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BlowFish
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Everything posted by BlowFish
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Hi Harlequin, When Hubert talks about reading the tape are we talking about using T&S? Seems that it means slightly different things to different people. On the whole trade the markets seem to have a good reputation as far as vendors go. I thought Carters book was Ok but other than that have no experience of them. One thing I have to say I found pretty questionable is taking public domain indicators, renaming them with TTM in front, and selling them for close to $500 a pop. (Most if not all had appeared on TS forums) To me that's shooting yourself in the foot as it calls into question there whole business ethic. Anyway I have no real axe to grind and may even go for the trial if there tape reading stuff is good. Cheers.
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I have been in that position before (a couple of times) I can certainly empathise. Are you absolutely sure you are doing the same thing? The psyche can play some pretty mean tricks on us. Have you tested (back forward sideways it doesn't matter really) to establish your old method really doesn't work any more? Why? Btw was it a completely different approach or similar to what you are doing now? Could it work with some minor adjustment or do you think there is a fundamental flaw in what you where doing? The reason I ask is it may be easier to get back to where you were rather than to some place new. BTW I am not saying abandon your education in Whycoff PA volume etc. Not knowing what you where doing before I can't really comment if that would be a viable course of action. As I said I have been there before so I am speaking about my experience when I say that it is tempting to want to change the wrong things rather than dealing with the root causes. That quote was as applicable to me as much as anyone. In the past I have probably spent tens of thousands of hours doing 'work' that, while it contributed to my trading 'education', it did nothing to advance my actual trading.
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If you keep doing the same things expect the same outcomes - paraphrased from someone cleverer than me.
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Indeed, however trading need not be about predicting. Monitoring what is happening now and taking appropriate actions based on that will get you a long way. You can see a price being supported as it happens in real time for example by volume passing across the tape but the inventory being 'restocked' (i.e the bid or ask does not lift). Also the tape is great for judging changes in pace right as they happen. All sorts of interesting stuff goes on in the order book too though I must be honest I don't watch it currently. Of course there are shenanigans all the time as it is simply people 'advertising' and unless hit they can close shop and walk away. Mind you that might tell some people something in and of itself. One thing I have noticed that a huge amount of time price tends to move towards size i.e. the thicker side of the book. Many find this counter intuitive. There are plenty of other patterns and characteristics that people talk about every now and then too. Currently I look at a small interval tick chart (constant volume would do or even perhaps a small interval time bar) to see what is happening in 'real time'. That is not to say that I have not given up on learning to read the 'pure' tape. Good quotes as always btw DB
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On numerous occasions over the years I have watched the tape to try and "get it". I think it is as much art as science. Thats probablly why not much has been written about tape reading from T&S. It's probably as 'pure' a way to trade as you can arrive at. Do you plan on using the DOM (depth of market) along side to try and guage what was advertised vs what actually sold? Over the years there have been odd nuggets of wisdom about tape reading often buried deep amongst the mire at Elite Trader. A bit of patience and careful searching might dredge them up. There was one guy who's name escapes me who posted how he learnt and basically it boiled down to watching live and then printing out every single print and going over it all again after market hours. It may have been a poster called FutureTrader71, its been a long time and my memory is not so good. If you find anything interesting please share it here.
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http://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Guide-Point-Figure/dp/1897597630 is my favourite book on P&F fwiw. It's pretty comprehensive.
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Link at the top of the page here under the traders laboratory logo. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/tlchat2/blab.php
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On the whole that will be true, running analytics will show one exit strategy to be more effective from a pure profit point of view. However there are a couple of advantages to scaling out. Firstly psychological - a lot of people find it easier to manage a trade once it is 'paid for' by taking some of the position off (i.e. they can no longer lose). Secondly it will result in a smoother equity curve.
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Mark Fishers "ACD Trading Method", Seminar Videos Wanted.
BlowFish replied to Szymon's topic in Technical Analysis
Thank you. -
You could also display time as a histogram underneath the constant volume bars, much as volume is on regular time based charts. Likely to need a programmed study, I'm not aware of anything that does that off the shelf.
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Mark Fishers "ACD Trading Method", Seminar Videos Wanted.
BlowFish replied to Szymon's topic in Technical Analysis
I'd quite like to review the various vids in this thread in the future sometime. Are they all in reasonably 'persistent' places or should I download them just in case? Thanks. -
Sounds like if you take the best of the one from woodies and the best of smartclock you'll have it . Personally I am pretty anti bloatware and last time I looked clocks seemed full of bloat. Focus on the primary function and do it well
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[VSA] Volume Spread Analysis Part II
BlowFish replied to Soultrader's topic in Volume Spread Analysis
Milliard makes good points. It makes me smile that proponents of FX talk about the trillions of $ worth of liquidity when most retail traders have access to exactly .....none of it. Anyway I digress (well perhaps I don't) you have to wonder what these bookies show as volume? Is it the volume of there book? Not much informed trading going on there. This is one of the things that put me off looking at FX, though there are a couple of real brokers coming on line it seems. Anyway seems to me that milliard is not knocking VSA but saying it is not going to make much sense when there is no volume being reported. I have a more general concern with no supply/no demand and it is to do with all participants withdrawing (much as Milliard points out) rather than just one side. I suspect that many bars that might be identified as no supply or no demand are actually indeterminate. Even during regular market hours. Maybe thats something to try and articulate in another post. Anyway I guess Milliard and the rest of the London FX gang will be in the pub by now being as its mid morning on a grey London Friday Unlikely to get much more sense from them this week hehe. -
It's not about learning to trade more questioning if there is a "better" way of doing things. By better I mean a different set of compromises. I have a set that work well enough for me. I am really not too bad at listening to what the market is saying though as I said, in the past I have been more susceptible to directional biases when entering multiple times. I think it is a very real danger of trading early rather than late. Mind you that is not "wrong" all the time you are in a S/R zone, unless there is clear evidence its breaking. It's less of an issue for me now. Some days are better than others of course, the good days completely in the 'flow'. The bad just not listening or, probably more accurately, choosing not to hear. The worse days are eking out a few points while swimming against the tide. This tends to happen when layers of S/R, through a zone are breaking and I am swimming the other way. It's really nothing to do with trying to nail a turn, what I said is the ego wants to nail the turn, really It was just a philosophical ramble. Having said that that it is not all about poor hearing. There is no way of knowing whether a climaxe within a zone is potential or real until after the fact. There is no way of knowing whether the zone is breaking or holding until price starts moving away from it. Even when it is moving away it might be a test, what the MP boys I think would call range expansion. C'est la vie. That is not to say that I do not strive to improve my listening abilities or even tighten up my identification of S/R but that is not such a big a deal as examining the compromises we choose to make.
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Personally I am never far from a laptop, vacation or not. I do vacation pretty hard though. To be honest the guy hasn't tried to sell anything (yet) so should be allowed, even encouraged to speak. <shrug> I'm sure the plug will be pulled if (when) there is a pitch. btw forsearch are you implying that there is something odd because of how the guy looks? I really can't see what you are getting at or why you posted that guys picture unless there's some sort of racist thing going on. Thin ice ahead in that direction my friend.
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Lots to chew on there - Im not thinking too clearly today so will probably deliberate a bit. I try and trade at extremes which tends to make me prone to being early. I think being 'later' (either at the test or later still) so momentum has actually shifted and carries you along may be a more comfortable place to be. I dunno. There is psych stuff tied up here too I guess it comes from the ego wanting to 'nail the turn'. At least it no longer surprises me when you get that one last push. There is another side effect to being early and that is you are more likely to suffer from perceptional bias. probably one of the things that separates the truly great traders. I used too, if I hit a short (or two) at resistance I was less receptive to the idea that R might be breaking. I think I am dealing with that pretty well. It occurs to me that a lot of trading is about compromises. So I am not really looking for a 'better' way to do things just a different set of compromises that might be better for a particular aspect of me. Anyway I have rambled a bit I'm in a kind of strange mood today. It was a shame Dunnigan died when he did, i'm sure he would have kept producing interesting insights. From what I recall he was prepared to be late to the party even waiting for a thrust in the new direction for confirmation.
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I almost spat my luke warm tea all over my laptop when I read that. I bet you just love our beer?
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As brown says starting at NN:NN alarm every XXm:XXs. Youd probably want to have several of these with different waves attached. Same thing for repeating times of day alarms. I've attached SmartClock, sadly its no longer in development. Its only failing is the core requirement of a whole bunch of countdown timers. Everything else it does extremely well. Its really small (80k) you can set different time zone clocks. It has a transparent background (v important) so you can place it on say your charts title bar and it loooks like part of the app. It has an option for mouse over dismiss so you can get at whats underneath. Actually what would be cool is under your clock display having a couple of little horizontal segmented bar timers that count down to nothing. At a glance visual representation of how much of a time segment is remaining. Thats it for now smclk131.zip
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[VSA] Volume Spread Analysis Part II
BlowFish replied to Soultrader's topic in Volume Spread Analysis
Thanks for digging that out CW. I don't have my copy where I am living currently. Sounds like time for another re-read with a view to uncovering other titbits about taking trades. Tawe really I don't think it wise to wait for confirmation, the no demand is usually very narrow, very low volume (by definition) quite often an inside bar (not VSA I Know). The next bar is often a 'thrust' as it breaks out. i.e it is wide it opens one end closes the other. Actually seems that a fair few of the WRB type guys are looking to exit right around there. If you wait for that bar you are going to get poorer trade location. Watching live on 'smallish' intraday timeframes you can see volume dry right up and price just hang there before it cracks. Each to there own of course. CW did you see my question about what instrument that was? -
Good point. Perhaps I am that trader! This is something I have meant to ask you about for a while. While rectangles may provide a much truer picture of where S/R might lie they do present more challenges to the trader looking for trades. I think you coined the term 'preliminary climax' for the push that comes before the real one. Sometimes you may get a couple if the side in control just wont give up. Now what if all these are in the zone? I guess one trades them all? You mentioned elsewhere that Wyckoff would have no qualms about entering and re-entering. If you get good trade location and apply decent money management principles you should get a scratch or even take some profits on a portion if that is your preference. Is this the answer, trade management. Actually lines provide a similar challenges too because if price has visited somewhere a lot (i.e. it is 'real' S/R) there is likely to be 'clusters' of them resulting in a zone anyway. I guess another way of putting this is if the S/R zones are pretty wide compared to the space between them they become less useful in there job of guiding the trader to where he should be looking for trades? Not sure if this is the right place for this. I was going to post in your blog or PA thread. Feel free to link off somewhere if it's straying off topic here. I have given this quite a lot of thought, maybe its the old traders malaise of looking for 'certainty' where none exist. Still I would be appreciative of any thoughts you might have on this. Cheers.
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[VSA] Volume Spread Analysis Part II
BlowFish replied to Soultrader's topic in Volume Spread Analysis
Are you sure about that? I know he says that strength appears on down bars and weakness on upbars, but I don't recall him talking about taking entries on them? Of course just because I dont recall dosen't mean he didn't say it I do find my memory is really not as sharp as it used to be! I wish he'd written a chapter or two on trading (as opposed to analysis). Though many might disagree, I am of the opinion that there is much to be learnt from how others manage there trades and why. -
[VSA] Volume Spread Analysis Part II
BlowFish replied to Soultrader's topic in Volume Spread Analysis
I like looking at trades that didn't work out, often much more enlightening. Of course its easy to look back to try to find some piece of evidence to support the other side but to be honest, if I had not been round earlier, I'd have probably been all over it too. Seems to me that there where clear signs of weakness in the background and a push down to 70 or even 60 was quite plausible. Just out of interest which pair was it? I am starting to take a bit more interest in the currencies though its pretty casual right now. I guess that's obvious (that its casual) or I would know what it is by where its trading! I'm just interested to see how it behaved later. -
I used tradestation 2000i to store tick data for the longest time. I still maintgain that data in multicharts though it is less manageable. There are several off the shelf packages that have pretty robust data management facilities. (Neoticker instantly springs to mind).
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Yes, Indeed. Concidering they only introduced charts in...what was it....version 5? They (charts) are really at version 2.0
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[VSA] Volume Spread Analysis Part II
BlowFish replied to Soultrader's topic in Volume Spread Analysis
I would go with Mr. Ed's comments on the volatility breakout. The volatility expansion zoomed right on. CW does things in a way that works for him - and generously posts them what's more! I have annotated the chart in perhaps a more traditional way, by encapsulating the area that was broken out of. For me (an it's just an opinion) this usually provides a tighter more focused zone and so its easier to look for entries. It's my belief that this is where 'real' S/R lies but at the end of the day it dosen't matter its what works for you that is important. DB's blog (where he does a couple of weeks commentary) and the realtime price action thread have a lot on identifying S/R zones for the day. I have to say they where uncanny in there accuracy and certainly worth a review. Keep 'em coming CW, I always find it interesting when you can get to the same place by different routes.