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I wasn't sure where to put this, so the powers that be can move it if they see fit. I put it here for anyone who is just starting out and wondering what it really takes to become part of that elite club of profitable traders. I lurk on several trading forums. I join a few and make a few posts. One thing that I rarely see is the painful path one took to becoming successful. So for all you beginners here is what becoming successful took. For my fellow brethren that are already in the club have a good laugh. The markets had always lured me as a kid. I would read the paper and make predictions. Sometimes they were right; sometimes not. Then one day I got that famous commodity-trading flyer, sent my money off and took the plunge. My first stab at trading was commodities and I started with $5k in 1991. I was using the strategy as outlined by the guru. The account was gone within a few months. Well that didn’t work. I thought, people do this everyday and make money why not me. So off to the library. I read every book the Memphis library had on trading and investing. I paper traded the strategies I found while I built my bankroll back up. I learned exits, set-ups, position, expectancy, market psychology, and portfolio management. I soon realized that I was reading the same thing over and over no matter which book I checked out. Time to build my strategy. I am ready to do this. I bought a new computer, Metastock Pro 6.0, and opened an account with $30k. Its 1995, and this is my shot. By 1997 I was toast again. The family life went to hell in a hand basket, and I thought I could trade through the difficult times. The result was an account with a balance of $2500. Back to the drawing board. Took care of the personal stuff. Lived like a monk raising capital. Worked nights and watched the market during the day. Took a second job on the weekends to raise more money. Then one day out of the blue, the little red and green candles started to make sense. I saw patterns develop over and over in the same spots. I placed a trade and made a profit. But I had done this before. I removed the MACD from my charts. Placed another trade and made a profit. Maybe I am on to something. Removed the channel indicator that I stumbled across. I could still see the action and new what the MACD was doing and where the action was in the channel without them even being on the chart. I even stopped drawing trend lines. It was just me and the screen. I planned every trade. I knew exactly when, where, and why I entered and exited. I was patient. I became a predator. Lurking and waiting. I took every shot the market gave me. If it started to go wrong, I got out quick and waited. If the market did not give me an opening, oh well. There is always tomorrow. By the fall of 1999, I was consistently profitable and have been ever since. For those that are waiting for the sales pitch, there isn’t one. For those that are waiting for me to expose some great secret, well there isn’t one of those either. What I will give you are a few simple pointers that I learned the hard way. And the sad part is, most will stilll learn these the hardway. 1)Take everything you read with a grain of salt. That includes this post. 2)Never pay for a system. It is just not that easy. 3)If something comes up in your life that is distracting, stop trading. 4)Plan every aspect of your trade down to the smallest detail, and plan for every possible outcome. 5)Develop your own strategy. Don’t let someone tell you that you can’t trade a simple moving average if you truly believe you can. 6)Test the strategy in the market that you will be trading. If you like the results, trade it in another totally unrelated market and see if it still holds up. 7)Paper trading is ok, but there is nothing that truly tests the strategy like hard earned cash. 8)You will have to make sacrifices in order to make it. I still do. In the middle of my learning period I was working 18 hours a day during the week and 12 on the weekend. 9)You are responsible for everything when it comes to trading. That includes stop running, bad fills, limit moves, your PC crashing. I mean everything. See #4 10)And last but probably most important, don’t be afraid of failure. Just do like Edison and go, “Well that didn’t work”. Good trading to you all.

Donald, here is the pdf version of the book, if you are interested. While a bit "salesman-like" in its approach (all of what he claims cannot possibly be true or it would be the Holy Grail), it was packed full with pictures, commentary and helpful information. Enjoy. Profitable_Candlestick_Trading-HERE.pdf

I'm not one to make a habit of bumping old threads, but based on earlier discussion, this is clearly the best place to post a link to the original Wyckoff course: The Richard D Wyckoff Method of Trading and Investing in Stocks: A Course of Instruction in Stock Market Science and Technique. Wyckoff - Course.pdf

Hard to believe its been almost 11 years since we had a great year in this thread. I think of you guys still. I wish we could have a reunion week here for any of you who are still trading ... or even if you're not. Maybe the first or second week of June 2020. If interested, drop a note here and perhaps an email address if you don't plan on checking back. No more forex for me - just stocks, ES, and NQ. As always, Best Wishes, Thales

Here is something that should get pretty lively.. Since everyone keeps telling you that screen time is important, there has to be something to it. But nobody is telling you what you should be looking for. What is it going to teach you? There has to be something that those who do this for a living see that you don’t. Well there is. And just like the magician that exposed the secrets to magic tricks on national TV, I am going to tell you what we see. But before I do remember one thing. Take everything you read in a forum or book, or hear from a guru or in a seminar with a grain of salt. Question everything. Only when you prove it to yourself, does it become the rule. What I am about to share can be found on thousands of sites and in countless books. If you have done any research at all, you have come across Dr. Elder’s triple screen, or some permutation of it. You understand the principles behind using multiple frames of reference. What has most likely not been explained to you is why it works or how to apply it correctly. In most cases you are only given a single example. Single example you say? Yes, when most first stumble across using multiple time frames, they follow the rules of: Use the upper time frame to identify the trend, the middle time frame for the set-up, and the lowest time frame to enter. If by chance you are not familiar with the triple screen just goggle “triple screen +elder”. Trading instruments exhibt three different types of market action in any given frame of reference. You use multiple frames of reference (i.e. Time or ticks) to identify the current market environment. These markets are: Trending, Trading, and Volatile. Why screen time is so important is that all instruments do not exhibit the characteristics of Trending in the upper time frame, Trading in the middle, and Volatile in the lower at all times. They can be in any one of the following combinations at any given time: Trending/Trading/Volatile Trending/Volatile/Trading Trading/Volatile/Trending Trading/Trending/Volatile Volatile/Trending/Trading Volatile/Trading/Trending Or any one of 84 possible market combinations if you consider Volatile/Volatile/Volatile. Like the major pairs in Forex, the combinations I listed are what I consider the major market combinations. The elusive secret that you are looking for, and what screen time teaches you, is to identify which market combination you are in and then how to trade what you see. Or better yet, when to stay on the sidelines. Each combination requires a different strategy, and some may not be tradeable at all. If you are trading across a broad range of instruments, you only need to master one. The fewer instruments you trade, the more market combinations you may have to learn. But you have to learn them one at a time and only add the next one once the first is mastered. But you ask what about Trending/Trending/Trading? Or how about Volatile/Volatile/Volatile? Or if I use Weekly/Daily/Hourly I get Trending/Trading/Volatile but if I use Daily/Hourly/Min I get Trading/Volatile/Trending. One step at a time grasshopper. One step at a time. As I mentioned there are 84 possible combinations. Multiply this across thousands of instruments and countless frames of reference, and I hope you get the picture. You do not have to learn them all. You only have to learn the few that fit you, your chosen instrument and frames of reference. Find the market combinations that are most prevalent and learn to trade only those. This is why it takes screen time to learn to do this, and why each trader is different. It is also why three traders in the same instrument will be doing something different. Trader A will scalp, trader B will be a buyer, and trader C will be seller, and they all make money. They are using different frames of reference and therefore see a different market

To become a full time traders, it will take years. Full time trader is smiliar to becoming a lawyer, Doctors, etc. The problem is many people believe day trading es is "get rich quick." If it takes 5 yrs to become a doctor, it will take 5 yrs to become a full time trader. I have no clue why people believe they can become a full time trader less than 1 yr. If that is true, why does it take a long time to become a doctor, lawyer, etc. According to the Gov report, 97% of the people lose trading in the futures market. One of the reason they lose is, they failed to understand trading futures involves substantial risk and only risk capital should be used. All brokerages and few trading school websites have those risk disclaimer. But for some reason, most people FAILED or ignore the risk disclaimer. For those who are a successful full time traders took them yrs to get there. Plus, they fully understood that trading es is NOT A GET RICH QUICK and trading futures involves SUBSTANTIAL RISK!!!!!! hope this help

Put simply, support is the price at which those who have enough money to make a difference are willing to show their support by retarding, halting, and reversing the decline by buying. Resistance is the price at which those who have enough money to make a difference attempt to retard, halt, and reverse a rise by selling. Whether one calls this money professional or big or smart or institutional or crooked or manipulative or (fill in the blank) is irrelevant. If repeated attempts to sell below this support level are met by buying which is sufficient to turn price back, these little reversals will eventually form a line, or zone. Ditto with resistance. A swing high or low represents a point at which traders are no longer able to find trades. Whether that point represents important support or resistance will be seen the next time traders push price in that direction. But everyone knows this point, even if they aren't following a chart. It exists independently of the trader and his lines and charts and indicators and displays. It is the point beyond which price could not go. Hence its importance, both to those who want to see price move higher and those who don't. The first two posts to this thread address these matters, as do others here and there. However, finding S&R in real charts in real time takes more than just a couple of posts. But one must understand the nature of support -- and resistance -- itself before he begins to look for it. Otherwise, he will find what he thinks are S&R in some very peculiar places. Before coming to any conclusions about what “works” or “doesn’t work”, and thus does or does not provide an edge, one ought to keep in mind that a given event -- such as price seemingly finding support or resistance at a trendline (or moving average, candlestick, Pivot Point, Fib level or whatever) -- may be only incidental to what is truly providing that support or resistance. A fundamental misunderstanding of how "indicators" are calculated and what they're supposed to do can lead to all sorts of off-task behavior. We think we see the indicators indicating something, or not, and believe we have made an important discovery. We then devote our efforts to improving the hit rate and the probability of whatever it is we think the indicator is indicating when our efforts ought to be focused on determining whether or not the indicator is actually indicating what we think it's indicating. In most if not all cases, it isn't. Consider the virgin being tossed into the volcano: sometimes it results in a great crop, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe tossing her in earlier or later will change the probability of a healthy crop. Maybe two virgins are better than one. Maybe six. Maybe tall virgins are more effective than short ones. And surely age is important. But does the robustness of the crop really have anything to do with tossing the virgin into the volcano in the first place? The money under the pillow is not evidence of the existence of the tooth fairy, and spring will arrive regardless of whether the virgin is tossed into the volcano or not. (Db)

As you may know by now, ESG stands for environmental, social and governance, which are the three factors business managers and investment advisers are implored to take into account when making business and asset allocation decisions. It’s a scam, just like the Green New Deal is a scam. Oil and natural gas are so critical to national security, transportation, home heating and other critical functions that prices are heavily politicized and manipulated for better or worse. The Biden administration has declared war on carbon-based energy sources starting with oil and natural gas. On day one of his administration, Biden closed the Keystone XL pipeline. He has since banned new oil and gas exploration leases on federal lands, handicapped the fracking industry with new regulations, banned offshore drilling and used regulatory powers to stop the building of new refineries. Biden has also pushed through green new scam legislation that showered hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for wind turbines, solar modules, electric vehicles (EVs) and EV battery manufacturing. Don’t Tell This to Elon Musk Here’s the problem with these batteries: Despite manufacturers’ efforts to market electric vehicles to the masses, EV models have never been scalable, sustainable or ultimately successful. Plus, the problem of producing enough power for a successful transition from gas-powered vehicles adds major headwinds for the EV market to contend with. No amount of marketing can overcome these fundamentals. The first hurdle is a matter of chemistry. Batteries for EVs are made from cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper and other base metals and compounds. Despite some efficiencies in the manufacture of batteries, there have been no major technological breakthroughs in the specifications for batteries in over 100 years. Batteries have always been the constraining factor for EVs. In 1905, 90% of the taxis in New York City were battery-powered. In the 1950s, 100% of the East German postal system used battery-powered delivery trucks. Golf carts have been a reliable form of EV for decades. The simple fact is gasoline is by far the most efficient way to power an automobile. That will remain the case as far as the eye can see. Urgent Note From James – Response Requested By Midnight I just made a massive change to my Altucher’s Investment Network newsletter. This is one of the biggest changes to a newsletter in the history of our business… As far as I know, nothing like it has ever been done before. I’m adding 3 brand-new benefits to this all-new “Pro level” of Altucher’s Investment Network. And as one of my readers, I’d hate to see you left behind. That’s why – until MIDNIGHT tonight – you’ll be able to upgrade your current subscription to this new “Pro level” by clicking here. Seriously. Just click here now to see how to claim your upgrade. More Problems In addition, all of the chemicals and metals needed to make batteries are either in short supply relative to potential demand (especially lithium) or incur enormous costs in terms of electricity, diesel fuel, heavy equipment, waste and disposal of ore and unwanted byproducts. It’s likely that more coal- and oil-fired electricity generation will be needed to build an EV battery than will ever be conserved by the vehicle itself. Even assuming these chemical- and fuel-based hurdles can be overcome (an unlikely assumption), the U.S. power grid is not close to being able to provide the power needed for a fleet of EVs even a small fraction of the size demanded by the Green New Scammers in the Biden administration. If EV usage grows even slightly more from current levels, we can expect brownouts and blackouts as local and state power grids struggle to keep up with demand. Tesla customers are already starting to complain about long waits at charging stations. Quick-charge gimmicks don’t help if you’re the fifth car in line for a charge. I know some owners who plan take-out dinners on long trips while they wait two hours or more for a charge. Simply put, batteries don’t work at scale for transportation. This has been known for more than a century. Nothing has changed. And for what? The Green New Scam and the environmental component of ESG all trace back to climate alarmism. Garbage Climate alarmism has no basis in observable science. It’s all the result of climate models, which have been consistently wrong about warming because they reflect the biases of their programmers. The climate change models are garbage (and yes, I have studied them and understand the math and complex dynamics and I know why they’re garbage. They can’t even backtest reliably let alone forecast. Like I said, garbage). So the threats of “existential crisis” and “we’ll all be underwater in 10 years” are based on garbage. If you listen to the climate alarmists, they’ll tell you we only have a few years to save the planet. If we don’t eliminate CO2 emissions quickly, the planet will warm, sea levels will rise, storms will intensify, cities will be inundated and lives will be lost to starvation, disease and dehydration. Every one of those claims is empirically false, but that doesn’t stop the global power elite from trying to shut down the oil and gas industries and replace power generation with solar, wind and hydropower or so-called renewable sources. Hardly a Crisis Here are the facts: The best evidence is that the planet is not warming, but it may be cooling under the influence of a periodic minimum in solar flare activity and increased volcanic activity (the two may actually be related), which creates an atmospheric ash layer that cuts down on sun intensity. Sea levels may be rising slightly, but the tempo is about 7 inches in the next 100 years. That’s hardly cause for alarm considering that sea levels rose 400 feet since the end of the last ice age and humans adapted just fine. CO2 is a trace gas that makes up just 0.04% of the atmosphere (400 parts per million) and doesn’t have a major impact as far as science can tell, except that it is essential for plant nourishment. Based upon recent studies, a doubling of carbon dioxide would likely result in a temperature increase of only about 1.5 degrees Celsius. That’s hardly a crisis. But the war on oil continues anyway, and it’s not ending. How to Invest There are many moving parts to this story. Oil has gone through extreme ups and downs over the past five years. The Green New Scam and the mishandling of delicate supply has pushed oil stocks into critical territory. I believe it’s an excellent time to look at select oil stocks. Notice that I said “select.” Not every oil stock will be a winner, even when the price of oil inevitably charges higher. I’m also looking at refining and pipelines, Appalachian coal and the Marcellus shale gas region. I believe they’ll deliver huge gains over the next few years. These are ways to profit from energy, despite the ESG scam. Right here, I talk about my strategy for surviving and thriving through this storm. Author: Jim Rickards Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/

Hello there! can anyone reccommend me a good forex broker?

:haha: I hear you say. But really. I think that this is perhaps the single biggest factor in the high failure rate of new traders. Perhaps it would be better put that you should not expect to make money. Let me put it in a different way. A beginner will come into trading and have had very little experience of anything similar. The market will however look familiar somehow and tease them into thinking small successes are down to skill. After all, humans like certainty and are quite happy to congratulate themselves when they think they are good at something. Would you expect to pick up a guitar and then a month or two later be playing at a rock concert? Would you expect to pick up a paintbrush and shortly after have an exhibition on display at the Louvre? Probably not. The difference is though that poor trading costs you your money. Coming into trading, you will be pitted against seasoned professionals, massive hedge funds, banks and computer systems to name but a few. Losses early on affect more than just your bank balance. They affect your emotions and your ability to learn and develop confidence in your understanding of markets and methods you use to trade. If you don't understand how to 'take a loss' this can be catastrophic. Do yourself a favour, when you start trading, trade to trade well, not to make money!

In a previous thread, [thread=1962]Part I[/thread] I introduced the Volume Distribution Function in the form of a volume histogram plotted along the price axis (see figure 1 of that thread). The length of the bars extending out to the right represent the amount of volume traded at that price during the day. The distribution has a peak which I call the peak volume price or PVP ( also known as the Point of Control in Market Profile Analysis, but I won't use that term here in order to avoid any confusion). . The volume distribution is a probability function, thus trading occurs less often in the low volume regions of the distribution compared to the high volume regions. However I also stated that the distribution function is dynamic and that the shape of the distribution changes during the day such that the PVP may change abruptly as the trading day progresses. As such, if price action is in the low volume region, it does not mean that there will be a reversal back to the high volume region. The distribution function could simply expand itself and continue moving in the same direction with an eventual abrupt change in the PVP. This was shown by the price action in figures 2 and 3 of the previous thread. In order to shed more light on this, I want to introduce the concept of the volume weighted average price or VWAP. The VWAP is a well known quantity used by institutional traders to gauge there trading performance. It's use as a day trading tool however has not been fully explored. The VWAP is simply the average of the Volume Distribution Function. The figures below show examples. The red line is the PVP of the distribution and the light blue line is the VWAP for the distribution. To compute it, take the volume Vi for each bar i in the distribution, multiply it by the bars price, Pi, compute the sum, SUM(PiVi) and divide by the total volume, Vtotal, for the whole distribution: VWAP = [sUM (PiVi)]/Vtotal The VWAP has the following characteristics: 1) Being the average for the entire distribution, Volume traded above the VWAP is identical to volume traded below the VWAP. In terms of the distribution function as a probability function, it means that when price action is at the VWAP, there is equal probability for price to move up as there is for price to move down. As corollaries then we have: 2) if the VWAP is above the PVP, then more volume has traded above the PVP than below it. The distribution function is thus skewed to the upside and the expectation is that at the PVP, price action should move up. Take a look at the figure below, the ER2 for June 28,2007. At the end of the day, the VWAP (light blue line) is at 847.98 and the PVP at 846.60. The VWAP > PVP hence more volume was traded above the PVP than below. 3) Conversely, if the VWAP is below the PVP, then more volume has traded below the PVP than above it; the distribution function is skewed to the downside and the expectation is that when price is at the PVP, price action should move down. You see this in the following figure for ES on June 11, 2007. The VWAP is at 1525.32 and the PVP is at 1528.75. VWAP < PVP. Clearly the amount of the skew will be a function of the difference between the VWAP and the PVP. 4) If the VWAP approximately equals the PVP, then the distribution function is symmetric. In this case when price touches the PVP, there is no expectation of price movement in either direction. Instead, expect to see small oscillations about the VWAP. The next image shows this for ER2 on June 22, 2007. VWAP = 840.44 and PVP = 840.20. Oscillations about the VWAP occured for most of the afternoon starting at 13:30. 5)The VWAP and its relation to price also determines the trend of the market as follows: a)If Price >> VWAP, the trend is up b)If Price << VWAP, the trend is down. . 6) Finally it doesn't matter on what time scale you plot the distribution functions and its associated VWAP. The chart could be a 1, 2 ,3 minute etc time chart, or a tick chart, or a range bar chart or a volume bar chart. The distibution and hence the PVP and VWAP are all the same. You need only take a quick glance at the VWAP and its relation to price, to decide the trend of the market. In future threads I will present some examples of how to use this information for entering a trade. In [thread=2008]part III[/thread] we will start with the newbies, since they need the most help. After that we will look at more complex situations using only the distribution function and the VWAP. There is a lot here to digest, so I will stop for now Comments are welcome. JERRY

While there are several investment options to choose from, an investor still requires a substantial amount of capital to build a diversified portfolio. This capital need can be a special challenge for young investors, as they may have minimal savings to invest. Thus, Tamir Zoltovski (Co-founder of Moneta International UAB) says ETFs (exchange-traded funds) make it probable to have a diversified portfolio with comparatively low investment thresholds.

Have you looked at tweaking https://www.incrediblecharts.com/indicators/chaikin_volatility.php Basics = On charts: - statistically speaking, nothing has been found in markets that comes closer to following linear cycles than 'volatility' - statistically speaking, sideways ‘congestions’ are followed by ‘volatility’ - statistically speaking, narrowing ranges are followed by expanding ranges “statistically speaking” means these indications give no "gauge" / information about the size of next move or the risks involved... only that ‘activity’ typically follows ‘inactivity’ ie-with options, nothing (outside of astro) is reliably predictive of the variance of the next move... ie with buying options, you have to figure out a way to play all the major waves in order to be there for the outliers ie- hope you’re writing ‘insurance policies’ into screaming volatilty instead of buying them in dead volatility... who makes money ? the insurer or the bozo who buys policies left and right... took taleb years to figure that out and he’s a pretty smart cookie... sorry - off topic now.... and congestion time is due to end ... hth

"Moving Averages, Oscillators, Woodie Are the only indicators that i like to use for trading.

Well there you go nameat. Follow that and you will trade "without bearing any loss"

Actions for the 16th. Price was choppy and indecisive and I knew it at the time but tried to make something out of nothing, all trades scraped the bottom of the barrel.

Adjusting Stop to 1.3202...just below entry.

Learning is the only way you can be successful in this business. There is no other way or system which can make you rich within a few days.

Scams have made headlines since the inception of the internet and with the advent of cryptocurrency, the topic is still trendy. The scam in the cryptocurrency space, both recorded and unrecorded continues to multiply on a daily basis with recent updates suggesting that about $9 million is lost daily to cryptocurrency scams. The most popular types include Ponzi schemes, fraud, phishing, initial coin offering (ICO) scams, hacking, fake application, and even theft. Although this is heartbreaking, it is believed that individuals who indulge in this awful activities both the investors and the operators of the schemes are forced to do so by their station and financial status. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts hope that the scams in the industry will be reduced to a minimal level as technology advances rapidly. However, it is clear that with the advancement scams also advances in frequency and sophistication. New strategies to scam investors are devised on a regular basis and the population of individuals who engage in these schemes grows bigger. It is believed that the scams in the cryptocurrency industry are what has set the government of many nations as well as financial institutions and experts against the notion of digital coins. In recent times, financial institutions and even search engines and social media platform have taken active steps to reduce or ban transactions and ICO ads from their platform.Financial experts have also dedicated time and resources to educate investors across the globe of the risk involved in putting cash into digital coins. Meanwhile, the number of investment in this virtual currency continues to multiply. A few financial experts have taken a different stand, stating that investors are not to blame for putting their money into something as uncertain as cryptocurrency investment, rather their impecuniosity should be seen as the culprit. It is true that a substantial proportion of the population has closed to zero investment opportunities. The heat of this situation can be safely blamed when such individual decides to invest in get-rich-quick schemes in the cryptocurrency space or even partake in such activities. For instance, Ponzi schemes promise to reward its investors with a substantial amount of money within a short period of time, which sounds exciting to individuals who tirelessly search for ways to make ends meet. It is believed that the risk in the cryptocurrency space is not half as much as that in the lotto and gambling industry, yet the government legalize it and forbid cryptocurrency transactions. Statistically, it is estimated that about half of United States adult play the lottery, with official lottery data providing that the population who participate in betting regularly is about 3 million in the Republic of Philippines. This a large number and if an average lottery player wages a dollar daily, it will amount to $365 annually, which is a guaranteed net loss. This invariably means the average amount spent on lottery by bettors in the Philippines is the annual amount spent by an individual multiplied by three million which amount to $1.095 billion lost annually. It is important to state that this figure does not include the money spent betting on illegal gambling schemes such as cockfighting and Jueteng where the figure may be quadrupled. Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is believed to be a risky exercise that offers no guarantee or consumer protection, but this point can be safely argued otherwise. A smart and intelligent cryptocurrency investor can convert a meager capital into a substantial sum of money in the digital coins space, but no matter how disciplined a gambler is, the improbabilities in the betting industry are unimaginable. There are over 800 cryptocurrencies and this number is rapidly increasing on a daily basis. After calculating the possibility of growth and profit, an investor can easily purchase the digital coin he desires to own right from the comfort of his home with no intermediaries or involvement of any governmental or financial institutions. Cryptocurrency investment provides ample unprecedented opportunities for investors. Storing cryptos in vaults or online wallets, waiting for its value to multiply may sound like a child’s play to many financial experts but it is better than the lotto as it gives individuals a total control over their assets. Furthermore, no matter how little your investment or how risky cryptocurrency investment is, a skilled and hardworking person can make substantial returns in no time. New investment opportunities continue to evolve in the cryptocurrency space. This even gets better as digital coins are now easily procured with the development and installation of cryptocurrency automated teller machines (ATM). In March, reports states that two cryptocurrency ATMs where installed in Georgia in other to make the exchange of bitcoins and Litecoins hassle-free with support for Ethereum and Dashcoin expected in the nearest future. Many online stores now allow customers to pay for goods with digital coins with lower fees compared to the traditional currencies. In addition, a new concept known as Bitcoin IRA provides investment opportunities for retirees. It helps to create a cryptocurrency IRA investment account that can be benefited from at retirement. Retirees will only have to pay fewer fees compared to that of the traditional currency plus, they just have to sit and watch their investment grow in the cryptocurrency space. Cryptocoins are rapidly growing in terms of awareness, acceptability, and investments. It can now be used to make payments for products from local and international stores ranging from the purchase of groceries to the management of online contents as well as the procurement of digital assets. Even with the risks, high volatility, scams and hacking activities in the cryptocurrency space, it still provides innumerable investment opportunities for its users and it is believed by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts that this is just the beginning. The industries are projected to grow like wildfire over the next 15 years, providing new investment opportunities and revolutionizing financial institutions in ways that were practically impossible with the traditional currencies. Digital coins provide everybody with equal opportunity to own it and take part in the growth of the industry over a period of time.

The idea of cutting your learning time many hours is valuable for me. I like saving time so I can spend it with family, relaxing, etc. Also like learning from less source and not seeking among hundreds of answers but using a reliable source. Maybe one doesn't have to invent every rule on his/her own but use the knowledge of others. I mean maybe you are not da Vinci, but you can still make a living by doing what he does.

I use Fib tool+moving average combo and RSI most often. But have plenty more to experiment with :P

Agreed, sometimes less is more, and unfortunately 1+1 in trading is not always 2

Oh you have! Glad you liked it, and good luck to us then. I have learned a lot from them so far. Be patient and keep learning!

Im a beginner trader and just wanted to say hi. Ive bin trading with a real account for about 6 months now strictly in stocks. Practiced on a simulated account for about a year off and on and i must say the difference is like black and white, I did far better on my simulated account. Hoping for better times ahead.

I've been using my iPhone 7 since the release of this phone. So I was trading for about a year now, and I never had a problem using my broker's mobile platform.

No seller coming on oil. Buyers building long positions.

Gamera... Just another example of seeing things differently. Considering the lines that I've added to your chart, how may you have traded differently through the session? No need to answer the question here... it's just offered for your consideration.

Thank you so much. it was really helpful. I think i should think about my level of risk tolerance before making a final decision.

I always thought it was a speech impediment issue and it was meant to be - Sales trader :doh:

You are right Greed is bad in Forex....

Thanks Db, I'll read through the thread for sure. All the best. Note: if anyone else has suggestions on resources, please let me know via PM and I'll add it/them to this thread. Thx

There's no future with those automated trading systems. They are made by marketers to grab your money, not by traders. Trading is hard work. Trading is an art which must be mastered over time. In all my trading years, I have seen many automated systems. They all crash and burn at some point, however, there were two systems that showed promise... They had huge drawdowns which exceeded 45%. That's a deal killer for me as my maximum allowed DD is 15%. It's best to learn how to trade "manually" first, as a profitable trader for several years, before you consider automation. Just sayin' My two centavos.

You should factor into how much you have of your account at risk. Yes, it does also make sense to use daily stop losses. But they could, also, be based on account risk and not your own feeling to that regard. In general, with a tiny account, risk should be reduced at the 25% of account level. It also makes sense to stop when ahead if you can't trade overnight because you have less time remaining to recover from any losses but only in terms of closed trades. . These types of considerations are a bit advanced in that focusing on them can be counterproductive for the beginner but are nonetheless important. It is worthwhile to consider: How much time is left in the game (early game, mid game, late game) (i.e day) % of capital at risk total closed trade profits open trade profits ----- Now, let's say you are a momentum trader and you are up $250 on a $1,000 account (like I was today) and you have a total of around $500 at risk. In this case, you have 25% at risk to break even and so you should start reducing your risk. Many successful traders just trade the open and morning session. I also do better with morning session. Trading late in day has many pitfalls, namely, limited time to recover and more fakeouts. It also depends on your style. You shouldn't set an upper limit per se but you should watch your total account risk and set a lower limit. If you aren't trading a hard system then it likewise makes sense to listen to yourself when you are losing and take time off, whether that be a day or a week. Most professional gamblers will step away when losing. Push harder when winning and take it easy when losing. A quantitative example might be that overbought indicators tend to get stuck when market trends strongly. Maybe it is a profitable indicator for you, if you can manage to avoid the bad losses, i.e don't keep fighting when it quits working!

Don't try to make money? Are you out of your mind??? Of course you should go after profits right from the start. Just remember to look for trades that have a decent probability for a high reward to risk ratio (such as 5 or 6 side-by-side bars on a 120 minute chart in just about anything breaking out into a steady move on a 15 minute chart: trade any 15 minute bar that shows price rejection, such as a rattail candlestick; risk half the rattail range and lock in profits as the move breaks from your entry zone...) How dare you advise people to settle for mediocrity when one needs to build successes in this business to stand a modicum of a chance at success??? Luv, Phantom

I agree with cuttshot. Once you have a sizable account I find it necessary to remove all profits for the week from your trading account. Take physical delivery of that money and go cash it at the bank, touch it, hold it in your hand, and then deposit it into your check, savings, and investment accounts. I think this process is important because it makes what we are doing tangible and real. Perhaps its mostly for psychological purposes, but if you leave the profits in your account, they are "at risk" of the market. Removing them each week keeps it structured more as a business.

Hi guys, Can anyone help me out by porting the following code originally made to ThinkorSwim to NinjaTrader? Here it is: declare lower; input length = 20; def closeLog = Log(close[1] / close[2]); def SDev = stdev(closeLog, length)* Sqrt(length / (length – 1)); def m= SDev * close[1]; plot spike = (close[0] – close[1]) / m; spike.setPaintingStrategy(PaintingStrategy.HISTOGRAM); spike.AssignValueColor(if close > close[1] then Color.UPTICK else if close < close[1] then Color.DOWNTICK else GetColor(1)); Thanks a lot!

Shuanna... Are you from the Planet Vulcan, where they don't have emotions? Lol...

The CIA had an opening for an assassin. After all of the background checks, interviews, and testing were done there were three finalists — two men and one woman. For the final test, the CIA agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room you will find your wife sitting in a chair. You have to kill her.” The first man said, “You can’t be serious. I could never shoot my wife." The agent replies, “Then you’re not the right man for this job." The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about five minutes. Then the agent came out with tears in his eyes. “I tried, but I can’t kill my wife.” The agent replies, “You don’t have what it takes. Take your wife and go home.” Finally, it was the woman’s turn. Only she was told to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one shot after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman. She wiped the sweat from her brow and said, “You guys didn’t tell me the gun was loaded with blanks. I had to beat him to death with the chair.”

Eiger, presume you meant "No Supply" on D & G bar rather than "No Demand"

A simple study for CQG plotting the 60 minute (initial balance) high/low. This works only on a day session chart. Once imported and applied to a chart, right click on the two lines > modify > and change the line to dash. Screenshot is attached. Enjoy! IB Range.pac

Trading by price -- and "volume" -- requires a perceptual and conceptual readjustment that many people just can't make, and many of those who can make it don't want to. But making that adjustment is somewhat like parting a veil in that doing so enables one to look at the market in a very different way, one might say on a different level. One must first accept the continuous nature of the market, the continuity of price, of transactions, of the trading activity that results in those transactions. The market exists independently of you and of whatever you're using to impose a conceptual structure. It exists independently of your charts and your indicators and your bars. It couldn't care less if you use candles or bars or plot this or that line or select a 5m bar interval or 8 or 23 or weekly or monthly or even use charts at all. Therefore, trading by price and volume, or at least doing it well, requires getting past all that and perceiving price movement and the balance between buying pressure and selling pressure independently of the medium used to manifest or illlustrate or reveal the activity. For example, the volume bar is a record of transactions, nothing more. The volume bar does not "mean" anything. It does not predict. It is not an indicator. Arriving at this particular destination seems to require travelling a tortuous route since so few are able to do it. But it's a large part of the perceptual and conceptual readjustment that I referred to earlier, i.e., one must see differently and one must create a different sense of what he sees, he must perceive differently and create a different structure based on those perceptions. As long as one believes, for example, that "big" volume must or at least should accompany "breakouts" and clings to this belief as ardently as he clings to his rosary beads or rabbit's foot or whatever, he will be unable to make this perceptual and conceptual shift. If you can work your imagination and use it to travel in time, you will have a far easier time of this than most. Imagine, for example, a brokerage office at the turn of the 20th century. All you have to go by is transaction results -- prices paid -- on a tape. No charts. No price bars. No volume bars. You are then in a position wherein you must decide whether to buy or sell based on price action and your judgment of whether buying or selling pressures are dominant. You have to judge this balance by what's happening with price, e.g., how long it stays at a particular level, how often price pokes higher, how long it stays there, the frequency of these pokes, at what point they take hold and signal a climb, the extent of the pokes, whether or not they fail and when and where, etc., all of which is the result of the balance between buying and selling pressures and the continuous changes in dominance and degree of dominance. One way of doing this using modern toys and tricks is to watch a Time and Sales window and nothing else after having turned off the bid and ask and volume. But this wouldn't do you any good unless you spent several hours at it and no one is going to do that. Another would be to plot a single bar for the day and watch it go up and down, but nobody's going to do that, either. Perhaps the least onerous exercise would be to follow a tick chart, set at one tick. Then follow it in real time. Not later, but real time. Granted this means a lot of screen time and only a handful of people are going to do it. But those few people are going to part that veil and understand the machinery at a very different level than most traders. Once this is understood, the idea of wondering -- much less worrying -- about what a particular volume bar "means" is clearly ludicrous, as is the "meaning" of a particular price bar or "candle". If it is not understood, then the trader spends and wastes a great deal of time over "okay so this volume bar is higher than that volume bar but lower than this other volume bar, and price is going up (or down or nowhere), so...".

Glad to see this finally come up. I've been very interested in combining other types of analysis along with candlesticks such as volume and MP. Heres one quick trend play that you could do using WRBs. As we know, typically a WRB is followed by an easy short to scalp, but if you use volume with the WRB then you could probably get some nice setups. 1 - As you can see we start off with a WRB, and lets say you want to go for a quick short at the exit OR wait for a candle to go short. For textbook style play let's just say we went short at the close of the spinning top that immediatelly followed. This is an ideal setup because the volume of the spinning top is nearly identical to that of the WRB. This will make it easier for some of the newbies. 2 - Two candles later we have a test of the WRB open or low. You can exit here for a quick profit or you could see that volume has been declining. We have smaller bodies and taller wicks, but the lack of volume would tell me theres no interest in demand as it is quickly shoved back down. So we could move our stop just above these wicks to protect our profits. Then we get a rise in volume, and a candle that breaks through those lows this would be our confirmation of a new trend. 3 - Now we get a hammer and volume as been slightly rising. Since there is a nearby support level we may be tempted to exit this trade and take the hammer. If we did that, we still have a nice profit and obviously the hammer would have failed. No big deal, thats life. OR we could have waited until something more meaningful to a trend appeared like a MA crossover, oscillator, or a hammer with STRONG volume. For the sake of hindsight and textbook style play let's say we waited. A few candles later we get a hammer with STRONG volume (similar or more to the WRB). That obvsiously screms that buyers are present. We happily exit the trade and go the other way for our hammer setup, and walk away with a new sum in our bank account. Now to be fair this isn't a setup where you see a spinning top after a WRB and assume you can nail near 20pt ES trade. BUT if you started with a simple 2pt play and closesly followed volume you could have turned that into a nice trade. For the sake of argument and realism, here are a few losers in the same day. Heres another play we could have used. 1 - Clearly defined hammer after a WRB and volume is very similar. 2 -Next we get a follow through WRB with strong volume. Typically I think we would have taken the hammer and a quick profit with the WRB and been happy. Or we could let volume tell us that buyers are still heavily present in the market and hold onto the trade from here. 3 - Our trade continues to move higher and we eventually test the long term MA. Knowing this is a counter trend play I think most would be disciplined to take their profits here. Just in case this doesn't happen the high volume inverted hammer would tell us the bears quickly counter attacked with equal force keeping price down. So you could take your profits at the close of this inverted hammer and still had a healthy trade. Or else you would have waited for the spinning top with low volume to tell you the move was over. So overall I'm starting to see a pattern of nice candlestick patterns following WRB with EQUAL OR MORE volume. How a trade could possibly setup. 1 - Reveral candle after WRB witih equal or more volume. If I'm not alread scalping for a quick reversal of the WRB then enter on the close of the reversal candle. 2 - Wait for a signal such as an oscillator, moving average, or another candle (with strong volume like the WRB) to exit my trade. I think this would be a trade that would have to materialize, I don't think you could just see it happen in real time and take it. But I do think it would go along with what you said earlier about taking a typical setup, and using volume expand on it and capturing a bigger move. I think this is a good start though. Once I feel more comfortable with my knowledge of MP I would love to start a thread combing candlesticks, volume, and market profile into one setup. I believe if we could blend a lot of these great analysis together we could have an extremely efficient trading plan and one that we could use to expand our careers. I also don't think volume is something that would complicate our plan, just compliment it

Welcome. There is more than one definition for No Demand. In the book the base definition is given as a narrow spread bar closing up with volume less than the previous two bars. The Trade guider definition, also in the book, is a narrow spread bar closing up on volume less than the previous two bars AND closing on the middle or low of its range. Joel Pozen would define a No Demand as simply any bar closing up with volume less than the previous two bars. Or a bar closing equal, on volume less than the previous two bars with the previous bar higher than the bar two bars ago. Still others would include any buying bar (a bar with a higher high, but not a lower low than the previous bar) that has a narrower range and with volume less than the previous two bars is No Demand. If it closes either up from or equal to the previous bar. The underlying element is volume less than the previous two bars on equal or up closes. Note if the close is down and the we have a buying bar with the close on the low, the we have a hidden Upthrust in the form of No Demand. Sorry, I don't think I have really answered your question. I guess the reason is, the question you should be asking yourself is "How am I comfortable defining No Demand within the context of market behavior and amidst the various possible elements set forth?". I have added this beautiful pic from Monday. Note the two No Demands on the right of the Dotted line. The first one obviously closes on its high and has a smaller range than the previous bar. Plus it has volume less than the previous two bars and is a buying bar. The second one has a greater range than the previous bar and closes near its low. It has volume less than the previous two bars. It is a buying bar (positional relationship), but the low closes signals no real buying going on. This is a Hidden UpThrust in the form of No Demand. TG software would NOT pick up either of these.

Hi Gordon G, remember weakness apppears on up bars not down bars, you have marked all down bars with volume less than previous two not up bars. so simply put,. down trend looking to go short look for weakness in up bars up trend looking to go long look for strength in down bars regards sheptrader