addchild

Advising anyone not to use stops, is akin to advising someone not to use condoms. You might be in a position where its ok for YOU to be unprotected, but it's terrible advice to give out. The only finite rule in trading is this, "cover your ass!"

The purpose of applied statistics is to answer questions, If you don't know what it is your looking for there is nothing to find. Once you have an idea of what it is that you're looking for, and what questions you are trying to answer, you can venture down the rabbit hole. UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts: Statistics 110: Probability | Harvard Video Course Khan Academy

Same info, less distraction.

QM is only 1/2 the size of CL, Its not worth sacrificing the liquidity for the decreased leverage unless you are swing trading. choosing an instrument to trade is all about finding what fits your personality, no market is easier to beat than any other. They all have unique attributes and risk tolerances. That being said I find the things that drive oil prices to be fairly well defined. Keep an eye on either the dollar index or the euro, as they are very correlated with movement in Oil, keep an eye on bonds and notes as well because they are essentially the other end of the market (risk off). The key to oil is that you will get beat up at first, so start in simulation. Learn the habits and patterns of the markets. The best way to do that is just sit and watch, dont trade, don't try and guess which way it will go, just sit learn and take notes (mental or physical) of what you see. Eventually it will all start to come together.

I sort of agree, I'm not really sure who the gullible person is though, it's seems subjective to opinion.

Yes it generally applies to all markets, as it is just part of the mechanics of a continuous double auction. But it is much harder to view in the orderbook for ES because of how many orders are in the book. some DOMs will give you a total at the bottom of the bid column and another at the top of the offer column which makes it easier to view. (sierrachart is the first that comes to mind) Keep in mind, even with this information, It won't be much help in your trading without a greater form of context.

Horace, Not sure what market your trading so you will have to take my opinion with a grain of salt. The two pieces of information your missing is the market maker aspect, the entity that profits by collecting the spread and providing liquidity. Also the market is a continuous double auction. In a continuous double auction price will always move to provide greatest utility. If more and more people want to sell above the current market, price will rise, reverse for buyers below market. All a market maker needs to do to exploit this concept is remove some of the liquidity from either side of the market, and as price moves away from is initial position more orders will come in to cross the spread. Hope that helps a little.

To take advantage of the initial balance concept of market profile you need to us CME equity futures Regular trading hours. That being said depending on your charting application you can use the full 24 hr chart, and segment that into two separate profiles. I use RTH and ETH (ETH-rth)