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BlowFish
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Everything posted by BlowFish
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Ninja Traders...lets Build a Better Mousetrap
BlowFish replied to darthtrader2.0's topic in Market Internals
Saw you post about this structure elsewhere. Certainly seems quite elegant code wise I have to say I am an 'old school' type of coder and have always used arrays in the past. Mind you I predominantly coded in assembler, and built any structures and routines for manipulating them from the ground up. Actually they (arrays) work remarkably well and are a very fast a way of doing things when it comes to execution speed. Of course you pay a bit for this in storage by pre-allocating. Dividing the price by tick size gives the array index, quick and easy. Actually I tend to use relative price (from the first tick in the series). Sometimes I get a bit nostalgic for the old days, still, hopefully the above might prove useful or interesting to someone Actually by pre-processing the price data as above you could use an integer dictionary which is likely to be much more efficient when it comes to how the compiler hashes things. -
I have a hunch its some sort of bot. What purpose it serves who knows. I sent a couple of PMs to 'admin'.
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Asking the question but doesn't want to hear the answer which was plainly spelled out in the thread about secret of traders.
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Kind of weird to find a year old post bumped and to have deja vu about the comment.......only to discover that it was something I had written 18 months ago.....un-attributed of course.
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IB has a fairly extensive range of reports you can download in various formats (word,excel,quicken,msmoney etc.). Its pretty neat. Not sure whether you can access them on a test account though.
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It's only a mild irritant but doesn't create a good impression for genuine new members. I did get 1 PM for some forex course. Actually there was one that sounded like a fortune cookie that did make me smile
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Is there an institution somewhere that allows the inmates internet access Friday evenings? Lots of random slightly sureal 1 line posts by brand new posters. We're not in Kansas any more Toto.
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I see a journey abroad with a tall dark stranger. Be careful on Monday when Jupiter is in Uranus. Have things gone completely sureal around here or is the forum mixing up threads? Noticed several identical fairly strange 1 line posts in what appears o be random dead threads. Weird, still be careful monday
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What's a good place to put 10K for 10 months?
BlowFish replied to AbeSmith's topic in Beginners Forum
Well since a year has passed since this was posted I guess its all pretty academic now. -
liquidity and volatility are important. Most of these ideas like 'don't trade NY lunch' or 'don't trade Friday pm', are because those tend to be less liquid and have less range. In current conditions lunch times seem fine to me. You don't have to do hugely complex analysis just throw up an hourly chart (doesn't have to be hourly that's just an example) and notice when the long high volume bars tend to occur. Look at the shorter bars do they look long enough to provide trading opportunities for you? As BB says take a look at Europe & maybe Asia too.
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You are talking to the wall to be honest Darth Actually maybe you are the wall There is absolutely no assumption about a normal distribution. Actually the assumption is quite the reverse until later on in the presentation. It is actually assumed that the distribution will be skewed. I just don't see how you can walk away with the normal distro idea. Really I truly and genuinely don't understand how you don't 'get it' if you have read the early threads. You need to read it without the blinders mate 'cause frankly you are plain wrong. It's a real shame as Jerrys work would seem to be a pretty close fit with the sort of stuff that interests you.
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Introduce Yourself Here - Don't Be Shy!!
BlowFish replied to trading4life's topic in Beginners Forum
Hello & welcome CT. Might I ask did you find it difficult when you moved off floor? -
NinjaTrader Stop Loss Bug - You May Looose $$$$
BlowFish replied to rsagi's topic in Brokers and Data Feeds
No, it varies exchange to exchange you need to check with your broker to be sure. From memory and unless its changed a stop will be held at your brokers or client platform, not on Globex. Eurex is the other way round. Over time exchanges are adding more order types but it used to be quite sobering to see how few are handled natively. You would probably be surprised to find some exchanges don't even support market orders, they are converted to limit orders with wide limits . Believe what you please but I would check personally Edit: OK I checked for you (senility makes you question yourself sometimes) Globex does not support stops or market orders nativey, so there you go. (guess I should have trusted my memory) -
Yes indeed eliaun. Though (imho) the best way of judging momentum is in real time either by how fast the 'tape' is passing or how quickly price and or the bars are doing there thing.
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NinjaTrader Stop Loss Bug - You May Looose $$$$
BlowFish replied to rsagi's topic in Brokers and Data Feeds
Maybe you got slippage on the stop? Price can jump a bit round fomc. Don't stops need to be sent as stop limit to reside locally on Globex? Can't remember off the top of my head but I think that's correct. -
It varies platform to platform, market to market and exchange to exchange. Your broker should be able to help you out.
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You don't need execution speed with a break out bracket order resting at the exchange. You don't even need any directional bias. A simple way to exploit the volatility caused by news. You still have to be nimble of course. A quick and easy idea for struggling traders.
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Re- read this thread. Where's the confusion?
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What do you think from the comments here? I din't think people could have put it any plainer.
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Of course 'professionals' would watch different things depending on the nature of their profession. There is an extraordinary level of naivety shown by many retail traders when it comes to recognising the diversity of participants in today's markets. Actually the same could be said about many 'pros'. I wonder what you mean by "daytrade futures directionally"? I guess you are seeking to exclude traders that are not profit motivated like hedgers, or maybe arbitragers both who might be happy to be 'on the wrong side' of directional moves. Kind of confused everyone trades directionally though some participants are not bothered about market direction. Also I wonder your source for "the vast majority are scalpers that trade size"? I guess that is simply your contention as little (beyond the CoT) is known about the volume traded by different types of participant. You would still have to discount the lions share of volume as non "directional" to arrive at that conclusion though. Still as I am not sure who you are excluding this might well be moot. Even scalpers trading momentum are aware of highs and lows in the tick flow, well the good ones are You could argue that scalping is the purest form of trading 'price action'. Put another way 'tape reading' is based on 'price action' and momentum. I guess I may as well go for the clean sweep and question all your points I think you might be surprised by the background of some of the posters here.
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Bill, If you are thinking of changing instruments it may be time to re-evaluate brokers. Have a search round the forums there is a thread about TS, some people have problems with them now and again. There are also a handful of brokers that get mentioned fairly often that have a good rep. having said all that, if you are familiar and comfortable with TS then why introduce another new factor into your trading.
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Not sure who the book comment was addressed to Hakuna, me or Steve? I think probably Steve. I was responding to Firewalker. If you are interested in who the 'smart money' is, how they operate, and why, then Harris or O'Harra will answer those questions. If you are prepared to accept they exist without knowing anything about them thats fine, as I said the information is not needed to trade successfully. Anyway apologies Steve if this was off track, I did think it pertinent to some of the questions being asked and one of the core concepts that Harris discusses is information asymmetry and how it is utilised, what naively and simplistically could be called 'smart money'.
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If you want to know who trades, why they trade and how, I recommend Harris' Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners. Apparently O'Hara is pretty good too, I haven't got round to that one yet (its taken me a year to digest Harris Your questions are answered over numerous chapters. In short there are dozens of types of participant with fairly different motivations and time horizons. For example someone hedging currency risk is likely to behave quite differently to a broker/dealer (different categories but sometimes performed by the same people) riding on the back of order flow. He also also identifies the different types of information asymmetry and who tends to loose when a particular category of participant wins. I think its a remarkable book though it is perhaps a little 'difficult'. I can't say it improved my trading but it lifted a veil. A separate point. The liquidity that news can cause assists people with large positions to unwind, or wanting to build large positions. It provides activity they can use to do their business.
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How much do you want for it:question:
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Or one can play hammers,pin bars,key reversals, double tops or a variety of other 'patterns' at levels of potential support or resistance. For a price level to be rejected price has to move away from that level when all is said and done. How long you decide to wait for confirmation determines 'lag'. (whether watching price itself or a derivative). There a couple of interesting threads in other corners of the interweb where people have demonstrated (in real time) trading S/R with simple easily recognisable 'PA patterns' ('pinocchio' bars seem to be a favourite). I think that something along these lines is probablly the simplest, least ambiguous way to get a pretty decent edge in the markets.