darthtrader

I don't think its really possible to build a laptop. im not really sure why, I dont know if it has to do with the keyboard/mouse or whatever. if you really wanted to practice before building you could probly go to a computer shop and get some old celeron based machine for 20 bucks, take it apart and put it back togather. even memory now is so cheap I see you don't have to worry about skimping. I always get crucial memory and its 100 bucks for 2 gigs. Just looking quick on new egg its still about 600 bucks to build a sick machine(that price seems constant, just the specs get better over time), then depends what you want to spend on a case. The only thing is i think i might wait until the 3.0ghz duo 2s come down to the less than 200 range. 180-200 always seems to be the deal area for bang for the buck cpu wise. duo core 2 3ghz has to be absurdly fast. the most important thing is to get a cool case

I wouldn't waste your time with a class. Like I said once you decide to do it you will laugh at how easy it is. Even calling it "building" a computer is probly insulting to people who really build stuff. I'm not even sure what they would teach at a class, the biggest part is how to use a screw driver. Basically you snap the CPU, RAM, video card, audio card into the motherboard, screw the board into the case. screw the hard drive, dvd drive into the case, plug them into the board and install... If you buy the top quality parts there isn't much that can go wrong and it will be a much better computer since makers are going to skimp on the quality of parts they can't market. You can also salvage parts too if the system dies or you upgrade. I think my power supply is 7 years old now.

Reinstalling is probly the best idea. If that works you should consider Norton Ghost. Basically you would reinstall all your apps, get your machine setup perfect then take a snapshot of the harddrive with ghost. Then if you have problems you can just blow away the drive and Ghost will put the drive back to the way it was when you Ghost it the first time. I always do these tweaks from the audio recording world too for better performance when I first install. http://www.pcmus.com/TweakXP.htm I dont bother with Enable APM or Disable Write behind Caching, not sure why though. If its still a hardware issue you really should consider trying to build your own system.You will laugh at how easy it is when your done, its only scary the first time

how old is the system? I always build mine but if i get more than 2 years out of the machine and it starts to get flakey i just ditch it and build a new one. At the 2 year mark you could probly build the same machine again for less than what it would cost to repair. I was just looking at maybe building a new one and you can get a monster duo core 2, with 2 gigs of ram and 500 gig drive with all top of the line components for probly about 700 bucks. i'm sure that would eat anything charting wise you could throw at it for lunch.

sweet chart dogpile. actually i can't rememer now if Jerry stays out of trades when price is that close to the PVP but there is good skew but that doesn't seem to be working. i guess this is pretty straight up open drive. to advanced location for me.

what kind of setups are you guys looking for here balancing around at 1548? i'm clueless here. maybe a quick scalp short around 1546.5?. That doesn't look like it has very good risk reward though.

powerfull open. i think i'm done reading/watching anything that would give me a directional bias. i had been looking for the breakout to go long above 1545 since thursday, then watched that MP/COT video in the DOM thread this morning and it biased me i should be looking to short at that area. enough of that, that was just stupid. be interesting to see if we start a new balance area here and previous resistance becomes support.

Richard, I don't see the DOM part of that video either but great video none the less.

That sounds like the way to go with this. Also with the market delta I would think you would be able to get a sense then too if market orders are lifting or sinking the bid/ask towards the size on the book limit order wise. If price is near your setup and you have size on the book in your direction plus aggresive buyers hitting market orders taking price towards the size you would at least know your not on the total wrong side. To be usefull though it would seem like you have to get this down to some kind of yes or no indicator on the chart though and that might be hard to quantify.

I just want to tell you guys how much I enjoyed/learned from this thread, hopefully this becomes a running theme. I still have never traded a futures contract with real money. The first time I read the New Market Wizards and the interview with Al Weis, with him saying he spent 4 years studying commodity charts before trading, I found my hero. I actually haven't made a real money trade since april when i tried to short amazon. I got crushed, went back to the drawing board and thats when I found this site searching for market profile and tradestation on google. Things clicked with Dalton last weekend, then seeing this thread I reinstalled the think or swim paper trader on monday and went 7 for 9 on my paper trades for the week, up $2150 on the 100k paper account. This week was the first time I felt like I actually could hear what the market was saying, incredible feeling after 2 years of being obsessed with this stuff night and day.I also found my style this week, VWAP/market stats, MP and TICK. Nothing else exists to me anymore. I would like to start contributing to these threads, but if I say something you totally think is wrong, please don't hesitate to blast my ideas. I've been pretty hungry to learn the markets for 2 years but now im starved. nate

That chart is pretty much every MP piece of information you could want. I know we talked before about our frustrations with Mind Over Markets. I think that was about a month ago, I started reading a few pages a day since then and then one day things clicked and I managed to read about 30 pages straight and actually understand it. Its like your brain is trying to download an entire different mindset so I think it just takes some time to set in. You might want to try doing that, just read one idea at a time and think about. I see now the problem with that book is it is SO information dense its almost absurd.

Maybe I can add something to this discussion instead of just leaching information off you guys. I'm thinking that $tick is probly something interesting to watch in this type of environment. Yesterday in order for the market to drive down to the bottom of the composite high volume area around 11:30(the long that Ant said he took and I asked about) you had the monster $tick reading for the day on the low side. I would think if it took that much fire power to drive the market down to that area, the chamber is basically empty and it might be a smart trade then to fade the $tick extreme. Same thing just happend now with price being driven down into that area again. $tick seems to be somewhat useless in a trending market but I think its something to keep an eye on in a bracketted market. Also, this open today was pretty straight up Open-Test-Drive wasn't it? That didn't register fast enough in my head, tried to short at 1543 but the market left me in the dust without a fill.

is this pretty typical action after a Neutral-Center Day? Doesnt seem like price has enough momentum to break out of that huge volume area. anyone take a long around 11:30 at 1537 when it couldn't break the volume area? I didn't notice that until looking at the chart in hindsite. Doesn't seem like there is much to do here besides fade the extremes between 1536 and 1544 or wait for the breakout. Since 12:30 it doesnt look like the market could possibly be more in balance. this is kind of comic.

without question! really this a huge help with currently reading Dalton, im sure people will find this stuff helpfull a year from now too if they read the archives. The best thing is that its MP/Dalton concepts applied to the current market that we all have a feel for and are familiar with what is going on as opposed to january beans in 1986, should provide alot more meaning to the concepts.

Steenbarger posted a pretty interesting analysis on the opening range break for this morning: http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2007/09/opening-range-breakouts-false-and-real.html dogpile, One thing that is interesting about Marc Fischers ORB system is he says in his book that the more people who use it the better it will work. So it could possibly be a good thing that everyone knows about the ORB. So far today looks like another terrible trade location day to me, the after market really messed things up.

Have you guys ever tried to incorporate an opening range breakout strategy into your trading? I know in Marc Fischers book he mentions basically the same thing as far as the open and the high/low for the day. It seems like those ideas should be able to fit in with market profile/daltons openings quite well, somehow. out of curiousity would todays open be considered an open test drive? The wrest of the day just seems like a mess.

yea, the problem with options is they are more 3d than a stock or future. its not just price and volume, its price, volume and then how the greeks relate to the underlying. from what i've seen with options alot of people just use them as leverage to the underlying when they would probly be better off even looking into single stock futures. i really wanted to get into options trading a year ago but the more I understood the less I wanted to trade them. I think they are best avoided.

hmm...brutal open.

I'm slowly cracking(very slowly) Mind Over Markets. Interesting idea with those 4 not lined up = balancing. damn after market.....1528 looks like it should be very interesting today. What are you going to do though if we open and continue down? Seems like we are kind of in no mans land if that happens.

I just found this last night searching google for Market Profile http://www.cbot.com/cbot/docs/handbook.pdf I only browsed it last night but it seems pretty interesting with some of Steidelmeyers post On Markets ideas jammed in there.

thanks ant, that was exactly the type of information I was looking for. I take it you just use the rotation factor as a general bias?

nice. how does price tend to act when you get that double distribution looking profile? Will you look to play bounces between the two higher volume areas? also, have you guys ever played around with Dalton's rotation factor idea? Seems like that could be interesting but I can't picture how to fit it in yet.

cool ant, i don't think i'm ready for that kind of trading yet when its in the middle of the congestion area, that seems tough. you guys get that short when it broke out? that was pretty sick with the market profile area and jerry's stuff all lined up togather. like a price rocket launcher.

ahh cool to see the vwap, i really need to get my tools togather. looks like a nice short if price can break through the vwap with it lined up so close to the bottom of that high volume congestion area on ants chart.

That could work actually. http://www.tickquest.com/NeoTicker/data.html Neoticker shows them as compatible with l2 supported. I wonder how excel would be on system resources though? Also, I wonder if James would elaborate on how things work in Japan? If its illegal to play these games, what happens if you want to cancel your limit order? That seems like a tough distinction.