Markets, Trading Tools, and Trade Setups

[ant]

The purpose of this thread is to discuss your favorite markets to trade, trading tools, and trade setups. Feel free to mention other things like your trading platform and preferred broker, and elaborate on your reasons.

I think it would be best if folks were to focus on one or two aspects of their trading in each category as opposed to listing everything they do and use. The idea is to distill what you do in your trading to your very best ideas as opposed to creating a long laundry list that loses its effectiveness.

I'll start...

• Trading Style: Daytrading
• Timeframes: Primarily, I start by looking at daily charts at the end of the day, use 30m charts for Market Profile, and tick/1m/5m charts for fine-tuning entries/exits.
• Favorite Market: ES (emini S&P)
• Trading Platform(s): TradeStation and Wealth-Lab (primarily for backtesting and EOD analysis, not real-time trading)
• Broker: TradeStation (plan on opening account with IB soon)
• Trading Tools: Market Profile and Market Internals (Volume, Ticks, Trin, Breadth, and Bid/Ask)
• Favorite Setups: Fading the the extremes of a trading range, breakouts, and buying pullbacks in an uptrend and selling rallies in a downtrend.
• Best Trading Advice: Determine market condition (bracketing or trending) first and then adjust trading strategy accordingly regardless of your timeframe. Treat your trading as a business.

For me, trading with the trend (retracements) is the easiest way to trade. Fading bracket extremes is psychologically the hardest way to trade because the market always looks like it's going to break through the bracket limit as it approaches it, but the more I take this trade the easier it gets. Breakouts are the most profitable. Fading the extremes is my favorite setup though because the market spends about 70% of the time in a range/consolidating.

[Soultrader]

Interest thread Ant. I'll jump in as well.

• Trading Style: Daytrading
• Timeframe: I start with the daily chart to look at key S&R points and overall trend. I do alot of price and volume analysis on the daily. Then I narrow it down by using a 15 minute market profile chart and finally a 233 tick chart. The 233 tick chart is my most important chart.
• Favorite Market: Dow mini (YM)
• Trading Platform: Tradestation (used to use Esignal as well)
• Trading Tools: Market Profile, Time of Sale, Custom Pivot Point Clusters, Market Internals (TICK, TRIN, PC Ratio, PREM)
• Favorite Setups: My strength lies in the opening setup. This includes gaps and entries based on TICK, pivots, and tape.
• Best Trading Advice: Trading success depends on how badly you want it. My favorite trading quote is by Ed Seykota. "A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing traderis not going to want to transform himself. That's the kind of thing winning traders do."

[cooter]

• Trading Style: Scalping, DayTrading, SwingTrading
  
• Timeframe: Tick or Volume Charts. NEVER Time-Based charts.
  
• Favorite Market: Treasuries, E-minis, and moving to the Grains. Why? More technically sound, and more bang for the buck too. Get in, on, and out quicker.
  
• Trading Platform: Tradestation
  
• Trading Tools: Pivots, Support/Resistance, Divergence, rawADX, TickDelta
  
• Favorite Setups: Divergence, Trendline Breaks, Confluence
  
• Best Trading Advice: "Patience, grasshopper." Pick a market and study it relentlessly. Open your eyes. Look, see, feel and hear what is really going on.
  

[brownsfan019]

TRADING STYLE: For purposes of discussion here, day trading only.
TIMEFRAMES: 'Lower' Volume Based Charts (VBC's).
FAV MARKET: E-mini's and the Euro FX contract.
TRADING PLATFORM: TradeStation.
BROKER: Mirus Futures using the T4 trading platform.
http://www.mirusfutures.com/ & http://www.ctsfutures.com/content/t4/
TRADING TOOLS: VBC's, WRB's, and candlestick analysis.
FAV SETUPS: The ones that make the most money with the least amount of heat. I do not have 'different' setups or plays - the entry, stop and exit are clearly defined, although I do not know going into the trade which one will 'pop' the quickest.
BEST TRADING ADVICE: Treat trading as a business and it will pay you like a business. Treat it like a hobby and it will pay you like a hobby.

[epiktetos]

TRADING STYLE: Daytrading, EOD Daily and Weekly
TIMEFRAMES: Multiple
FAV MARKET: ER2
TRADING PLATFORM: Tradestation and Neoticker ( Getting used to it )
BROKER: IB
TRADING TOOLS: Market Profile, Internals and Bid/Ask Analysis for daytrading. Bar Patterns and econometric tools for EOD
FAV SETUPS: the PULLBACK!
BEST TRADING ADVICE: "Be aware of background information so that when you do make mistakes, they will be minor ones from which you can recover. Don't trade absolutes." and 'Know where value is"

[descartes]

TRADING STYLE: Day trading and scalping.
TIMEFRAMES: Multiple
FAV MARKET: FOREX
TRADING PLATFORM: FOREXtrader (gain capital)
BROKER: FOREX.com

TRADING TOOLS: candlestick analysis , DMI , MACD , RSI
FAV SETUPS: Depends on market conditions
BEST TRADING ADVICE: I trust myself, everyone else pays cash :-)

[octrader2000]

Is there a Value Area calculator antwhere on the site?

[descartes]

Not that i am aware of.

I actually asked my broker and they told me "no" , they would not give me that info.

But then if you look at charts, it should be easy enough to figure out where about 70% of the action of buying and selling is.

[torero]

TRADING STYLE: Day trading and scalping.
TIMEFRAMES: 600 tick, 3000 tick, 60-min, daily, weekly, monthly
FAV MARKET: ER2, Ags
TRADING PLATFORM: Tradestation
BROKER: Tradestation, MBTrading

TRADING TOOLS: price, volume, Force Index, trendlines, price patterns
FAV SETUPS: Low/high failure and higher high/low or lower high/low
BEST TRADING ADVICE: "it's against human nature to succeed in the markets"