BlowFish

Actually that wasn't the question. the question was 10 or so posts before and had a chart of the FTSE attached to illustrate it. It was not about trades per se but about real time monitoring of price action

Indeed, though as I said the levels can be comfortably drawn the night before without the pressure of the live market. Actually I know traders that trade successfully with just one or the other though. Furthermore of the vanilla 'levels' guys some trade break outs some trade them as S/R. Anyway I wonder if you spotted my original question concerning corrections that look like reversals off the 'front edge' of a zone? I would be interested in your take on that.

A lower time frame chart to monitor the turn around 46.25 was the first hurdle.. I was late to the party 47.75. (short of course) edit: Looks like a re-test might be needed before any decent sort of move.

With the benefit of hindsight the top line is a little low Clearly found resistance at 50 which has held so far. The key thing now is to monitor to see if the bears can sieze control

Maybe calling them trivial is trivialising things It's not the lines/zones that matter anyway its how you monitor and trade them that matters I have been trading FTSE last few weeks but threw these on an ES chart this morning (europe). They may not be "right" but they will keep me right side up Edit I should say they are relatively 'short term'.

Sorry edited the original post and it double posted as I went back to many browser pages.My bad.

I should have been more specific I had assumed (never assume!) entry at the resistance zone rather than exit (though the same question is relevant). You will notice I talked about entry later on in the post. Yes this can cross over to tactics as I mentioned. However I think if you just 'blindly' sell every potential S/R you'll go bust quick, well thats my observation. Determining potential S/R is the easy bit I'd go as far as saying its trivial. There is a bit of 'art' involved but with some diligence its easily accomplished. It's also done 'unreal' time in the calm reflective phase well away from the trade. Erie I would humbly suggest it does matter in fact I would suggest that monitoring to see if potential S/R is really becoming actual S/R is what determines success or failure. I would be interested to hear your take on it, do you just enter at the zone or wait for some sort of price confirmation? Either way you would have been short off of the first edge when price started making LH LL. I figure I can't have expressed too well as it appears clear that not only does it matter its critical. I guess scaling in is an option that obviates the need to monitor quite so closely until price approaches the 'last line in the sand' that is.

I should have been more specific I had assumed (never assume!) entry at the resistance zone rather than exit (though the same question is relevant). Yes this can cross over to tactics as I mentioned. However I think if you just 'blindly' sell every potential S/R you'll go bust quick, well thats my observation. Determining potential S/R is the easy bit I'd go as far as saying its trivial. There is a bit of 'art' involved but with some diligence its easily accomplished. It's also done 'unreal' time in the calm reflective phase well away from the trade. Erie I would humbly suggest it does matter in fact I would suggest that monitoring to see if potential S/R is really becoming actual S/R is what determines success or failure. I would be interested to hear your take on it, do you just enter at the zone or wait for some sort of price confirmation? Either way you would have been short off of the first edge when price started making LH LL. I figure I can't have expressed too well as it appears clear that not only does it matter its critical. I guess scaling in is an option that obviates the need to monitor quite so closely until price approaches the 'last line in the sand'.

You buy (or sell) the contract on credit. You provide margin (a deposit) against potential losses. Exchanges have a margin requirement based on volatility and point value of the instrument being traded. The overnight margin is often more than the daytrading margin (more risk). Many brokers do there own risk analysis and allow you to trade with lower margin deposited. Dont be tempted to trade over leveraged just because they allow you to! With futures accounts are usually settled at the end of the day (google settlement) essentially money is transferred from the losers accounts to the winners accounts. This is one of the reason you have brokers as they organise the settlement of customer accounts (though some clear through a third party).

Hi, I have noticed that every now and then a thread loses the position I had read up to so when I click on the icon for last unread post it takes me to the beginning. I am not sure how or why but often happens on a 'necroed' thread. (Necroing - Action to dig up a dead thread in a forum.) Having said that I seem to remember it once happened on the VSA thread which is anything but dead! It just happened on OSFX's thread for example.

VSA does not have WRB per se. The sorts of place you might find them are pushing through previous areas of demand/supply or on steadily increasing volume in a trend. With both of these you would anticipate continuation. The only place you would be alert to a shift in the dynamic would be if the volume was high to ultra high. (we are talking really climactic here not Meg Ryan climactic) My price action foundation goes back to Dunnigan one of the grand fathers of PA. In his terminology a thrust (WRB) after a double bottom or a bottom and a test actually confirms a trend in the new direction - again not a place to exit. In traditional Candlesticks dosen't a WRB signal continuation too? I mean they have three white soldiers / three black crows. In both instances you wouldn't want to get out on the first one. In a nutshell the whole premise for exiting just because a movement is strong so it might stop is flawed.

The discussion has seems to be centring on drawing the levels or zones of potential S/R. I'd like to ask how people use the 'real time PA' of the thread title to determine whether S/R is holding or breaking? I have noticed that price will often react to the first 'edge' of the zone and in fact retrace some way. It may then push a bit further (perhaps to the midpoint) and then finally turn from the outside edge of the zone. Using lower time frames seems a common approach to detect the turn. Looking harder and closer at price where you anticipate this might occur if you like. The problem is that often (very often) you will get a change in trend on the lower time frame that is actually just the first reaction. One of the answers seems perhaps to be through tactics (e.g. enter 1/3 first edge 1/3 centre 1/3 outside edge). However how does one recognise whether you have a reaction or the final turn? Heres a picture that hopefully might illustrate what I am talking about.

Actually when you define patterns rigorously enough for a script to detect they are anything but random. That is one reason to do it, consistency, a good thing to have in trading. When you candle guys can't even agree what one or another is, that's random. Again you have me perplexed in your zealous defence of candles yet you dismiss anyone that wants to do rigorous work to determine there efficacy or find possible uses for them if they are not a member of the 'high church of candles'. Again (to me) you do candles a dis service by sniping at other rather than offer up detailed descriptions how you use them. Too much time in Combat Grounds battlefields perhaps

<Doh> had a buddy visiting the last couple of days so been occupied and missed the start. TBH much as I enjoyed hanging with you guys the game didn't completely gel for me. Clearly there was some finessing to do but the game seemed a bit too formulaic nuke, build up troops, then find some poor shmuck to obliterate for levels. Rinse repeat. As I say hanging out was fun and I'll maybe try again next time round how long is each game a week, 10 days?

They are UK based aren't they? I seem to remember chatting on the phone to them and they came across well. As some one else said the performance figures seem lacklustre enough to be realistic and they fully disclose how the thing works without having to buy (from memory). If not fully disclosed it was easy enough to work out from the sample charts. I think it essentially looks for an ABCD measured move correction to a fib number in a larger swing/trend. Again thats just from my slightly flakey memory. Cheers.

Many moons ago I used to work as an IT consultant and whilst I always called the truth as I saw it I got into the habit of using a qualifier. My girlfriend was always telling me off for prefacing everything with 'I suspect...' Old habits die hard I guess.

Brown, so really you aren't using candles at all except as a method to portray price over time? Or is it just one knows or agrees on what they are called or what there characteristics are Tell us what you look for rather than just poking at the VSA guys (I'm pretty sure I know as it happens but it would be helpful to others I'm sure). So really it boils down to the fact you find candles aesthetically more pleasing? Thats a genuine question btw. Cheers.

Bingo - Price Action baby! The fact you chose a candlestick chart over bar chart over P&F the price action is clear. It hit a potential support area and reversed. Nice trade! Did you enter on bar close with a stop below the wick? I have noticed (in index futures particularly) they will often poke through that price just to gun stops. Cheers.

J-S on your chart the downtrend is over almost as soon as it starts. You don't know it is a downtrend until it has moved 4 points right? A point later price retraces 6+ ticks so its finished. There are much better ways of determining trend imho that you can see instantly just using price action. Is price making higher highs higher lows and higher closes? Is it leaving higher swing highs and swing lows? etc. Thats just my opinion each to there own of course:D You might want to check out Clyde Lee's website the swing machine he has a tradestation function called swingleeII (from memory) that is freely given and has many user inputs and options to determine swing points. It will plot a zigzag swing to swing I think too. Actually i believe most zigzag indicators will do what you require with little or no modification. Cheers.

Personally I'd stay away from the obvious charting packages. They really are not robust enough unless you are going to sit and watch which kinda defeats the object. The obvious place to run this stuff is at your brokers where they have (if they are any good) suitable redundant infrastructure. I have never used them but maybe check out strategy runner. They also have in house programmers to help customers with automation. Quite a few brokers offer to run SR strategies. Step one is writing a detailed enough spec that people can quote on it, you can have placeholders for key elements if you are worried about plagiarism. I know a couple of people that have done it themselves but they have either been pretty hot Java or C guys or had access to pretty hot Java or C guys (friends or colleagues). It is possibly a greater undertaking than you might imagine. Long story short you aren't going to want ninja, ts, amibroker, ensign, or whatever running on some virtual machine in a data centre. Of course if you are going to run it on a PC in your office while you watch TV with one eye and make sure everything is OK with the other that's a far more trivial proposition. Cheers.

thrunner I think the accepted definition is "the total number of options and/or futures contracts that are not closed or delivered on a particular day." Of course if you are getting real time OE then you would know this tick by tick rather than day by day. For every buyer there is a seller of course but OE tells you if they are trading to open or trading to close. Put another way its the number of open positions held by traders.

If price smokes through, just as if it smokes through any other line, it tells you something pretty important. Now if you get a climatic bar that pokes the pivot then closes back up followed by no supply a test etc etc you have a different story. I favour the traditional pivot (h+l+c)/3 mainly as it's the one the world and his brother watches so there is an element of the self fulfilling. There is some inherent logic if you think about what that calculation actually represents. Hint: (H+L)/2 is yesterdays midpoint (somewhere else stuff often happens).

There's some pretty astute stuff there or so it seems to me.

I have never used a strategy in TS so I will defer to BlueRay Hopefully will learn something too. There are a bunch of reserved words to buy sell etc. that I guess would go in instead of plot. Easylanguage really is pretty easy (IMHO) and a bit of hands on will get you there in no time at all. Perhaps look at one of the sample strategies to see how it hangs together. Im sure there must be one for a moving average Xover or something similar. Be interested how it pans out for you.

IF C[1]>C[2] and c[2] > C[3] and C[3] > C [4] and H > H [1] and C < O then plot1 (h+1,"High") else noplot1; Set to plot a dot, it should plot over the high on bar close. You can but your own logic in quite simply. The number in square brackets [n] signifies n bars ago. Haven't tested it as I typed it straight into the post. I'm sure BlueRay wll correct it if I am wrong