philmg

That's really a shame. They are much more restrictive than others. I have a tradestation account and am margin and option level 5 approved. However, due to the cost of it and the functionality of TOS and Dough I wanted to switch to TD. Damn it! I will try out IB and if they don't give me margin and full options approval, I guess I would just stay with Tradestation. Thanks for your comment! Best regards Phil

Hi, I am wondering, if any of the non-US residents here have an account with TDAmeritrade and are on margin. Also they told me I can only have option tier 2 approval as foreign account holder, not tier 3. Please, tell me it must be a misunderstanding. they are messing up my whole strategy concept, if that's true. thanks for advice! Best regards PMG

Hi DB, I would like to purchase your ebook. I can I get to it. Is this email still correct? Thanks. Phil

Why? Well, because I have very limited time available each day and therefore cant look at several different instruments and analyze which one I wann trade. The short time frame, because in this 60-90 mins it is unlikelz to find a setup for a trade on daily or hourly timeframe and I believe I can control my risk much tigther on a shorter time frame (more narrow stops). Well, I don't wanna take trades overnight, so swing trading is not really an option. I suggest you go through the first two steps of Developing a Plan. Then characterize each of the markets that appear to meet your requirements (Appendix E of the SLA/AMT). If you can't find anything that meets your requirements, then you'll have to adjust what you want with what the market is willing to provide.

Hi guys, I am not sure, if this is a good place to post my question, but I really would like to get advice from the Wyckoff croud rather than other parts of the forum. I am learning to trade the NQ according to Wyckoffs teachings and DBPhoenix's modern interpretations. Now I have a few limitations and am asking for advice from you more experienced guys. I have a day job and my trading plan needs to account for my limited time. I am based in Europe and trade the NQ in the evening on a 1 min time frame for about 60-90 mins each day. The corresponding market hours in the US are something like 2.30 - 4 pm. I am a bit frustrated, since I have to play the less volatile part of the session. This leads sometimes to little success due to limited opportunities/small moves only. I am often times getting out breakeven, since I cannot let winners run due to the small moves. Does anybody trade these hours in the NQ? My dilemma is really the limited time, so I don't want to start analyzing stocks and jump around to find opportunities. I want to trade ideally one instrument an a very short time frame for 60-90 mins per day. Why? I am wondering, if you had any advice, if I should do something differently in my position. Trade a different instrument? Or other advice? Also I would like to know, what you guys think about level 2 data for emini futures? I know there are no market makers shown anyway, but you see the limit orders and size. Does this help at all for the NQ for example or is this information incomplete or useless? Does anybody here trade futures with level 2 information and how? Useless. WOuld be great to get some opinions! Thanks a lot!

May I ask what book you are talking about? DB you have written one yourself?

Hi, I may have a very stupid question, let's see. I frequently hear and see, that traders may want to limit their risk by hedging and trade another stock/future/etc. in the other direction. As far as I understand both products should typically in the opposite direction, so they are correlated. Now, I am wondering, if you do that you do not only limit you risk, but also your profit potential. Isn't the total profit often times 0 due to making a profit on the one trade and making a loss on the other. How do you make money with this? Is it that you expect you trade 1 to show a larger move than you hedge? I don't get it, sorry for this newb question, but it would be great, if someone could fill me in or point me to a source, where it is well described. Thanks!

I am wondering, if NinjaTrader supports Chart Trading similar like Tradestation does, where you can move your orders graphically in the chart with your mouse. Could somebody please let me know, if that's possible. I am thinking of switching from tradestation to ninja due to the playback capability.

Well, I also have some trouble seeing the point of hedging for trader. Maybe someone can elaborate a bit more. I get the point of protecting oneself from downside risk, but how I see it it also protects against profit potential. If you take the example from the first post: If you expect tech to go up and you take a short in ES futures to hedge, then you basically dramatically reduce your profit potential and concurrently your market risk. Why would you do that. In case of trading you try to make money by exploiting the swings. I don' t see the point, maybe I am missing something. How do hedge funds make so much money with hedging or do they not actually hedge? Would be geat if someone of the experienced guys could give some more insight. thanks!

thanks DB, I get the point not to to be distracted by the bars. i find it kind of irritating to include volume into the structur of price behavior visualization as soon as you use constant volume bars. the more volume the more bars. on the other hand it seems easier to see immediately the price levels, where large volumes have been traded, which I would view as an advantage. Somehow I cannot decide, with which bar interval to continue my practice. do I understand correctly that you mainly use 1 min chart for the NQ100? if yes, why do you opt for a min chart instead of constant volume tick charts?

I would like to understand, if it makes any sense to use constant volume bars instead of time bars, when trying to learn the wyckoff method. I have not really found anything about it in the forum so far. would be great to hear your thoughts!

Thanks DB, I feel relieved, that I actually did understand your advice correctly in the first place, which is to go through testing manually. Coding is a very different approach obviously and is more a kind of software development than trading. i have read your "short" course and have been lurking around for a while, but never came accross a copy of the full course. Where can I find it? Cheers! P.S. the Wyckoff forum is the first tarding forum I found, which really drives my learning process. Before I was trashed with all the indicator/bling bling nonsense all over the internet.Thank you for your great moderation!

Hello, I have read in the "trading journal" thread the process description of system development and a lot of emphasis is given on testing ones system/rules. Now I am wondering how to actually do it in practice? The Wyckoff way does not seem to be an exact science, so at least I cannot figure out how to code the Wyckoff principles into an algorithm and test it on large amounts of data. So, when your recommend backtesting, do you actually mean applying your system manually on historic charts or do you use some coding to test your ideas? The manual way will be tough, since one needs to create a large sample, right? Also, when doing it manually, how do you distinguish backtesting and walk forward testing, when both is on historic charts? Thanks for advice and this great forum! Phil