zdo

Good post. Excellent rules Some other thoughts You will have a high probability of being attracted to a room where it turns out the moderator has the same trading issues and deficits as you… so learn from that too. Dig deep fast. Bust your butt learning the methodology fast. Ask really tough questions from day one. So tough the moderator will threaten to fire you… Disclaimer re my actual trading room experience: In my 20+ years of trading, I have only been in one trading room for three weeks. I learned a lot quickly. I did get fired. All done with that. The way to get the most out of a trading room is to get out of the trading room

The YM book is thin So yes, in essense, low volume. bakrob is correct. The YM is a bit shakey to trade these days. I still like the charts of the YM on short timeframes though - less 'blocky' and often id setups on YM and take the trade on ES as they rarely diverge directionally for very long. fitzkie, re "what is the volume?" I wish I could help you there Good luck. Read DBP and VSA and good luck with that too.

YM is relatively thin these days but slippage is 1 tick in normal auctions – very generally speaking. Any speed at all though and you should not be surprised at a 2-3 slip on a mkt orders

Most days, I trade the FX intraday on Currenex for an hour or so and while the EJ charts still have the easiest technical signature for me, I’m seeing the bid ask get pushed wider and wider as if a lot of players are moving to something else. For the last couple of weeks have been doing more and more turns on GBPUSD instead of EJ Note to self … ‘volatility’ on the BP seems to have settled down a little bit from the old days, however … keep reminding myself those BP boys can play rough.

Yes I can sympathize with these emotional reactions - but codde ignorance and stupidity ? No Way! John Q. Lostjob and Joan E. Maylosejob are outraged that these ‘bonusees’ expect to get the agreed upon pay for putting together deals. BUT, somehow, they are not outraged that the govt is increasing John and Joan own personal debt in increments of freakin $100,000 at a time and that members of Congress’ real motivation for forcing these liabilities on to John and Joan is to keep their seats/ own jobs /power... talk about major rewards for doing the wrong things! And John and Joan are not just getting fooled once. They are getting fooled again and again... and we're supposed to be 'understanding' ?! Fwiw, a large % of these John's and Joan's work(ed) in financial services and sales and would not be voluntarily giving their agreed upon 'bonuses' back if the shoe were on the other foot... they would not feel doing the jobs they were hired to do was doing the wrong thing. btw - The ‘bonues’ were forbidden in the original bill…After all the ‘blame game’ attacks on the republicrats, it now turns out obama (’s crew) called dodd and said put it back in to allow the bonuses... This culture is going insane. When I read comments like “… “Maybe, just maybe we have a President who really wants to do some good” it hits me just how lalaLand things are getting. The peeps will have to learn the hard way, narcissists never actually want to do some good.

BF' s answer is generally correct in a broad statistical way. Getting a tiny bit more specific - If, at a very granular level, your system using MktOrders is buying into strength (and vice versa - selling into weakness) then you will get negative slippage. Otoh, if your system is buying into weakness (and vv) then you can expect neutral to slightly positive slippage. Also Mkt Order slippage expands with acceleration and price 'speed' In the ES, liquidity is slippage beneficial and the tick size is slippage detrimental... In testing a system using mkt orders should hold up well using 2 tick slip in and out ... These are still general answers btw only slightly more specific than BF's hth

SAM, You are joking us right? http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Obama-Received-a-101332-Bonus-from-AIG

Jupiter, As far as I know, the smallest amount of capital you need to (day) trade one YM is $500. As far as is realistic, (and not being eaten up in high commissions and bank wire fees, btw ) real "staying power" starts around 12-15,000 USD per car. .. very generally speaking though - your individual experience and edge may push that higher or lower... hth zdo

Somehow, I just can't seem to get nearly as disgusted that AIG passed on the money as agreed as I get that ANY bailouts ( the first, next, and coming) were ever allowed to happen at all... ...it's sheer hypocrisy...want to see something that is disgusting to me?

... how about the idea of Bernanke as a branch manager ?

well duh ya think bush betrayed you just stick around peeps The Making of a Fuehrer at http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html

cowseathay, et al, If you need, PM me with an off forum email and I can send you a plain english guide to mindfulness.

Harlequin re “Your trading style and personality will have an influence on whether or not daily goals are suitable for you. If you have a style that offers many signals a day then a daily goal can help to stop over trading and loss of focus or concentration. If your style is to wait for the market to come to predefined levels then sometimes the market will not offer you an opportunity to trade and when it does the market will decide how much you make not the goal you set yourself.” I agree and here is some expansion about the type of system being important as to whether daily goals are advisable or not. If one is trading a trend following system, it is categorically imperative to stay for the outlier profits. Trend followers must go for absolute returns, not benchmarks! But, for example, a discretionary swing trader who must also more carefully manage / mangle his or her ‘sychological’ capital (see Denise’s posts), might be advised to at least consider daily $ targets during some parts of his own or his systems' development. Basically, every type of trading has its axioms and platitudes. Unfortunately, beginners get slammed with all of them at once, instead of having them matched with the (usually unspoken) type of system the advisor is basing his suppositions on. jasont re “Why is it people think to make more money they need to make more points per contract? ” One possible part of the answer is that most traders, especially those that post on forums, operate under sizing constraints. Single lots, which imo is the most difficult, inflexible way to trade, is what makes them think that way…

etink, If you haven't already, try doing a trial of TradeStation and pore through the contributed systems. You can cull some testable ideas and go from there. Note – consider TS as a prototyping environment…and, btw, the pascal is easy to port If nothing else, there is some ‘graduate level’ content on the nuts and bolts of testing and correctly interpreting test results in the forums. IF you do this, let me know and I can refer you to specific contributors... hth

https://www.tradestation.com/Discussions/Topic.aspx?Topic_ID=56436 and … “You can have as many sets of barhi/barlo as you like, as long as the barhi preceeds its barlo. And plot1 is on top of plot2 which is on top of plot3, etc. And the first indicator applied is on top of the second, which is on top of the third... Personally, I think shading is a really neat thing. It is much more logical for some sorts of things than lines or dots. I keep asking/hoping that TS will give us more tools to make it work better, e.g., fill between lines.” https://www.tradestation.com/Discussions/Topic.aspx?Topic_ID=77948&Reply_ID=383139&SearchTerm=shading&txtExactMatch=

see solidus's posts re shading etc on TS forums... it can be done...

Thanks BF and Minoo. … was reading BF’s post about focused and disciplined and personal timing and Minoo's contribution about what also amounts to personal timing. In my view, we are talking about personal ultradian cycles and that has been a huge key to moving me up through the pareto of traders. This is a significant aspect of the State goal work I was discussing a couple posts back... For me, the trick has become not to choicefully take ‘focus breaks’, but to become aware of and align myself to those natural focus / ultradian rhythms. ...BF - My immediate thoughts. It’s a dang paradox and this is so against the grain, but there is no way I could trade all day, day in and day out the way I do if I was focused or disciplined – Especially disciplined! If I have to ‘get disciplined’ more than once a month, then I need to acknowledge I’m way off my game… …and now we’ve pretty much hijacked this freakin thread

...speaking of 'old fashioned' patterns - there is a slight possibility of a island cluster reversal on the YM daily.

Did anyone 'trial' TickZoom and if so any feedback? Many thanks. zdo

For most who find themselves in this thread, drop/ban all the money goals. Remember that old (negative ) performance adage “Don’t think about the money” ? So, if not the money what does one think about? Instead of money based goals, set behavior goals that 1) move you toward optimal state and 2) bring you closer to the full development of and application of your edge(s). In that order? imo, giving these 2 areas close to equal attention is more important than an order as both attenuate actions and reaction relevant to market auctions and trading tactics, technique and systems. Basically it’s 1) ‘state right now’ goals instead of self improvement goals and 2) action reaction goals specific to the actual markets and trading approach instead of money goals. For many, an appropriate first goal is to get ALL you focus on the action goals i.e. to get rid of the split attention of ‘one eye’ even glancing at the money. Literally let the money take care of itself – and it will. Also, for most, pay little concern to organizing, or prioritizing, or a making a hierarchy of these action goals. Just keep the goal hopper full and accessible/visible/present. As you approach the fulfillment of one goal , make sure you have already added a new worthy goal to the hopper. …Not saying setting small money goals and working up form there won’t work… am saying most likely if you do that then look back you’ll realize in the long run any ‘goal’ energies utilized would have been more beneficial had they been situational action and subjective state goals instead of money goals… if you find yourself in this thread, most likely you still experience at least vestiges of fear in trading. Go back and look at Mark Douglas’ listing and content of trading fears with a brutal face the facts about yourself attitude. Note that de-sensitization, of which small daily dollar goals/limits is a form, are one of his prescriptions for dealing with trading fears. Money goals dilute awareness away from the real issues. I’m saying face the fears, deeply experience the fears – but use action goals instead of money goals to work through the issues… and btw, keep going until there’s not a scintilla of these fears left… absent fears (and their accompanying mistakes) even a very small edge can be compunded to yield astounding returns.

I found this post on "Daily Goals: System or Dollars?" interesting and have nominated it accordingly for "Topic Of The Month February, 2009" even though I now see it is months old...

Have you read the article The Utilization of Anxiety as the Primary Determinant in Position Sizing Decisions by Zkared Drader ? Neither have I... but sure would love to... maybe he discusses the option of leaving the top end unlimited but not letting the day's profits fall back below a certain dollar amount... Think for yourself as though your life depended on it.

Here you go - Rsi(c,2)

re: "I'm a total newbie who just starting learning about trading... start and stick in one area?" etc. Imo, as a total noobie, you should not yet know which instrument(s) you will ultimately end up trading. A noobie should stay open to exploration, not totally haphazardly, but still with a questioning of what fits and is energizing. Yes the 'signatures' between instruments, for example ndx's and fx, are different but exposure to many in the beginning is imo ultimately beneficial... particularily if you are keeping a eye on developing systems that are truly transferable (ie yes they are "similar enough") Basically, do what it takes to become extremely adaptive - even if you stay with just one market you will find that its 'signature' rotates and changes too. In the beginning, be open, flitter about(with your mind not your money ), enjoy - you will know when it's time to settle down and start to specialize... All these comments are fairly general. You alone can determine what is best for your particular nature. HTH

Let Wall Street pay for...rant Wonder if the transaction tax would apply to the (unregulated?) insurance contracts written on multi-sector collateralized debt obligations? Or to CDO transactions themselves? While congress is being so stupid, how about just a bill to charge transaction taxes on all the unregulated derivative transactions the 'too big to let fail' banks and financials make. ... and while they're being so reactive to things that 'got' us into this mess, why don't they consider letting the mortgage broker business pay for ... with a hefty little transaction tax on each risky mortgage they write... and now re-write with even more risk in them I'm sure they could find a way to blame the bush administration for these new taxes in their findings... Speaking of findings and that the nation is outraged by how the first bailout was handled...let me express my outrage that ANY bailout was ever even considered! And if they are going to do bailouts, let me proclaim I much much much prefer the 'no strings attached' type to the fascist variety 'someone' is cooking up with increasing intensity in each of the new (and subsequent) bailouts. I use the word 'someone', because how could actual congress members have time to write these big bailout packages if they don't even have time to read them before voting on them... rant out