BlowFish

Good post JBW, particularly about emotions often being more complex than simple 'fear of loss'. In my case fear of failure is closer to the mark. This results in a couple of re-occurring execution errors . Funnily enough these do not manifest themselves as fear in 'real time', I am pretty relaxed when I trade. Its just the primal instincts doing it's stuff even though it's misplaced in trading. What I am saying is that the fearful even can occur in the past and the stuff that's going on trade to trade is quite calm, it just might limit your trading potential rather than blow you out of the water. I think its often more complex than people think. Mea do you stick to your plan 100%? You are a rare trader if you do, and probably one I could learn from! I know a couple of fully automated (retail) traders and even they interfere with there systems! A complete plan is a starting point (OK maybe the first or second hurdle) not the finishing line imo. Having said that of course the more trust you have in your plan the more likely you will follow it come hell or high water.

Yeah I recently got the workshop too. Though I still haven't got my finger out of my a**e and tackled the exercises with vigour. Rather telling in itself. I wonder why its so hard to do things when you know that at worse they will do no harm and at best could be very beneficial? Is it simple laziness? Or maybe resistance to change? Or perhaps even some sort of self sabotage - those inner demons not wanting to relinquish control? Edit: Oh and an extra special welcome if it is.

Are you a familiar withe Denise Shulls worK? You seem to be on a similar wavelength. EDIT: Oh welcome to the forum btw!

While we are on a role, here was something I played with a while ago (can't find the thread but it was one of the ones dealing with market delta). It is a 1 tick wide constant range bar with delta plotted at the bottom. The idea was that the 1 tick wide represents a bid ask pair and the delta would display the action for that level. I did not presue it but I have just put together another chart. Whilst the delta stuff didn't pan out (volume seems to work equally well) it seems to show how price moves at a 'wall' well.

The thing is it dosen't matter where you start with 'fast' tick charts you are not really looking at candle patterns per se you are just using it as a way of getting into the 'flow' of things. As you get flurries of activity at S/R levels you can see 'walls' form and break. Its a fairly intuitive thing. If price hits the wall and falls back it leaves wicks (several). I use it more like a proxy for the tape than as a regular chart. On the whole I use bars it's just this visualisation helps to see price rejection. Maybe a brick display (like the old pong games) with the order book changes filling up new bricks and trades at the ask knocking them out would do the job?you could even have price like the ball bouncing between S/R on the micro scale. That's interesting.

And another way of looking at things this time a weekly. Here I don't want to see wicks.

Actually for me it is to help visualise what is important. For example a reason I will sometimes use candles on a very low time frame chart is to better see price rejection (by virtue of the wicks). It is not seeing more or less data it is to better notice what is important. This on the ES as we speak might help illustrate, see the wicks at the top?

This is interesting http://www.prosticks.com/education/concept_tech_charting_history.php?sid=27e2633066b399616dbb49c89802ecbb Basically a candle with a 'dot' for where the 'POC' is within the candle.

Ahh but you can't eat gold I was thinking grains, beans etc. Funnily enough I'm having pork belly for dinner today. Very underrated! Still, interesting point you make. Whilst some things may have intrinsic value due to their function it could be argued that most do not. I guess foodstuffs are about as intrinsically valuable as you can get. Anything beyond that (talking about consumer products) is getting 'derivative'. I guess what I am thinking (I am making it up as I go along) is that perhaps traditional marketplaces for goods and services are not so dissimilar to the markets we look at each day. People buy and sell goods and services to make money to by food & shelter with some left over for 'luxuries'.

I rather liked that quote for some reason, though some instruments (commodities for example) are more 'tangible' than others. David111 you mention 'needs' and hedging, aren't the needs of those hedgers the epitome of supply and demand? If you are a utilitarian trader (i.e. not profit motivated) you need to buy/sell at the best price, but buy/sell you must. There is real demand in the markets from some the many types of participant.

Spoke to soon, FTSE on tranq's this morning, I hope it's not like this for the next 2 months.

Did anyone state the 'laws' of supply and demand? It occurs to me that people might be singing from a different song sheet. For me there can be no cracks in supply and demand as the way I view it is as a simple fundamental. e.g. for someone to buy a contract someone needs to be prepared to sell one. If they can agree on a price there is a 'market' other wise not. To be this is irrefutable. Whether one chooses to believe that this price represents value or is prescient of subsequent prices or whatever else is likely to depend on how one builds subsequent rules. Of course its when the rules become more interpretive (e.g. tendencies rather than hard and fast rules) then people searching for absolutes might see these as cracks.

My hay fever would agree! Do currencies tend to go lethargic during the summer holidays? The index futures (both Europe & US) still have a bit of fizz (well imo).

That's a real hard one to answer briefly (i.e. Yes/No). I would veer towards the former if you had to pin me down. I do think Charlie is the real deal and has some remarkable insights to share. I would go as far and say he is a 'great'. His treatment of the interaction of multiple time frames is second to none for example. The whole thing is comprehensive, essentially you are getting access to 20+ years of his work. Lots of tools lots of concepts but all in a unique framework. On the down side there are certainly easier ways to trade. It took me a hell of a lot of study to get to grips with it, every time through the material I discovered something new. I am normally a fast learner but this took me probably thousands of hours. The scope is massive, thats a two edged sword. Mind you there where certain 'aha' moments that really gave a huge insight into certain aspects of market behaviour and mean that I will always look at markets in a particular way. Of course once you get the complexity and nuances the simplicity starts to reveal itself. I'm not sure what to tell you to be honest. If you get to a point where you are considering embarking on that route give me a shout and maybe we can skype or something. It's really to much to discuss in a couple of paragraphs. Oh and call Ted he'll discuss with you and he's a straight up sort of guy. He went a long way to help with my own psych issues.

Thanks for taking the time to put together the analysis last page. I hope you don't think me cheeky but have you considered putting together a short video commentary? I just figured that the amount of effort to annotate and add notes for all those bars it would be a fair deal easier to just talk about bars as you hover your cursor over them. A secondary benefit is they are easier to follow along as you don't need to flip back and forth between charts and notes. Anyway I don't want to appear ungrateful (I am certainly not!) but figure it might make things easier for you as you do produce quite a few of these excellent commentaries.

Ahh Ok then you are good to go. I was using MC until recently though I dont fire it up so often, mainly for looking at longer term charts and for my Drummond Geometry charts. I am sing ninja for intraday trading/charting. Ninjas built in swing routine is .....well....not great.

Oops sorry, I am always the one that gets all excited when the aha moment comes and then spoil the carefully constructed presentation by blurting out the 'punch line'.

You know one of my plans was to invent a new way to visualise (chart) market data. Bars,candles,point and figure, MP, equivolume, Helkinaskis, Ichicoopark (not sure about the spelling on the last two). There must be room for another. Some sort of 3d effect would be good with modern computing power. Trouble is my imagination is not what it used to be

Clyde is one of the good guys imo. What language/package are you working in? Give me a shout if you convert it to Ninjatrader

Smaller tick size tends to increases volatility. The reason being the premium that traders get to offer the option to trade (offering liquidity through limit orders) is much smaller if the spread is smaller. Assuming the spread is 1 tick it costs more to trade immediately in the ES than the YM (with a market order). Why offer liquidity in the YM when it only costs 5 bucks to enter late? I guess that explains the popularity of instruments like the YM & ER amongst day traders.

Go to Clyde Lees sight (theswingmachine) and amongst his commercial offerings you should find a freebie tradestation study called swinglee2. The first page is comments covering a multitude of ways of detecting swing highs and lows(all included in the code). He has already considered most if not all the things you need to. You could even use the code as is (if using tradestation) or convert it to your application. Edit: you may have to join his yahoo group to get the study. If you have trouble locating it let me know.

You might like to ask yourself why banks trade to better understand how they trade. As others have eluded to different 'divisions' will have different motives. Each will require different strategies and tactics. Not all motives involve making money btw. EDIT: I forgot my non affiliated plug for http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Exchanges-Market-Microstructure-Practitioners/dp/0195144708 A great trading book and possibly the best on how and why different participants trade. If I could write a review to do it justice I would. A favourite.

A couple of points. It's not the system that determines the success of the trader. You can give 10 traders a winning system half will blow up another 3 will die from slow bleed or scratch by be and a couple will make it. Thats why we are concerned for you Northern. That and the fact that I really think you might have made a mistake on your figures. You could get those sort of results with a fair amount of discretion but a mechanical approach basically not possible. I have to side with Art about working smart rather than hard. Thing is it takes most people a lot of hard work to discover this. Some days I stay in bed and watch TV <blush> there I admitted it. There are some great words of wisdom and some excellent contributions here at Traders Lab but one of the reasons I hang out is for camaraderie. Trading can be a solitary business. Actually that to me is one of the valid for going prop. Equity is not for reasons I outlined before. Art you trade with the London crowd don't you? Still waiting for my invite for beers I am not sure that hanging out here will improve anyones business though there are some interesting ideas here for further research (one day). The other reason is I am interested in how others trade and trading in general. I have to be careful to separate trading the hobby and trading the business. It's a bit like the engine driver that goes train spotting at weekends.

If you want to win rather than just "do OK" you need to go all in on the highest risk bets you can find. You need to keep aggressively pyramid using all the margin available to you. Sadly the tactics for winning competitions are quite different to those for successfully investing or trading. Or maybe I am just a sceptic EDIT: If you can get two 'accounts' it is much easier.

OK thats good to hear. When it comes to trading we have all seen people fall into holes that could have probably been avoided. Hell, we have probablly fallen into then ourselves. The problem with using a legal mechanism is that you are going to need to expose things in order to protect them. How would you know if someone was infringing anyway? I think you can rule out patents NDA's etc. That really leaves not disclosing in the first place and endeavouring to hide what you are doing. If you have been in the market four years and presumably enjoyed some success I can't understand why you would want to go prop? If you could demonstrate the sort of results you are talking about I'd wire 50k right now. If you go into a prop shop without capital you are going to get a sh*tty deal. (If you go in with capital you are likely to get a sh8tty deal!) You are going to start off way lower on the equity curve (actually negative). You will have desk costs and the shop will take a massive chunk of any winnings. You will have pretty severe limits in place for a good long while too. Only after doing wel for a decent amount of time are you likely to get a fair crack of the whip. I don't understand why you would want to start so far 'in the hole'. Why start with such a handicap unless you don't have confidence in your system so don't want to risk your own (or loved ones) money? Just struggling to understand what's going on here.