Gekko78

Wall Street on the left, Wall Street on the right. What could be better? Nothing.

I would say I use TA , but also psychological analysis as that works better for me. I find behavioral finance methods work better for me than 2 lines crossing some other line on a chart.

..............................

I use AMP for futures. Low commission , free demo , free live feed with demo , CQG data feed , excellent customer service . I use free ninja trader with static super Dom enabled which costs .10 And CQG costs .10 as well . No other fees added on.

Guess we will have agree to disagree .

Depends on account size 1% of $1,000 is $10 1% of $100,000 =$1,000 a lot harder to achieve. Also harder to achieve mentally.

Yea there are probably a few things that need to be gone into further detail here. I like the philosophy as that is kind of of something I already do . I have $$ targets per day that I shoot for , after that I move over to SIM and try out other things. There is no need to "keep going" ....sure I miss out on some winners but I miss out on losers to .....and those losers would have forced me to give back profits. I stopped looking for 10-20 tick winners a long time ago ....especially when trading things like ES , 6B and NQ.....a lot easier to get a 4-5 tick winner than 20 ........ 2-4 tick ES winners are presented all day long ..... Guess it depends on your style of trading also .. I could not sit in a trade for 20 ticks .....to stressful . Like you said you have to do what works for you..........I learned a long time ago that swing trading , or anything longer , is not for me as I do not have the patience for it . I cannot change that so I play to strengths and not try and change my weaknesses ( at least not yet) I think getting 1% a day is a lot easier than most people think ...........a profit is a profit whether it is $1 or $100 I do not know what goes on in other traders minds when they are trading......everyones emotional level is different . That is why indicators do not work well because they try and quantify emotion which cannot be done. I think if people looked at trading from a simple viewpoint instead of over complicating it then things might be a little easier ..............but that is just me As I already know there are many people on this forum who do not share my viewpoint.

Came across this today .......... I like the philosophy. Thoughts??? In Baseball there are home run hitters and there are players who get a lot of hits. Usually the two are not synonymous meaning the players who hit the most home runs are usually not the same players who get a lot of hits. However , in baseball getting on base 3 out of 10 at bats could get you into the hall of fame. Hitting home runs is great of course and something many people strive for but , some people are just not home run hitters. In fact , your chances of getting into the hall of fame are greater by getting hits than they are getting home runs. This same concept applies to trading as well. When people first start out they tend to try and go for those "home run" trades. Trying to turn $1,000 into $10,000 in a month. While this is not impossible to do it is HIGHLY improbable to achieve.The problem here is that a new trader who is trying to turn a little into a lot will usually take on excessive risk and poor money management techniques in order to try and improve his bottom line. Sure he may get lucky a few times and have some good winners with this but eventually the market will teach him a lesson and he will likely lose all his capital. If you think about it another way and go for the "base hits" you will more than likely achieve greater results over a longer period of time consistently which is really the name of the game. Anyone can have a few lucky trades but being able to stay the course for the long term is something very few can do. Here is an example to illustrate this point: A trader with a starting bankroll of $1,000 going for a 5% weekly goal will have turned that $1,000 into $12,643 by the end of year one. If the trader were able to consistently maintain this strategy for 2 years he would have transformed his original $1,000 into $159, 843( due to the power of compounding) ....not bad for 1% a day right? The problem is that the trader wants the $159,843 RIGHT NOW! Not in 2 years.....hence why 90% of traders lose over time. To do this the trader must set a daily goal of 1%. 1% of $1,000 is $10 a day . That should be fairly easy to do. $10 is a 2 point movement in the YM , NQ or 6B ( $6.25 ) contracts. ( not including commissions.) This is also is a little less than a 1 tick move in the E-mini S&P futures contract ( $12.25 per tick) The issue is that traders get greedy , they win one they keep going , they win another one they keep going even after they have hit their targets until evetually they hit a streak of losers and give it all back to the market. When you hit your goal for the day you are DONE for the day. Discipline , money management and controlling your emotions are the keys to the trading kingdom while strategy plays a very small role. 1% is easy to do but the catch is it is also easy not to do. If you want to make it in this business you have get consistent in order to be successful.

My guess is that they realized they can make more money selling books than trading. No I would not take their advice. That is like a college professor or politician trying to give business advice based on theory and them having never actually done any of it themselves.

I suppose if I ever did use a chart to trade off of , this would be the only way I would do it.

New response to all further questions regarding other methods , profitability and such ...... see post #81

Selling?? Nah ....... I assume you mean selling my philosophy as opposed to some product. Perhaps what you call selling I call giving out info......these are the fundamental ideas that were taught to me so I am just giving them here...but not trying to teach anything. As far as opening another thread .............Not bloody likely. There is enough info on the other threads, and this one, that I have posted to give someone an "idea" of how it works.....anything beyond that they can PM me or Google it. I am not a teacher of any kind and do not care to be ........the only reason this whole thing started was that someone said DOM and order flow trading gave no edge as opposed to charts.....I disagreed and have shown many things that demonstrate this.......but alas, the "resistance" as you call it keeps coming in. I only respond to something when I see the information is inaccurate not wrong( there is a difference) Its cool though I belong to some other forums where this information is not only known but talked about regularly in the same way that I do ( I can already hear it " so why don't you go there!) I think I have done enough of explaining myself here............ Let me be perfectly clear yet again so I do not get attacked for this as I have already stated this many many times in other posts but somehow people miss that part of my post. Order flow trading in not the only way to trade , there are other ways to be profitable .... There now everyone can stop saying that I keep saying that this is the only way to trade and all other methods suck and I have the keys to the kingdom or that I am awesome or anything like that. I only respond when I feel info is inaccurate. I have never started a conversation out of the blue on order flow trading anywhere in this forum. Like I said if anyone wants the info they can find it........ ...

I just find humor is the "market wizard" title . Not for you personally but for anyone.

Thank you Market Wizard Please see post # 76 for response.

I agree , I did mention in another post somewhere and I should have clarified it here as well that this method is a scalping method........Usually 2-3 ticks at a time on said instrument. Order flow trading is not really meant for anything or than that. If you are trading of dailys or 4hrs or something then I absolutely agree with you . I have never known anyone to use order flow for trading of higher time frames so I just figured it was implied. ....my bad

Please point to any post that I have made on this forum anywhere that I said one cannot be successful unless you do it this exact way? You will be hard pressed to find such a post.... I have also never stated that I found any keys to any kingdom ......those do not exist. You seem to jump the gun and interpret mine ( and everyone elses posts ) as you see fit. Perhaps you should start reading posts a little bit better before you start saying things that are just simply not true. I am not Roger Felton , you want to come at me .......lets do this.

That's a great question ..........honestly I do not know the answer to this. I am sure it can be back tested somehow but may go beyond the tools that I posses. I am not a huge fan of back testing anyway due to limitations that I feel are key when trying to research methods. Sme find value in it I just do not. Forward testing is probably better, at least for me it is. I spent about a year learning order flow and demoing it and such. I have found much more success in order flow trading then any other kind. It is just like when you first learned to read a chart . You had no idea what you were looking at and how to interpret it but to learned slowly over time until you are where you are. It's the same thing with this . Most people do not want to learn it because it causes them to have to make a decision themselves instead they would rather ( place favorite indi , cross over , oscillator , candle pattern here ) make the decision for them . Everyone is always Talking about "this pattern or that pattern or this turned green or this crossed this or an arrow formed here or this candle is bigger than this one" but no one ever seems to want to know what actually happened during that time to make said object form that way. The answers are in the cause and not the effect.

Well really my point the whiole thing was that a slim edge is all one needs to be successful. Perhaps you do not know enough about it to make an honest statement. You know that whole " you don't know what you dont know" stuff? I was trying to show that difference in those 2 charts I posted. Candles are nice , they look nice on a chart and the colors are nice to. But, that information alone is not enough to make a well informed decision about whether or not to put capital at risk. Like I mentioned before I look at a chart every mornings for about 5 minutes to see where the key levels to look for are but that's it, I'm glad that most people use charts to trade with it helps me more. When I see price coming to these key levels and I only see 2-5 lot orders coming through trying to move price higher I know that is the very people I am talking about. I will fade because the guy who is taking the other side of those trades is who's side I want to be on. A candle cannot tell me that. When price gets to said levels I look for what Is really happening there ,who is hitting into the bids , what size is trading there ? Should I fade the move because I see allot of bids being hit vs offered being lifted ? A candle going up and down and then closing at some arbitrary point tells me nothing other than it closed there. I do not mind if people think that the way I do things is odd or that it won't work. Does not bother me , but when people are misinformed about the info then I feel the need to step in.

I see what you are saying here but the difference is actually quite large. What is" is what is ( was) happening right now at this exact moment in time . Like how many people are hitting the bids vs offers right now ......1300 hit the bids vs 200 hit the offers ....that means something......... What "was" is hey the 5 ma just crossed the 20 MA.... when that happens , more often than not , the reason ( people) that made it happen are long gone. the trade is over .....you missed it. Seeing who is hitting / bids and offers and size of those orders tells a story. You say that it implies and advantage that is perhaps slim at best......and I say CORRECT! Slim is all you need .......Slim is all Vegas needs and they seem to do quite well.......One does not need a huge advantage to win consistently ....a SLIM edge will do just fine... It can be the difference between picture 1 and picture 2 Picture 1 is what most people trade of off.....where is the edge here? Picture 2 is your SLIM EDGE .....all I need.

Well for one CL is a very thin market and ES is a very thick market. Order flow reading on thin markets can be much more difficult especially with how volatile the CL is

Perhaps, One could also argue that any member of a forum with the title of "Market Wizard" under their name could also be suspect or incorrect.

I never said they do not LOOK at charts.....I said they do not TRADE off charts......There is a big difference there. I use a chart once every morning also .....to see session highs , lows value areas etc. I look at a chart for about 5 min .......and then that is it ....the rest is off order flow. Yes I have X Trader also so I know about it but I am getting rid of it. . I have no problem trading of the DOM in Ninja. I have the direct ( free) edition and use it quite regularly. There is no need to pay for it unless you are chart trading, or you feel the need to use the ATM stuff which I do not. What I was trying to say here was that Depth of Market , order flow , market profiling or whatever you want to call it are the ways the pros trade . They do not look for MA cross overs and all that garbage. They trade order flow .......they trade WHAT IS , and not WHAT WAS ,.... As for professional traders , yes I know 2 of them.

Just so you are all aware you can get this on NT 7 .

The attached screenshot is just an example of the difference between order flow trading and trading off a chart. Your charts will tell you what happened in X time frame or X tick count but You charts will NOT tell you how many contracts actually hit the bid or lifted the offer. Even a regular volume bar will not tell you this. This screenshot is a look actually what is actually going on in real time ....... How many contracts are trading the price and who is winning the battle between the buyers and the sellers which is the most important thing since size is what actually moves the market. This is why the pros use this stuff......you cannot see this on any candle , bar or tick chart.