Tasuki

...and you guys are successful traders? However can you trade with this sort of music scrambling your neurons? If you want some good music to trade by, check out the Galant style of 18th century baroque. Definitely more soothing on the nerves and MUCH easier to trade by than Korn, ACDC, David Bowie and their ilk.

BG, If you want to learn about intermarket dynamics, the best source I know is John Murphy's nightly emails. He is the master of intermarket analysis, including bonds. It ain't cheap, but it's worth every penny---I've been subscribing for several years--wouldn't face the trading day without his wisdom. Hope this helps, Taz

My advice can be reduced to one word: Don't. The coding of their software is antiquated, hogs huge amounts of computer resources. Their signals look really excellent in hindsight, but from the vantagepoint of the hard right edge, they're not very good at all....and they're often late. Finally, you can learn VSA from Traders Lab, then you won't need their overpriced buggy software. You'll be able to see the signals yourself, and that is ALWAYS better than the software. Even their former spokesperson Todd used to admit that fact (maybe that's part of the reason Gavin threw him out). Hope this helps. Taz

hanz, might have something to do with your datafeed for Ninjatrader.

Just had a quick look at the two pdf files. They seem pretty accurate to me. Doesn't surprise me that Bill Wolfe, whose trying to parlay a pattern into a career, would say they're inaccurate--it's in his economic self-interest to say so. Well, it would make for an interesting discussion if someone can find some mistake in Linda's work. If you do, please post it!

Ah yes, I see what you mean. This is the ETA line, and as Waveslider has correctly pointed out much earlier in this thread, that line doesn't always work out. In fact, my experience is that one should mostly ignore it. Perhaps it is necessary for a proper "Wolfe" wave---since Bill Wolfe discovered it I guess he can make any rules he likes, but I think the rules for the psychology of the pattern suggest that one should be a little flexible with the construction of the wave, Wolfe or not.

OAC, please explain for us what you mean by "converge". Thanks, Taz

Just a quick chart of QQQQ. Today's action looks like "no demand" to me. Taz

Here's another view of Waveslider's daily ES chart. The only thing I've added is a notation that the test of the upper median line was done with what Tim Morge calls "good separation". In other words, price touched that line and then strongly recoiled from it. In pitchfork terms, this strengthens the belief that the median line was being "respected". Unfortunately, we've now come up to that upper line a second time, and price has not rejected it as fast as it did the first time. This is not so good for the bearish case. If this AP is going to hold, we're going to need to see price pull back from this upper line fairly quickly. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Wave, I can't see the pitchfork. Could you redraw with just the AP? Thanks, Taz

Wave, thanks for the link. Looks a little overwhelming, but definitely cool.

januson, if you need convincing, then investigate the work of Timothy Morge, and doubt no longer. Morge has TONS of free stuff on the web. Check it out.

Sad to say, my efforts to correct Tradestation's egregious errors in this regard have gone completely unheeded (I've been harassing them for years). As it turns out, there are different calculations that data providers use to transition the data from an old contract to the new contract, and Tradestation, in its infinite stupidity, has chosen a calculation that almost nobody else uses. As a result, their continuous contract price data, at least for agriculturals, is almost useless. I would strongly advise against using the @c.c price data. Instead, use the symbol for the month you're trading, which in this case is cn08, I gather. Better yet, don't trade agriculturals with Tradestation. The continuous contracts for oil and bonds I've also found to be wildly inaccurate, especially as you get into the weekly and monthly data. Strangely, the continuous contracts for the emini index futures (e.g. @ES, @ER2, @NQ, etc.) are NOT inaccurate. If you had been paying attention to Tradestation World about a year or two ago, there was one instance when a contract in the emini index futures rolled over and Tradestation's continuous contract data was inaccurate---there was a veritable firestorm of protest on TSWorld, and TS wisely corrected the problem and it's never happened again. Why on earth do they screw up so badly with less-frequently traded commodiites? Precisely because they are less frequently traded, and nobody raises a stink (nobody but me, that is). Where can you get accurate data for agriculturals, bonds, oil, etc.? Well, the best source is ESignal, but there are other data providers. If you're swing trading and you don't need intraday charts, the following link may help: http://futures.tradingcharts.com/menu.html Hope this helps, Taz

bubba, thanks, looks interesting. Two questions: 1) What's the code? 2) What's the ftp.tradestation site? Never heard of it! (How do you get to it?) Thanks, Taz

Folks, I just tried to use Tradestation's new matrix with its long-awaited sim-trading. My advice--don't touch it with a ten foot pole. Reasons: 1) the buttons for buy/sell/OSO/OCO work SOMETIMES. Obviously unacceptable. Twice I was in a trade and clicked the "sell market" button, and it just failed to work. I was on the phone at the time with Tradestation tech support, and they couldn't provide any explanation. Actually, I think I can---Tradestation has overbuilt the matrix, and the coding for it is antiquated and convoluted, making it prone to errors. 2) The OSO function failed to work one time out of three. Obviously unacceptable. 3) The Trademanager window turned strange colors for no reason. At one point, the entire window turned magenta. TS tech help could not explain. Their only answer was to say that the window had become corrupted and told me to delete that window and create a fresh one. That was also their answer for the errors in the matrix. 4) This one is unbelievable, but it happened while I was talking to TS techs---the matrix put me in a live trade in the symbol SPY when I was supposed to be in "sim" mode and, unbelievably, I hadn't even touched the matrix. I think I've figured this one out as well---the new matrix is so slow that the instructions I was following from the TS techs were stored in the computer and executed several minutes later. 5) This brings me to another problem---the new matrix, with its sim feature, is so complex that it slows down your entire computer, even moreso that it did before. I've got a screaming fast computer, but admittedly I have several dozen charts in multiple workspaces. Prior to the new build, TS 8.3, build 1631, I noticed a tiny amount of slowing in very fast markets, but now the slowing has quadrupled. Actually, it's probably more like ten times slower. Altogether, I recommend using Tradestation for charting, which is (IMHO) the best in the business, but I'd strongly recommend placing your trades elsewhere. Like so many people on TradersLab, I recommend Infinity brokerage and their Infinity AT platform. Fast, reliable, elegantly simple.

Froggy, FOREX refers to the foreign exchange currency markets, some of which have futures contracts derived from them. For example, the FOREX symbol for the Eurodollar vs the US Dollar is EURUSD, and its futures derivative is ECM08 (for the current front month futures contract). Taz

Well, I got the idea of trying to trade the SPY because it follows the ES almost tick for tick. The patterns on the charts are identical. The reason for trading the SPY rather than the ES is because it moves in smaller increments, so you can risk less if you are pathologically risk-averse, as I seem to be. So, why would the SPY be harder to trade than the ES?

Wave. that was a beauty. Interesting choice for point 1. I'm starting to trade the SPY now, so that was very helpful.

cute quote from Steve Nison on one of his training videos: "The Japanese have a saying, 'Fear does not ride out on a donkey.'"

I will thank you to please keep the conversation civil. If you cannot do that, then please post elsewhere.

DB, actually, the answer is yes, they matter alot, at least to the style of trading that I'm trying to develop. The idea is to understand, as clearly as possible, the reason for the market's move in a direction. I can only speak for myself, but I was allowing myself to be seduced by the idea of sinister "smart money" that was out to get me (the "retail trader"). Listen to Joel Pozen or Tom Williams or Todd Krueger if you find that idea far-fetched. These guys really believe that the big operators are intentionally moving the markets to outwit the retail trader. If you follow this notion too closely, as I was doing, then you start to ascribe every market move to professionals whose motives you can only guess at. Fortunately, there are much better explanations. At any turning point in the market, you can observe the forces of fear and greed and weigh their relative strength by looking at support and resistance. You can also assess the central notion of "fair value" as described in the philosophy of Market Profile. By carefully weighing in your mind each of these forces, you can get a much clearer picture of where the market is likely headed than if you indulge in the paranoid fantasy of "smart money" that is supposedly manipulating the markets. Frankly, I think this notion is actually detrimental to a trader's mental edge.

Soultrader, I guess what I'm objecting to with VSA is the tendency to attribute every little move to the "smart money". Number One, I don't think they're so smart---ever seen the balance sheets of mutual fund companies? The majority of them suck, and they manage multi-billions of dollars every year. Secondly, I don't think they're manipulating every move. For example, Todd Krueger was asked about the No Demand bar on the SPX the day before Christmas. He said categorically that the "smart money" is always active in the markets. Well, folks, I beg to differ. My Dad's office was on Rector Street, one block from Wall Street, and when I was growing up I got a good look at what the rich folks of Wall Street were doing the day before Christmas---getting smashed, that's what. In a recent Pozen video, he said that the specialists were manipulating the overnight markets. No, folks, wrong again. The specialists at the NYSE are sound asleep in Long Island during the overnight markets. So, I question this obsession with "smart money". The simple fact is, they are NOT responsible for every market move. Given the fact that the rich players are trading against each other more than they are trading against retail traders, I doubt they are actually responsible for any of the signals that VSA ascribes to them. With their efforts to outflank each other to get an edge in this market or that, the notion that they act as a single force to move the markets is preposterous, when you sit down and really think it through. And make no mistake, with the biggest, most liquid markets, the ONLY way they could sway the entire market is if they acted as one block to move the market up or down. Individually, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch or even Blackstone could not move the entire S&P. OK, so it did happen once (Long Term Capital Management), and what a scandal that turned out to be. And yes, in ages gone by, the likes of JP Morgan could indeed sway the whole NYSE, but those days are LONG gone. No one player has enough money to manipulate an entire exchange like the NYSE. So, this whole notion of the "smart money" banding together to screw the retail traders is utter nonsense. What I'm proposing is that there is alternate explanation for every VSA signal. For example, let's think about the Upthrust. VSA proponents would have you believe that the smart money is intentionally driving up the price to catch stops and "wrongfoot" the public, as Tom Williams would say. If we were talking about an individual stock, controlled by an individual specialist on the NYSE, then yes, this is very likely the case. In fact, those who know specialists (e.g. Robert Tharp) say that this happens every day (Robert's told me as much). However, when you see an upthrust on the $SPX, do you suppose that the specialists for 500 stocks all got together in a massive collusion to make that upthrust? If you've ever seen the floor of the NYSE you'd realize how utterly impossible that would be. No, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to find another explanation for upthrusts on the S&P, the Dow, the Compx, and every other index (or their derivative futures contracts). So, what causes on upthrusts on the indexes or derivative futures markets based on them? Quite simply, it is the psychology of fear and greed. The breakout traders got greedy and thought the price would continue higher, but they ignored the sellers who were afraid that they'd miss their opportunity to sell at an improved price, and obviously (because we got an upthrust) the sellers swamped the breakout buyers. Simple as that. No conspiracy necessary. Simple market psychology. I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that you could find equally simple (and logical) explanations for every VSA signal that we've been taught. So, do I think manipulation doesn't exist? Yes, it certainly does exist in individual markets---in stocks controlled by an individual specialist as I mentioned above, and in commodities such as the grains which can be manipulated by huge buyers like Cargill or General Foods. But for most other markets, the manipulation that we've been taught in VSA is simply not possible without serious collusion by the major trading houses, all of whom are competing with each other. Rather than resorting to concepts like "smart money" to explain Upthrusts, No Demad, etc. etc., the psychology of the auction process is a much more cogent argument.

I've been thinking about two of the major threads on Traders Lab---VSA and MP, and it occurs to me that they rely on contradictory principles. If you believe VSA, the market is manipulated by the "professionals", "specialists", the "big money." Several contributors to the VSA thread have even opined that, if you get right down to it, this manipulation means that the markets are not a true auction, because it s rigged. Some voices, such as Richard Ney, Joel Pozen and others, are more strident in their opinions than others, but the fundamental philosophy of VSA is that the big players drag the price up and down to suit their needs. This philosophy is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Market Profile, whose principles rely on the notion of a fair, two-sided auctioning process. If that process is not fair, if the auction is rigged, then Market Profile strategies would not work. The whole notion of "value" would be a sham if it were rigged by professionals who would be manipulating value to suit their interests. Let's take a single example to illustrate the two differeing approaches to the market. In a recent video with Joel Pozen, he showed a downtrend with a slight retracement in the middle. In other words,the market went down, then rallied slightly, then went down again. Joel insisted that the slight uptrend was created, manufactured, by the specialists in order to fool the masses into going long, so that the specialists could take out even more people's stops and create another, deeper downtrend. Frankly, I found this conspiracy theory too damn far-fetched for my liking. so I was delighted when I read Dalton's explanation of the same phenomenon (Markets in Profile, p. 155). He simply said that the slight uptrend was caused by "weak sellers" who covered their positions after they had realized a small profit from the initial downtrend. Personally, I find this explanation far more satisfying, not to mention plausible. In short, the more I study Market Profile, and the mechanisms of the auction process, the less need I feel to explain market moves with conspiracy theories involving super-rich, super-intelligent professionals or specialists. Tom Willaims and Richard Ney and Joel Pozen notwithstanding, I doubt that the folks who manage millions or billions are any smarter than we are. True, there certainly are very rich market players, but Willams and company lump these folks all into one camp and call them "professionals". The fact of the matter is, they do NOT act as one block. The truth is, these guys hate each others guts and are just as much interested in cutting each others throats as they are in screwing the public. This notion that the professionals are taking the market up or down or sideways supposes that these folks all work together. Sure, within one brokerage or hedge fund, I'm sure their traders all work together, but the idea that Goldman and Merrill and Blackstone and whomever else are all working together to move the market is a fantasy conjured up by paranoid conspiracy theorists. The fact is, the auction process has far more logical explanations for the market's moves.

Chad, that's really good news. Any clue if you can play the same game (Opentick realtime /DTN backfill) for Ninjatrader?

Blowfish, Thanks for the info. Geez, whaddya know, yet another forum for traders. They're sprouting like weeds.