BlowFish

As TRO frequently points out, you don't need any indicators! In fact if one can not see if price is rising when it hits 00 then any career that needs even the basic levels of numeracy (or being able to tell up from down for that matter) is likely to be out of reach Glad you have deciphered things though!

The short answer is no. (though I suspect your question might simply be to get 3 posts). It depends on what you want to achieve. The requirements of a scalper taking maybe maybe 50 trades a day are going to be different from someone wanting to catch the main intraday swings. I notice from another post you have been trading 8 or 9 months I am kind of surprised. If you are profitable (or close to being) great! I would change nothing. If you are not you need to stop and work out what you are trying to achieve and then pick the tools to do it. If you tell people exactly what you are doing now and what's not working out (or you'd like to change) it would be easier to offer feedback. In the meantime just use 42.

http://www.traderscalm.com/ror.html might interest you.

One of the reasons I like IB is that they are conservative with funds. I would be far more wary of the checks and balances in place at outfits that let you trade ES on $300 margin. Actually IB traders are somewhat protected, the same losers trading on $300 margin will be wiping out the day they open their accounts. With IB it will take much longer and they will at least walk away with roughly 6k

Yeah indeed, but median lines are just another way to draw a channel. Having said that his approach to trade management is pretty solid (and what he emphasises). Unlike many 'vendors' his credentials are pretty impressive.

81 is the secret sauce number :hmmmm:

There is an argument against fixed money daily goals and that is you can only take what the market is offering. Would it not be a better goal to take all the trades presented and manage them properly during the hours you trade? Knowing when to press it and when to ease off can improve results. Having said that having a good general understanding of what you might expect (points wise) over the period that you focus on can help alert you if things are OK or going wrong.

IMVHO this is likely to be a problem. Exersising the daemons is what is likely to determine success or failure. Once you have overcome the daemons just about any method can work. Still, all credit to you anyway.

Tim Morge has a new article at http://www.medianline.com/ As it mainly covers trade management I thought I'd put it here. No affiliation just enjoy how he writes about trades.

I have to say I quite like bullet points, dosen,t take long to go through and make a short list.

No problem with liquidity sure its a bit thin and spikey sometimes but I guess thats part of the appeal I think you should be fine up to about 10 contracts (though I don't trade that many). I use IB (interactive brokers) and have no issues. I draw S/R from hourly (though sometimes zoom out to 4h and daily if things look too 'busy'). The lines are usually good for weeks I then trade from a 1-5 min chart depending on volatility. Its a feel kind of thing. I do watch a very fast (currently 10 second though have used .5 range or 10tick etc.) fine chart to gauge momentum and try to see if S/R are holding in real time. To be honest 5 min or 3 min / 1h or 4h are kind of academic. If there are no lines nearby I sometimes scalp just off the 1/5min. but trying to pay attention where price is moving from and where it might move to.

And when you are done there perhaps you could come round and mow my lawn? Thanks.

It is not presented as a fixed system but having said that there is more than enough information published to trade it as such. If the 11 threads are daunting just read the first post in each and you will have all you need. The rest is questions and ongoing discussions. It is worth doing this as a simple newbie trade is first presented and then the ideas built on. You would be doing yourself a dis-service by not spending the 10 or 20 minutes to read that information at least. I do have a summary (with some key observations) in a reporters notepad but I guess that's not much use to you

Amp & Mirus both have good reputations. Personally I use IB.

H = Hourly 1 = One (Hour) Colour Red Open > Close Green Open < Close

Do you find that the YM is a bit like flies on the elephant? In the past I have found that sometimes YM run's a bit further then comes back and is generally a bit more 'jittery' being thinner. Bump: People should be aware that most retail 'traders' don't have access to this liquidity. In fact as most forex brokers are bookies they dont actually have access to any of it! Some observations on VJ's points 1. High degree of trend (the trend truly is your friend) This is oft quoted and may well be the case. Intraday I see little difference from other instruments. 2. Respond well to "technical analysis". TA is a broad category to be sure, but it is nice that currencies can be traded so well from a purely technical side. One thing I have observed is in FX price really respects fib levels. It's pretty much on all time frames and rather uncanny 4. Liquidity is high in both spot and futures. Volume in futures may be light to some, but I seriously doubt that anybody here can trade at the size that would make that a problem. Trouble with spot is most retail traders don't have access to this liquidity. Most 'brokers' are in fact bookies. P.S. #7. Related to 2, but deserves mention of its own. The BBs leave such visible tracks in the forex market (VSA). This has been debated ad nauseam however it should be noted that no one publishes spot FX volume data, you can get number of quote changes. Quote changes seem to be a reasonable proxy for volume. If you need this info it narrows the tools and data feeds available to you. Just a few observations. I have only been trading spot FX for about 6 weeks now but found myself drifting back over to the the FTSE for the European morning session.

Hi VJ. You aren't a pop star as well as a trader are you? You seem to re-invent yourself as often as Bowie or Madonna Still whatever the nom de plume the contributions are always welcome!

Yes that occurred to me H2K. Interested to hear more

The thread is about mechanical systems whether automated or not is kind of academic it could be automatic, broker executed, or self executed. I wonder if you are actually talking about fully mechanical systems? as most of what you are saying is contrary to my experience. It's also contrary to what most systems designers, who also publish, write. Do you trade a mechanical system(s)? How long have they been working? I am interested cause it sounds like you have discovered the holy grail if you have a system that can use the same entries for trend and consolidation that works in all market conditions under all levels of volatility and never needs tweaking or putting on the shelf for a while

I think one of the issues is that many starting traders have pretty small accounts. This make 'firing blanks' (paper trading) appealing if you haven't got much live ammo. Spread betting or CFD's might be helpful in this case as this allows you to trade (well its really betting) smaller size. I think this is one of the reasons that retail forex is gaining in popularity. Of course you mst remember that the outfits that offer these products are bookies and there are a bunch of issues that this introduces but it does allow practice with real, albeit small amounts of money.

JT It is not a 'system' but the answer to your question is almost surely No. Simply as there is no way to collect the data that is required for this sort of analysis. MRC there are two questions really. Does order flow have a short term effect on price? And are these indicators an effective tool to guage order flow? A search for delta or market delta should reveal a couple of discussions that might interest you.

Do you have a sound plan? If you can't answer immediately in the affirmative stop trading until you can. If you do have a sound plan then why aren't you following it? I still find myself asking that last question occasionally (once in the last month, a week ago yesterday, mid morning) You need to get to the point where aberrations are rare. Just to be contrary, there is nothing wrong with taking 40 trades a day in and of itself. That is, if your method calls for this, and of course your plan is profitable when executed with discipline. Personally I think the benefits of high frequency trading can potentially far out weigh the drawbacks but that's another debate. However my guess is that you are probably jumping in and out of trades for the wrong reasons? In which case there may be a clue to the second question I asked.

This can be probably be said about any trading method, I remember having an aha moment many years ago along those lines. Having said that there are clearly 'better' areas to look for trades than others. My knowledge of stats isn't great (i have Jerry to thank for diving a bit deeper) but no no no no. You absolutely CAN calculate the variance without knowing the distribution. The whole point of calculating variance is to tell you something about the distribution of the sample! (the amount of dispersion). I think you might be getting confused, because of some of the often quoted stuff about normal distributions. Specifically if you do have a normal distribution then 68% of the samples will fall inside 1 standard deviation. Therefore people sometimes cheat and draw bands at 68 or 70%. I suppose I should say 'use a heuristic method' rather than cheat. Jerry makes no such assumption. He calculates the sum of the weighted (thats the really clever bit) squares and this tells him about how the data is dispersed. The only assumption that is made is that the data set is one that you can actually calculate the variance for which it clearly is. (e.g. some data sets diverge from the mean and/or tend towards infinity). I am sure Jerry (or someone) will correct me if I am wrong.

I have a friend who is a pretty good trader in his own account. He also works in the city on a contract basis. In short he is a bright sort of guy. He is fascinated by this 'natural law' stuff. (They call it that so people don't think they are crackpots ) He's always researching, sending charts, and telling me days I should be watching. Again he can read price action and has a good grasp of money management. I guess it's essentially cycle stuff, but can't you just measure a swing high to swing high to find a 'cycle'? I do see how a timing method that is based on time (rather than price), or that gives a point in time, could be quite complimentary to a price orientated approach.

I am inclined to agree with you about Gann Steve as you will see from my earlier post. Having said that he had a rock solid grip of price action and money management. Nothing esoteric there.