Dogpile

I heard Market Wizard Linda Rashke say recently that for an experienced pit trader, it takes 18 months of full-time trading before most make much money in front of their screens trading electronically. I would tend to agree. Trade small for the first 2 years if you have no experience. After 18 months to 2 years, you will look back and realize how little you really knew after your first 12 months.

"Markets In Profile" by the same author is much better writing. I had trouble getting through Mind Over Markets after many attempts. Markets In Profile walks us through recent examples (2006) -- times when I was living the trading world so it was very interesting to read how he interprets it... also, get on his email list (the "Profile Bulletin") -- nice monthly insights: Markets in Profile > Home ( DNN 4.3.5 )

Well yesterday was a special case where no price on the S&P futures found 'acceptance' --- it was an 'elongated' trend-day (skinny profile). NQ did form a value level near 1903.00. In this case, I am more inclined to play for the 15-min EMA. Not blindly -- only in combination with a risk-controlled technical strategy. Re your 15-min 20-EMA comment -- Yes, this is just a guideline and the real trick is reading the pattern and applying short-term trading strategies around it. You must avoid fighting trend days in pursuit of this tendency. But NQ tends to have large retracements and I am very often sitting there saying "wow, we are 18 points away from yesterdays POC -- no way it touches it today" -- and then it does. For example, Tuesdays POC (to use for Wednesday) was 1892.00 on NQ. We had a strong push up on Wednesday during period 'A' (opening 30 minutes) and put in a typical morning reversal during period 'B' -- NQ then formed what looked like a large A-B-C down for a play back up. I went long here, it pushed up and I got my stop up to breakeven but then stopped out when that China news came out. What happened next, it proceeded directly to the previous days POC before going vertical back up. Turns out there was an even larger scale A-B-C down. The useful point here was to stay flexible to the idea that the odds are it will go touch yesterdays POC --- not necessarily to always trade/scalp with that as the objective. As I reviewed my trades that day, I realized that once it touched the POC --- the downside pivot had been met as an objective for the day and that could give you confidence that the market may have just put in a large corrective A-B-C down rather than thinking to 'go with' the downside momentum. Again, this is context for how to put oscillator momentum into perspective and using 'right-brain' thinking to synthesize the various buy and sell pressures into a trade. I was just curious how others are practically using the information generated in Market Profile for context. I have read Daltons books and they opened my eyes big-time with how to think about trade location ("Markets In Profile" is just excellent).

To me, Market Profile is about context for your pattern recognition. ie, I have been using 2 guideposts for my trading -- though I trade NQ futures mostly, not S&P's. There have been 102 trading sessions in 2007 so far: NQ has 'touched' the previous days POC 80 of those 102 sessions - 78%.(price calculated POC, not volume) . FYI, NQ has touched the 15-min 20-EMA 94 times out of 102 sessions - 92%. Thus, if the market has pushed one direction but has not touched these 'pivots' yet -- I am biased for a move towards these pivots. Having this statistical tendency is quite nice. Clearly, you need a great short-term reward:risk trading strategy to go with this tendency but in the volatile NQ futures market, it is nice to come in each morning with a first trade plan to short above yesterdays POC or a long below yesterdays POC and play back for the 15-min 20 ema or yesterdays POC, or play simply for it to try to test it -- not necessarily touch it. Curious if this is standard Market Profile thinking or if there are other such things that you guys use that I might incorporate into my gameplan each morning (MP-based context to give short-term technical strategies that added boost). Thx in advance.