BlowFish

Perhaps som enterprising person should negotiate a bulk discount! I wonder what other gems might be buried there. I am surprised they haven't converted the majority of their micro fiche stuff to digital by now actually.

Funny you should mention that. Here'e the thing I don't think the ES is a great instrument to scalp (well sometime isn't). Al talks at length about how many ticks move you need to get a scalp etc. and the ability to trade 200 as easily as 2. I have traded the ES on and off for a while and can remember when 10 point (and less) daily ranges where common. If the distance between the BO (break out) and the previous swing (see enclosed chart) is not enough for a scalpers profit you might want to consider passing the trade. Anyway sometimes the ES is kinda lifeless and with holidays upon us there will likely be some pretty lack lustre days. Another thing to look at is the infamous 'bigger picture' after a couple of days of momentum (especially if the last one backs off from the extreme on high volume) you might anticipate a day (or three) of narrow range listless low volume trading. I don't have anything formal along those lines in my plan but certainly something to be aware of. Anyway here's a DAX chart from this morning. I thought the action is kind of similar to the ES chart that was posted. Not unreasonable to take a short at the bottom there which gave a comfortable 8 or 9 ticks to the previous low the actual move went a wee bit further despite the fact that you would have been on the wrong side of the market from the point of view of a swing. Maybe other trades there....I woke up late. Long story short the ES sometimes lacks volatility for scalping (imvho). EDIT: <doh> actually the entry should have been a few ticks better triggered off the 2nd white candle

My broker (IB) gives FTSE tick - symbol:TICK-LSE. The fact they don't offer DAX leads me to suspect that it is provided by the exchange rather than constructed by them. They also offer a couple of asian and europeans 'ticks'. Don't know about VIX.

AbeSmith I don't disagree with your post I have a couple accounts with FX bucket shops (actually they are spread betting accounts...same thing except no tax). The complete flexibility in position sizing is nice. It is worth pointing out that most retail traders get no access to the underlying liquidity as you are essentially taking a bet with your bookie. This doesn't bother me (or most other people I imagine) but I do know people that have had difficulties when there size has increased.

I am not sure I should post this.....trying to be constructive but not sure there is anything here of help really. it was a tough period for a scalper that's for sure. Here goes anyway....... Easy to sit here with the benefit of hindsight and find reasons why there where failures. Still...... I don't really think there was good momentum off the open, the whole area was kind of 'rangy'. Tim Morge calls this sort of action rolling chop, apt enough description. We are moving down but there is a lot of 'backing and filling'. If the trendline that you drew was the 'boss' not looking at longs until its broken and the extreme re-tested keeps you safer, well a bit safer. The troublesome area was a tight range.....if the market is out of phase with your 5 min bars you get bars going red green red etc. rather than a string of doji's not really possible to know that until it had developed somewhat of course. (I know, I know you said don't mention barbed wire!) Thinking about what potential is in the trade might help, is there a good couple of points to the last SH SL? Assuming that is the likely place that price will go next. To be honest I'm glad I wasn't trading that.

No not completely wrong It's one of those age old arguments. Going back to a statistical argument. People generally accept that the FX market is trillions a day, is a sample size of a few hundred thousand that a bookie conducts a significant sample? IBFX is meant to be quite good as far as bucket shops go (for volume figures) so I opened an account with them. To me the volume just seems a bit 'off'. The best thing would be try it and see (if you can find some indicators), or you could use the FX futures and a different package for charting (maybe ninja or sierra). It could be that the way of sampling and recombining the data that are presented here might minimise inaccuracies, who knows?

If Ninja 7.0 delivers what is being claimed on the recently published feature list then it goes a long way to fixing some of it's shortcomings. Lets face trade station has major shortcomings of pretty fundamental things. Still it is somewhat imature. I don't know much about IRT I hate the lease model to be honest, I'd rather buy an outright license. I did try it once (probably over a decade ago) I had a few stability issues guess they have had plenty of time to fix those People might want to concider NeoTicker (though it has a steep learning curve) it has had some remarkable features for 'hardcore' development for some years. Things like there tickprecise technology and grid optimisation. Quite a remarkable product. Mind you any backtesting needs to offer tick by tick processing 'inside' the bar.

For multiple symbols the best option might be ADE (if using V@B V@A rather than plain old upticks/downticks).

The fives are great imho. If you think about the geometry, they are essentially trend lines constructed from two bars. Because of the nature of HTP interactions they can be significant. The dot and ET are great for organising where you are and act as support resistance in there own right (ooops I meant termination!). 11's are useful too, especially when they line up with the envelope framework, these are essentially 'floor traders pivots. The new stuff looks all well and good but seems to me to be paving the way for automation and backtesting (many with binary outputs). I would focus on the core stuff myself. (unless your interest is automation). I developed my own version of the zones as an aid to organising farther out geometry (in a similar way to how the EB ET & Dot are used to organise nearby energy.

Here is a failure despite that it gave a bounce that would have alowed a scratch or small loss depending on how one was to manage it. (even a profitable scalp). The blue line was towards the bottom end of support and had been tested a few time already. It looked like a fail to me (support failing despite the volume peak).

There are a few earlier in the thread. I have a couple of nice failures from the end of last week, the reason they are nice is because it looked like support had already 'gone'. Been a bit busy last few days.

Well this is not trading advice but it is saying enter against the prevailing trend. Particularly if it is an area that you might anticipate a turn (S/R). I have not talked about volume @ bid and volume @ ask or trade intensity (well not in this thread, there are other threads that discuss those metrics). What I presented is simply looking at volume peaks on a fast chart.

I wonder if you are trading spot fx as you are using MT4? If you are I would be a bit wary, what is actually reported is bid ask changes rather then actual traded volume. It might be good enough, but for a technique that is entirely based on the statistical analysis of volume and price you might want to consider instruments where that is reported. (Even last price is a 'guesstimate' in FX).

Hi rigel I don't actually trade from 15 seconds (though the paterns that brooks talks about occur there) it is more a kind of barometer to try and judge 'pressure'. One has to be careful not to get 'drawn in to' that chart. What these fast charts seem to show better (on the DAX at least) is the sudden short peaks of activity. Often after a spike in activity you get a 'rest' which means that the spike can get lost on slower charts. Its a way of looking inside the bar if you like.

Indeed though I thought AgentKay was talking about 'order book' ticks i.e. not generated by an actual trade (similar to how FX data providers generates ticks). It is my experience that using those as a proxy for volume is not nearly as useful as 'real' ticks. That's not to say the information is not useful, its just rather a dubious proxy for volume.

As an aside loops are generally a pretty poor way of averaging though they are 'unintuitively' what people seem to use. Sum the new point and drop the point n periods ago for the win

So they are either breaking NFA regulations or are a bucket shop operating unregulated I guess?

I always bought into the rule of thumb of having charts separated by about 5 -7 Times. Using the 15 seconds as a pressure gauge it doesn't really seem to matter that its a long way removed (20 times) from the 5min. In some ways it makes it easier to 'snap back out of it' as it is kind of 'abstract'. Interestingly you do see the same sort of patterns develop (as you might expect).

Thales, I draw S/R on a 60 minute chart to give context (and a bit of directional bias, DAX is down today, actually running out of lines on the current contract and might have to use the cash!). My trading chart is a 5 minute I draw a few lines here horizontal and trend with the occasional outside channel line. It is here I look for trades with decent location. Really I could stop there (and sometimes think I should) but I do mess with ways of judging 'order flow'/'buying selling pressure' call it what you will. The current flavour of the month is this 15 second DAX with volume. I am growing to like it in fact I have a strong hunch that one might be able to scalp from it alone without much regard for 'context'. I am sorely tempted to put together a simple scalp strategy more (maybe solely) focused on the 15 second chart. It just seems to be working real nice on the DAX right now. I tend to be a bit of a scalper anyway, I do try to hold half for longer, frankly I'm just not that good at it. Still here is the 5 min chart with a few lines on. The short brown ones are entry and two exits (based on previous swings). Of course break out guys like yourself would be in a few ticks past them and you can see what happened!

How about ritalin bhairava? Seems to be the drug du jour. I was just reading about modafinil, hydergine, lucidril (gotta love the name), adderal and provigil in wired (yeah I know its kinda a 'tacky' mag, I like it OK). I can smell a really lucrative business here

OP if you are still round you should really read and digest the two nominated posts. If you can get to the point where you might actually believe them you will be on your way.

Wish I had had you as a parent Wish I could interest my son to the level that he would want to follow through.

Trouble with a lot of the clocks I looked at (some while ago) is many where pretty bloated for what they do. I had a quite nice one (that I think I posted earlier) that has the digits on a transparent background so you can put it on top of your charts and still see through. Mouse over temporarily hides it completely. phlsti's zip looks compact.

Another example they are easy to find as they work more often than fail. I snapped this one 'real time' and then another chart with how it panned out. It was further propelled with what I guess was news at 8.30 eastern.

Phall Haven't looked at what you are doing but you might want to concider this pseudocde. This will accumulate sideways ticks in the prevailing direction. up will be unstable until you get two different value ticks (a non issue). if tick < tick1 then up= false; if tick > tick1 then up=true; if up then inc(upvol) else inc(downvol); tick1 = tick;