Sandbox

[k p 10]

Ok, didn't know that. I realized that as most chat members just stopped posting. Sorry.

 

We were discussing how chat was exteremely helpful in some ways, but of course since you gotta make trading your own, it can also sometimes hold you back. But its just great to know the old crew is still checking in there.

 

May I ask Niko, you wanted to go live for May, how close are you?

[Niko 10]

We were discussing how chat was exteremely helpful in some ways, but of course since you gotta make trading your own, it can also sometimes hold you back. But its just great to know the old crew is still checking in there.

 

May I ask Niko, you wanted to go live for May, how close are you?

 

I start on Monday. Lets see how May goes.

[Niko 10]

10:42 Seems like finally someone got interested in this above 90.Not sure it will last. Given where we are.

 

The upper limit as of this morning is around 90, so one would be well-advised to let traders work all this out and wait for a test of 90 or thereabouts rather than get entangled in the trading activity around the "mean" at 50.

 

Focus was not high today. Will post analysis later, is a holiday here and I have to go to the park.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Niko

[Niko 10]

Something to consider in this kind of environment:

 

RULE #13 Occupy yourself while you are not playing. The fact is, if you are playing correctly, you are going to be doing a lot of folding, so you need to think of ways to fill this time. If you hate this period of time when you're not playing, and some do, it will have the effect of throwing your game out of kilter.

[Niko 10]

I've been doing some rough data analysis on night session versus day session. I've included the excel file if anyone is curious. There is raw data for the overnight session and day session going back to April 1st 2010. I didn't exclude holiday's but if someone wants that level of detail they are free to do so.

 

So what is the point of all this? I wanted to see how often the overnight high or low is broken. It turns out that this occurs 96% of the time. Even more interesting is that when the high or low is broken 71% of the time the other extreme is not broken. I have over 1000 days as my sample set so this number is historically accurate. This got me interested in the distribution of ranges where neither end was broken. Surprisingly when this occurs it's most often with ranges of 20 points or less.

 

I also did some distribution work on overnight and day ranges which just give a better sense of what sort or ranges normally occur. I made the excel file for myself so if you can't understand any part of it feel free to ask me - it's not pretty.

 

 

Have you included trend in the analysis, I mean what is the probability of the high being broken when you are in an uptrend?

[Niko 10]

The Importance of the Small Win:

 

I was a psychology major in college - I've always been interested in psychology and both poker and trading have given me some direction in my continued education. I've said elsewhere that I believe creating a very specific morning routine before the trading day is important. This is all about the small win.

 

The night before a game Michael Jordan would watch a tape that was prepared for him. It was clips of his opponent and their go to moves. A statistician had analyzed his opponent's tendencies and put together 10 or 20 short clips of that player making their go to move from that spot on the floor. Basically MJ did his homework.

 

On game day Michael would eat a specific breakfast. He would chose a particular car, play a particular playlist and drive a particular route to the stadium. Upon arrival he would go through his routine to prepare himself. He would change into his uniform, always wearing his UNC shorts under his Bulls uniform, always putting on his wristband up to his elbow. A few minutes on a warmup bike, followed by a specific stretching routine, followed by a shooting routine where he shot a specific number of shots for each area of the floor, working from the layups out to the 3-point line. Then he put his warmups back on and put on headphones to listen to a specific playlist. This whole routine would take around 2 hours.

 

When we think of athletes doing this kind of stuff we often call the "superstitious". What MJ and almost all successful professional athletes are actually illustrating is the power or the "small win". MJ's pattern was a habit. He had done each of these things so many times that there wasn't any need to think about them. Each step in the habit was a small win. Each small win leads to the next and on it's own seems insignificant. What each small win does is reinforce the idea of winning. MJ puts himself in the right mindset and each small win builds to the goal of playing his best that day.

 

Some researchers were interested in figuring out why some dieters repeatedly failed to lose weight. They found a bunch of failed dieters and asked them to keep a food journal - to write down when and what each of them ate each day. There was no request to diet in the study at all - it was just meant to give the researchers some data. Something far more interesting occurred. Some of the failed dieters made using the food journal into a habit. Others were only recording what they ate from time to time. After six months of journal entries they found that the dieters who had made the journal into a habit had lost a significant amount of weight whereas the other group had remained the same.

 

What caused this? First the journal acted as a tool for recognizing a pattern. The participants who used the journal regularly noticed (for example) that around 10 each day at work they would eat a doughnut. Just by making this observation they could adjust their behavior by switching out the doughnut for a healthier alternative. Once one small change was seen and recorded it gave these failed dieters a sense of accomplishment and a positive feedback loop was formed. They saw a pattern, they made a plan to change their behavior, the followed their plan and booked a small win and they recorded the results. This made them feel good about themselves for a change and many more small wins naturally followed.

 

If you can come up with a method to track your small wins and a morning routine to create a winning frame of mind you greatly improve you chance for success. The end of this document is especially important for this: http://cdn3.traderslaboratory.com/forums/attachments/131/38017d1398254234-developing-plan-trading-journal-developing-planwst.pdf

 

Great stuff. How is that plan of yours working?

[green.green 10]

Have you included trend in the analysis, I mean what is the probability of the high being broken when you are in an uptrend?

 

I haven't done more on this as it's much harder to do in excel and i don't know what time frame to consider to define the trend. As for the plan - it's going well. I'm using DBP's template and going through a full calendar year of data which is taking some time but certainly is helping.

 

Did you go live today?

[Niko 10]

 

Did you go live today?

 

Monday, lets see how it goes.

[Gringo 10]

Monday, lets see how it goes.

Scratch, scratch, and scratch.

[DbPhoenix 42]

This business of settling into the mean of the day's range by the end of the NY session has become a pattern. AMT at work. Reminds me of '99. So, again, we wait for the market to tell us what to do via its response to these tight trading ranges/consolidations.

 

I've also provided an updated March TC.

 

There are of course tradeable trends within these daily ranges, but, given the back-and-forth, AMT becomes much more important than the SLA (see yesterday's chart). Good practice for trading Dogs.

 

Images 2 and 3 are a before-and-after.

 

Post-session: This was primarily a day of means, though the SLA and AMT kept handing the ball off to each other all morning long, so being comfortable with only one or the other would have presented problems.

 

The fourth chart is an extension of chart 3.

Edited May 2, 2014 by DbPhoenix

[Bern 10]

140502 pre

 

I finally did not trade on the 30th. I had some computer problems and it took me some time to solve them.

 

Yesterday I took the day off. It was International Worker´s Day

 

***

 

For today, before RTH open:

[Niko 10]

Scratch, scratch, and scratch.

 

Yep, not the most exciting days.

[Niko 10]

Seems like 05 and 85 are the levels that do not provide any more followers, lets see what happens after the open.

[Niko 10]

9:37 Still cant make it above 05, the fact that they couldnt even reach 87, is a sign that buyers want it more than sellers want to get rid of it. But If buyers dont wanna pay more than 04 then is just another TR. No REVs for me unless 4.50 is actually tested.

 

9:43 Well, 3.75 was all buyers were willing to pay, missed the REV at 00.50, I guess Wolf took it

 

9:47 Now sellers are hanging on to their contracts, no selling below 90, still looking stronger than weaker. No the fact that buyers gave up at 50% is not that encouraging.

 

9:49 Ok, from strength to weakness in 2 minutes , after buyers gave up at 50% and some of them turned into sellers this started looking much better for the short side. This last move puts us back inside the TC from the daily.

 

9:58 Tried to get in the RET after the BO but got SCR too many times, the overlap was a b#$h so I just gave up after several tries. Lets see what happens at PDL.

 

10:08 Missed the PDL by almost a point so no REV, but the SLA entry was pretty straightforward.

 

10:12 Selling around the OR MP, perhaps this is value and nobody wants to pay more, perhaps not a HH will tell us.

 

10:27 No HH, that was value, untill someone realized it was way too expensive at 95 and decided to get rid of it.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Niko

[r3algood 10]

Nice bounce at mean of TC on hourly at 3580.

 

Can't post pictures yet on here (post number requirement?), but when I can I will upload a picture.

[Niko 10]

There are of course tradeable trends within these daily ranges, but, given the back-and-forth, AMT becomes much more important than the SLA (see yesterday's chart). Good practice for trading Dogs.

 

Damn dogs are filled with fleas , I have been scratching all morning.

[k p 10]

Damn dogs are filled with fleas , I have been scratching all morning.

 

I think its way better than being unable to put a trade on!

[Niko 10]

10:39 Now this turned out to be a hinge day. Last attempt to get a following above "value" just failed, seems like 95 is all they are willing to pay for today.

Finaly some decision here, now 78 is the line in the sand, is there gonna be a trend or not.

[Niko 10]

I think its way better than being unable to put a trade on!

 

Hehehe, you are right

[Niko 10]

10:48 So we have a trend now.

10:58 And got stuck at PDL :crap:

Edited May 2, 2014 by Niko

[Niko 10]

SLA entries of the day, the number of times you needed to enter will depend on your scratching-reentry style.

 

When you see it from an SLA perspective it was a really nice day .

[Bern 10]

140502 post

 

These are my trades for today. (I stopped early since I was not really feeling focused)

[green.green 10]

Someone sent me this video this morning and I think it is important. Allow Steve Vai to teach you how to trade:

 

[k p 10]

Someone sent me this video this morning and I think it is important. Allow Steve Vai to teach you how to trade:

 

 

Nice video. Not only is the message lovely, but its very well produced and hence a pleasure to watch. The guitar playing wasn't too shabby either!

[Niko 10]

Prepwork

 

So we are at the top of the Daily TC. There were no more buyers above 604. From there selling has been the thing to do. Now we are 40 points lower, and selling is drying up, seems like 60 is too cheap and is scaring sellers or motivating buyers. Anyhow, the stride of the uptrend from the 28 is broken and we seem to be in the middle of a RET in the hourly chart.

 

Given than we have LHs and LLs, this is a downtrend.

 

What could happen at the open.

 

Given the trend the most probable course of action is an attempt to break below 60 (this could happen even before the open) in which case the first destination of this trend would be 40 (50% from 480) and from there 30 has proven to be an important demand level so we could expect to find some buyers there as well. from there is all the way to the bottom of the daily TC around 460.

 

The other possible course of action is to reverse above or around 60, and try to go back inside the hourly TC, In that case the stride of this downtrend form friday should be broken before we are back in bullish mode, that would happen around 75, from there we would need to take 82 and deal with the MP of the up TC, but if we can clear all that clutter we would be on our way to 604.

 

SO far seems like the upside has more trouble than the downside. So lets wait, see and act only on prime trades. If the day turns choppy at the open, will be better to avoid trading until things clear out.

 

Remember to scratch and reenter when required, so to avoid fear and keep focus.