wanr

I got to know nanex through zerohedge but most of the time I don't understand their charts... They have really nice chart with a lot of colours but I have no clue what they represent... Do you know from which software they take their screen prints?

I keep hearing about alledged market manipulations. How do they exactly do that? It is because of the size of the orders that can drive the market up or down? Is this with HFT? Who manipulates the market? Big banks and hedge funds or does it require some kind of cooperation between big players? Where can I know more about that?

Hi gosu, Interesting post. Could you elaborate on the first 2 points? How do you trade? Daily, swing, long term? What time frame? What tools do you use to read the market? Only Technical analysis / Price action?

MightyMouse, Then you can summarize it in only 1 trading mistake: not trading well. But I am not sure it helps. Anyway I understand what you mean. Optimizing these 4 actions would result in a perfect trading. I consider I have to assume that no system is perfect and can make every trade profitable. If my system indicates me to be long and then the market drops, I don't consider it to be a mistake. It was an opportunity that didn't realize. I consider it would have been a mistake not to go long, even if the deal happened to be a loser, because it would mean that I don't take all the opportunities that makes my system statistically work on the long run. For every art/technique involving random phenomenons, a very bad move can turn out good by luck and a masterpiece can turn out awfull by lack of chance. But on the long run, one can see if it was luck or mastery. Anyway, this is pure procrastination. Whatever way you see the market, if it works for you, that is great. I am a just a beginner and far from getting confident in my current skills. This is what I like in trading. You have so many different ways of understanding things and acting. It is still quite puzzling for me but I hope things will get clearer with time.

Well said Mad Market. At the opposite, if making no mistakes means buying at a the bottom and selling at a the top of a trend on every deal, this is just not gonna happen. I guess we are always some kind of too early and too late in entries and exits. There is no way around and this could be considered as a mistakes if it is really to late or early (anticipate a reversal without clear signals or try to make some extra bucks on an hypothetic 4th or 5th leg) Besides physical mistakes (wrong button, etc...), my biggest mistakes happen when I somehow try to feel and anticipate the market moves outside my rules (which are not very well defined so far because I am still experimentating, well I'm just a beginner). On the other hand it is also sometimes when I make my best trades...

Does anybody ever tried to build a consistent losing system using the top ten typical trading mistakes, then to reverse it to see if it can be consistently profitable? All operators on the markets are trying to take money from each other right? Then it is not surprising that the resulting behaviour of a market is an optimized trap for the typical human trading psychology. If we agree with that, it may be cognitively easier to create consistently losing systems than consistently winning ones. The "reverse engineering" of a system might better adapted to human mind and reasonning. Or not...

The funny thing with that stat is that new traders should then be considered as providers of high probability winning strategies. If 90% of new traders are consistently losing money, placing reversed orders of a new trader would be have 90% of chances to be a consistent winning system!

QQQ Definition The Nasdaq 100 Index Tracking Stock. The QQQ is an Exchange Traded Fund which allows investors to essentially invest in all of the stocks that make up the Nasdaq 100 in a single security.

In the Nasdaq. QQQ POWERSHARES QQQ TRUST NASDAQ STOCK QQQ The ticker symbol and Wall Street name for the exchange-traded fund based on the Nasdaq 100 Index. This fund, traded on the American Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, serves as a proxy for large-cap Nasdaq stocks, including Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, and Intel. Also called cubes.

Hi, I'm getting interested in the QQQ and added as a new instrument in Ninja Trader. I'm not sure I did it right. What is the Tick value for the QQQ? The minimum move is 0.01 point, the minimum amounts seems to be 100 shares and QQQ is directly quoted in USD. Does it mean that if you buy 100 shares and the QQQ move by 0.01 point the P&L is 1 USD? It seems very low but would be great for me as I'm looking for some low risks instruments to play with, with the goal to contimue learning by switching from paper trading to real trading at low risks (ideally limit my loss to 10-20 USD per day is reasonnable for learning with real money). Do you know other instruments that would have low risks (in terms of average possible loss per day in money) and would be suitable to trade for real while learning?

Nanex - Strange Days June 8'th, 2011 - NatGas Algo

About the Flash Crash on the Crude Oil and Natural Gas: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/no-its-not-nat-gas-fractal-also-nanex-discloses-very-ominous-implications-todays-berserk-cru I am not sure to understand all the details but I though you will find it interesting. By the way, there are a lot of amazing charts at the end of the articles, that I've never seen before. Any comments on these events or the charts will be welcome to try to understand more in details what happened.

Very interesting discussion between Maelstrom and Eqsys. 2 opposite way of trading. I am a newbie interested in both... What instruments are you respectively trading? What are your results (I am not sure if it is taboo to talk about results but let's break the ice...)? Ideally I would like be able to have a few systems auto-trading low risk / low return strategies and day trade live a few hours per day with higher risks/returns strategies, that is why I was particularly interested in your discussion. By the way, asking what is profitability in general doesn't make sense and is the same kind of question as asking what does it mean to be rich. Some would say that people earning 10k salary per month can be considered as rich whereas other would say that these are poor people that have to work for a living and cannot rely on their capital. In fact, you don't have to be profitable (earning 1 USD in 1 year would do) you have to reach goals that you have to define by yourself. Trade for a living (you need to ensure a short term profitability which can be expressed in terms of P&L per month, week or even day), sustain the buying power of your capital though years while minimizing the risks, take reasonnable risks to increase your capital (then long time profitability could be measured in ROE or a return/risk)?

I found barchart.com very good.

Hi everybody, I was away for a few days without my password to access the forum. Thanks for all who replied to my thread despite the lame title (I realized just after posting that it was probably one of the worst possible title to try to draw some interest!). I started paper trading for a few weeks with a lot of losses as you can imagine... I also started a few simulation and was surprised to see that even some simple Moving Average reversal strategies could be "theoretically" profitable for a lot of instruments with a nice regularly raising equity curve although generating quite big drawdowns. With good parameters for the slow and fast moving averages for day trading, I had often and for different instruments about 40% winning trades around 1 hour in the market. But the winning trades were generating just a little more profit than the loss generated by the losing ones, so such a strategy would be able to produce very bad days that my small portfolio could not allow. I think I will buy a new computer running all day dedicated to testing strategies (computations can be very time consuming). In the meantime, I will continue evening paper trading (i work during the day) until I can be consistently profitable if ever... I also got intereted in the QQQ which people told me is easier to trade with a nice volume and could be a good instrument to start. While continuing my studies and readings about trading, I got more and more interested. Such complexity and simplicity at the same time is a real beauty. Learning how to trade seems to develop a lot of interesting qualities: patience, stability of emotions, accepting risks, accepting lossese, accepting to be wrong and being able to change your mind quickly to reassess the possible trend of the market, confronting theories to reality with a quick and direct feedback, the ability to summarize the complexity and changes of the market evolution in a simple system, determination, riguor, discipline. And of course a closer insight to economical/financials news. I am getting convinced that the mindset that one has to develop to become a profitable trader can be very usefull in a lot of other areas in life. Do you guys noticed a change in your personnal life or personnality after successfully learning how to trade?

My first plan was to stick to paper trading for 6 months and then assess my results to see if I would continue more training or go live. But with these micro contracts, I am thinking of shortening that period. With all the mind games that apparently occur when going live, I think it may be a loss of time to polish my trades on paper for years and mess everything when going live due to the emotional charge. I may be wrong but I would see trading 1 trade per day on these micro contracts with a tight Stop loss more like sparring rather than getting into the ring.

Hi SIUYA, Thanks for taking some time answering my questions. It sounds like there is no big mistakes in my first assumptions, so well understood, I will do my homework :missy: I will start contacting a few brokers to have a better understanding of the fees involved. I just saw a live trading session on the net with FX micro-contracts where the guy was trading within a P&L range of only 5-10 USD per position. I will therefore investigate those micro-contracts in order to get familiar with live trading earlier than I initially planned while limiting the risks involved. I am considering doing 1-2 months of paper trading and then go live on a micro-contract with maximum 1 trade per day (systemic approach) with tight Stoploss to minimize the risks but confront myself to the reality of this game: get familiar with losses, avoid mistakes in making orders, experience the relationship with a broker and be sure that my simulations are based on real data (slippage, commissions, etc...) I will probably start with a very conservative approach and then relax some paranoid rules step by step. These micro-contracts might also be good way to try algorithmic trading and not being scared that your computer will mess with your account like your wife would do if you give her your credit card...

Hi guys, I am new to trading and after studying the basics of technical analysis, I would like to backtest a few strategies to start with. I have 5 questions that most of you have probably heard thousands of times but a few tips would be very helpul and would save me a lot of time ! I installed Ninja Trader and took a connection to Kinetick to download intrady historical data. 1. Do you guys think it is a good tool to start? Since I have a friend trading commodity futures, I decided to start with these instruments. I was thinking of one Instrument per category to see the differences and I am considering Sugar 11, Crude Oil, SP 500, Gold and a Currency to be determined because USD or EUR may be too much likely to be influenced by Fundamentals if not manipulated (and will they still exist in 3 months?). 2. What do you guys think? Is it a good way to compare different instruments or do you think I should concentrate on 1 category? Are Futures a good start for trading? I also try to see the brokerage fees and Exchange fees to integrate them to the simulations but I am confused: should I add brokerage fees to Exchange fees. I think the ICE charges commissions for each trade that are not small, and my future broker will do as well. 3. Am I correct? I could not find these fees on the net. Can you guys tell me the commissions range for futures? Where can I get all the figures? I started to look at the Sugar 11 for a few weeks and was confused when confronted now to the contract rollover. 4. How should I consider the contracts roll-over for back-testing over a long period of time? What historical data should I consider ? From which Volume do you consider that the historical data are good enough to work with? Are Swing traders just closing their positions on the July contract now and follow the same strategies on the October contract as if nothing happened or do they consider some corrections from the spread or something like that? Don't worry, I will not quit my job to trade unless a miracle happens and I manage to make some good money out of it. I have understood that there is more change that I lose money than make money at first but I am willing to take the challenge. 5. What is the minimal amount of money I should put on my trading account (and be ready to consider lost) to have a chance to learn and make a few mistake? What capital I should consider if I manage to do well after some time and would like to make a leaving out of it? I know it is quite a lot with these 5 questions hiding in fact themselves other questions but every comments will be welcome ! Thanks, Wanr