BlowFish

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc. :\:\

Yeah what a bizarre interview. Having said that the Euro breakout appeared to happen immediately before he gave it.....I am sure the conspiracy theorists will have a field day with that!

Hi Mr B. That certainly tells you something however seems like in practice several things can happen. 1) Price can fall away (possibly the level will be re-tested) but it comes on down. 2) Aggressive (@market) buyers will continue bashing at the wall and it will get slowly eaten (often price will pop through as it breaks and buy stops behind get triggered) 3) Price backs off but support is found close by (maybe 5 or 10 ticks away maybe less) and then carries on back up sometimes with residual resistance where the wall was sometimes not. Sometimes I just think I am not astute enough reading these things I guess there are nuances that I just miss. It appears to me that there is a huge amount of 'art' as well as any underlying 'science'.

Yup I think its a hidden gem too!

Some of the 'models' bandied about are hugely simplistic and not really representative of whats going on. If you are really interested in who trades (market participants) and why (their objectives) I'd recommend you pick up a book on market mircostructure. I like Harris though hear O'Hara is as good (better?). You could of course choose to ignore who trades and why and still trade successfully just by knowing that someone is trading (volume). Half baked ideas (largely spread by marketeers and then re quoted as fundamental truth) about 'who' and 'why' may not hinder your trading but they certainly wont help your understanding of markets. This is fast becoming a pet crusade of mine!

Well after a steady slide against the dollar for a few weeks it looks like EUR.GBP has bust out of a several month range. I just wondered what you currency guys & gals thought about sterling's immediate to mid term prospects? Doesn't look great to me. This is merely from a general interest point of view of someone that has pounds as there 'home currency' rather than as a trading opportunity (though it would seem that opportunities exist).

You might find this interesting http://www.traderscalm.com/ror0.html

I definitely think we are ready for a T&S thread. Darth mentioned he had made good progress there. It would have my attention though not sure I could contribute much. Guess I am more of a visual person but hav difficulty with just using the 'tape' (T&S)

Congratulations on the tape reading, that's quite an art. Be intrested to hear anything you had to say about that (though perhaps not here).

You just copy and paste the text into the editor and hit compile. It would be worth spending a wee bit of time learning the very basics of the tools you are using. It's kind of like pasting text and saying can I have it as a word document. Of course the other way round can present a problem (getting text from a word file). Shout if you are still confused, its worth taking a couple of minutes to understand this.

As for books search for market microstructure. I like Harris but hear O'Hara is great too. Guess i'll get round to that one day.

Have you asked them about it? Maybe you can eek out enough information to find out where it was borrowed from. Are you interested in the indicator or the set up?

When you have had a crack at O'Hara perhaps we can compare notes. I might get that too one of these days.

Markets change back and forth over time congestion comes and goes volatility expands and decreases. Could it be that the market changes and you do not recognise it or recognise it late - hence triggering a tipping point?

SilverKing, Pretty much what Kiwi said. There are practical exercise and drills that are likely to help you if you follow them. Her ideas 'resonated' with me so I bought it.

Extremely good point so bears repeating in my view! It is why 'x month mentoring' programs are likely to fail.

Absolutely you can figure out VSA without using the software. Actually even a novice VSA'er should be able to do better than the software (its clunky imo). There are only a handful of principles to learn. The software has 'simplified them' into 400 or so. Buy Tom's book sit down and read it. Look at loads and loads of charts and learn. Sebastian told me once that he simply printed tons and tons of charts and went through by hand with a pen annotating them until things clicked. I have a pretty dim view of "professional trader and VSA expert Gavin Holmes" (the moniker he has recently adopted). Lets be clear he derives his income from selling products and services. His pitch and the claims he makes in it become more sensationalist and 'tabloid journalism' as time goes on. It is clearly designed to appeal to people on an emotional level. I would be very wary of purchasing anything from him myself.

If you ask would be traders (or experienced traders for that matter) to list the top 3 reasons why they trade I would bet that "freedom it can offer" would be right up there for most. It is kind of ironic that most of us go through a phase (in my case phases) of being a 'slave to the screen'. I too used to do 18 hours a day 24/7 While it was not completely wasted time (I learnt lots of 'stuff') I can honestly say that most of it did not advance me towards my goal. It is important to work purposefully towards specific goals rather than just sop up random trading information. I currently am doing a couple of hours a few times a week. That could easily flip to watching a whole session or even two (Europe and US) but it will be my choice. As brown points out a dozen ticks a few times a week will quickly compound if you use position sizing (don't over leverage!!) to compound your returns. The way to make more money is to increase size rather than take more points! Having said that an adequate living can be made from a 3 lot without doing more hours.

Well it looks like you are 3 of 4 now....thats 75% rather tha 50%! of course rather a small sample:) Tick charts do a good job of 'obscuring' volume. I think you would agree the second set of charts show clearer variations? This is because high volume tends to be accompanied with higher numbers of ticks (i.e. more transactions) so the volume tends to get smoothed out over more bars. A couple of practical 'solutions' to this 'problem'. Is it possible to divide your two signals as set up and trigger? thus nullifying the timing issue. Have the trigger on a faster chart if neccassary. Alternatively think of it as setup and filter.

To be fair it (time@price) does seem like a pretty good proxy. Often as not the peak volume will coincide or at least be close. I was wondering about its usefulness in spot forex for example. Jerry (Jperl) raises what seemed like very valid points about VAH VAL which are really somewhat arbitrary. They do seem to provide pretty relevant 'lines' which only fuels my suspicion that the market is prone to be self fullfiling. So in short I think it is significant because it is watched by many market participants.

Indicators are just tools. What are you trying to achieve? The hammer I use for banging in screws (hehe) might be unsuitable for you trying to cut wood.

Not sure if you are being sarcastic? Ahh OK I think I see what you are saying....poor comprehension skills on my part. Kind of amusing that "Professional Trader and VSA Expert" Gavin Holmes trades live sometimes. Mind you the tiny little accounts are trivial compared to what they are raking in selling cr*p. It's kind of like train wreck TV, you just have to keep watching the presentations to see how low he can go.

Only thing I would add is the advice I would give anyone entering into a contract or agreement. Spend the extra time necessary so that both parties fully understand the expectations of the other. Of course I guess this thread is all about what would be reasonable expectations for you, don't forget to spend time discovering what the programmer expects. The main reason any agreement goes bad (imo) is mismatched expectations.

Actually the MP chart is a proxy for volume PS has said as much (though please don't ask me to try and find the quote!). The assumption is that if price only stays at a level for one TPO that the volume transacted at that level is likely to be lighter than if it remained at that level longer. Also the sweater analogy is a about volume@price (over a sample time of a week). Ignore me I am just being picky

Trend lines 'work' fine. All of the things I mentioned a page or two back 'work' fine. Apart from the (excellent) points Browns makes don't expect to master a tool in a day! Some times things are obvious, other times not sometimes pace picks up...and then declines again. Sometimes a trend line breaks but the trend remains intact. Maybe moving averages may be easier for you, personally I don't care for them much because they are kind of slow (though I do like a 3 period simple MA of HLC/3). You can get a provisional trend line on two bars (though that is perhaps 'unorthodox'). Put simply a suitable tool should show some utility straight off but don't expect to 'master' it immediately. Of course if you can not see utility in something then you need to move on. This can easily lead to a search for the holy grail though. It's a bit of a catch 22 that's for sure. imo its probably best to err on the side of caution and waste a bit too much time testing something than throwing the baby out with the bath water.