zdo

rurimoon, Yellow is QuickMA Cyan is really Jurik (through the 90's it was the only adaptive mov avg I considered, hence the indicator label of "AMA" … (and obviously) it uses JMA function) TS has an AdaptiveMovingAverage built in (Kaufman’s) but I would be afraid to even allow it to open on my screen …seriously and … If you have TS you can try it... if not let me know and I will take some serious pain medication and put up a comparison. Keep in mind though that the kaufman effectively just 'dynamically' varies the length parameter via a stochastic rather than actually doing the 'phasing and whatever' that more recent ama do... hth

Yes ...................................

altradelab and Jeff821, You’re right - It was not a post helpful to premium buyers. Imo, though, beginning option players should be at least aware of the option of being only a seller of premium and that was the motivation of my post. I don’t have much else to contribute re buying premium except one (untested) little diddy if you want to pm me. If buying premium is your game - play on man. I can relate. I wish you all the best. altradelab, if you are already trading futures, you might consider getting your option ‘kicks’ by using them as stops… particularly if you have time constraints that force you into using longer time frames for your positions. re your guesses – using seasonals and cycles, I sold mostly covered (got naked a few times like a dumbass) premium on bonds and hedged day to day / swings / extremes even further with futures... boring... and boring returns too... re “Cryptic” Here’s hopefully some plainer English… Option sellers take the most money – because the math is in their favor AND, by a slight margin, they tend to be more careful and loss averse. I.e., as a rule, they are more conservative, experienced, “practiced” and, in the same vein, are also a little less ADHD than premium buyers. So, Jeff, re: “ Am I destroying the markets with astronomical returns? No, but I am happy with what I am doing and I continue to learn at the same time.” If indeed you can be happy with smaller but consistent returns instead of homeruns, who knows you might be a candidate for being a premium seller … be aware though, it is not a game for ‘continual learners’ re: In its immediacy, this is a perfect example of the premium buyer's need “to outsmart all the Greeks at once /… “

altradelab, Who makes money? - the insurance company or the policy holder? I played the ‘fools game’ in options until an old coot pulled me aside one day back in ’89 at one of Pruden’s SF meetings and convinced me never to buy premium again. Rather than learning all the insects, birds, and other option creatures, imo it is better to just simply learn how to sell premium into net delta close to zero and from there learn how to bias and hedge your position for trends and swings, etc. Bear in mind, the zero net delta is like the footing / foundation – which needs to be sound – but the ‘living’ dynamic, utilized part is the biased structure built on top of it. It’s not very exciting. Laying traps for suckers is a patient, boring, lowered leverage activity compared to the thrills of trying to outsmart all the Greeks at once / avoid being one of the suckers. I'm aware this is probably not the kind of information you were looking for but with options we really don't really have many options for actually making money on a consistent basis...

At beginnings of / Going into congestion - It is possible to algorithmically and statistically 1 assign probabilities to whether a thrust or correction end will turn or congest 2 start putting probabilities on congestion on its very first bar 3 be getting good probabilities as to the ‘quality’ / type of a congestion by as early as its 3rd bar Within congestion – It is possible algorithmically and statistically 1 project probable end of congestion / break out times 2 then, in real time, drill down and test the quality of those projections 3 and by separate measures, identify by end of one bar when a ‘release’ from congestion is likely to have been triggered (well before price has actually broken out) … not picking on you personally Sevensa. Your post is just representative of all the “it can’t be done” assumptions about working congestions before and during instead of only after... congesting is entangled up in the very core of market dynamics... 'Philosophically' / attitudinally, for me it is about a primary choice to be aggressive and creative instead of helpless and reactive in my interaction with this extremely crucial aspect of market behavior... and I'm definitely not saying that I still don't get the living sh!+ kicked out of me by congestions on a routine basis - but with the engaging instead of fleeing way, at least it is with far less frequency and degree. More than the money available around congestions is the benefit of being capable of sustaining 'in synch' both in and out of congesting btw my congestion work is all on very short intraday time frames. For me it would be a complete burnout to attempt to gather this kind of tradeable information manually / observationally / with wetware… but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible by applying analogues / adaptations of the same techniques to longer time frames and being willing to give up progressively more precision with each larger time frame quanta. Happy new year all

relizer, Find code below... it was written in word not EL editor so I don't even know if it will verify... nonetheless it should get you started and maybe someone else who is in TS this weekend can help you fix it... don't really have much time to think about it now, so beware ... :pc guru: ie read / use it as if it is concept / pseudo code...hth inputs: DataSeries1(Close of data1), DataSeries2(Close of data2) ; vars: cs(0), os(0), hs(0), ls(0) ; cs = (DataSeries1 - DataSeries2); if barstatus(1) = 0 then begin //cs = (DataSeries1 - DataSeries2); os = cs; hs = cs; ls = cs; end; // if barstatus(1) = 0 if barstatus(1)= 1 or barstatus(1)= 2 then begin //cs = (DataSeries1 - DataSeries2); if cs > hs then hs = cs; if cs < ls {and cs > 0} then ls = cs; end; // if barstatus(1)= 1 or ... Plot1(os, "os"); // set the style of this to Left Tick Plot2(cs, "cs"); // set the style of this to Right Tick Plot3(hs, "hs"); // set the style of this to Bar High Plot4(ls, "ls"); // set the style of this to Bar Low

Why don’t you just replace the conditions for ZigZag turns with conditions for your turn in the zigzag code?

Yes, this stat is misleading ... and, independently btw, it is also inaccurate 78.6 % of traders lose Happy Holidays all

Please clarify your specs. Do you mean plot the highest ‘close’ and the lowest ‘close’ of the spread per bar for your timeframe? Or do you mean plot the spread of the highs and plot the spread of the lows of each bar for your timeframe?

I like 'a line is just a line until you get there' You all have nice holidays ...

End of a Run… Tue 12/16/08 was the first day I ended up in the red ndx daytrading since early Oct. and the only other one since early Sept. Definitely not my first off day of this run… just the first time it showed up on the bottom line. Techniques, perseverance, getting down and playing some hardball with them etc (even maybe a little discipline) had pulled me through on previous occasions Also, have been operating in the ndxs recently with a short only constraint… actively hedging a lucky swing trade long in DDM and SSO etf’s. When indexes are trending up intraday I go over and look to buy currencies, check other positions, and read threads etc. If you were ‘there’ on Tue though you can attest that the bias was up all day even during the congestion wait – making it tough to short… Two trading mistakes account for about half the $ loss – 1 holding a loss too long and 1 ‘prediction’ ( You strictly rational types can stop here and skip the rest…for you I didn’t follow my rules precisely with obvious consequences and there were losing trades that just happened like they just happen and that’s that. ) But for us traders who are blessed / cursed with more emotional intensity - what about the other half of the losses? … some steam of consciousness reflections on that >Am recovering from a cold. It had not seemed to have an effect on Monday’s trading, but sleep was far from optimal sun and mon nights… felt like napping all day and didn’t…plus it was rainy and grey >distractions early in the day… people popping in or calling >showed up late (not physically) by still messing around after the open with paper hedges / futures on ‘real’ money / physical metals positions >implementing / integrating additional techniques (not changing existing ones btw) – which always seems to be accompanied by setbacks, resistance, obstacles for me... chalk that up to genetic neuroses from many grandmothers… >while shopping the evening before had encountered a relative who mentioned ‘family’ topics I hadn’t thought about in months.. old pains… wonder if that evoked some ‘old identities’? >while avoiding Christmas music for one more week found myself listening to music I listened to long ago during some very low miserable points in my life. Beautiful music with painful far away associations – hm… more ‘old identities’ stirred ? >commentariat may still by ‘articleling away’ about the ‘volatility’, but intraday things have settled down significantly. things certainly aren’t in a summer sleep but compared to the all day madness we’ve enjoyed up until recently - intraday is now quite mellow… No excuses – just some possibilities or possible confluences… …, Post Script. Time ran out. Since I didn’t have time to take it back before the close, I stayed ‘hedged’ / short. After the Fed 'rush' was over my original analysis held up... and the position was lifted through the night at a profit so the whole 24 hr period was still profitable (see attached)... and so far today back on track. My insight from the day: The gap between winner and loser is extremely miniscule so... Losers take heart. Winners be careful

See above "Volume Spread Analysis Dedicated forum for VSA traders." Please combine elsewhere... thx

New thread would be appropriate - especially after all the fighting in the past to keep the VSA threads pure ...

This post is for the small group that might both ‘need it’ and ‘get it’ that they ‘need it’. btw the following was written when almost everyone still drew charts by hand or received them in the mail… in computer charting it is easy to make adjustments, but our brains are basically at the same evolutionary level as they were when it was written. Some people get it and automatically, almost without thinking make the proper adjustments. Others don’t quite so unconsciously see the need to make scaling compensations or replot for analysis purposes… Anyway if you ‘chart’ various stocks, or multiple commodity groups, or multiple fx pairs, or various treasury instruments (or even multiple trading indexes on the same time frame) – making the proper scaling adjustments can be a tiny change that brings significant transformation in your perceptions. From The Profit Magic of Stock Transaction Timing J.M. Hurst pg 165

Almost as soon as I thank you I now have to disagree with you. IMO, in the long term simple affirmations are a detriment. At best they are a waste of time. I know that flies in the face of all the common knowledge on the planet but...

great suggestion kiwi thanks.

Blowfish, re: “definitions”. I become more grateful each day at the freaked out definitions and perception patterns I have in trading… but I wouldn’t wish them on others. Again, I was only trying to help Tresor a little bit in his explorations… just some things off the top of my head to shorten the search and facilitate him bringing it to resolution in his own way. I have absolutely no argument with the preciseness of your definitions of divergence, etc. btw I suspect all of us are projecting big time – he has only hinted at what he’s really after and we are imagining from there re “what you have there zdo is an oscillator with what I would call low phase shift or lag” That’s amusing – cause when I saw it, my first thought was “way too much lag” re: “Better still learn to prefer price” Again, no real argument. Like I said - it’s easy to see why a lot of trading minds reject oscillators period… on the other hand, price also is just a representation of the auctions and to make it the ‘only thing that matters’ is ultimately limiting… Have a good one. zdo

As others have noted in earlier posts, due to the nature of bound oscillators for them not to get pasted to an edge or diverge, they must be truly predictive of how far this swing will go and adaptively increase the length ‘just right’ to hold it back from cascading across the middle to the other side for the first swing and then adaptively / differently manage the length of the second swing to allow it to run closer to the edge than the oscillator did the last swing. That’s more than fitting shapes into shape holes – that’s magic. Basically, at first use ‘stochastics’ type indicators to indicate when an instrument is ‘stochastickin’ and when it’s not. It’s just as important to know when to use them as it is to know how to use them. Realize that the same pattern on an oscillator can represent a huge variety of patterns up on the price chart and if one were viewing the oscillator in isolation it would be possible to narrow down to a promising set of likely price patterns occurring on the hidden chart the but impossible to say which one it is. If you are going to master ‘stochastic’ type indicators, learn how the price representation and the indicator representations work together for you – including + and – divergences, etc. Then, get to where smooth sucks. Learn to prefer fast, ragged, jagged, and jittery. (ie If you’re looking for smooth security, consider getting a job instead of trading leveraged instruments ) ...It's easy to see why a lot of trading minds reject oscillators out of hand. re “For a project of mine I just need the oscillator that resembles the price as much as possible, e.i. if the price makes a new high, I want the oscillator to make a new high as well…What you guys wrote is not very optimistic for me” No, in general we can not be very optimistic on this. All the suggestions I made were just off the top of my head. Here is another. Run your oscillators beside a detrend instead of a price chart. See Blowfish’s #9 post. If anything else pops into my head will let you know - at least you've been warned. “I need it for calculating Bollinger Bands of it.” Suggestion – on indicators, try Keltners instead of BB’s. Find attached a weekly YM chart with StochasicCG. It tends to diverge less often. White trend lines show place where it did not diverge. Red trend line shows place where it did. Again- it only diverges slightly less often! There are still divergences all over the place hth All the best, zdo

Blowfish, Yes ( But as was covered on the first page, mathematically we are 'grasping at straws' (whatever that means ) with the bounded range of the indicator requirement. ) and No ... ..just trying to help... Bump: Tresor, Have you looked at slow ergodic(s) or stochasticCG for your purposes? zdo

Polarized Fractal Efficiency (PFE) on ‘momentum’ indicators will not diverge as much since they tend to slam to the top or bottom and stay there until time to slam back to other side hth zdo

Sam, Here are a few ideas to trigger the development of your own ideas for dealing with this. idea 1: If you don’t have edge(s) that you literally LOVE, then demo / screen time / grail search until you do. idea 2: If you do have edge(s) acceptable to you then - All done paper trading! ‘Get real’ and stay that way! With your current edge(s), mindfully, non judgementally face and bring your best game to each new trade. In the future you can demo to develop new skills or forward test new techniques, but with your current edge(s) – stop stroking yourself, stay real, and tough it out. idea 3: If you do have edge(s), but have noted 'mental' issues then for the next x number of weeks, if you are daytrading, then MonWedFri are live days and TueThu are sim/demo/papertrading days. (If you are holding positions overnight then alternate trade 2 real, 1 fake for same basic effect.) Continue this until its obvious you don’t need it anymore, then go 4:1 real:pretend for daytrading days (and 4:1 real to fake positions if position trading) etc to quickly extinguish the papertrading days. idea 4: For a time, restrict your notetaking/journaling to the subjective experiences you have before during and after ‘decision times’ - especially for comparison if you are doing something like idea 3. Even though the fears arise from habits of misrepresentation and misapplied identities, your work is not to destroy, correct, of apply ‘discipline’ or willpower to the ‘losing’. The work is to continue increasing your awareness and perspectives. The behavioral changes in your trading will come on their own! If you do note/journal on your objective decisions, create a focus on what you are doing that is working far in excess of attention to what you are doing ‘wrong’. For example, if you were applying some version of idea 3 you would pour mental energy onto what’s working on your demo days and quickly acknowledge and forgive your screw ups and losses on live days. Your ‘discipline’ is to focus on how close to excellence you are. Screw trading plan ‘discipline’! If a trader has to apply discipline (in the sense of applying willpower to overcome an impulse or conflict), more than once a month then I question the compatibility of his trading plan with his true nature. idea 5: forward click them freakin amygdala at least once an hour! All the best, zdo

Note: this post is for those few who are really going for high high pareto levels… it is ‘bad advice’ or for everyone else. We have some posters who almost totally favor edge over mentality, some that almost totally favor mentality over edge work and we have some that marginally favor one over the other. As I have previously posted, I find it increasingly necessary to do both concurrently and diligently. I call it ‘up the middle way’, but it can also be seen as ‘consciously re-expanding to contain and balance this polarity’, etc. In my experiences with self and confirmed in working with and helping other traders, it dawned on me that the side (of this ‘argument’) a trader is discounting is the one that needs an increase in priority (but don’t try to just come out and tell that to one of the extremists or know it all’s in here or elsewhere ). Balanced emphasis, even when it doesn’t seem related at all, to the mentality side opens one to discovering and implementing edges. And 'obsessing' on the mentality side spawned by the painful consequences of ‘acting out’, etc. indicates a need for more edge work. Basically, beginners at all levels will progress much more rapidly if they spend equal time and energy on the mentality side as they do charts, grail seeking, edge discovery. This includes building a practice of immediately following mentality work with edge work and of immediately following edge work with mentality work…building a habit of immediately following progress in either ‘side’ with serious, value finding (not problem solving) questions about the progress’s implications to the other side. This kind of work is more arduous but it brings geometric returns. Your 'system' is found within you as much as it is objectively. btw, for the target audience of this post - the ‘mentality’ side is not about psychology, new therapeutic modalities, problem solving, conflict resolution, working through fears, etc. If not those, then what is it? Yours, much more humbly than this seems, zdo ps Have a great holiday weekend all pps Yesterday sunilrohira posted this audio link over in the Trading Mind Software thread. It belongs smack up in the middle of this thread http://club.ino.com/trading/2008/07/...aders-mindset/

sunilrohira, Thanks. Please cross post this link to the Edge Vs Mentality thread in the psychology section... might open some eyes... Fwiw, for all, Woodies site had two great audio's of M. Douglas at one point...haven't been there in years... hopefully they are still there...hth zdo

re "The trick is in coming to a turning point without having to go through the pain of a huge drawdown or loss of capital entirely." An alternative attitude is "The trick is in coming to a turning point no matter how many times you have to blow up entirely." Make your mistakes faster and faster. If you are truly embodying total commitment, you can not possibly make them fast enough.

In my first post I described two types of measure. The first - the angle / slope at a given point using a fixed look back The second - the angle or slope starting from a pivot (of some MA in this case) to its current print. It looks like JK_LinearRegressionAngleDouble indicator is using the first type of angle with the fixed look back of 1 for the angle (and 2 for the slope ?? the code looks like it's going 'redundant' why doesn't it just return slope with a length of two??) Not getting enough resolution on the image to give you any feedback on that... ...and I'm out here still trying to figure out which type of measure you are looking for...