Sparrow

My suspission is that the TS version doesn't use the real average in the SD calculation, however I haven't invested a lot of time in understanding the code. e.g. avg of 9/5 + 5/3 not equal 14/8; My NT version SDs look very narrow compared to the others, although the 1st SD has held up price very well ... most likely a bug somewhere.

Just interested in how you guys know which VWAP is the 'right' reference here? The VWAP forumla isn't that complex, so there shouldn't be that many variations. For the ensign version being wrong, jerry sure gets a lot out of it don't you think? As for the market having to stay within the 3rd standard dev because of a normal distributions assumes to be the case ... probably the markets aren't normally distributed all the time. Let's assume that you have a narrow value area and suddenly price breaks out at the end of the day. The VWAP has averaged volume * price over the whole day so a few more bars make hardly any difference, it's easy for price to pull away from the VWAP on strong momentum. Because of averaging volume * price, the VWAP will considerably lag behind price on a trend day, nothing new here. StdDev formula.

Hi Cattus, I'm staying on Forex, don't have another choice at the moment, I'd rather scalp futures though because of tape and volume. However I'm open minded and will change my approach if I can find something that works for me. I'm amazed how well the close/high/low numbers work, pivots are pretty significant too. Also Trend lines look very good. The reason I like scalping is that you can have a very tight stop, and as a consequence use more leverage than for e.g. swing trading but not too much of course. A few small profitable trades and you're done for the day but the setups need to be very good. ... and that's where I'm stuck at the moment. Cheers.

Hi Cattus, yep I've drawn a lot of inspiration from our friend Walter, but FX is a difficult animal to tame as a scalper. Dunno yet if anything useful will come out of this research :bad idea:, but I'm certainly learning a lot. Here's the correct link to the post. Cheers :beer:

CBOT e-mini data is no longer free, that offer ran out last month but opentick is still very cheap compared to other data services.

I've met some people who rely heavily on their indicators and are successful traders. If you know what to expect from your indicators during certain market conditions then they can really be an aid. Unfortunately I'm haven't been able to do that yet, maybe I have to test 100s of oscillators like Walter did(and in the end go back to the CCI) before I reach that stage . Here's another post that is critical of indicators. Cheers

I think we are looking at the same things then, I don't use the open though. Here's something you don't have yet. Found it by accident today. I'm just trying to scalp these levels, but since they are zones as you mentioned, it is quite difficult to tell if price will go through or reverse. I don't have any intention to go back to indicators. Here's a link against MACD btw. Cheers

Excellent approach Cattus :thumbs up: I am currently looking into S/R levels but far too early to see if it will be successful or not. It's difficult dealing with fake outs, waiting for confirmation increases risk and lowers profit potential. Cheers

I think this thread has some information.

Hi Cattus, thank you very much for your explanation. I'm having my doubts about indicators recently, I'm focusing more on price action. Indicators have their use, otherwise auto trading wouldn't exist or Ronin wouldn't look at MACD/Sto/RSI, but I just can't seem to get anything out of them myself. I believe the main ingredient to Walter's system is Walter. Sorry for rambling :sleep:. Good luck Cattus, have a great 2008.

Usually you use only the session time, although I think it has less of an impact on a volume profile than on a market profile(tpo) derived value area. It would be a disaster for a tpo value area but overnight volume might leave the volume based value area mostly intact.

A new average computer for a dedicated trading machine shouldn't be challenged by charting/trading at all if you use XP. Exceptions are heavy system development and backtesting, computer intensive indicators e.g. multi timeframe, multi instrument and automated trading if your strategy is very complex ( or just just poorly implemented :o, applies also to all others ). I think MS is creating an artificial demand for their friends in the hardware business for the none gaming people by forcing Vista on them.

Hi treadstone, If they have a board mention it there, maybe people will pile on your request and they'll implement it. Shouldn't take up a huge slice of their development budget, key would be to get it near the top of their priority list, since it's no big help if something so fairly simple but so useful gets done within a year. Start the riot!:fight:

I'd be cautious with your money there are no "holy grail" indicators and if I had one I'd only sell it for a billion dollars. Too much marketing talk for my taste but who knows maybe they have something useful, but I'm not going to find out.

If it's not possible with their platform you can only go looking for a third party tool or put something yourself together with excel or have someone write a piece of software for you. I tried to spin my own tool for my old broker, got pretty far but ran into some problems. I suppose the data you get is opening of a position, price entered, instrument, number of lots and close of position, price exited, instrument, number of lots. What you'd need to add manually is the $point value per instrument and comes the difficult part. If you always have only one trade on and your money management strategy doesn't include partial profit taking all is fine and dandy. If not, it's hard to tell which lot belongs to which trade especially if you have more than one trade per instrument on at a time. Gross profit/loss should be easy to calculate with an excel though. Hope you can find some tool or at least make infinity aware of what is lacking in their software. Another a bit drastic measure would be to switch to NT, guess it's free for trading Infinity anyway. Good luck

Great post smwinc, I'd just like to add a few things You're right smwinc, some FX brokers are an exeption though, e.g. MB FX has reasonable spreads. But commissions and spreads take away a high percentage of your profits. E.g. 1 pip commissions + 1 pip spread that's 20% which is a huge amount if you only have 60% positive trades. The market has to move 10 pips in your favor to give you 8 pips of profit, but only a 6 pips move against you will leave you with an 8 pips loss, quite a disadvantage. I have to agree with you that the futures arena is more friendly to scalpers, you'll also get time and sales and volume data there but the FX world offers some opportunities as well. Being able to call it quits for the day after a certain $ amount is reached is dependent on your trading style. If most of your setups are generated on trend days, you'll need to take as much advantage of them as you can. Trading less size after you reach a certain dollar amount to protect your gains can be benefitial, after all the work put into trading should pay off as well. Days on which you were up a lot and give everything back are very demoralizing.

Somewhen maybe James, but I don't think that will happen any time soon, it's difficult to accurately model a complex system. We certainly haven't figured out how to do it e.g. for the weather. Remember markets are not only driven by price action alone but also by other events like wars etc. etc., basically fundamentals.

Hey ronin, sorry to hear that. Computer stuff can make one go crazy sometimes. I don't think that anything could have stopped you if not for your computer, interesting to see a pro at work :thumbs up: Seems like you are using a recovery cd from a different computer you owned. Sometimes it's better to start off with a fresh install, in case your XP came with the computer, which it looks like, that could be a problem. Hope you'll get back to trading soon. Happy holidays

The discussion took off in a bit of a different direction though than intended, it was about making 10 ticks a day and not 10 ticks a trade. 10 ticks a trade is difficult because of the spread, comissions and slippage but possible if your setup has a high probability, if not you'll have to grind out a profit. If you are that consistent and add contracts every time you reach a certain amount, it really snowballs. In case you have an almost mechanical system you can take the ego out of the game. A problem might be liquidity, somewhen theoretically you positions would be too big for the market, happens sooner or later depending on the instrument. I think it can be done and a fellow trader told me that he made a fortune by getting 20 ticks for a year every day. Can't say though if he is just a show off. Cheers

I can make her change directions if I don't look at the picture directly and everything gets blured. Then focus on the blured arms and legs and as they reach the edge in which way you would like her turn, refocus on the image.

Had to update the indicator because of a small bug. GuppyMACD_v091.zip

Hi J, maybe you could give him Justin Mamis', When to sell as a christmas present. It might not be that up to date being written in the 70s, but one of the first chapters is called the neurotic investor. It describes perfectly how the herd is trading. The book is about investing though, not day trading. Losing traders should paper trade until they think they have an edge without deluding themselves, everything else is gambling. Hope it helps a little.

Here's a screenshot

Hi, I've ported the GuppyMACD indicator from MetaTrader to NinjaTrader. It doesn't look so special to me, maybe cattus can enlighten us about how to use it? Cheers GuppyMACD_v09.zip

Here's one more example