james_gsx

I've seen/heard plenty of people who start with a small amount of capital and look like trading Gods because they make a ton of money in a short amount of time. Then it ALWAYS takes one single trade and their entire account gets blown out. I'm sure there were several people in the same boat as him. For some reason leverage attracts idiots.

I decided to trade today after it slowed down a little bit (I didn't trade the first hour even though there was more money to be made it was too volatile). It's actually one of my best days yet, if not my best. Although I'm being very conservative and holding onto my profits and exiting trades quickly, even though I maybe leaving money on the table I still feel good keeping my profits and waiting for the next setup.

I have no idea where to put this thread? But I have a flat green line on my chart, what does this mean? Were the limits already put on?

Wow! Those targets were hit in a matter of days.

Good thing I got out the day after I bought it :o

Those of you who were in the chat with me last week watched me take a 100ym loss in 15 minutes. Kind of sucks when the market opens below your stop. Goes to show, unless you can afford the draw down and have proper risk management don't hold anything over night in this type of a market.

ES down 6% from last night. This could be interesting tomorrow morning...

I had my matrix setup for ESH08 and went to buy, saw the chart moving up and thought I was making money. I looked at my P&L and realized I was losing money. Confused I looked at my chart again, realized it was a chart of CL :o

NY Giants - 24 Patriots - 20 Who do you want/think will win? Let's get this going!

Market internals: I want to see ticks, trin, trinq, ticki, put/call ratio. I want to be able to plot the trin on a graph, same with the ricks. This is my "internals screen". Note that I have the ADX up instead of the put/call but I'm getting that sorted out with TS right now, but that's where the put/call would normally be. As you can see, I have a spot for the trin, and ticks. This is helpful for me throughout the day so I can gauge market sentiment. This also brings up time and sales. I believe we talked about this already, but I would like the ability to watch time and sales like on the screen shot. The ability to watch sectors like the banking and semiconductor sector would be convenient, but not something I need and I wouldn't really notice if I didn't have it. It's basically there to fill space right now, but some may like that. As far as MP goes, I'm really not sure what to ask for since I don't use it either. MP is something I would want to use in the future, so the only thing I can think of is to be able to view it like in all of SoulTraders videos and charts. Even the ability to import it from marketdelta.com would be nice. But like I said, since I'm still unfamiliar with it I don't know what to really ask for (or if I should even be asking, but I can't learn how to use it without seeing it in real time). I will look into this more and get back to you.

A few things I wrote down and have questions about... 1 - internals would be nice. 2 - Some people may like to see MP. I might eventually want that option, but don't need it. On TS I can type in @YM and get the YM contract over several years or whatever. I'm sure you can do this with OEC based from your charts, but I'm not sure how? Are the fibonacci retracement lines customizable? For example on TS I can decide what %s I want to plot and that was convenient. If they don't offer that, then that would be something I would like to see on my wish list. Other than that I like it so far. I like how it has it's own feel as well and the fact that it isn't nearly as CPU intensive as TS. I will use the platform more this week and come back with more questions/requests for you. Thanks! :cheers:

I agree, when I bought my computer it only had 1gb of ram but it had slots for 4 sticks. So I went out this weekend and bought few gbs more and it makes a HUGE difference. Especially if you're running Tradestation

I just talked to my dad about this and he said basically the same thing mcichocki did. I would call your ISP and figure out what exactly is slowing down your connection and what you can do to fix it. You could also call Cisco or any company that makes good routers and ask them for advice. My guess is you're probably running a ton of data at once and a nice router would do you good, not the cheap $80 ones you find at a retail department store like Best Buy. Just my 2 cents though, I don't have the experience that mcichocki has.

Even if we have hit bottom, I still wouldn't feel comfortable investing in any normal stocks. I still think we'll be in a typical bear market scenario for a while. But that's just my opinion that I got from my own research. And that's why I'm looking for a longer term hedge like gold and bonds. When I think we'll go back into a bull market then I'll start pouring my money into stocks. If I thought we'd see a crash or something like that I'd load up on ES shorts.

OAC, I have seen those butterfly charts a few times but I don't really understand what they mean. For example, what would a potential target be if it held or if it broke? When I look at the YM, I see a double top. When I look at the weekly, I see a double top with several key support levels failed. And on the monthly I see the long term trend line holding, but I don't know how long it will hold for. It still looks like we might see lower 11,000s. But of course, I'm biased. So some explanation on that chart would be much appreciated!

I downloaded the OEC demo and theres a few things I noticed right off bat compared to TS (I use TS for charts and my broker currently). 1 - TS is a cpu HOG! If you don't have at least 2gb of memory and you want to run more than just TS, forget it. OEC is much better. 2 - Once you customize the OEC charts the way you want, they are very easy to read. 3 - It's really simple to trade from the OEC chart, personally I love this feature for scalping. 4 - You can do a lot more programming and theres a ton of support out there for TS. 5 - TS is slow, and I've been having technical difficulties lately I like the customizable feature of TS. There are a few things I still need to work out with OEC but I'm sure it won't take long to figure out. Brownsfan should chime in soon, he has OEC and makes a lot more trades than I do. He will have a lot more info off the top of his head than I will for OEC. I would recommend though that you download the OEC demo and play it with for a few weeks and see how you like it. Try to customize everything how you like it and just play with it. Also check out this thread if you already haven't. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f92/tradestation-the-good-the-bad-or-3222.html

Wow, I almost went to tonights Avs game since I had nothing going on and it wasn't sold out. Turns out nearly half the team is out! Stastny had an appendectomy, and a few players have flu symptoms. The northwest conference will definitely get interesting this year!

hahahahaahahahahahaha

I agree, I have a few main motivators for basically anything I do that's off the beaten path. 1 - People say I can't. 2 - The intellectual challenge and feeling of success (being in synch with the market is one of those feelings). I can say I've taken a lot of the advice that has been given to me by many people on this board and I am turning into a better trader. I actually trade now, and from time to time I miss good trades but that is something I am working very hard with to overcome.

Okay cool. I'm more concerned about my videos of my actual trades, those will obviously be much shorter and I believe I have a pretty good idea on how to upload those. Thanks!

When I used Camtasia to produce the video I opted to produce it for the web and it automatically created the video in several files. The default file is in .avi and I have a few options in shockwave flash object, not really sure if that's the .swf or not. The file is rather large though around 7:00 minutes but I can always break it down if needed.

James, I'm a little confused how I put a camtasia video on the forum. I have the video saved on my computer, but how do I go through the proper steps to put it on this site? If it's really easy, just tell me and I'll figure it out. If not, it might be beneficial to others as well if there was a simple video tutorial. Thanks...

Well I've been 100% cash since before that big move down in August. Back then it was an IRA so I couldn't really do anything but go long. I think this weekend I'm going to look into some bonds that we can hold for a few years and then some gold ETFs. I would feel more comfortable with an ETF rather than the actual futures contract since it seems to be pretty volatile.

Disclaimer: No, I don't think we'll crash. No, I don't expect or want a crash. Yes, I am a bear. Now onto the thread. But the facts are in our face, this is a shaky market and things are a lot worse than we see in the daily news. As day traders, we are probably the best prepared considering we rarely hold anything over night and we can quickly adapt to new markets. But what if we have $500,000 just sitting there, how can we protect it? Let's say our worst nightmare came true and the markets did in fact crash. Whether that be in one day or over the course of say a week. How would you best prepare yourself? Not just for the day, but for the longer haul. Maybe even a deep recession, obviously you don't want to be long your typical stock. A few ideas I have are, long gold, long government bonds, and basically puts on the markets.

Does anyone know if it's possible to use Infinity with either eSignal or TS? Or since it can be used as an independent broker can I use it with whatever charting software I'd like? The more I scalp, the more I find myself losing money with TS due to bad fills.