lastninja2

the only trading wizard who don't know about FESX

aye well you may be right. Altho, 1 day, nevermind 3 months, is probably enough to describe + explain a few good entry setups, e.g. flipper-algos, front-running real size on the DOM, joining a reloading bid etc etc. Trouble is (just in my experience - all i can go on) everything else in between. Hard to spot enough good entries, day in day out (and if the prop shop is backing you, you'll be under some pressure to trade regularly every day) Hard to keep the less-good entries to a minimum day in day out. Hard to manage the trades once you are in - after all, who except for 'Harry Hindsight' can say how long you should have held that winner for... meh re: Turtles, I'm sure I must have read the book years ago - something about breakout chart strategy? Hmmm, well, I can pick out markets that for several consecutive years have rallied nicely, pulling back 50% periodically. I could probably find some great examples on S&P 500 over the last 3 years, but too lazy to upload such a picture. Anyway, had I been buying 50% fibonacci retracements because my SMA 50 was above my SMA 200 (or whatever), month after month, I might have made a fortune by now. Dunno if that makes me a good trader tho... conditions change and all the money will be given back.

I dont know any prop guys who really had anything to show for it inside 4 months, or anything close. But then, I only know about a fraction of all prop traders so how statistically significant is that?

Hi there, Never bothered to trade or even watch any stocks - recently decided to remedy that and set aside some time for investigation. Proposal: Using third party software to consolidate my ninjatrader time&sales, I am thinking to stare at the time&sales for whatever US stocks happen to be "in play" that day. By "in play", I mean likely to attract institutional buying/selling on the back of pre-market news or what have you. Just to satisfy my curiosity, I will be staring at the T&S for a particular event: large market orders of peculiar size being repeated in quick succession. I stumbled upon this random idea on another trade forum - one of the posters suggested that it might signal the disguised actions of a specialist acting on behalf of more than one large client. Whether the idea is credible, I've frankly no idea - but happy to watch and make some conclusions based on actual observation rather than speculation. Would welcome ideas on the following: 1) Thoughts on the concept 2) Methods or websites that would help in identifying potential "in play stocks" - preferably smaller caps to reduce noise on the T&S. Thanks in advance if anyone has any input

Hi there, Just a little annoyed with my charts atm, wonder if I could get some fresh input. As far as I understand, on a daily time frame the default feed should display ETH. My daily charts seem to display only RTH , regardless of whether i use zenfire, kinetic, kinetic end of day free. I have tried changing session template - it has no bearing on the daily chart. I am not willing to change my charts to 1440 minutes to remedy the situation, it slows me down. Much appreciated any assistance here http://s3.postimg.org/67lg7wto1/rth_or_eth.png

she just keeps on going. down to 1485, stops still being taken out. Defo a dangerous business stepping up to buy this

GC, Comex, Very interesting moment for gold. Put up a daily chart and you can see the support area around 1550 has broken badly, stops being annihilated on the way down to 1500. I think there could imminently be a good buying opportunity, after the market has shaken out a tonne of weaker longs. I'm looking out for signs of aggressive buyers around 1500 and below.

"Long YM again at 14,310" "Out of YM long at 14,293" I have a lot of respect for how diligently you have posted your trades publicly. Would like to offer a second opinion from the sidelines if I may - guess this thread would be pointless if no one ever commented. I think the long YM at 14310 was good. My reasoning would not have been quite so specific as the trend line you have drawn. My premise would have been the same as a 5-year old child might come up with: this market has obviously been trending up for some time and it is probably better than 50/50 shout that the next leg will be upside again. But to bail at 14,293 ... only 17 prices lower. It's kind of equivalent to going long ES at 1400 and puking out at 1398.3 Just seems more like a scalping trade than a swing trade. And if the premise was that the trend line did not hold up, than my personal opinion is that - the markets are rarely so neat and tidy - it was enough that the trend was up, but needed more than 17 prices on the downside to prove that idea wrong. Hope no offence taken if it sounded overly critical - just looking at the numbers there at face value.

Haven't traded Z in a long time. Possibly did it via Velocity Futures or AMP Futures Currently with Alpari US

http://s11.postimage.org/5vjgqwmvl/UK_loses_AAA.png

http://s8.postimage.org/qnc96unxx/partridge.png I'll play the devil on his other shoulder. might start communicating only through the medium of jessie livermore book quotes now :rofl:

I place bids and offers pre-emptively in areas where I believe there will be a stop run. Then if/when I'm in the trade I pray for a swift retracement. But becoming increasingly fascinated by the arm-chair analysis of daily charts/conditions as per Livermore. http://s15.postimage.org/l0npetdqh/scenario_2.png Fingers crossed for scenario #2 "Mad props" for posting live trades on a public forum.

Thanks for the blog link - it was an interesting read. I actually agree with you that ES and YM look like they could easily pullback for another few days and take out some weak longs who panic on the back of the FOMC Minutes. I think you are brave with your YM and hope it works out for you - but - taking my queues from Jessie Livermore / Kroll, I guess my personal preference would be to sit on the sidelines and wait for a nice opportunity to go long. If that means I make no trades because the markets are not trending nicely... so be it If that means ES starts to rally from 1500 and I miss the trade because I was hoping for 1450... so be it The book is called Dragons and Bulls. It's fairly short, very similar style to livermore. GL

Hi Karo, I appreciate the sentiment of this thread - swing trading is increasingly of interest to me (very short-term background) particularly since I re-read Jessie Livermore + Stanley Kroll books. I don't like to clog up someone else's thread, but I'd like to share a few of my favourite quotes from Kroll & Livermore... "The experts are frequently wrong. A good technical approach to investing and timing, coupled with sound money management and a focus on trend following rather than trend predicting, are really the recommended ways to operate for optimum success." ed: It is so true that analysts like to wheel out explanations for large market moves long after the fact became apparent on the chart isn't it? "Every time you take a with-the-trend position, you should premise that you are in for a mega-move. By so doing, you will be encouraged to hold the position and not look for short-term trades. Let your stops take you out of those trades which fizzle" ed: With this in mind, I think it really should be no surprise if the swing trader takes several small losses to every winner. "Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end. To do this you must study general conditions and not tips or special factors affecting individual stocks." Ed: And with that last one I'd simply like to give my very general thoughts, like Mr Partridge did in Jessie Livermores books, on the major stock index futures. Displaying FDAX here, but FESX, ES would show the same story http://s17.postimage.org/nyw96313h/FDAX_UP.png I ask myself - what would Jessie do? Would he try and pick a top here on account of the bearish Fed Statement last night about curbing QE? No, I believe he would be looking to buy simply on account of the path of least resistance being to the upside!

don't want to derail the ops thread so I'll duck out from here after this: re: The Dude. Famous character from the movie The Big Lebowski. He loves drinking White Russians. I assume that's where the username came from

This book is a cross between basic introductory courses in econometrics and finance (and it even does this poorly)" "but it's useful to know that you recommend it." lolol, i know it wasn't meant this way, but at first it came across to me as a subtle shot at The Dude.

Find quantitative analytics jobs to boost your career in quantitative finance Suggestion: Have a scan through the job descriptions for whatever quanty jobs capture your attention. It may give you a sense of what programming languages/attributes these guys are looking for, and provide better sense of direction for your study. As an aside, I've heard it said before that while many quants are technically brilliant, many lack actual trading experience. The employers don't seem to care, so maybe it ain't no thing. But if you wanted to have a play around on SIM, in a proper futures market, I'd sign up for a free trial with AMP Futures. Comes with a free trial CQG feed to the major exchanges. NB: Ninjatrader price ladder is garbage / Market delta has no price ladders that I'm aware of, but quite interesting/cool footprint charts. GL

but it did give me the idea to check spread betting firms (UK) http://s9.postimage.org/j1bgx3hdp/cmc.png To my surprise they do offer King kong products. Charts even go down to the 1 second granularity, albeit max lookup is 15 minutes - pah. http://s8.postimage.org/h7ttdq7ir/cmc_2.png altho... imagine trying to make money with these spreads, with anything less than a trade lasting weeks if not months. No wonder it's tax free. Government wouldn't have anything to collect.

http://s11.postimage.org/negkrnlch/no_kong.png interesting, but alas, apparently no access to king kong / hong kong.

thanks Tams I've been doing some ongoing forum searches and seems IB are the only viable option, to trade. Trouble with IB is , they have such tight restrictions on rates of message submission to exchanges. So be it, was worth asking anyway

Hi there, I'm interested in taking a look at some of the wild index products of HKE... Hang Seng Index & H-Shares Index, particularly. Perhaps someone is aware of a datafeed trial that I could snag for free, for 2 weeks etc? It's easy enough to get temporary free access to CME... but HKE, anyone? Thanks.

"most traders are happy to just make $200/day or so which doesn't require as much work."

http://s3.postimage.org/l363yogxf/roger_felton_1.png http://www.mememaker.net/static/images/templates/14288.jpg

Seems this thread has gone off course but if anyone interested still, I will try to offer a pretty straight answer, based partly on solid data. My assumptions: * Trading major CME/Eurex Futures * "Normal" market conditions For every 1 x contract you trade, you should be pleased with yourself if you can average +$250/month, before broker fees. Those transaction costs are going to make this twice as hard, if you are paying retail rates, but that's the way it is. "You said $250/month. Surely you mean per day... per week?" -No, I mean per month. Remember, I'm talking in terms of averages. You may have a few trades that make 25 ticks in one go. You might have a great day when China cuts rates unexpectedly, and finish up 100 ticks! But there will be losing trades, too, and probably plenty of them. Realistically to make a living off trading, in my opinion, you need to be clipping between 10 and 20 contracts. This keeps a roof over your head + yields some additional $$$ to build up your trading size over time. I bet some of you were hoping you could make a good living off 2 contracts. Do you think the guys trading with 20 contracts per click are making enough money to support the lives TEN people? hehe! Now, in all markets, the game starts to change when you trade in greater size. Ending the day +$300 after 30 round turns is good, but from the data I have seen of various traders' P/L, as a general rule your $ return on each round turn is going to decline. The game becomes more difficult because deploying 5 contracts should be more straightforward than deploying 500. Do 5000 round turns in a day and you might be pleased with +$30,000 that session. This helps to explain why fund managers are unable to match short-term traders in % returns (in theory). They are deploying millions/billions of dollars. You are deploying a few thousand. To re-examine some of those figures, then: Hypothetical Average Successful Trader A: Account Size: $10,000 Clips 4 on ES Finishes the month +25 ticks, net. (+$1250) +$312.50 / contract... a good month hey! Broker takes $200 (argh!!!) After about a year of this you've hopefully doubled the $10,000. And maybe added a couple of contracts along the way? So after 10 grueling years, grinding away for 12 hours a day, you have finally built up the account from $10,000 to $5,000,000. Hehe that's a nice story - and from a mathematical POV, perhaps within the realms of possibility. But will you now proceed to take over the world, doubling your account every year until it runs to the trillions? I don't expect so. With such a large account size you might now be buying and selling literally thousands of ES contracts at a time - and the daily return, the daily bang for your buck, I think is going to severely dwindle. Probably long before now. It's a tough realisation for aspiring traders just how many contracts you need to be trading with, in order to make half-way-decent money. Average Succesful Trader B: Account size: $50,000 Clip size: 20 lots Average month: +$5,000 (not a bad performance) Broker takes: $500 (?) G'vnt takes: $1250

Yeah thanks for the response - intraday COT report haha I didn't think of that way. Good to hear that it wasn't a totally stupid idea, although your point about horizons - fully agree. Still, I'll keep an eye on CVD over the coming weeks. Perhaps the occasional peculiar CVD reading can provide a red flag when especially large puke-outs are in prospect, even if that CVD reading is diluted with long-term traders/closing trades rather than initiations.