling a little better as noon rolls around my friend! Get better soon!

The arrows look about as random as they come. There are arrows everywhere, so of course there are arrows at the reversal points. I wouldn't plot these arrows on my chart in real time for any reason as they would only distract me.

So far your 41.50 test worked -- was that just because it was the lowest volume node on the long term profile? My vote if we do go up is for significant resistance at 59-60 again