Help understanding the Tape.

[Yigal]

Hi everyone,

I know that many of you read the tape and have an experience in interpreting it, I would like to know your opinion on the following action. The thing is that to me it just doesn't make any sense.

[Soultrader]

It doenst make sense at the moment because you do not understand what to look for and how to use it. Tape reading is not easy. You will need to devote a few months observing and staring at it until you start to see information relevant to your trading. You might want to start out by looking at the tape only when price reaches a certain key level. Watch how it behaves when price reaches there and keep an eye on bigger contracts that come across tape.

[Yigal]

	Quote:	Soultrader
	It doenst make sense at the moment because you do not understand what to look for and how to use it. Tape reading is not easy. You will need to devote a few months observing and staring at it until you start to see information relevant to your trading. You might want to start out by looking at the tape only when price reaches a certain key level. Watch how it behaves when price reaches there and keep an eye on bigger contracts that come across tape.

Thank you Soultrader for your answer, I have seen all of your tape videos, thanks again, very helpful!!! The thing is, I see large buying at the tops today and large selling at the bottoms it's in the attachments, THAT doesn’t make much sense to me, since today is all choppy and range bound, but again I am new to tape reading and that’s why I’d like to know your opinion on today’s action.

[Soultrader]

One thing that comes to mind is that you were not actually seeing selling but instead buying at the bottom. Those orders were basically limit orders. Did you see alot of contracts on the red without further price decline? Many times, longer timeframe traders will have orders set before hand.

[Yigal]

	Quote:	Soultrader
	One thing that comes to mind is that you were not actually seeing selling but instead buying at the bottom. Those orders were basically limit orders. Did you see alot of contracts on the red without further price decline? Many times, longer timeframe traders will have orders set before hand.

Thanks, didn’t think of it in this way. Appreciate your help.

[trader273]

Just an FYI, a lot of people wont open Word or Excel files. It is best to save your pic as a jpeg or png file.

[Yigal]

	Quote:	trader273
	Just an FYI, a lot of people wont open Word or Excel files. It is best to save your pic as a jpeg or png file.

Thanks, next time will save and post in jpeg.

[keymoo]

Yes I won't open them for sure.

[Yigal]

Here.

[weiwei]

Yigal, on pic1 with stream of buying range from 648 to 651 and order stacking together on the bigger contract.(the one you circled). That usually mean all these big order rushing in to buy. usaully it should create market momentum.

However, big players know that people are monitoring their activities, and they will do any thing they can to hide their intentions.

For example: to buy 1000 contracts, they may buy 1500 and sell 500 alone the way to create chaos in the market to achieve that final 1000 numbers, and guess what, they do not have to achieve this all at same time, they can do it within a period of time, could be hours to days.

Bottom line: use tape as reference but be alert on its action. especially on low volume day. Once you look at it long enough, thing will start to pop out at you.

Another intertesting one on tape is you can ID short term SR on that market. You can some time spot price slamming on tape. It is actually quit fun to see how market in action.

weiwei