Tasuki

Hi folks, Criminy, it's been a dog's age since I've been on Traders Lab. Hope you're all surviving the volatility with your accounts intact! Anyway, a friend of mine is thinking of purchasing and using the specialty indicators provided by a company called emini-watch.com. No reviews of them in the review section, and only a couple of random posts with no useable info. So, maybe nobody uses these indicators, but if there are folks on Traders Lab who have tried the indicators, I'd like to know what they think. Are they worth $425? Are they worth anything at all? Thanks, Tasuki

Waveslider, Maybe this is closer to what you were thinking? Taz

Battle of the Patterns. See attached charts of Dow and SPY. Both forks do look bullish (very, actually), but both have met their initial, official objective--the median line. Note too that both forks are pretty steep. The chance of price continuing up to the next objective, the upper medianline parallel, is (IMHO) vanishingly small. So, if they don't meet that lofty goal, what will they do? Fail, of course, but how and when is the question. That Wolfe Wave I drew has a bit further it can go to make pivot 5 before it needs to turn down (for the pattern to work) so we may find that both patterns work, to a degree. Like they say, may you live in interesting times. Tasuki

To all, See attached. Looks like a near perfect bearish WW setting up on the Dow. 1) pivot 1 in middle of range 2) pivot 2 scared the pants off investors 3) pivots 3 and 4 lulled them to sleep 4) pivot 5 (not sure it's formed yet) will, I trust, give investors (false?) hope 5) target would be somewhere south of 9500 Tasuki

So, where are we now? See attached chart. Looks like that was one great call, Waveslider! Good job!

Hi waveslider, The way I see it, the move up (or down) to pivot 2 is also designed to drag around people's emotions, and it's the interplay of pivots 2 and 5, pushing traders first one way, then the other, that gives the Wolfe Wave its unique power. In the bullish case, traders are giddy with euphoria going into pivot 2, which by definition (well, my definition at least) has to break into new highs, sucking in the breakout traders. Then they get slammed the other way into pivot 5, scaring the pants off of them and washing every last one of them out of their long positions, which they held through the chop between pivots 2 and 4. Well, that's the way I see the WW. Tasuki

To answer your question, Tom Bulkowski shows statistics proving that the traditional H&S is a very successful pattern. Also, John Murphy's email today shows the utility of the 50/200 SMA cross. Thanks for the convincing Wolfe Wave on the ES. It'll take a while to play out. What would be your target for point 6? Tasuki

Oops, problem. fjvoy@mail.com is not a valid email address. Tasuki p.s. I tried adding a "g" to make it "gmail.com" but that didn't work either. p.p.s. is anyone else having a problem with this email address, or is it only me for some reason?

kamase, You're not providing any clear explanation of what you're doing. This is an educational forum, so an explanation of how VSA and tick volume work together would be appreciated. Just a heads up---if you're subtly trying to sell a system, the moderators will boot you off and delete your posts (hopefully). So, please, explain what you're doing. It looks interesting! Tasuki

yes, please no more bickering on this thread. let sleeping rats lie.

FT, could you explan for us exactly what the "spot market" is? I have heard this term for years and years and I still don't know what it is, and how it differs from the futures contracts of agriculturals, oil and metals that we all trade. Many thanks, Tasuki

Fat Tails, Thanks for the extremely valuable information, and the links as well. From your description, my fears about getting the rollover wrong were well founded. Just goes to show, you shouldn't trade anything live that you don't understand thoroughly. On the other hand, I guess one could trade any of these contracts intraday without worrying about rollovers. Even then, I guess, you'd want to be careful not to get caught in a low volume contract month. Tasuki

Question about rollover dates for some commodities, bonds, forex futures contracts. Ordinarily, I just trade the ES, and every monkey and his uncle knows when rollover is for the ES (it's today!). However, I've just started using Ninjatrader, and I have been playing with a few other contracts. I vaguely remember that some futures contracts don't rollover the same way that the ES does, but rather they have two month cycles rather than three month cycles like the ES. If anyone has the correct scoop (or knows where to find it) for the following contracts, I'd be very grateful: CL--crude oil GC--Comex gold ZB--thirty year bonds 6E--futures of EURUSD forex pair 6S--futures of USDCHF forex pair Thanks, Tasuki

Tresor, now this is interesting, and significant. If they were always off by exactly the same percentage, that might be OK, but if the percentages change, that's not good at all. It's for reasons like this that I've asked TL's founder, Soultrader, if he could create a forum specifically for discussing data reliability issues. I just checked Tradestation's data (see attached chart) and bless Bess, they got it right. Tasuki p.s. thanks for the link. Very useful.

Tresor, great idea. Here's an interesting question---does it really matter? What I mean is, if the data providers whose numbers are wrong still provide numbers that are proportional to the true numbers, maybe that's good enough. Think about VSA or Wyckoff analysis---they don't need to know the actual volume, they need the relative volume---today's volume vs the volume two days ago, for example, So (I'm just hypothesizing here) maybe polled or filtered data is good enough, if the filtering is done proportionally. The real problem would be a filtering process that was more aggressive when volume was high or when volume was low. THAT would create a serious problem for the trader, methinks.

Turns out that my concern was unfounded, thank goodness. It just makes me look like an idiot. Apparently the chart properties got switched somehow so that the volume was measuring tick count instead of trade volume.

The paragraphs below come from a post I just made to the Tradestation forum. My question to you, my fellow Traders Lab folks, would be--how common is this sort of glaring data corruption? Does it happen with Ninjatrader? eSignal? If so, or if not, please let me know. Here's a copy of my post to the Tradestation forum which is at this link: https://www.tradestation.com/Discussions/Topic.aspx?Topic_ID=98375 .... Please see attached chart. The UPPER chart of GLD is the one that's been on my workspace for years, and I've never questioned its accuracy until today, when I compared the daily volume (chart not shown here) with the volume reported on the 5 minute chart. I started mentally adding up the volume bars on the five minute chart and realized that the total did not come even close to the volume shown on the daily chart. So, I called Tradestation, and we figured out that the volume on the five minute chart was way too low. So, I created a new 5 minute chart on the same workspace (which is the LOWER chart of GLD shown here) and the volume on that new chart was correct, according to the Tradestation tech I spoke to. Question: how can I tell if a chart has become corrupted? For heaven sake, I haven't got time to go through every chart every day and question whether Tradestation has screwed something up and corrupted its data. Isn't there some way for the Tradestation platform to flag a chart that has potentially become corrupted??????? If there isn't any way to do this, then there sure as heck should be. Tasuki

very well said, Thales. Possibly, RA is just a scam artist. From what I've seen so far, however, that is unlikely. Actually, very unlikely. Possibly, RA is afraid that, if he shows his trades, people will catch on and he'll have nothing to teach. This seems quite plausible, or at least plausible that he thinks so. Possibly, he's just a crusty old bastard who's a good enough trader that he doesn't actually give a damn about teaching or sharing. Given his past as a floor trader, this is also entirely possible. Pity, really, because I think these "hidden pivots" might be useful for entries in difficult markets, if we could figure out how they work. Tasuki

Well, this is the last time I start a thread on TL and try to add something of value to the forums. By jumping down this guy's throat, you pinheads have driven away a successful trader whose calls on the gold market (at least) are scary-good. Had you folks been a little more patient with him, we might have learned some more about his methods, which obviously work. In your insane drive for the purity of the forums (free of salesmen) you have done us all a disservice. Whatever makes you think that this guy Rick had any experience whatsoever with online trading forums? From what I can tell, he's a crusty old floor trader, and my own experience with former floor traders is that they are averse to online chat sites and trading forums and generally know jack about them. Yeah, I'll agree, it was tacky by our TL standards to advertise his services, but how the hell was he supposed to know that? Instead of insulting him by deleting his post, why not politely tell him that this was uncool, and ask him to edit his post and resubmit it? It is this lack of courtesy on the part of the forum moderators (not to mention the posters) that is unfortunately immature. IMHO you should review your impatience with someone new, especially someone who obviously knows a thing or two and might have been willing to share, if he had been treated less rudely. Well, you folks can do whatever you like, I'll just hang out elsewhere.

Thales, I know what you mean, but I think that was due to his inexperience with our forum. We'll see if he responds with anything more substantive. Tasuki

Hi Rick, glad you joined Traders Lab, and many thanks for the clarifications of your methodology. I know you're new here, having joined yesterday, but just a word of caution---the founder of TL doesn't tolerate any self-advertising whatsoever (even when it would be useful, as in your post). The rationale is that otherwise the forums would be overrun with people selling courses. Pretty much the only thing that seems to be OK is mentioning a website where members can go for further info if they're so inclined. What would be helpful, and completely OK, would be posting a few charts of your setups to show where you would enter and exit, and why. Then if people like what they see, they can find your course if they're interested. I've been particularly tuned into your gold forecasts, which have been really excellent, from what I've seen. I'm sure lots of members on TL would like to hear what you have to say about gold. Maybe we could entice you to start a thread on the forums to discuss gold's prospects? Just a suggestion. Tasuki

It feels a bit weird analyzing charts from 2008, but the attached chart shows where Rick got long on that day in December 2008. You're right, Suntrader, not the greatest possible trade of the day, but it would have been a nice winner, nonetheless.

Actually, in fairness to this guy Rick, the "strict rules" was my assumption, I just can't see how he would avoid alot of losers unless he was extremely careful with his entries. As far as a strategy that leads to runners, I'm not sure how Rick would treat his methodology, but I know what I would do---take partial profits at the point D target and let a portion run. In this way, the strategy could indeed be successful in catching the big wins. Attached is a chart of SSRI weekly. I was able to glean this tidbit from the free video---if price gets to the halfway point of the projected CD leg, and falls back (rather than motoring right through to the D target), then Rick predicts that the price will ultimately fail to reach the D target by the exact same amount as it fell back when it reached this midpoint. That's actualy kind of cool, and useful as well. For swing trading, as you would likely be doing with a weekly chart, this can be quite a powerful technique.

Hello all, I just discovered a website by Rick Ackerman who has a trading method that looks interesting. Maybe not interesting enough to shell out $990 to get all the details, but worthwhile enough to check out the free stuff. He's got a free video at this address which gives a teaser of what he does: http://www.rickackerman.com/video/ Here's what I've been able to figure out so far: His basic trading setup is the AB=CD pattern which is so familiar to most folks. However, he seems to have some interesting twists to it. His AB leg (which he calls the "impulse leg") has to exceed at least two prior pivots---an "internal" pivot which is a pivot prior to the pivot A in which price is going in the same direction as the AB leg, and an "external" pivot, which is a prior pivot to the pivot A in which price is headed in the opposite direction from the AB leg. I'm guessing he has some rules for how you pick those pivots. He then waits for the BC pullback, and he enters as the CD leg is starting to form. No doubt he also has rules for how to enter the CD leg. Something he does that's tricky is he chooses what he calls "subtle" impulse legs. They're "camouflaged", meaning that you wouldn't necessarily think of them as the beginning of tradable moves, and this is what gives him an advantage, so he says--because he's entering the market at trade locations that don't look attractive to the majority of traders (his examples do seem to bear out his belief). The key, I'm guessing, is in the strict rules he applies to these impulse legs--they have to exceed at least two prior pivots, an internal and an external. Another key feature that must be part of his system is a strict set of rules for choosing your C pivot, because his examples show that he is entering the market very soon after that C pivot forms, so he has to know very precisely when he's got a true C pivot and not just some random wash and rinse in the market. The thing I like about his method is that it is based strictly on price action, and therefore doesn't get in the way of any other method that you care to apply over top of it, such as VSA, or pitchforks, or indicators, or whathaveyou. My plan is just to study these impulse legs that he describes and see if I can find them in real time, and in time enough to trade them. If anyone has any further insight into Rick's methods, or has actually taken his course, any and all comments would be most welcome. I've posted a few charts to show his method the best I can, given the fact that I'm trying to smoke it out of his free material. Probably not fair to him, but maybe useful to some of you. I hope. Cheers, Tasuki

Tresor, respectfully, if you don't know what pivots are, how would you know what a Wolfe Wave is? I don't want to degrade the disussion into an argument, so we can agree to disagree, but I'm not convinced that you are correct. Wolfe Waves work because they reflect the psychology of traders, as I have stated in earlier posts, and the characteristics of Wolfe Waves that mark that psychology do not appear to be present in your charts--but I could be wrong--it would really help if you would annotate your charts with the WW numbering system (for the record, the numbers refer to pivot points). Regards, Tasuki