BlowFish

3) No inactivity or monthly fees charged (eg. Interactive Brokers charge inactivity/monthly fees and would not suit me). As far as I am aware IB do not charge inactivity fees. They may charge data fees if you sign up for different exchanges real time data (you may not need that with 6 trades per year:)) Some are subject to waiver if you generate $30 of commissions. Having said that I am not sure you can enter an order into a market that you don't have a market data subscription for. I think not so that would scupper you sadly.

Wierd thing but even to my pretty poor eyes chrome renders crisper. Here are images from each forgive the bmp's but didn't want to introduce compression artefacts (they are quite small images). chrome.bmp ff.bmp

And to you!! Good to see that you are keeping an eye out here still though it's a shame we don't see more of you.

Ahh figured it may be something like that. I'll stay with 3.6b for now that is noticeably faster than the release version (due to geko I guess) Xmarks works with chrome (dev channel version) so its easy to go back and forth. I really do like chrome (i think I am a minimalist at heart) and it has some neat architectural features (each page is essentially 'sandboxed' running as a separate thread to others for example). My one big gripe is such a basic thing......you cant 'open' a file directly in chrome, download is your only option. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Sounds like I need to re-evaluate the new FF beta, I must say chrome has pretty much won me over for day to day browsing. It feels really snappy, there are several things that contribute to that experience. One think Kiwi, I see 3.6b5 on the beta download page (they are calling it a preview now) does this update to 3.7 or is there a separate 'real' beta? Incidentally that is why competition is good, I don't think Mozilla would have concentrated so hard on performance if chrome had not arrived on the scene. Edit Installed 3.6b5 and it feels much more responsive.....I guess that's thanks to the new geko rendering engine.

Multicharts beta 6 offers it too. Untested by me but people on their forums seem to like it. Seem to remember Ensign does too, years since I used it.

Nice to see your setups Tresor. I wonder if you (or any other WW's) might talk a little about how you might manage them. A nice thing about WW's are that the target is implicit but as price can often move a way beyond the initial entry point initial stops can be tricky.

That still doesn't completely answer svensas question. In my previous post I suggested some things both are OK for. Personally if I where you I would ask myself 'what do I want to achieve'? rather than put the emphasis on the tool, 'what is this tool good for'? Hand drawn S/R is likely to be superior to both PP & VWAP however both are adequate to trade against in a similar fashion to S/R. When you get down to it you will find at times that both appear to turn price to the tick (and you will likely swoon) and at other times they both will be chopped to death (have price oscillate around them) and you will likely curse. Why not use excel to see which appears best for what you want to do? You are far more likely to have faith in your findings than some anonymous poster on the interwebz aren't you? For example last I looked the ES will trade within a tick or two of the daily pivot over 68% of days.(you can construct hourly pivots or 150tick or 2.5 day pivots btw) . That information could possibly be used as the basis for a profitable strategy. (and I know of one vendor that sells such a system).

Both are watched by enough people to be interesting. Both are good as reference points to let you know 'where you are in relation to' and both are OK places to initiate trades though you will obviously need a few rules. If I wanted (a computed) horizontal line I would go PP for a sloping one VWAP. (though you can easily make a PP slope should you so desire). Another concideration is whether volume information is available personally I would not consider a VWAP for spot FX.

To be honest it's probablly not worth pursuing this. It has all been said before in the threads I mentioned. Sampling market data is completely different to sampling die rolls, thats the whole point. Seems like a counter productive use of my time to repeat all the arguments again here. All I can tell you is that the threads I mentioned present ideas that demonstrated to my satisfaction that not only can statistics be used to analyse financial time series but they present robust ideas for trade entry and money management based on these statistics. At the time not only did I check out the maths (who would have thought stats would spark interest!) but I traded the ideas for successfully for several months before going back to my own thing. I can not understand why anyone that is interested in the 'evolution of MP' would not want to take a look. It has a lot of smilarities to MP including a similar 'look and feel'. You could argue it represents the current state of the art when it comes to the 'evolutioun of MP theory' (except based on valid statistical methods rather than heuristics). I guess you can lead a horse to water but you can not make him drink.

Looks like you have made some of Al Brookes writings well and truly your own. Great post . Certainly gives some clues to why PA 'works'.

It's worth spending a bit of time making sure you actually do the exercise properly. (I'll admit I failed a couple of times in the past). The idea is not to be profitable but to be consistent. Bearing that in mind it makes sense to have a simple clear un ambiguous plan. It's about building confidence in yourself not the plan. Having said that, elsewhere Thales has pointed out how having a good plan can make the process of building trust in it and then yourself a lot easier. This can present a bit of a catch 22 for traders. By doing Douglas' exercise at least it allows you to judge the plan (as well as your consistency). If you tinker as you go along or have ambiguities from the start any benefits will be lost Just saying from bitter past experience!

You might want to look at Jperls excellent threads on trading with market statistics. At a couple of points there are fairly interesting discussions on what is 'statistically significant' and what is not (particularly comparing MP with the market statistics framework). Apart from that it is a novel approach with as complete and robust a presentation that you are likely to find anywhere. There are a variety of things that are 'statistically significant' (Jerry discusses a few) whether they can be used to provide an 'edge' (my experience is that Jerrys stuff can) is a different matter of course

Indeed it is. Comes from flawed logic, the old 'I have a black cat therefore all cats are black' syndrome. Or more common I don't have a black cat there for black cats don't exist. If I had a cat I would call it Schrödinger then it could be black and not black at the same time (as well as being both alive and dead) . Of course high priests of various trading cults prefer dogma to cats though are humbled when they met (black) swans.

Oh and you might want to try a post infection tool like microsofts malicious software remover. I have used spybot search and destroy to good effect when other software has failed. There are also manual removal instructions dotted around the internet if all else fails.

I don't run real time virus scanning either. The issue with image backup and restore (or any backup restore) is if the virus goes undetected and finds its way all through your backups.

It is sad but not surprising that there are angry bitter people around this business, actually I am surprised there are not more when one considers the trials and tribulations most of us go through. What is particularly sad is that until one gets out of that particular place (angry bitter) chances of success are minuscule to nothing. Don't let the custards get you down. Oh and prosperous new year all

Ahh OK I would be wary of those terms as well, however that does not mean that someone that has a large line to accumulate might not sell whilst they are accumulating If you wanted to buy a large position in xyz consider how you might do it without bidding up price on yourself? Have you read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator? One of the best books ever written about trading and speculating (if not the best book ever written). It clearly illustrates some of the issues facing traders moving large positions around and how they deal with those issues. No 'manipulation' just normal common sense ways of doing business. No rhetoric nothing to sell (being written 70 or 80 years ago) It's a cracking book on many levels, a classic. If you want to get serious about your study of exactly how and why people buy and sell get a good book on market micro-structure. Harris or O'Harra are probably your best bet. You could also do worse than take a look at DBPhoenix's stuff on supply and demand. Incidentally manipulated is not a useful word and impedes meaningful discussion. Why? I hear you ask. Well it has two distinct definitions one that simply means to operate skilfully, the second however adds unfairly to the definition. Of course this is exactly why it is liked by the marketeers. I don't think we can have the discussion about how participants pursue there objectives until you explore how a continuous auction works and how supply and demand is likely to impact prices within the auction. Something 'being manipulated by buying power' makes little sense to me. There are various maneuvers available to traders seeking to accumulate or distribute inventory but that does not really describe any. As price moves around buyers become sellers, sellers become buyers, sidelined players enter, and yet others traders, exit. Put another way on each side of your trade can be someone buying to open, buying to close, selling to open, or selling to close. There is a good chance that they are motivated by price (though a whole bunch of participants are not). That trade might complete there quota or they might have another 1000,000 to cover. So it could be argued that all is not equal. Seems that you are looking at single piece of the jigsaw and saying hmm I can't see the big picture. Not only that it is a piece supplied by a guy with a sales pitch and so is not even from the real puzzle.

Barry over at emini watch has one for TS but its a paid for job. Not sure its how I'd want them drawn either. Quotetracker has one too I seem to remember it being a bit weird at times. (freebie though) Could check Clyde Lee's site too (He does pitchforks but I don't think trendlines). Finally I wonder if any of the Hershey crowd have one? Last I looked it was all 'tapes' which doesn't help really. Certainly the community could use a decent public domain offering.

It might help for you to express "the simple question that I am trying to establish an answer for," In specific terms. Not being facetious here but you have given a couple of examples but I am not completely sure exactly what they are supposed to prove or disprove (a bit of scepticism is usually healthy btw). Are you talking about any sort of volume analysis in particular? In some instruments volume is highly correlated to range for any constant sample size. Whether that is useful information or has anything to do with the 'volume sales pitch' I couldn't say. Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) is a very useful measure used by all sorts of institutions for a variety of purposes. Perhaps one of the most common is to rate traders performance though it is a common input into algorithmic systems. Some people swear by market delta type indicators (vol@bid vs vol@ask) as a proxy for order flow. Lets not even get into market (or volume) profile. I am pretty sure that there are a whole bunch of 'pro' traders that find volume pretty darn important, I am sure there are many that don't too (though liquidity nearly always becomes an issue for the real top guys and that's closely related to volume). The fact that some slippery snake oil guy is selling something or other based on volume doesn't automatically invalidate 'volume'. By the same token just because someone trades successfully with out it doesn't invalidate it either. I am not sure what your motivation is? Did you buy the pitch but are having doubts and want someone to talk you out of wasting time studying volume further?

In your second example (original post) it would take 1000 'littlefish' or one 'whale' prepared to trade a 1000 contracts 1 tick above the high. If one thinks that is significant (or more significant than the 1 lot traded) will likely determine how one answers the question.

This might be of interest List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia a pretty massive list with a large number of cognitive biases that are relevant to trading (or have been to mine!). Click through for more detailed discussion.

Just out of interest why are you so reticent to mention the data source? The sceptic in me immediately thinks that it may not stand up to scrutiny . In any case It makes it impossible for anyone to judge the veracity of your claims. I can't help wondering whether the data you used and/or your testing methodology might be flawed (I am not saying it is). For example I have observed inconsistencies with Zen/Gom both pre and post CME changes. From a pretty recent post of yours in the OFA thread you where advising pretty much the same thing about Ninja/Zen as you have with DTN.IQ. "NinjaTrader w/Zenfire is good for CD work" Anyway forgive me for banging on about this but I have often seen damn smart traders show a bit less rigour when it comes to the technical side of things.

If there are any multi millionaires living in political exile that need a European bank account to get access to their money please PM me and I will respond with a PO Box number to mail a cheque to. Thanks.

Whilst UB contributed some valuable thoughts and insights some of the stuff he wrote, particularly about data feeds, was complete hyperbole. I pulled him on a couple of occasions but did not press the matter as the good stuff far out weighed the more. I always thought it a shame that some one that clearly was well informed with much to contribute on certain topics could talks such nonsense about others. I guess you are talking about things like CQG when you talk of higher end feeds? Probably another good option. From the last few posts it would seem safe to conclude that the problem issue is potentially with any live data feed and infrastructure/capacity limitations. However the original poster suggests that this is not the case and that IQ.Feed matches live and historically. This is odd as Zenfire is fairly highly compressed, it seems to get more ticks in fewer packets so you would expect it to suffer less from data loss. Also your tests would suggest that it matches. Strange.