Nvesta81

Pardon my ignorance but what is a PV trader? :doh: lol

LOL. Ok, point(s) taken. I'll sit this one out, watch, and take notes.

I'm still new to trading futures and I'm wondering what some of you think about using sell/buy stops to catch the move after the fed announcement? I know the move happens so fast I'm wondering if I would even get a decent fill. Anyone with experience doing this? Recommended or not? Or is it better to just fade the move? Thanks.

Very weird indeed! The market has been trading in and out of Friday's Value Area. It just can't seem to decide which way to go. Some incredibly profitable moves to be had though if a trader's timing is accurate and has the guts to hold on. Very educational day for me. Good luck everyone.

Well the good news is I recovered most of what I lost Friday today. However, the bad news is I had to deviate from my trading plan quite a bit to do it. I guess it's not so bad considering these high volatile days need some adjustments made in the strategy one uses anyhow. I'm learning!

Db, I've found tremendous value in your posts and greatly appreciate you sharing your ideas with us. I've since started to look for S/R to the left of the chart more closely and they do seem to to work very well if you look for trade clusters as you demonstrated. This is something I use to ignore and mostly followed Classic Pivots. I'm now starting to see how they are quite often inaccurate as opposed to levels that have been tested numerous times in previous sessions. Thanks for showing me the light!

Honestly, I followed my plan, and the hard part to deal with is that on most of my trades the price action did do what I had predicted, just my entries weren't perfect so I would get stopped just before it went my way. The market was fluctuating 20 points like it was nothing (I trade the YM). I did have one impulse trade that I shouldn't have done. The only thing I can glean from this is that I should put wider stops on days like today and basically risk more for bigger targets. I haven't been trading futures for very long so I was surprised to see the DOW lose like 380 points in 30mins or so. The tape was going nuts. Thanks for the kind words though, you're right, I will take this weekend to put my thoughts together and regroup.

I'm afraid to post how much I lost. That bad. I wish I could be prepared for days like this when stops get hit like they are magnets. Anyone else feel the pain today? I have to admit that it would comfort me a little to know I'm not the only one who got killed in this excessively volatile day.

From my perspective prices were marked down to test the supply early in the day. They then hovered just below a key support area and because there was little volume below it (no supply), it was the go-ahead for the smart money to markup prices after they accumulated on YOUR and everyone else's selling hoping for a continuation of the down move. (not meant to pick on you, I got burned like this before). Basically you got caught in a trap. There was a spring just below that support zone that gave away the strenght if you missed it. edit : chart times are an hour ahead of ET.

I noticed that the volume this morning is higher in the old contract, are you guys trading the june contract today or waiting until tomorrow? I'm still new to trading futures as you can see. Thanks.

As far as I know POC is the price at which the most transactions (trades) have taken place regardless of volume, whereas PVP is where the most volume has been traded at a specific price. Jerry can probably explain it better, but I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I've noticed that even on days where I get carried away and over-trade I never lose that much money because I use proper money management and reasonable stops. Even if you were only getting 50% accuracy you can still manage to not lose too much or even be ahead depending on the size of your winners. People that really lose big must be reckless.

You could start by reading these two threads: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/vsa-volume-spread-analysis-1369.html http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/vsa-volume-spread-analysis-part-ii-3428.html

I'd say I'm intermediate at this point. I realize that it's hard to sum up all of trading in 1 book, and I know there are several good ones, but the reason I want just 1 recommendation per person is that it'll be easier for me to choose which book I want to buy for now. I also knew that not everyone would agree on the same book so at the very least we'll get a good list going. I've decided to order 3 in total for now: Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques Mind Over Markets Trading in the Zone That should hold me over for awhile. I found a free PDF of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. I got a lot of reading to do. . Keep em coming.

as the title says, if you could only recommend 1 trading book, which would it be? I've only read about 3 so far and to be honest I haven't found much value in them. Most of what I've learned I had to learn the hard way, from trial and error and just plain screen time. I'm looking to expand my knowledge as much as I can so I'd like to buy a new trading book. I'm hoping some of you more experienced traders can lend me a hand and point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Ok, here's a 1 min chart of today's price action in the YM using classic pivot formula and mid points between pivots. These were plotted before the open. Although arbitrary, it's apparent to me that price reacts to these levels in a significant way, more-so than S/R lines drawn from previous sessions (I've tried... believe me). I just find it interesting that many traders think they are useless.... note: the vwap also had a lot of influence today, I'm guessing there was a lot of Fund activity selling at that price level.

I'll keep that in mind. I also plan on posting a chart after today's trading to illustrate what I mean. All my pivots are already plotted on my chart. I'm curious to see if those levels will work as effectively as they did yesterday to look for as turning points. They seem to work more often than not, for me at least. I usually get my numbers from this site: http://www.mypivots.com/dn/?symbol=63

You know, as arbitrary as it may be I find that S/R normally finds itself pretty much spot on with classic daily pivot formula on the YM. Previous lows and highs on the chart barely seem to affect price action. Or maybe it's just me... shrug.

Surprisingly everything you said did click for me right away. I have quite of a bit of screen time behind me and I've witnessed what you speak of pretty frequently and likely absorbed it subconsciously, the hard part for me was making sense of it in the part of the brain that's suppose to articulate it to others . For example when I see a large rally take place then the next candle closing in the middle of the bar on large volume it's evident that sellers rushed in, if the next candle closes below the previous it hits you instantly that there could be a reversal, especially near S/R zones. You're right that it's all about seeing the big picture and not focusing on just 1 bar or whatever. Sometimes you just need someone's articulate post to spark the light-bulb, and yours did the trick.

Makes perfect sense to me now. I was just a bit confused from reading Master the markets on a few things but after reading your post I now see things a bit clearer. Thanks.

Ok, here is an example chart I made using a resistance level. As you will see, the first test was on high volume, prices bounced off resistance telling me that supply showed itself at these levels bringing prices down. The final bar test is on low volume. I'm wondering how one should perceive this? When near R Is it a lack of supply, or a lack of demand, or vice versa on S? Which way is price more likely to go from an expert's point of view?

I'm fairly new to VSA concepts and there's still something I'm a little confused about that I would like one of you more experienced members to clarify for me. If you have a significant down move that hits support on high volume, then bounces off it heavy volume, then later in the day the same support is tested on low volume, does that indicate possible bounce again because there's lack of supply? I think that's how the VSA documents I read explained it but for some reason my mind tends to look at it in reverse, if there's no volume coming in when it touches support then I would think nobody is interested in buying at that level. It really confuses me.

I must have a very unsual view because when my stop is breakeven+2 there's so much pressure relieved I barely even care where my runner ends up lol... I just look at it as a free trade, if I get stopped out, oh well...on to the next setup.

I ignore pretty much everything except what's on the economic calendar for crucial hours to watch during the trading day. I still listen to the news to have an idea of what's causing the markets to move. However, I don't base my trading on that. I mostly look at market internals and previous key levels for S/R areas. Tape + Volume + Price and market internals is all I really need to succeed.

It'd be nice if you could at least post something educational other than "hey look at my awesome trading that I will disclose no information of other than PnL results"... Zzzzz... I sure as **** don't envy you, pal.