BlowFish

Hot Tip: Don't take hot tips:)

You have to question their integrity really. From what I understand a whole bunch of 'their' indicators appeared first on the trade station forums. Malcom's indicator is also the same though he claims he displays things slightly differently (I corresponded with him pointing out he was selling public domain stuff). The thing is you either have integrity or you don't to me it calls into question everything they publish or present. I may be wrong but I thought Trevor (MD) had just patented the footprint chart and presumably have protected the name 'MarketDelta'. Personally I think its questionable whether that's enforceable (another issue altogether). People are standing up to TT over 'their' laddered dom display which is good to see Quite sad really.

I really don't think the S&P consistently leads, it would be far to easy to make money if it did (even if only by split seconds). I know many who argue the YM tends to lead for a variety of reasons (easier to buy/sell a basket of 30 stocks than 500 being one). Sometimes Europe leads sometimes not. Its such a tangled web with powerful computers running sophisticated algorithms to arbitrage things out in a nanosecond. Some things that I have noticed, thinner markets tend to overshoot then counter correct. When all the traded volume was done on the big S&P it behaved like the elephant the ES like the flies. Also Smaller tick sizes tend to produce more and faster movement (seems to me). I am currently reading Amazon.com: Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners: Books: Larry Harris excellent book btw, I am sure it is something that is covered in depth. Cheers.

Thats a great question and I see there have already been some great replies. Really there are three variables in the equation, price time and volume. (We could add tick volume as a proxy for volume but lets keep it simple). To draw a traditional chart with bars or candles we keep one of those constant, usually it is time. The value of that constant is arbitrary whether it is 5 minutes, 500 contracts or 5 point range. What you pick here is hugely important, there are a couple of threads here at TL on the subject. By changing the bar size you are changing your 'sampling rate' by doing this you are changing the main parameters of the moves you are trying to catch. As Charlie Drummond used to say the daily bar tends to be longer than the hourly after all. Anyway back to your observation, PP answers quite nicely about things being relative and that's what we are looking for, changes in relationship to what has been. What must happen for a top to be put in? price must stop making new highs. If you see "climactic volume" but "lack of progress in price" what can you say? (The "s indicate a degree of fuzziness). Really its not about patterns (I'd also argue neither are candles, just to provoke Brownsfan of course :boxing:) its about underlying shifts in "sentiment" that those patterns can highlight. If you strip away all the fluff its about price moving up and down and how easily it is doing that. e.g all of the topping patterns involve price not going up any more or going up very 'poorly', how can it be any different? The charts are a map not the terrain, if you want to get 3 blocks use a different map than for interstate. If you use a 1:50000 or 1:49000 it will still get you where you want to go provided you have a map that shows the detail you need for what you want. Finally and most important I think its good to question ever little nuance. Some people can trade on faith to a lesser or greater degree, I can not either. For me I can not build a belief system for myself unless I deconstruct stuff. Core concepts have to reflect 'reality' for me. Without solid beliefs you are not going to do do well. Be careful though over researching can be an indication of looking for certainty (or the holy grail if you like). Remember we are looking for stuff that works out on balance not every time. Cheers.

Where people some times come unstuck is the weighting. As the volume changes every single data element needs re-wighting taking into account the new total volume. Cheers.

Quality was great! Interesting day too. Particularly like that you did not 'sugar coat' things. Often happens that price can carry that little bit further on low volume (just enough to stop me out with the other weak holders!) before finally cracking. Also the fight between bulls and bears can be fairly even before one side wins out. Cheers.

I wonder if you go into format study -> scaling have you selected 'same as symbol'? It looks like its scaling the plot independently. Cheers.

Hi Darth, firstly I am no maths expert though I did do a degree in a math heavy subject ... that was in the stoneage! I did do a bit of research (actually a lot) when Jerry first published this excellent series. There are a few algorithms out there for variance but they can be prone to accuracy errors due to overflow and underflow. More likely an issue is when using anything but individual ticks you need to decide what price level to assign the volume of that bar to. Ensign I think uses a uniform distribution at each level from bar high to low. I guess some might use mid points or other methods. Sounds like this might not be the issue you have got. By definition price will get to the 3rd standar deviation X% of the time (can't remember what X is but its pretty small) from memory 2SD's is something like 2% of the sample. anyway no real answers but some food for thought. Cheers.

Havent really gone for a good spin yet but on the subject of getting quickly to unread messages ideally you want :- A list of threads with unread messages and a place to click that takes you to the last unread message in the thread. Ideally this should remember what you have read and haven't read rather than use message time and your last logged in time. (The old software was good in this regard some isn't). Reason is you might not be able to read all you want in one sitting. Something else useful is a 'catch up' button or 'mark all threads read' button. With the old software I used to spend a while just going into the last page of a whole bunch of threads that I wasn't interested in then straight back out again just to keep it 'tidy' and let the system know I had read them. If I had been away for a while that was painful Cheers EDIT one thing I found really useful with the old software was that the link was always there to take you to unread messages (as Blu Ray initially pointed out). That was pretty handy.

I think time is important because without it you loose sight of 'pace' or volatility. I am not saying you can't trade without it as clearly you can. The full picture (for me) is a triangle of time price and volume. They are all related and detecting the shifts is easier with all pieces of information (again for me). Of course price is king as that is where we make our money and some people can do well enough with price alone. EDIT: Have you had a look at James MP thread? Time is all important in MP

Worth repeating and remembering. There are many participants some 'smart' some not so 'smart' all have different agendas and different time horizons. Sometimes they are not active sometimes they are. For example think about what a test is. The market is marked down to discover if there are still sellers at a lower level. If there are then we see a failed test. The market is there to facilitate trade it will move around until it discovers where the orders are.

MacBook Pro laptop running Windows XP using bootcamp. Hardly ever boot MacOS. It is a windows "PC" so everything that runs on windows runs. Cheers.

Couuple of things you could addd/subtract half the range to S3 R3. I also notice the description appears a bit off. The range I believe is asymmetric for calculating S/R. I would guess the code is actually correct thoug havent checked.

Not maximum as you essentially loose the time information. Horses for courses though. CVB's do make nice smooth charts thats for sure but the spikes and sideways formations you get on time charts tell a story (to me) that gets diluted/obscured on CVB's. Bills a smart guy, but somewhat over zealous in his promotion of CVB's (in my opinion).

Chaotic not Random is my guess. There are several observable, exploitable tendencies that suggest non randomness to me.

Yeah had some good stuff at SI I remember Vladym Griefer posted a lot of great stuff and a few others that escape me now. The Motley Fool (TMF) I think was a few years before that but can't remember when they added the Devils Den. Met some good 'cyber buddies' at TMF and even met a couple in real life who where trading at a London prop shop. Certainly understand where you are coming from with chat. I blow hot and cold on that. There are a whole bunch of pluses but of course it can be a bit distracting, really that's a personal discipline thing I guess. The room here is pretty laid back and quite fun worth a try. Anyway rather drifted off topic but I think the computer freezing has been done and dusted anyway. Cheers.

The trouble with levels is there are so many of them! having said that I do look at them sometimes. We have floor pivot (with R1 R2 S1 S2) mid points of those if you wish. MP VAH PoC VAL along with recent few days MP values. Talking of past days there's yesterdays HLC and 3 day HL or weekly HL. Better not forget yesterdays mid point and FIB levels of its range. Of course you could also go exotic and have Ganns square of nine, Murray Math or even Pryapoint or Grid lines using square root of price. Of course if you leave lines on from previous swing highs/lows that generates a whole bunch too. If you add fib levels between those swings it gets ridiculous! Phew there's an awful lot. there's something quite appealing about a plain price and volume chart. There's a real purity and simplicity. Sure the lines will give a heads up where something might happen but the price action with a bit of VSA will tell you what is happening. This is certainly no criticism of key levels, clearly a lot of people watch them, its more to remind myself less is often best. A couple of lines to keep you orientated perhaps but its easy to overdo it.

Cactus If you look at the charts Walter has posted you can count the bars per time unit and get a feel for how many bars per minute there are. IT looks like the 6T gives at least 15 or so and of course more when pace is greater. Cheers.

heres a chart for today delta in bottom window. Today was a grind down so not a great example.

Depends a bit on how you plot! The chart I am proposing you would see price making a higher high and the delta (cumulative for the day) make a lower high. Trouble with this method of displaying delta it sometimes goes completely in the oposite direction of price. You could do worse than search over at ET for posts from a user called '5pillars' with 'delta' in the text. He has posted many examples of delta divergence followed by zero line cross. He resets the delta each bar though. (I think this may be what you are talking about its simply a graphical representation of the delta number at the bottom of each column). Cheers

Thank you for taking the time to find and annotate a chart I had posted! Pure VSAers (which I am not though I follow along hoping to improve) seem to approach slightly differently. I notice a subtle difference in your approach in so far as the price action - S/R levels appear to be key. Seems like you then use volume to help confirm or deny. Personally I also tend to look at volume over a few bars and spot changes of pace. Really price is king, despite needing fuel (volume) to drive it. I think VSAers tend too break individual bars into strong/weak and look for strength to appear (e.g. selling climax). Seems that the focus is less on the context but more on what's in the background. It's all good Cheers. EDIT: I guess whats in the background (strength/weakness) is context really.

There seems to be useful and unique data there....I have tried to extract it and visualise it in a variety of ways. Still no real joy in wringing something out. I did try plotting the delta (difference between V@bid V@ask) as a OHLC bar underneath the price bars. I can't post an illustration as it only works real time...I'll try and post a chart tomorrow if I remember. It is perhaps the 'cleanest' looking representation and if I was to trade divergences (which I don't particularly want to) it would be something to consider. It is also possibly the best representation as a 'proxy' for order flow through the day.

Ahh those where the days. You missed out on a couple of places to hang! Silicon investor had a day trade section I seem to recall, and of course there was The Motley Fool that had a section 'The Devils Den (daytrading)'. Actually that summed up the sentiment about daytrading round then We where all 'devils'. Of course the majority of these forums where about investing. How things change. Cheers.

Nice to see someone doing maintenance and updates on Ants code. I have some footprint code that does auto shading but it seems to look 'kind of pale'. I'll give this a spin sometime Thanks to both,

Indeed Walter, though I thought those where the moves that Brown was wanting to catch. (not so sure now you mention it ). Sitting through coils and such is likely to be necessary to catch the bigger moves unless you 'shift gears'. Edit: quickly recognising changes in market condition is quite a valuable skill for a trader.