rtg

i misinterpreted you. my apologies as well!

i'm glad your crystal ball is doing well. no need to be a douche bag. you will be humbled soon but i bet you won't post about it.

yes, I am definitely on hold. its certainly moving in respect to bernankes comments now though.

seems to me that we are on hold until the BB press conference which starts in a few minutes.

i agree to an extent insomuch that every position needs a reason for entry. if those reasons end up being dead wrong, so be it.. get out. there is no shame in being wrong, it happens to everyone who is actually trading -- ESPECIALLY on the outright contracts. personally, i take lots of small losses but then i will have a slew of doubles, triples and an occasional grand slams when i am feeling risky and add some ATM puts or calls on top of a few outright contracts. i agree with your prior post in regards to entry, though. if you find that s+p or dow is testing a high or low outside of normal trading hours, take the trade. typically, at that point, you will find out whether or not a reversal occurs within 15-60m. i do this all the time unstopped. you can just watch PA and feel whether or not you are right. agreed! T4 is superb. they have great help desk too.

i saw a few posts above about order flow and claims in regards to the inability to know what others are doing. you certainly can see order flow and if one desires, you can black box this into SQL working towards real time dashboard presentation of a certain TFs sentiment. I have a basic project that does precisely this. in the end, this is what a candle or a bar represents so it didnt seem worthwhile after some time invested. hope all are doing well w everyone. i am waiting for the dust to settle after BB's press conference red is sell, blue is buy in the pic

market conditions are tough. do you get to "lol" at tams since its rallied back 10 handles in his face? obviously, he and all other shorts covered and went long at the perfect time.

possible but his bearish comments did not take any fuel out of the NFP rally last week. risk is all to the upside today. i'm sidelined. it is too late to get long and picking a top here is not worth the risk.

forex is definitely more volatile than fx futures though the major pairs track pretty closely with futures. forex brokers literally will steal from you with EOD stop hunting spreads, spread manipulation (major events, certain hours of the day, etc) and slippage. personally, i highly favor fx futures. it is a little more smoothed, i never experience slippage with limit orders, it is exchange traded rather than OTC, and has nearly the same availability as the forex 24 market. having said that.. i still maintain a spot account w citiFX. they are the best US broker there is. trading accounts w them used to be FDIC insured to 250k (not sure about this anymore) and not subject to rehypothecation (very important, mitigates counterparty risk. no other forex broker offers this). the only real advantage with forex vs futures is that there is more liquidity on fx crosses. in futures, you will have to do your own cross in certain scenarios or suffer the lower liquidity

I trade FX futures (euro, yen, and to a lesser extent GBP) when the market reaches "extremes" after a major move (defined as ~ 1% in a given day). It almost always immediately retraces the initial move and proceeds to the bottom of the relevant hourly channel. but as usual, its right until its wrong I did put anything on today. I was looking for a higher high to sell in respect to NFP numbers from last week on the s&p. mini dows were promising leading up to the open and did nothing after that despite a higher high. ended up deciding to stay out based on the low levels of volume since I didnt particularly like the PA leading up to today's high. it appears we are in something of a wedge going into the fed decision on wednesday for several contracts. i'm looking for a short around 2970/80 on the euro to sell. glad you did well today

absolutely. it all depends on the previously mentioned conditions and those conditions can change quickly! it is largely a fundemental game of yield per acre, import/export supply/demand. rhetorically, things like: will the russians stop exports until price hits a certain level, how will argentina respond to tight supplies in the US, ethanol production, etc etc. there is more to it than that, obviously, but that is the general idea of the fundies involved.

i do calendar and butterfly spreads on corn i am long 100 dec/mar contracts. typically, i will walk away from thanksgiving - new years day simply because it is so squirrelly but there was a nice dip possibly from institutional investors at close on nov 29th and i got fills as it closed. typically, its a position game over weeks or months based (almost entirely) on fundamentals of the plant/harvest cycle, import/exports and perception of conditions , weather, etc. its a completely different animal from the politics and technical trading on the outrights right now

I got whipped around, stopped at BE. Then put them back on a bit lower when Boehner started flapping his mouth and walked away with a very modest $200 loss entirely due to breaking my #1 rule: never, ever, EVER jump in without a trade trigger. Life has no absolutes. Except that. It's one thing to trade and be wrong -- I'm ok with that; being wrong is inevitable. Its entirely another to jump in without a signal. I might as have wiped my rear with a few c notes today :doh: All in all, c'est la vie. the above diatribe is my one terrible bad habit of a spreader trying to trade outright contracts. there are trading rules for each strategy (calendar/butterflies vs outright) that do NOT overlap. glad all is well today on your end. monday is a new day!

for whatever reason my posts are slow to appear. great job calling that s&p short. i have 2 mini dows on averaged at 13115. playing small ball today looking for a return to the hourly pivot of 13045. I'm stopped at BE+1