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gifropan, Until you can really accept that the trend that you just entered may fizzle, and the low you just bought may fail, (etc.) it really doesn’t matter how well you understand auctions (even though it is ultimately critical that you do understand this type of auctions) Your learning and progress will be delayed, impaired, discouraging and you will rarely experience the flow that will tune you into long runs of winners instead of a miserable mess of losers. Check to see if you just didn’t list your own version of Douglas four trading fears. I forgot them, but what I didn’t forget from Mark is that I had to keep going in self work and edge work until I had absolutely no fears or regrets left - regardless of how any individual trade turns out. Spend as much time processing at this level as you do processing your actual trades and results. Read back through 86834’s posts – paying particular attention to the balance of objective and subjective, technique and attitude, etc. he is bringing to it and attempting to share with you. For a while, spend nearly as much time observing your perceiving itself (seeing the seeing) as you do observing ‘charts’ and trying to figure out markets and/or what rules, idioms, axioms, principles will work for you(seeing the seen). The list you presented - Those are system specific axioms and in the systems to which they apply, they are statistically sound. I applaud you for questioning them. Make them and a whole additional list of stuff you encounter false for a very long time… later their slivers of truth will be much different slivers of truth than they could be to you now. re “Trend is your friend”. To you, is trend a loyal, faithful friend or is it a fickle, weak friend? Are you sufficiently tolerant and forgiving in your makeup to be a lasting friend to trend also, regardless of how it treats you? Capitalizing only on the ‘good’ trends will not sufficiently offset the whippings. Trend systems actually require that every runner be fully exploited – especially the extreme outliers. They also require that every single every single every single loss be taken on time. With pure trend trading, you only get to be right in the middle and you/system will be wrong at the ends and the beginnings. Is all that you? re: “buy low and sell high” This old saw may or may not apply to your ‘styles’ of awareness and trading. If you have a proclivity for breakouts then, as others have mentioned, your truism is “buy high, sell higher”. See? Every construct we accept / create is system specific and needs to be seen as such. re “cutting losses” and “running winners” Again – very system specific! Check your system. You may be developing a system in which your need for expertise at loss exits and profit exits per trade instance dwarfs your required skills at making great trade entries. You may need to develop expertise at attuning to and following the moments’ path of least resistance instead of the trend – and yes, there is a huge difference. Basically create your own repository and lexicon of trading systems and then master knowing how you act and react to each of them. Persistently practice matching every looking outward for technique, tips, help, etc. with a serious 'meditation' of how that really fits with you at your core. Create what is a fit with your true nature AND aligns with your market(s). Then build on your strengths… Things started clicking for me when I got tired of compromising/searching and got back true to my original visions and passions of trading. Turns out they weren’t too idealistic or fantastic at all… they had to be grounded in reality of course, but they were what was right for me all along... yada yada … hth

Kumbaya is a victim song and I pray, posted evidence to the contrary, that this tone does not the demonstrate the extent of your understanding of the balance required between these two ‘works’. Your consistent partiality for edge work and discounting of strengths work is duly noted. Have you ever questioned if you are unintentionally hurting as many as you are helping with this imbalance? I trust you will transform on time (and not transmogrify )

I found this post on "Re: How Long Does It Take to Become a Profitable Trader?" interesting and have nominated it accordingly for "Topic Of The Month June, 2009"

The further you look outward for answers, the more likely you are to end up in that great 78% that just doesn’t make it. Any mentor or (online) helper who is suggesting or teaching you technique and or 'market principles' instead of asking you the correct, difficult questions is ultimately putting you on (unnecessary) life support and crutches. Remember this - even if he is a master at trading AND a wonderful teacher, he knows what he is doing and you will ALWAYS only think you know what he is doing. “That difference is worth maybe millions” (PointGuard) Find your own way! Stop listening to any of us – both the gurus who violate the inner game and the ones that validate it. Find your own way! Tear through as much trading information as you can as quickly as you can, but periodically stop and highlight those parts that resonate with your true self and build on those and discard the rest... assimilate, accommodate, repeat. You can shorten the quantity of the “10,000 hours”, but you can not dodge the minimum quality summing up to your own version and realization of the “10,000 hours”. Each trader must identify his own set of challenges and meet them as they arise. Certain issues / challenges may not be in the area of ‘thinking’ (or common sense or analysis or however one may want to describe it) at all. Thinking is required for many issues, but for a huge percentage of the ‘trading traps’, thinking is a total waste of time. Each trader needs to understand what he or she specifically needs to know and apply. Hal in a recent poster said it best "As long, as it takes! Period" Now that I think about it why that is not the post of the month I’ll never know. I’m going to go try nominating it now.

Sorry, I only have TS versions. Have never used it on TS or NT. If you study the code you should be able to determine whether or not you can make "solid assumptions" about the logic of his conditions particularily since fx volume is number of ticks proxy for actual volume...

One or two of the monkeys by nature and/or conditioning became focused on results and the implications of those results. By all indications, they are healthy, motivated monkeys, but are caught in a ‘do to have’ mentality trap when a ‘do to do’ orientation would be more adaptive. With the subjective implications of their results further complicating things, these monkeys are also in conflict about the wealth gained from a seemingly disproportionately small amount of work effort. Their trainers understand the importance of focus on process during deliberate practice, but with these monkeys the background threads of results and conflicts about those results hamper the monkeys’ trading at least 2-3 days a week. All the other monkeys appear to be able to strictly focus on process and be free of conflicts about ‘serendipitous’ affluence. The trainers have tried rational reasoning with these monkeys. The monkeys looked sincerely into their eyes and nodded Yes – but nothing changed. What are all the factors at work here? What can be done?

don't know if this will help you at all.... As others have mentioned feeds are different - Even NT Gain and TS Gain? Also, my bars may start at different times from yours. Also, I am displaying an older BetterVolume indicator... never downloaded the newer closed source ones.. hth

...have to recuse myself from giving stars this thread... but Tams deserves all the stars he can get...:ciao:

no return like in the c languages, etc. One solution is within the function dim a variable and set it via your various conditions then at the end of your code set functionname = the variable you used. like… vars: yvariable (... ; if (x=yvariable ) or (yvariable >3) then yvariable = 0 // assign a 'unusable' value here else yvariable = yvariable +1; functionname = yvariable; then test in object calling the function if it returned 'unusable' value else use it... clunky but... hth

well duh - by the time I asked i HAD noticed them The question remains - How does a thread get stars?

tam...sounds like you didn't go to american government schools Being thusly dense, I had never even noticed stars before. How does a thread get stars?

"personal growth" = "enlightenment" ??? or "personal growth" = "endarkenment" ???

Bf I only fade a gap if it is into a ‘fib’ cluster or cycle extreme. SR would work too. These days I also filter with the nature of how the gap was formed in the overnight - really no such thing as a gap anymore. hth

Robert, Practical answer: Yes. You can trade ‘classic’ chart patterns successfully > by placing a pattern in context / background. Others have described this well here and other threads. > by being ok with sloppiness in their formation. Btw often on the right side of patterns, the obvious, ‘prettier’, more symmetrical patterns don’t seem to fair as well as the misshapen, ugly, unattractive ones. They get faded more? > by implementing active position management, knowing where your pattern failure point is and ruthlessly stopping out there. > by not expecting them to work. (rephrasing the preceding one in terms of attitude) > by being patient, precise, and demanding with your entry placement. > by developing skills at sizing proper scaling out– some before target, some at target, and some (as many as possible) left on for runners… > by sizing correctly – this one might should be first! BS (but better?) answer: This is why the Zen master, when asked the nature of the Buddha, beats the student's head with a stick. Our words cannot convey participation or the realization to which participation can lead. Here’s one for you – can you trade (except randomly) for an hour, a day, a week, or in any instance(s) - completely without the use of pattern? The real question is - which patterns are YOURS? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PS In addition to Suri’s book, see Trading Commodity Futures with Classical Chart Patterns by Peter Brandt Trading Commodity Futures with Classical Chart Patterns by Peter Brandt, ISBN: at the Global Investor Bookshop

After going round and round with the same kinds of issues, I finally landed at running strategies on a one tick chart, getting triggers off other time frames via ADE, and doing ALL entry and exit executions with market orders - would never go back to any other way now! hth

Did the audio go ‘space alien’ about half way through for others, too? Shaun, any thoughts along these lines on the EurJpy? Thanks

Big picture – there are 3 breakout “philosophies” Tight = getting in as early as possible. Usually requires position management. Medium = going for statistically optimal entries with (usually) no active position management Wide = only going for ‘outliers’ VERY roughly – Mark Fischer’s techniques are an example of Tight, Tony Crabel's work is an example of Medium, and Larry Williams BO strategies are an example of Wide...

AgeKay and Blowfish – thanks. For the reasons you both gave (and a couple other reasons too) I decided to go /stay with an ‘unfiltered’ flow indicator and learn when (and when not) to use it and when to go with it and when to fade it... I found that with all of these versions of ‘money flow’ indicators, learning when to use them is more important than how.

Tams, re "you can paste it in TS and see what's holding it up." Thanks. Will do... just have been pressed for time lately...

Tams, What keeps it from working in TS? MC keywords? thx.

(BluRay pls correct me if I'm wrong, but) I think what he is asking for is a screen shot of just price bars and their 'Splitter' indicator (or even just the 'dumb' or 'smart' part of it) using same timeframe each shot across maybe the first 2 hours of trading or so for a few consistent days. Please also post the instrument, timeframe/barcount, and parameters being used with their study - that way those working on it can have a reliable reference to compare to and approach...

Hi all, re: "TradeStation users are invited to post your ELD." Actually for a period of time now TS users would be better served by just a posting of the code instead of 'compiled' eld's. The reason for this is that TS is currently supporting multiple versions and some of them will not import ELD's built in other versions... (8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, beta x.x are all 'current') I project this will pass as an issue by 6 months - but that projection could be off by months. So this is just a suggestion to all TS code contributors - for now, please post the code in addition to or instead of an exported ELD. Thanks.

re historical data for fields TS doesn't keep you can always harvest the data off each day to SQL server to build up a tick level backtesting database. Alternatively, for these short time frames, forget backtesting and just forward test several variants of a system- sizing cautiously of course... the comparative costs are surprisingly near equivalent

...maybe see VSA ... it's sufficiently granular to create a set of ideal patterns for yourself

Thanks RobotMan. Maybe if a few more peeps post some snippets it will start to sink in re Bob Fulks. Haven't heard from him in years. Is he all MC now?