rplust

Just my 3 Cents. I don't trade 30m charts (only D1, W1, M1) to find out where the price is heading. On the 30m thre are too many levels, too confusing and not significant unless in confluence with a level on at least a daily but much better a weekly or monthly chart. It's easy, go to M1, W1 charts and draw the major levels and then work your way down to the daily. As those levels are more significant and don't change frequently you really don't need an Indicator. When I draw the levels I change to a line chart as it makes it much easier to spot those. The only additional thing I do is to look for fresh levels of Demand Supply as I go along. To spot those of course you need a candle stick or Bar chart if you like that better. Again, this is the way I trade. Nothing spectacular but it works fabulously. Trading is quite simple, it's usually us who make it complicated.

Man, I fully underwrite that, from experience. Looking back at my journey of a thousand indicators, trading systems (when this line crosses that, look for the red dot...), well, it just sucked till I started looking at it from a business point of view. Supply and demand, as in any business. It's all on the chart, look to the left and it tells you what will happen to the right at a high probability, often to the tick. At least I know where I have got to pay attention and watch the panic attacks by those who follow the indicators and sell/buy right into a demand/supply level.

Ok, now we are getting there as you state that random price is your subjective view. When I hear traders say that price is random it raises my suspicion that they do not know what drives the price and they don't read or understand the price action they see on the monitor. Only because price moves "up and down" in long or short moves does not mean it is random. If you look at it from the point of supply and demand which is exactly what's happening in front of your eyes, the "randomness" is suddenly gone. You can see exactly at what price levels traders are willing to buy or sell from the past. New price movement follows very often to the tick as it is moving from one level to the next. If you understand to read that there is no need for double or triple down and up while draining the bank, there is no need for fancy indicators, expensive software and support of "gurus"...... all you need is a naked chart. So for me price is not random as it seems to be. Can I predict the price, no, but I can determine high probabilities, which comes very close. But this of course is my subjective view....

QUOTE[i have no idea how long the trade will be profitable. In this example, trading both sides allows you to be profitable regardless of where price goes.] I'm sorry, I can't follow your logic. In your example the price is going South. You have 4 contracts in the direction of the price and 14 contracts against it. And you tell me this allows you to be profitable regardless where the price goes!? According to my math your loss is at 3.5 times higher than your gain. In your example you created a happy ending. But in reality, if the price continues going South (and it may do this for months and years) I'm curious, how does that allow you to be profitable?:hmmmm:

No, it's not confusing at all. But your sample is like a roller-coaster movie with a happy ending. What if it continues the way it started and every time you enter a short you double the buys. If you stick with one short and one buy you'd have already 3 profitable trades and there'd be no need of averaging, just go on till you get bored....lol Makes no sense to me. If you guessed the right direction and you are profitable on the trade, why would you enter double the order (or any other multiple) against the profitable trade. Anyway, I acknowledge that this is up to you. Actually I wanted to address another issue. I see that posters here are confused. You say you don't trade on margin but use cash i.e. you buy for example shares directly or use options as your main trading tools (I don't suggest these are the only trading tools). Some posters seem to confuse margin with leverage. So it would be great if you'd explain a little the tools you use. I know that trading options allows me to make money most of the time even the trade goes against my original order. It's like buying an insurance policy. But you have to stick with the original order size. No double, triple... I personally favour options trading over anything else. It would be great if you addressed this issue a bit.

I agree with what you say but not the last sentence. "Beware who you believe"...my answer is: Nobody There is no reason having to believe anybody. Business is investment and as with any investment there is risk involved being it the type of business or the people or companies you deal with. There is no insurance. Companies are set up to make profit and are not charity organizations. And you are the source of their income. You chose a broker as you make decisions in trading i.e. following high probability decisions and spread your risk. Don't keep your eggs in one basket. And keep you accounts at a minimum at all times according to your trading size. And as several posters have mentioned, stay away from brokers located in obscure locations and stay away from sweet business deals with ultra low spread and bonus offers made to lure innocent people into opening an account. There is nothing free on this planet. On a last note: learn to trade higher time frames like D1 as many issues like fills, slippage, spread etc. will just vanish. I believe, many traders on ultra short TF scalping missions have a suicidal attitude and try to blame many failures on the broker. Happy trading! And stay away from bad trades and bad traders....lol

The advantage of trading on Saturday afternoon is that you can keep your losses at an absolute minimum.....lol...... But seriously, you are right. For me keeping a trading journal is like an uphill battle, especially going over losses because there is the other side of my conscious which tells me " forget about it, it's done!"

Can't agree more to that. That's what it is all about. Nothing magic, nothing secret, nothing sophisticated. Keep it simple. A thousand indicators will not give you an edge. I trade off supply and demand levels (which every trader should be able to define) with a 34 MA to follow the trade. We would be all rich "if..." But "If I had..." is hindsight. If you cut off a trade, it's done. Period! The magic word is "next". From history you learn about your trades but not about "profit". Happy trading! Stay away from bad trades and bad traders.....:doh:

The "chick" as you say is a 46 year old nurse who has got a family and is the mother of 2 children. So, if she was your wife, I guess you would have told the children.."well kids, the chick is dead, I've to look for a new one. Let's get over it and move on". Consciousness, decency and respect...ever occurred to you...or are those still unresolved issues!?

Exactly! Indeed we haven't changed that much or at all. Or as one writer put it ( I'll try to translate it from German language) " cars are getting better, people don't". Meaning we put effort into the progress of almost everything except ourselves. But as long as power and money direct our lives, we are doomed.

I guess the great teacher does not take any answer except "yes sir!"....lol.....but if he was such a knows trader he'd neither have the time to teach nor to post here because he'd be busy counting the money. I chose this sarcastic introduction because I remember my initial efforts a few years back that I thought to be successful I'd need to learn the trade and of course who were the best to learn from.... well, those great gurus who I thought knew everything. To make it short, the internet is full of those (most of them I'm sure failed making a living by placing there own trades) and of course there are thousand indicators out there which will tell you where the price will go the next minute and more of this BS.:crap: Sick and tired I soon decided to return to the basics by just drawing a line at every round number i.e. 00, 25, 50, 75,...( last 2 digits} you can observe that the price, thriving for balance will respect those levels most of the time. Or you could use pivots. Anything that visually indicates S/R levels if you can't see them on a naked chart. If you are also aware how institutions trade i.e. they will take out your stops first sitting below those levels then you can actually trade safely. The rest is observation and anticipation. The market is hardly random i.e. history repeats itself. This is how I trade, it makes fun and money and thus I agree with the Predictor. There is really not much to learn and definitely no need to spend thousands of Dollars for those "know everything" teachers. Price moves either up or down (well, isn't that great news!) and turns around when it runs out of gas (supply or demand) you just need to see where. Don't tell me there is anybody out there who could not do that! I will take his money:haha:

Hi, thanks, I just found out that this was a browser problem. Using IE I got only empty folders, but when I changed to Firefox everything downloaded perfectly.

When I want to unzip the files I get the message "invalid archive" Using either Winzip or Winrar. Operating sytem Win 7. Any suggestions?