AbeSmith

Yes. There is surprisingly little material on dynamic risk to reward. Actually I have not read any except one poster mentioned it in another forum.

Thales, the end of the day, traders are predators. The food that is on the table is not vegetarian. You make it sound like we are living in a fairy tale world where we can help eachother out, if only we can get in touch with our inner self. You don't seem to understand, or are suppressing the fact, that we are helping eachother in hurting eachother, starting with the weak. It is counterproductive to a trader's profession to share their trade secret with other traders. Unless the traders are part of a team that shares profit. In trading forums, people are not in a profit sharing team. They are, by the nature of the game, enemies. Though lots of them seem to share their knowledge, or some knowledge, because human nature is social.

I admire your nice mentality, but I'm not convinced that traders are not enemies. The few folks who helped you might not have suffered from it. But then, someone suffered from your success.

The answer to your question of why such forums exists, is because humans are social creatures. Other transactions between humans are for the most part not so one sided. You pay a carpenter for services, and chances are you both come out winners. In trading, one is the loser and one the winner. I think people come to these forums because by nature, there is a social, symbiotic side to humans, eventhough the trading profession does not appear to me to be symbiotic, except trades done between hedgers and traders.

If a trader helps other traders out on how to make money then there is too many people doing the same thing, and the method won't work anymore. For every winner there is a loser in the market, so helping other traders out is helping your enemy. That's the way I see it. I hope I'm wrong.

But as traders aren't we enemies? Why help eachother out and make our enemy stronger, when the point of trading is to win?

Anyone use dynamic risk to reward, where let's say, you choose a 1:2 risk to rewards setup, but take your profit at 1:1, because at this point, technically, you are risking 2 to get 1, if you count your profit as risk. Probably the best way I think is to take some profit at 1:1, and leave some runners perhaps. Or, move your stop to break even or near break even, though that really depends on your entry. Sometimes it might be best to just exit or tighten your stop closer to current price rather than move it to breakeven.

Thanks. Good to know. I did upgrade already, yesterday I think it was, whenever it first became available. Thankfully nothing happened. Does that mean I'm in the clear? Either way, I back up my computer often.

Tradestation is by far my favorite platform. And yes, they do have paper trading, but remember it will cost $100 a month if you don't meet the minimum trade requirements. If you are looking for something more affordable, IB has papertrading account, though their charting is worthless. Why such a major broker has such poor charting is beyond my understanding. You will need a separate charting software for it. Ninja Trade is one you can use. Think or Swim also has paper trading, and if you are into futures you can check out Open E Cry, though last I remember they charge about $25 per month for paper trading if you don't have an real account I think. These are all the ones I can think of right now.

No surprise this forum is filled with futures cheerleaders. Probably lots of those people earned a good living from those futures exchanges trading their other products, and like a GM or Chrystler employees they are very proud of their company and drive only American made cars when in fact everyone knows it is of lower quality. As for me, I must admit Forex is much better choice than futures. I opened a $300 account with Oanda earlier this years. Forex is especially good because you get to control the tick size like grains of sand. YOu can make each tick be very little money with a micro account, or alot of money with the huge leverage that you are offered. This is not so with Futures, which are more like rocks or bricks. In other words, each tick is like a big chunks. That may be ok with some, but for beginner traders who don't want to spend lots of money learning the market, it can be too much. Also, the grains of sand trait of Forex makes it easier to trader longer time frames, which will require smaller position size. The beauty of Forex is that it goes both ways, it give you very high leverage too, so you can have the big chunks as well. And Forex is more liquid. It is the most popular market, traded all over the world. I'm not too concerned with the less regulation in Forex. Forex is becoming more regulated. And Oanada seems to be a trustworthy company and comes highly recommended by traders. Here is info from Oanda site about it's reliability: Why Trade Forex Online with OANDA? - OANDA FXTrade OANDA has offered online currency exchange information since 1996 and forex trading services since 2001. OANDA is registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) and is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA # 0325821). Financial regulations require OANDA to maintain capital reserves at specified levels. OANDA’s reserves exceed these levels many times over. Our investors are industry and technology leaders confident in OANDA's technology and its use of that technology to redefine currency trading. We manage risks with sophisticated hedging algorithms and strict hedging policies. Any net exposure above predefined thresholds is hedged with third-party banks at the current market spread. Hedging mechanisms are real-time, fully automated and always on. OANDA is never exposed to customer losses.The FXTrade platform automatically closes positions with a margin call before a customer’s losses can exceed their balance. Customers will never owe us money (we guarantee it in our customer agreement). OANDA is a trusted partner in the forex market, providing forex rates used by financial institutions and the big four accounting firms. Our FXTrade technology is a proven white label forex platform for financial institutions.

Excellent. Thanks. I used to use the Econoday calendar, but Forex Factory has a very nice setup so I've been using it instead. I'm suprised Forex Factoy doesn't have that info, because the USD also dropped alot at that time.

Treasury sells 30-year bonds at 4.72% MarketWatch.com Story This caused a huge rally in the ZB today, and a rally happened at the same time in the indexes. The ZB rallie looked very easy to trade if you were prepared for it. But Forex Factory calendar made no mention of the treasury sale. Where do I get the schedule for these Treasury sales?

Ok. What about electing MTM on the equities? Is it still better to stick with futures, with the lower commission of equities taken into account?

Thanks. I'll check them out. Actually I traded the TLT etf today, which appeared to be following closely the ZN. ZN is too expensive per tick for me and where I'm at with my trading currently, but I like the way it moves. How much is commission with ZB, ZN, and ZF? You might get cheaper commission if you trade the TLT with Inteactive Brokers. Less than $2 round trip for 700 shares I think, which would equal one ZB contract, both will move about $7 per tick, but probably lower commission with the etf. That's how I trade the YM actually, through DIA etf, and pay less than $2 commission round trip, and get to lower my risk per tick as well.

Thanks for the info Brownsfan. ZB looks great.