BlowFish

Which is precisely the appeal of the latter!!

Information asymmetry is one of the cornerstones I guess. I think I can see how Harris is organising things which kind of helps. Broadly he takes each type of participant and goes through there agendas and how they operate. I wonder if O'Hara identifies the same participants or categorises them in a different fashion? The whole discipline of market microstructure seem relatively new as a whole and was totally new to me. I picked up Harris as it just seemed to have the edge with the reviews though to be fair both books are critically acclaimed. (I did have a couple of recommendations for it to). I starting reading and it was one wow moment followed by another. I found it quite mind expanding (I have a small mind to start with!). Actually they both seam fairly 'advanced' books. I can see how you might find Harris disjointed, especially with the sidebars (I love those) but I thought his writing still had a clarity. I did read pretty small chunks at a time though. Let me know how you get on with O'Hara.

What are you trying to achieve by simming? Thats the big question. What exactly are you simming if you don't have an adequate plan? How can this help your consistency and discipline if you don't have something to judge your performance against? The fact you are asking 'why did this not work' rather than 'did I follow my plan' rings alarm bells. Performance is all about how well you stuck to your plan. If you are unsure whether it was a valid trade or not you need to re examine your plan. A simulator is a reasonable tool to see if you can trade your plan without deviation. If you haven't got the plan down cold how will you know if you are deviating? A simulator is not a good tool to determine if a method works. In fact its a distinctly bad one. Looking at charts (both live and historical or with a replay) is likely to be much better proposition. There are two main reasons. Firstly you can judge the method without your judgements being clouded by actually 'trading'. By all means watch live charts to see if things 'work' but don't add the presure of the simulator. Secondly you can get more work done by review of charts to see if things 'work'. You don't have to sit in the live market to wait for things to occur. This is the time for iterative refinement to your rules. That's not to say that once you start trading your plan (live or with the simulator) that you might not see some room for improvement. You might be using the simulator to improve your 'market reading' skills, again sim is not really suited for that either. Do you think you are likely to read what is going on better with a position on or without a position? Again watch the live market or replays by all means but adding the 'fun' (your word) of the simulator is unlikely to help. Far better to scribble in a note book or talk yourself through the price action than trying to trade it. There is no doubt that becoming proficient at trading can be a lot of work but the journey can be cut down by doing useful work with a purpose in mind. (I know, I have wasted probably 10's of thousands of hours in my time and you know what, I am still prone too) So what are you trying to achieve by using the simulator? tbh I might be completely wrong (I often am) as I don't recall you having stated that yet. The other thing to do would be outline your plan (a few sentences would do) then people will be better able to comment on where (if at all) you are going wrong. Cheers!

The answer lies here...... You obviously have a lot of enthusiasm for this so I feel safe that I wont dampen it by saying you are putting the cart before the horse. It sounds as if you have a few ideas how you want to trade (maybe a few too many?) I suspect you need to formalise them. What are you trying to achieve by siming? If it is a better understanding of the market or trying to improve a setup shut the sim down it will likely delay your progress.

Thanks Atto, If I understand this correctly any company that complies with the appropriate regulatory requirements can get its self listed as REIT? Again if I have got things straight there is and index of all the REIT's (though I can't seem to find a ticker for that so wonder if its traded?) Interesting.

This baby looks interesting too http://etf.stock-encyclopedia.com/IUKP-LSE.html Having trouble getting data for it into my charting package of choice but it looks like it might be useful.

Re laying off risk this quote from http://www.financial-spread-betting.com/Property-spread-betting.html puts it better than I could. A pretty clear picture of a decisive shift in sentiment is emerging. John Austin, head of proprietary products at IG Index, says that because of this the firm's house price markets are currently suspended and it is only accepting bets to close existing positions. 'There has been such a run of stories in the press talking of meltdown in the housing market that the volume of sell-side business left us with no choice but to close our book to new business for the time being,' he explains. The problem is that there is no easy way for spread betting companies quoting these products to actually hedge their exposure to the house price index. The flipside is that there is a huge degree of interest in these bets. 'We are very eager to get back into the house price market,' acknowledges Austin. 'We have a large exposure to the prices next March and would anticipate that once these figures have been released and the bets settled we will be back taking new positions again,' he adds.

http://www.fin-alg.com/tpoandvolumechart.html there you go.

GJ, yes that makes very good sense - it had not occurred to me to think of things in that way. Aidaweb - thanks for jogging my mind, I thought I had heard of an 'instrument' that tracked some sort of house price index. I wonder how the spread betters lay off there risk if it's not an index that is actually traded? EDIT: Incidentally I am surprised that this is not a fairly common requirement.

I asked this before a while back, and possibly this is not what James had in mind for this sections so apologies if that is the case. I have a modest property portfolio (all UK based) that I don't want to unwind. I feel that further house price decline is on the cards and would like to minimise the effect of it. Can anyone suggest instruments or tactics to hedge against this decline? Thanks,

Glad you came back to report on your progress! Good luck for the remainder.

Any 'proper' futures broker will offer 1 (or maybe more) platforms from a fairly small list most (if not all) will offer what you require. Just out of interest what size ES ER2 & NQ make up one equivalent 'unit'? Are you saying that ER2 & NQ tend to give up more on pull backs? Seems to me that's not always the case. I guess this is kind of like a pairs trade really? You are betting on the NQ ER2 out performing the ES in the short term?

I think it was stored here and linked into this thread. From memory the first post mentioning it linked offsite but the one a few posts later had it 'embedded'. Try searching a few pages back in this thread.

I have planned to for a while. Tbh I am not sure how to approach a review, there is so much information in there. It's one to read small chunks at a time thats for sure it took me about 6 months but I use it as a reference. I guess that information overload might be one of the issues. I find the sidebars with market anecdotes and historic illustrations help break up the subject material.

Yes fair comment. When starting out you could do a lot worse than the law of charts as an intro to PA. It is a decent enough framework to build from and assuredly better than starting with a bunch of oscillators and squiggles. Actually I mentored with Joe must have been <blush> about 10 years ago. I am embarrassed to admit its probablly easier to list the courses, seminars and books I don't have. :/ You can see why I am an easy mark for the hucksters! Still at least I am well qualified to talk about trading products and services! hehe. Your correct about sharing epiphanies too, there's not that much new in trading (if you have as much stuff on your shelves as I do!) For example, Carter and Steners (who seem to be 'tolerated' vendors) shamelessly re-package indicators that are in the public domain and sell them for 100's of $$$'s a pop. Personally I find that at best morally dubious and for me it calls into question their whole raison d'etre. It amazes me they are still considered vendors of the good kind by many.

OK, fair enough, perhaps it was not 'plain' (it was to me, but I looked further than the home page) however that is still no excuse to attribute claims that where not made. Mind you it never ceases to amaze me peoples poor comprehension skills in general, they see what they want to see. (and that's not directed at any of the protagonists in this debate btw). A pet peeve of mine are logical fallacies (unless I use them myself ;-)) this smacked of argumentum ad hominem (agan just IMO). I.e attacking the character or motives of a person who has stated an idea, rather than the idea itself. I am still interested in why some think it is OK for people like JR to post (who also has hypothetical results on his site and is clearly a vendor with a capital V). I guess the heart of the matter is people believe the figures to be falsified in some way? Of course that is likely because they mis understand what they represent. Anyway I apologise for perpetuating this particular debate when we are all in agreement it has no place here. (in my defence I didn't start it!) It's fun to lock horns now and then (especially with Brown!):fight::beer: I hope a mod will clean this up as there are some interesting ideas (to me at least) in the thread.

I am inclined to agree. Mind you supply and demand pre-dates the oldest profession right? Apart from the 'paradigm' one of the particular things that interests me is the use of a 'buying pressure'/'selling pressure' type indicator. i.e attempting to split volume into upticks/downticks or volume@bid/volume@ask. It is something I have looked at numerous times over the years. I should add on the whole unsuccessfully. It seems as a divergence type indicator it might have some value but I don't really want that level of abstraction in my trading. I still can't help feeling that the problem is me (i.e. how I am looking at the information) rather than the information itself. So for the time being I remain open minded to the possibility that looking at volume in this way might provide an extra clue as to who is in control of the market at the present time.

Quite - this would be plain to anyone that had looked beyond the home page, and that was my point. If EMC2 is willing I would ask that a moderator delete all this BS about "track records" other wise the place will end up looking like ET (which incidentaly, is a perfect place for a witch hunt!)

You could try and calculate it MK FV for future = cash [1+rate (x/365)] - Dividends or something similar. Problem is what you slot in for Dividends.

Are you looking for a study/indicator? If so finalg has a package for Ninjatrader that is superb. If not forsearch's advice is good

I've already said that what interests me is the anxious/patient paradigm, and how it fits in with a more traditional supply/demand picture. It seems like a novel twist and by no means mutually exclusive.This is what the thread is about so its probably not helpful to talk about xxx website here. Unless its just an underhand trick to get the thread shut down :hmmmm: hehe. Having said that I do suggest that you look at the trade by trade results, the faq, and the guarantee. This left me under no illusion that "the vendor has supposedly made 278.75 pts in the last 30 days". That was your claim not his and hence the comment about misrepresentation. What about the rest of my post? Is ole JR OK cause his results are more modest? Or is it all right because he charges a more substantial amount? So in a nutshell If some one (even an evil vendor) contributes and obeys the forums guidelines that's OK right?

What I believe is that you have mis-representing what the figures are. Anyway they are academic as far as I am concerned as what interests me is the paradigm. I do understand your (and many others) inherent distrust of 'vendors'. However I find it amusing that you where the first to thank Joe Ross for his last post, someone who has a considerable business marketing trading related material (Courses, books, seminars, newsletters, mentoring and systems). (btw I am not passing any judgement on Joe, his trading or the value of his products but he is certainly a Vendor with a capital V) The long and the short of it if people are playing nice and offering information that is novel without hyping their wares does it matter if they are a vendor? For example I would hate to see DB hounded out just because he has a book for sale :) ET is a much better place to burn witches anyway! It's always a tough call but it does not seem like EMC2 is a typical snake oil salesman. EMC2 I am sure you understand the scepticism, more often than not it is justified but I do hope you continue to post regardless.

As an aside there are a couple of things that have a big impact on volatility 'thickness' (volume) is one of them as is 'granularity' (tick size). Good old Harris goes into great detail why.

Thanks, I have to say Its a very interesting way of looking at things. I haven't completely got my head around it as it does seem to look at things from 'the other end'. A tangential (and perhaps irrelevant) question:- do you think S/R attracts price or repels price? Markets move to seek out liquidity right? So price will tend to move towards sizeable patient participants (is it important that they are patient and sizeable or both?)

You can not accurately. (Unless the exchange reports the extra information). presumably if the bid was70 and goes to 50 at the same time 20 x 1 lot orders are reported with an identical time stamp (all at the current bid) hit the tape it would not be un-reasonable to assume the scenario has taken place. Are you sure that is how things are reported? I am a wee bit sceptical it seems unusual to me.