BlowFish

I presume that the firewall is a university or company one. They may open up a port if you can give a good reason. (research for a project or something). Failing that it is possible to circumnavigate most firewalls using a proxy and tunnelling. A web search and a bit of reading should explain what that's all about. Cheers.

Is it quite 'technical'? (Hows that for a vague term). Is it 'trendy' on intraday time frames ? I'll try and think of some more vague generic questions Which exchange are you trading on? I typed in CL and 'ONE' came up. Cheers.

Indeed, but variance and so standard deviation are inherently a relative measure. Guess thats why TG uses it. Whilst pure VSA relies on relative volume (sometimes in a rather arbitrary way) there certainly can be useful information to be gleaned from absolute values. Low volume at 50,000+ contracts is different to low volume at 2,500- contracts It is also valuable to have an idea of relative volume at a higher level. e.g. for an intraday trader knowing it can be helpful to identify a high high/low volume day whilst its in progress. Cheers.

Only for break out brackets. And only use BO's at very specific times (pre fed for example)

And less risky than some of the suggestions! Wasn't low risk one of the stipulations.

It has less granularity than the contracts you mention, they need to tick 2.5 times for each of its ticks. It is also much thicker as other have mentioned. A few years ago it all but 'died' range and volatility wise. Now its nice. Yesterday afternoon it dropped 7+ points in a couple of minutes running stops. Shortly after that it advanced double. YM dropped a little under 70. Slightly contrary to what others are saying it is displaying similar characteristics as the ER2 of old and the YM (despite it's 'thickness' ). In a nutshell volatility. 5 minute bars that are 5+ points or 70k contracts are not uncommon. Sometimes those overlap a lot (yesterday) i.e. back and fill, sometimes not (day before). I would say it has more in common with other index futures than differences. Come on over there is plenty for everyone

Check out the selecting a time frame thread. Equally applicable to tick charts. Cheers.

I hear MS one note is good for organising stuff you can add voice annotation and 'handwritten' notes too. I don't want to get into the whole ecology argument, however the above reasoning is completely flawed. It is simply not how supply and demand works. I only point this out because as a trader I think its vital to have a good grasp of supply and demand as this is fundamentally what drives the markets. Cheers.

Just means that he has not actually presented how you trade the strategy adequately. I kind of enjoyed the book from the 'inside the head of a trader' point of view but not a great beginners book. Funnily enough I originally bought it to see what he had to say about pivots but came to the conclusion that all the 'setup' stuff was filler, there's much better on these forums for example. At the end of the day setups are probably the least important part of the trading equation however many educators do great damage to learning traders by emphasising them. (Not saying JC did this particularly). Cheers

This is a 'pattern' I have trouble with. It also occurs at each resting point when price 'stair steps' down too. The difficulty is knowing whether it is simply a pause (stair step) or the end. Is it possible to tell whether the market will continue on down after a few bars rest - or whether it marks the end of the down move? I mean from these two bars and the background only? I can post lots of examples where it goes either way. Actually from looking at a helluva lot of charts I would say that you get continuation (just a pause) more often than a bottom. I think this is why most VSAers like to wait for the test before considering a long.

Its really a way of continuously monitoring the market from the point of view of continuation or change. Those are the only two choices. This is opposed to looking for 'setups' to occur. Exactly how you react depends on your focus (what exactly you are trying to capture). Its a more 'going with the flow' style of trading rather than an 'entry - stop or exit' approach. As an example steadily increasing price and volume would support continuation of the price in that direction. That is until you detected change (e.g supply swamping demand, demand drying up whatever). I have to say that I am looking at things slightly less from a VSA point of view (at the moment at least) and more from a Whycoff point of view.

Quoted for truth. Actually it should be quoted twice! As an aside I think an area where VSA shines is monitoring what is going on in the now. My paradigm was always anticipate and then monitor. Is it happening yes/no. VSA is a pretty decent monitoring tool. I have shifted recently to simply looking for continuation/change. Neither of these paradigms rely on prediction. It is easy (especially amongst newer traders) to come away with the idea you can 'predict' and that if you 'read it right' the trade will be right. This can actually lead to a pretty damaging mindset and is patently not true. Its refreshing to see trades that did not work out, I'd like to see lots more to keep a balanced perspective. Besides that there is often much more to be learnt from these scenarios. It is how one reacts to unfolding events that is really key to trading success not the initial 'read'. Monitoring price and volume puts you ahead of those that only watch price. Cheers.

Just being picky little guy is not equal to dumb money just as smart money is not equal to big players. We are mixing to separate entities. The little guy makes up such a small portion of the overall volume he is hardly worth bothering about. The 'big dogs' are on both sides they represent the dumb money and the smart money. The CoT reports bears this out. Of course we all know which side we want to coat tail which is the important thing Cheers.

Usually alone, occasionally have friends round to trade, that was a lot of fun. I tend to watch satellite TV while trading. Old digger Murdoch provides quite a good selection in the UK. In the past I tried playing computer games while trading that was a bit too distracting. Sometimes think it might be nice to join a prop shop for the comradarie but then I couldn't trade in bed all day if I wanted If I was more motivated it night be nice to get a traders co-op going where people could hang out.

PC all the way....and maybe a WII to get a workout :fight:

Check out medianline.com Tim Morge trades currencies using forks and manages a fund using them from what I understand.

has Todd parted company with Tradeguider? I guess so as you write in the past tense. Was it all amicable?

That's not quite what I meant I have added and outside/righthand line to your last drawing. Point 4 fails to meet it (which can indicated weakness). My question is for a 'classic' WW set up is it madatory that point 4 fall short of that outside parallel channel line (the cyan squiggles) I think you still provided the answer when you said that we should see a wedge? (i.e. the naswer is yes) So if point 4 had been on that outside channel line does that invalidate the pattern? Cheers.

I was always was fond of Borland products. Quatro theres a blast from the past! I only once did a small data mining project (once (how often did price come withing xx ticks of the floor trader pivot on a daily basis). I used Excel. Where xx was equal to 4 I believe it was 68% of the time for those interested. It is an area I would like to learn more about ( as are a few others if a previous thread is anything to go by). http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/data-mining-in-tradestation-1966.html I'd certainly be interested in what you are doing and more importantly how you actually go about the process. Cheers

I use MC. Its strongest point is the easylanguage compatibility. Customer service is great too. This is my main reason for selecting it. Prototyping ideas in easy language while being able to draw on the public domain code base. I have to say in most other areas I find it average to weak. To be fair now it has reached version 2.1 it is better however this is the first version I feel is worthy of release status. It still feels kind of slow and clunky in use and has quirks (most would call bugs) that irritate rather than are catastrophic. I certainly wouldn't trust it to auto trade. Looks like backtesting is coming together (never used it) but the data management is still lacking. To me this is daft as what is the point of running back tests if you cant maintain the data how you like. Really depends what you want to do. The price I paid for it (a couple of years back when it really was almost unusable at times) was a bargain if you look at the product today. Of course now its over 10 times the price! Not sure exactly how they are pricing it right now but its starting to get in range of products like Neoticker which is a superb product and far more mature and powerful (though has a steep learning curve particularly if you want to program complex indicators, power has its price). If you draw a lot of lines or other geometric stuff or the studies you need are available built in or through DYO (design your won) Ensign is a great choice. If it looks like it fits your needs give it a trial.

I still didn't finish stuff off...Ive been very lazy recently - Dbntinas stuff should keep you going. Excuse me going slightly off topic How do you like Ninja?

Good show, I had to run out of the door or Id have tried to find a link (well depending how lazy I was feeling!)

Well I have mulled over your quite though provoking post. Despite this the thoughts have not really crystallised so I'll just spurt a couple of ideas out half baked! Firstly congratulations, I think its probably a mark of great maturity as a trader that you can change markets and methods and do what it takes to get the job done. Tools are just that - its the cook that makes the meal not the robocheff 2000 delux food processor. Markets sometimes just act up or maybe the trader is just off his game....I think even if he is off his game markets still 'act up' sometimes. For example recently the DAX has been 'weird' with regards volume and spread. Sometimes tools need a tune up for a market. I was thinking MP - for example if there are gaps use something like Jerry's developing MP for the current day, or the MP for the last time that price traded at this level. If Use VSA on hourly bars rather than 5 miutes etc. Finally where to set the discretionary <-----> full mechanical slider. That's a real toughy. Some things are inherently 'visual', channel lines, VSA, tape reading. Personally I feel a draw to these types of methods. The dowside is they are quite hard to make more 'mechanical' so discipline becomes a big issue (for me at least). Anyway got to run...travelling again... for me it was a thought provoking post on a couple of levels. Cheers.

Would you mind posting a DLTR chart if you get a moment? I would guess with what happened in the indexes it may have dumped too. Actually I was trying to find the YM & ES charts you posted ....guess that was a different thread. I am of the opinion that once you have accepted a concept and learnt how to recognise it that analysing and learning to identify failures is equally (or possibly more) important. Cheers.

A question if I may. Can we imagine a channel line (drawn parallel to 1-2 through point 3). Is it important that point 4 does not make it to that outside channel line? The reason I ask is that (I find) this is quite a useful observation in and of itself and shows potential weakness. Cheers,