bakrob99

Sorry ... I can't really as I never spent any time in her room ... but I think the point is that professional winning traders know how and when to exit... and do not get as caught up in the perfect entry as novice traders do. How many times (especially recently) have you seen time and sales data roaring away, momentum clearly higher or lower, and fretted about how to get in... only to see the market move 10 or 20 ES points from the time you noticed the trend. Happens all the time. My advice: Get in .. 1 contract to start... and get ready to add to it... wait for the first green bar in a downtrend (red in an uptrend) and the next time the bar color changes back to red, add to your position. Leave your stop at breakeven. If it's late in the day, plan to exit at the close. Major moves... scaling in... building positions... managing but accepting risk. Those are the trades which build account balances. I admit - I don't do it. I have to use an automated strategy which doesn't care about how much it's made in the trade - just how much it plans to make. Since that has happened for me, trading has changed to the upside.

Why do you think Futuresbetting.com is Tax Free ? I worry more about making proftable trade decisions, and I'm quite willing to pay tax on earnings. To my way of thinking , you already have your answer.

Everything you said can equally apply to a discretionary system. So what? If you are live trading your system and making money, just be aware that at some time in the future it may stop working. How will you know? Look at your equity curve and treat it like a price curve. Stop trading it when it is trending down and wait for it to turn back up gain, or set a new high or higher high. One of the big advantages to computer generated trading is the automatic record keep and statistics maintained (in my case by TradeStation). And I know that having just one (type of) system forme is not helpful. In my case, I have a breakout system, a pullback system and a consolidation system. They all work - some times better than others but on average work more consistently than just 1 by itself. Be sure to reduce size. Trade small. Build an edge and consistency on a daily basis.

One thing you should consider about any strategy BEFORE you trade it is how or when will you know when it has failed or stopped working. This is a problem for trend following systems or any strat which has a low percentage win rate because it is only after a severe drawdown that you know it needs a change and to stop trading it.

which line? i see a bunch of them.

I see you are showing/using MetaTrader. Do you have the same Indicators developed for TradeStation?

I'll look at it again.

Not really. What I see is if you went long at the first opportunity at the Line you talked about, then you would have had an MAE much larger than the MFE in the trade. And if you had waited to see if the move materialized in your favour you would be stopped for a loss. So, come on Avery, money management is key. And you are not offering any advice on what your money management, stop loss, take profit levels are.

This is the 1st time I have come across an indicator like this that calculates correctly and is very easy to use. Very professional. Congrats and thank you !!

Try arranging your REVERSALS outside of your ENTRY eg. if HullsAvg crosses over EMAvg then begin Buy ( "Long" )this bar; end; if HullsAvg crosses under EMAvg then begin sellshort( "Short" ) this bar; end; if MP = -1 and HullsAvg crosses over EMAvg then Buy To Cover("Cover") this bar; if MP = 1 and HullsAvg crosses under EMAvg then Sell ("Close") this bar

Thanks ... I didn't know it (the links) was there... I don't really think of it as a beginner's topic although the way JPerl presents it I guess supports that.

I have put this thread together because I wanted a place which had all the links for J.Perl's TRADING WITH MARKET STATISTICS threads for easier access. Trading With Market Statistics I. Volume Histogram Trading With Market Statistics.II The Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) Trading with Market Statistics III. Basics of VWAP Trading Trading with Market Statistics. IV Standard Deviation Trading with Market Statistics V. Other Entry Points Trading with Market Statistics VI. Scaling In and Risk Tolerance Trading with Market Statistics VII. Breakout Trades at the PVP Trading with Market Statistics VIII. Counter Trend Trades in Symmetric Distributions Trading with Market Statistics IX. Scalping Trading with Market Statistics X. Position Trading Trading with Market Statistics XI. HUP

Change your symbol from FOREX to @ESZ08 and see if you get some trades. If you do - then your strategy is not handling the small values of the FOREX symbol. If not - then you have something basic setup wrong.

Suri's discussion really got me more interested in formalizing some of these patterns which I have traded using rather different rules - still effective. I am going to concentrate on 2 of then for now ... as I currently have AutoTraded Strategies trading breakouts and breakdowns; I don't need to do those on a discretionary basis. I like the 2B and the A-B-C patterns... but I find the 610 tick chart a little quick for my liking so I am increasing the frequency a bit. For A-B-C pattern recognition, put a PIVOT HIGH and PIVOT LOW showme with strength of 5 on the chart and get the pivots marked for you. Have the FIB tool ready... take the trade... hold for 100% for target 1 and try for 127% for target 2. Once a TOP or BOTTOM is evident and you perhaps have managed to capture it using the 2B method, then trade in the trend direction for the A-B-C's Good luck.

Have you considered the obvious - that perhaps the stop is too tight?

Absolutely - I use the following: SetStopContract; SetStopLoss(nStop); then if I want to move the stop after I get a gain in the trade I use: If GrossMFETicks > MoveStopAfterTicks then SetStopLoss(MoveStopToTicks * BigPointValue *minmove/pricescale); NOTE: DO NOT PUT THE FIRST SetStopLoss IN A CONDITION. IT MUST BE SENT EVERY TICK EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT YET IN A TRADE.

The best resource is the TS Forum and Community. Plus you can get all the TS EasyLanguage reference books at https://www.tradestation.com/support/books/default.aspx With respect to your backtesting... do not trust any results which give you profits within the same bar as you are trading. The assumptions TS makes about which came first ... the OHLC or the OLHC, while reasonable - do not provide accurate backtesting results for scalping conditions. To get around some of the problem, set Look Inside Backtesting Bar (LIBB) to a short time interval like 1 minute which gives the backtesting engine more information about how the data came into the bar. You can go down to the 1 tick level , which provides exact results but is very slow for any longer term testing, and is only available for 6 months of back testing data. In my experience - although at first I strongly resisted this - you are better off trading on longer time frame charts and having larger targets and stops with fewer trades per day. Good luck with your strategies. I now greatly prefer automated trading (of many markets simultaneously) to the task of trying to enter on a discretionary basis for a short term gain.

The difference with this one was the consolidation zone which happened just before ... in my opinion the rapid retraces back from far away tend to bounce more... Also - look for key fib retracement zones or any other s-r zones to support the trade. Nice work.

Thanks for the nice post... I am spending more time working on my brain than anything else these days as I have a setup/plan that has an edge and just need to trade it. I am profitable - but not as much as my plan is ... Interesting - I thought that more research and analysis which proves/supports the edge would help me overcome the latency in taking signals - but now I realize that I must deal with my "emotional side" NOT through reason but by other ways ... Your posts help me ... as for the others who complain ... I don't really concern myself with their issues.

You could suggest to your friend to use a CONDOR as a safety net. Basically - if he is writing a CALL option, he can buy a (inexpensive) CALL option out of the money which will provide insurance on his trade to limit the risk to the difference between the 2 option strike prices. Also - he should put 10% of the premium he collects into a fund to pay for the inevitable loss which will occur on events like Sept 11 etc.

How do you calculate "Summation Ticks" ? Oh ... and Nice post by the way.

When I first (re) started trading a couple of years ago ... I was surpsied at ALL the information compared to my last trading ventures in the mid and late 80's. For me - success only became possible by specializing and learning one market very well... I gave up Forex, Swing Trading and concentrated on developing a winning strategy for the YM/ES. My suggestion for any newbie: conentrate all your resources and learing efforts on one trade market and only 1 ro 2 setups. Once you can trade them consistently - you can add more variety.

What I'm talking about is the price that the market will open at ... which is NOT necessarily where it closed.

It is one of the data points that Ben of tradersaudio.com makes a point in providing.

I agree - Pit noise level and changes in volume levels are useful tools.