ezduzzit

Well Soul, I would agree with you that when I was trading the YM as you do, movements would often be 20-50 points before a reversal. I only did about 3 trades a day and would usually bring my initial stop back up to b/e +1 after either 10 or 12 points and if I got stopped out so be it (it actually happened about 16% of the time but it only cost me the opportunity cost of having to wait for the next trade). Then I was pretty much in a risk free trade so I often let things run with my full position until price reached the next level of S/R or I noticed that momentum in my direction had seriously begun to stall. At that point I exited regardless. If it ran further without me, I could care less. I am not the kind of guy who after a big purchase gets upset when he finds he could have gotten a better deal. I thank the good Lord for what I was given and move on. As to scale-outs, I could just never personally get comfortable with exiting most of my position early on (dramatically cutting my winners so to speak) while leaving only the barest minimum of my position in for the real run. In trading the Russell I use a bit wider opening stop but I trade it much the same. I feel there is no right or wrong way, only what fits your personality and trading temperament. Happy Trading

Well FTT I may be wrong but I think that is why it makes great sense to go for the "meat in the middle" rather than trying to jump in at bottoms and hope to hold on until tops. Yes, you have to be quick and nimble with your exits, but it is perhaps best not to be too greedy and try to wring every last drop out of each trade. Some even go so far as to play the game in a different manner and scale out of their trades thinking that logically it is a smart way to reduce stress and capture greater profits by leaving the least amount of their position open as a runner. Frankly, unless you are constantly getting stopped out by deep and rapid reversals or you hate having to manually adjust your stops (as opposed to using an automated trailing stop which often gets hit too early in my experience) then scaling out almost assuredly guarantees you a lesser profit than you might otherwise attain. Many traders employ that method anyway, as it lets them feel reduced risk early in the trade. There are numerous ways to slice and dice the action whether you are a momentum trader or not. The key is perhaps to just make sure it fits your personality and keeps you in the game. Happy Trading

Clearly, the days when even a blind pig could find a kernel of corn are indeed over. However momentum is a tricky thing. When it is truly obvious enough for most people to see it, it is often too late to do much about it. Assessing it early enough to benefit from it seems to be the trick. I sat in an online trading room recently for a couple of weeks wherein their software was designed solely to find and benefit from momentum in the market but I was hard-pressed to find better signals there from that jumble of indicators than from following a simple set of smoothed and enhanced moving averages. As the saying goes, one man's meat is another man's poison and I think that holds true in trading as in any endeavor. Certainly momentum still exists in the markets, but it is nothing like was experienced prior to the bursting of the bubble. I try not to get too hung up on the flavor of the day anyway as whatever works today may not be working next year at this time or even six months from now, despite general psychological behavior will be quite similar. I think perhaps there is great merit to the phrase "trade what you see, not what you think." Perhaps I shall change my name to MOTOman... Master Of The Obvious heh, heh. Happy Trading

I guess there are two that I quite like: 1) "The system wasn't designed so that most people could beat it!" and 2) "If you find yourself in the bottom of a deep hole, the first thing to do is stop digging!" Happy Trading

Well said FTT.. when you are not the lead dog the view never changes and it is an unpleasant one at that! Isn't it interesting that some traders absolutely obsess over entry points while others, who are equally as successful absolutely swear that it is exits that are the key, not entries. I guess that is all part of what makes trading so rewarding when you hit it right consistently. Happy Trading

Hmm.. lots of good rules to trade by here. I guess I would say it is your own personal commitment and willingness to do whatever it takes to maintain your edge, as long as your actions remain consistent with limiting your risk and thus preserving your capital to trade. Happy Trading

Well Soul, I frankly can stake no claim to having the final or definitive answer as between discretionary versus pure systematic trading. Your comments about using market internals in your own systematic rules based discretionary trading exactly mirror those propounded by John Carter as he answered a question to a reader at his site about his always in the market, simple strategy for trading the mini Dow. He admitted he avoids the lunch hour periods and also utilizes market internals and order flow to further filter trades, thus turning what seemed to be a simple always in the market approach into a highly discretionary method. Having watched many traders trade from free trials in their subscription based rooms, I have further noted they often operate outside the rules of their system or method. It often comes down to their very personal "feel" for what is happening in the market at a given moment, a feel that only comes from thousands of individual hours of trading such markets. If someone is taking all signals, regardless of market condition then pure automation would seem advisable. However, I have yet to hear of an automated system that consistently results in an acceptable level of profits over time without excessive drawdowns that most would find unacceptable. If such a system really did work and generated an acceptable level of profits that could be scaled, then I strongly doubt that anyone would ever be foolish enough to sell it. If they did, only the biggest players could ever afford it. Even so, any meaningful expansion of its use would soon cancel out any "edge" it might have initially conferred upon its first users. My own limited experience suggests that discretionary trading of a very simple and well defined plan, taking note of market internals and order flow for additional filtering (in order to keep even a small "edge" in this game of probabilities) is probably the right way to go. I might further suggest that this simple plan will have to undergo fairly constant change if one is to remain successful in the markets over any extended period of time as they are always changing. I happen to think that any "edge" that comes about through the use of someone else's off-the-shelf system that a trader has not personalized through hard work, discovery and adaptation is likely doomed to fail. I think it has always been so and is likely to remain that way for the forseeable future. I am equally sure there are those who strongly disagree and feel that no daytrader can long succeed without removing their emotions from the trading arena through use of a pure systematic approach, whether automated or not. Frankly, live trading results over time with real money is the only thing that has ever mattered, regardless of any personal opinions I or others might be happy to toss out here for entertainment. All in all, I think trading the markets will usually prove to be one of the hardest ways to "easy money" ever attempted. Happy Trading!

Ahh. .ok now I get you. But their pivot tool should start out automatically with the floor pivots or whatever generated by OHLC of the prior day. Were you instead looking for variable pivots that readjust throughout the day based upon a time parameter you select? Good to hear some of the other stuff is working out ok there.

Soul: Very interesting idea scanning the pre-market volume of the SSF's. I had never come across that before and thanks for providing the link for the listing. Happy Trading! :-)

Soul: I recognize this TRIN > 2.0 strategy from my two week trial with Hubert Senters but my question comes down to the breakdown you have shown on the probabilities. For instance, taking the bottom item.. you note that when TRIN closes above 1.5 it has a 70.9% chance of being higher at the OPEN and that it has happened 55 times over the past two years. But then 1.6, 1.7, et al are all "above 1.5" as you noted, yet their percentages are different. Did you mean to say for instance that if it closes above 1.5 but below 1.6? I know that as I sit here typing the question it may sound a bit anal, but it somehow seems there must be a real difference in the cut-offs that I am not understanding. I have played the strategy twice before and won about 40 to 50 mini DOW points at OPEN both times. However, much like you noted, I waited until well into the evening after the afternoon CLOSE to take my position so as to avoid getting stopped out for a 30 or 40 point loss. Happy Trading! :-)

Soul: I agree with Linda's comments about "mechanical systems" but to me that is not the same thing as discretionary trading using indicators (whether they are lagging such as MACD, MAs, etc. or leading such as pivots and Fibonacci, etc.), trendlines, channels and set-ups and instead represents more the automated or blackbox type of systems, in which case the stats prove her comments as spot on. More importantly, my earlier comments regarding the value of indicators was only referring to using them as competitive info to know where the masses would likely jump in and out rather than depending directly upon them for your own entries and exits. I suspect I did not make that as clear as it should have been. Happy Trading :-)

Luke.. I have unfortunately been far too busy with out of town visitors lately to even keep up with posting here let alone take the free trial at TopGun. My initial reason for posting that site was to get the opinion of those more experienced than I (that opens it up to most! heh,heh). I am a little surprised to hear that you could not find a pivot tool as the video on Forex at that site clearly shows one in use on their charts. I suspect if you contact them, they can help you get that fixed and also tell you how to get the volume profile set up properly to reflect as it shows in their examples. I currently use E-Signal myself and since I only trade e-minis I suspect I too would have to add some additional data, such as NYSE, etc. but I shall have to call Scott Wilks over there when my visitors are gone in a week and find out what I need for all of it to work properly, and only then will I open up a free trial. If it is only a 7 daytrial then I don't want to waste any of it. You may very well be correct about the new MarketDelta charts, etc. Frankly, since I don't feel I have enough knowledge yet to properly use market and volume profile for my actual trades, I gladly yield the commentary space on such issues to those traders like you who do. Happy Trading :-)

Yes, I am basically to this point a support and resistance trader, which of course is more than the morning's posting of the floor pivots. Pivot Magic is a little course put out by a fellow named Asher Landesman, who believe it or not is a CPA, one of the first I have ever come across who could trade, heh heh.. but of course the same could be said for bankers so I will be quiet about that now. I do not as yet use market profile in my trading as I felt the tools to do so up to this time were quite weak. I think you were right in your primary assessment of this new site in that it ferrets out the footprint info to give you a true edge in running alongside the real market movers as opposed to getting slaughtered alongside the individual retail players. As to indicators, I disagree with you slightly. They have GREAT predictive capacity. Yes, no doubt they are terribly lagging but just think of the millions of retail traders who trade with them! Much like Fibonacci, it causes reactions in the marketplace that you can "almost" rely upon a good percentage of the time as you know what their signals are going to be telling them to do, regardless of the real underlying current in the market which they cannot see and do not understand. That gives them predictive value to those traders who do understand how those indicators get played. ADX/DMI is quite useful on 5 and 15 min charts with the right settings, but again is still a laggard. As indicators go, I feel it is one of only a very few semi-useful ones. However, without a little luck and excellent money management, the pros will still separate you from your trading capital over time. I feel you are spot on in your assertion that those relying on indicators may never really understand what moves the markets and how to flow with it. It forces them to become and remain "impulse" traders which over enough time is sure to lead them to financial ruin. Nothing at all wrong with trading a 233 Tick chart that I can see, however, I am perhaps a little less fixated on tick versus time period bars as you seem to be. As to the Russell, just pop it up alongside your normal chart(s) for a week or so and watch how it moves. I think you will find a fairly strong correlation in most of the e-minis but it takes screen time to find your favorite and of course things do change over time. Today has been an excellent and readily tradeable day on the e-mini Russell once again, but that is just my personal opinion. After all my study, testing and live trading thus far I can only say the following: There are tons of would be "experts" out there in trading separating people from their money via marketing pure junk (read as more and more indicators and black box systems, methods, etc.). On the other hand the small percentage of actual pro traders (who closely protect their own methods) claim there are no secrets to trading. I think the truth falls somewhere in the middle. The holy grail of trading I think is centered in two keys: 1) The "discipline" to stick to a simple trading plan with a tremendous focus on money management and position sizing to protect your trading capital and 2) Centering your trading plan and rules upon info that shows what the big dogs are truly doing to move the market and riding those moves piggyback as well as you can. Now I think it is time for me to stop posting and get back to a review of my day's trading before I risk providing even more laughable fodder for the real pros who visit your forum!

In a nutshell, I looked at and trialed every trading indicator I could get my hands on and mostly found little of value. All those methods based on lagging indicators are a large part of the reason that 90+% of traders give away their money in the markets. I finally moved to short period Jurik moving averages along with ADX with DMI (though not on standard settings) as my confirmation of momentum and timing of entry and exit, in addition to TICK and TRIN. That has worked fairly well, but hungering for better I looked briefly into market and volume profile. Dual auction theory and all was a great concept but I could see the info and tools available to trade it were rather pitiful until I stumbled upon this TG site we have been discussing here. I do not trade the ES as I feel it is much too short ranged and cuthroat. I traded the YM but after several forays into the mini Russell I think I have found a home. Despite guru comments to the contrary I have found the mini Russell to provide the best bang for the buck at least during current periods. Your execution has to be good and you can't be timid, but it often trends better and smoother than the other two and it is hard to complain about the monetary returns either. In my own trading I focus a lot on pivots and other S and R points that develop throughout the day and frankly, I learned more than anything else from a little method called Pivot Magic before running into market and volume profile ideas. At best, I would consider what I have been trading with as "moderate" probability trading, whereas what I have seen a glimpse of now which seems the real "high" probability trading. I don't want to say much more than that until I have had a chance to look into it further.

No, I don't trade with that topgun software toolset yet. As I have mentioned I am somewhat of a newbie trader (anybody with less than 5 or 10 years is a newbie I think). As an ex-banker, I already knew that the big dogs move the markets and the fear and greed of the retail players like myself is not what moves the markets but what loses money in the markets as those big players lead us by the nose to and fro. It took me a few months to get past the initial foolish holy grail indicator search but I knew there just had to be some tools in the market that really got behind the scenes to break out and show what the big dogs are doing as they do it. I looked at volume spread analysis briefly and then moved on to that marketdelta site. However a tip from a much more seasoned trader brought me to that topgunsoftware.com site and I was totally captivated by what I saw there. I will be interested in hearing further opinions about it from you and other more experienced traders here in the forum who might have the time to give it a look-see. I watched the futures video a few times to distill the essence of what he was keying off of to trade and it just made so much sense compared to the drivel that most of us are told to follow in hopes of being successful each day.

Some interesting posts here for sure regarding both market and volume profile. Interesting videos as well but if you are really into trading in that manner I don't think market delta can even come close to the tools available at topgunsoftware.com based on what I have heard and seen. Here is a link to the video for trading futures with their tools and I have no affiliation with them whatsoever... Learn How to Trade the S&P Futures = TopGun Software Also I just want to say that so far it looks like you guys have some really useful forum content here for a newbie like me.. so thanks for that.

I am brand new to your forum and site here and wanted to say many thanks for sharing the workspace you trade. Some of it reminded me of some stuff used by Hubert Senters. You also mentioned you use a 30 minute market profile chart. Have you found market profile to be terribly useful in your trading to date for things other than determining support and resistance? It seems to me you rely heavily on order flow for entry and managing your trades. How and where did you learn to read tape? I am a newbie trader so I do appreciate any and all feedback.