Tasuki

Could someone please enlighten me as to the Wolfe Wave numbering for the pivots on the previous charts? That trade may have worked out, but it sure doesn't look like any Wolfe Wave we've discussed in this thread previously. Taz

Tresor, I'm guessing that MM means "money management" and RR probably stands for "risk reward." Just a guess. Tasuki

velious, if you want to get serious about learning pitchforks, I'd highly recommend Tim Morge's new service at MarketGeometry.com. It's $129/month, and you more than get your money's worth (BTW, I have no connection to Tim whatsoever). I'd wait until the new year before joining up, if you had a mind to do so, because Tim's moving from Chicago to somewhere in Arizona, and he won't be doing much on the website until then. If you want to get your feet wet, the website has some free stuff that's very valuable, such as a bunch of recorded webinars and a free forum. I signed up for four months of Tim's daily webinars, and learned a whole lot of refinements to the pitchfork technique, many of which were incredibly helpful. As the undisputed master of pitchforks, Tim dispenses with many of the rigid rules that plague lesser teachers, and the result is a clearer picture of how pitchforks can "resonate" with price. Hope this is helpful. Tasuki

Simple answer: No. this is a rolling chop, not a Wolfe Wave. Look at previous examples and read my psychological description in earlier posts of this thread to understand the WW. Tasuki

robertm, The business of outliers is always a tricky one. I had a friend once who took the raw data from the exchanges and massaged it with some fancy software programming in order to parse out the big traders from the small traders. As part of the process, he had to clean up the raw data he purchased, and it said that it was very difficult to do because apparently there are ALOT of bad ticks, I mean really bad ticks, and it takes a massive amount of work to figure out what algorthims will clear away the bad stuff and leave only the correct trades. I'm surprised to hear that eSig's data has lots of outliers. Is this true for all their data, or only the "broad/raw FX feed"? Don't they have a polished up version of the data that they also sell? Tasuki

baywolf, Have you looked at the volume on those futures products? It's abysmal. Tasuki

Hello folks, Yet another warning about problems with Tradestation, this time having to do with Forex. Apparently there are two problems, both very serious: 1) people who have compared the quality of the Forex data between Tradestation and eSignal have found that TS Forex data is very poor quality Here is a quote from a friend who did the research: "Tradetsation uses GAIN Capital (who also run forex.com) for their FX feed/execution. They use a polled feed and therefore only provide a small window as to what FX trades exist. Don't believe me? Try comparing your high/low for the day or a spike high/low against a trader friend that has an aggregated feed like eSignal's paid feed. I am regularly seeing a 2-12 tick (yes 12 ticks!) difference. Now think about what this means to a pitchfork if the A, B or C pivot is 10 ticks from reality. 30-60 bars from now the difference may be 50 ticks." 2) Trade execution is very poor with GAIN Capital. These jokers will: a) give you a bad fill b) take the other side of the trade and screw you. As always, caveat emptor. Tasuki p.s. addendum: GAIN uses a "polled" feed, meaning that they display only a fraction of the market. They "poll" it, taking samples at discrete intervals, which misses all the ticks in between their sampling times. The reason for this is obvious--if you only take samples of the data, it requires much less bandwidth, saving GAIN alot of money. The opposite of this would be an "aggregated" feed, which is comprised of data from multiple market makers. That's what you get with eSignal, apparently.

No, the opposite, the lack of accumulation.

Speaking just for myself, I find that the best volume bar painting scheme is green for higher close, red for lower close, magenta for unchanged close and, most importantly, blue for a close lower than the previous two bars. When you get a series of blue bars, take notice! Tasuki

Geez, bbj, sorry to hear you're having such trouble with them. Gavin must be having financial trouble, because I took their 30 day trial about 3 years ago and got my money back promptly. Hope you get things straightened out. Tasuki

Returning to the above chart, I've got a question about how you know when the trio WRB/KRB/ND gives a bullish signal and when a bearish signal. Any insights? This is a standard dilemna for VSA traders: you could wait for confirmation, that would clear up the picture, but then you might have lost the meat of the move. Is there any clear difference between these two candle trios that would signal bearishness or bullishness without having to wait for confirmation? Thanks, Tasuki

Dear Traders Lab folks, Just a warning for those of you that use Tradestation. Last night I tried to upgrade my TS from build 2525 to build 2612. The process aborted, and crashed my computer so hard that their technicians are insisting that the only way to fix it is to reinstall XP (thereby wiping out everything else on my computer!). To make matters worse, the techs say that their finding this error more and more frequently, so it appears that there's something drastically wrong with this new build, 2612. They don't understand why this occurs, and apparently it doesn't happen all the time, but only rarely, but often enough that they're getting complaints about it every day. Supposedly, Easylanguage files are overwriting Registry files that are unconnected to Tradestation. Now THAT's a serious error! My strong suggestion is that you avoid this build, and wait for the next one. Tasuki

Brilliant stuff, VJ. Thanks very much. I'd like to continue this discussion with an observation and a question: Observation: The more I mull over these test bars, the more complexity I see. There are a whole bunch of factors to consider, but there's one that we don't talk about much in VSA, and that's the spread between the open and the close. Tom Williams' word "spread" refers to the distance between the high and the low. He doesn't even consider the open. I think that may be a mistake, or at least that he's missing some potentially valuable information (I notice that most people's charts posted on these forums include the open price for each bar). Returning to VJ's chart in permalink 132, p. 17, those two pesky test bars, #4 and #7, would seem to show strength to me preicsely because their open/close spread was wide--by the close of each bar, the bulls had pushed price nicely above the open, showing strength. Question for VJ: You say that a successful test bar should NOT make a higher high. Why is that? What's the psychology behind it? Let's review the conditions for a successful test bar: 1) makes lower low---price probes the low to see if there's supply down there. 2) low volume---BBs do not find supply down below 3) higher close---close of the test bar should be above the close of the previous bar, showing strength. A lower close would be worrisome---not enough "oomph" (that's a technical term) to make price rise. 4) lower high--the high of the test bar should be lower than the high of the previous bar---this is the one I'm puzzling over. Any thoughts welcome. Tasuki

traderdan, Compare the first and second charts you posted. The second one was just about perfect, but the first one wasn't 100% Wolfe-like, so to speak. Note that pivot 1 in the second chart was right in the middle of the range, and that pivot 2 dipped to new lows, scaring the pants off retail traders (that's what pivot 2 is spoze to do). The first chart lacked those salient features. It still might work out, of course. Just thought I'd point out those details for everyone's edification. Tasuki

I think we finally ran out of gas. I look at it from time to time, but it doesn't seem to work very reliably.

VJ, thanks for the very informative posts. I've always been confused about one aspect of test bars. Maybe you'd be kind enough to straighten me out. I was always taught that test bars were bars whose lows dipped down into supply but closed strong. They were successful test bars if the volume was low, meaning that there was no supply left down below, and they were unsuccessful test bars if the volume was high (like it was in your chart for bars 4 and 7), meaning that there was indeed supply down below, and those lows would probably be tested again before any meaningful advance could begin. My description of a test bar leaves out one crucial element, and that is whether the bar in question makes a high that is higher than the bar before it. In your chart, neither bar 4 nor 7 did so. Does this mean that they're not real test bars? Question: to be a proper test bar, does the high of the bar have to exceed the bar before it?

I see that Todd is now talking about Wyckoff principles in his newsletters and articles, skirting the VSA business altogether. What I've seen so far is pretty basic (for those of us who follow the threads on Traders Lab) but Todd's stuff is still valuable, and a good introduction to the material.

Psychedelic, man! In Tradestation, I don't seem to be able to change the colors. I've attached a 60 minute chart of the ES.D (day session only). Not exactly sure how it would help your trading, but it sure is cool, er, hot. Tasuki

pimind, If you changed the settings on the VS_MACD4, would you be able to get it to more closely match the EOT vol splitter? Tasuki edit: cunparis, I swear that your post wasn't posted when I added my two cents. I guess great minds think alike---(now, where are those damn smiley faces when you need them?)

Three more charts. Partial day today (good thing the flu virus can't get thru a computer, or you'd all get my cold). Comparison of VS_MACD versions 2 and 4. Some interesting differences. In some cases, the earlier one seems to anticipate the next move, and in other cases the later version seems to do a better job. Not quite sure what to do to get one consistently better indicator. phall, Richard, anyone---ideas? Tasuki

phall, actually, I was using 6, 10, 3, 100, 9999 Just changed 99 to 100, 'cause that's what we were using with Blowfish's indicators. I should have more charts today, if nothin' crashes!

Richard, I can't believe the legends to the indicators didn't show up on the chart as it was posted. I went back to that workspace, and the legends were there, just as they should be. Very strange. Anyway, you were right. The red one is VS_MACD4. They go from top to bottom, 2 (in white), 3 (in blue) and 4 (in red). Version 3 is pretty much a failure. Versions two and four are very similar, as you can see. Maybe version 4 is a little better. Thanks very much for the lesson in how to use the indicator. Much appreciated! sw9, all the coding here has been for Tradestation, and that's my datafeed and charting package.

Here are three charts showing the differences between the VS MACD 2, 3 and 4 volume splitters.

Richard's right, I think. Ben Lichtenstein of Squawkbox has mentioned many times that the floor traders in the S&P pit will hedge their positions in the big contract by taking 5X positions in the ES (since the big contract is five times larger than the emini). From what I gather from Ben, the floor traders don't place these trades themselves, but rather they have headsets and call over to an employee to place the ES emini trades for them, who place multiple large-lot contracts in a row, until the position is sufficiently hedged. If there is some way to change this feature of the VS_MACD2, it would be a good idea to go ahead and do so (wish I knew how to do it myself, but I'm just a newbie greenhorn at Easylanguage).