cunparis

Good point about the bid moving up. You're far more knowledgeable about this than I am. But I'd like to clarify one point: BetterVolume uses upTicks & downTicks (if configured to do so). So tradestation must provide this historically correct? I'm not sure what you mean about it using the ratio with the range, that's a bit over my head I'm afraid.

The only thing interesting is having it use the upticks & downticks.

BV for TS uses upTicks & downTicks. on a tick chart, if the tick is an uptick then that means it occurred at the ask right? how does TS draw the better volume indicator for historical data if TS doesn't have the bid/ask information?

Hi Guys I just found this thread. I have both TS & NT and the better volume for NT doesn't work at all. I've done comparisons and it's not even close. I ported the Better Volume code to NT but there's just one small problem: NT doesn't have access to historical bid/ask information. So the indicator worked in real time but if you do anything that would cause a refresh you loose all your volume information. This historical bid/ask feature is supposed to be added in NT 7.0. So what I do is use better volume with TS and use my other indicators with NT. I prefer to do everything on one platform but some tasks are much easier on one or the other. Hope that helps.

This wasn't the answer I was looking for but after playing around with various combinations of stochastics and bollinger bands, I have to agree with you that the pc ratio data has more information in it than the oscillators I made. The only problem is I wanted to do some backtests to test out some ideas and for that oscillators are useful.

Hi, thanks for your reply. It's a coincidence that you mention these two because I have recently been looking at both of them. I am currently playing with Ehler's sine wave but I thought it only applied to price. Could it apply to other data too? I have also demo'd the kase oscillator. It's great for detecting divergences but I couldn't get her method (from her book) to be profitable, nor could I get her kase easy entry system to be profitable. I concluded that it's good for detecting divergence which can be warning signs but often I found a strong trend and I'd get out because of the divergence only to watch it continue on for a while. Price often does pullback after a divergence but often it resumes. So I wasn't able to find a way to incorporate it into my trading. Also on the kase peak, can it be applied to non-price data? I didn't try this. In summary, I'm looking for a way to take data and make my own oscillator. For example the trin goes from say near 0 to 2. I'd like to make it 0 to 100 and have it centered at zero. Same for pc ratio, a/d line, etc.

Hi, this is one of my first posts here but I've been lurking for a while. I'm a professional software develop (Java) and I've been developing trading systems and tools, both automated and discretionary. However I'm not that good at math. I have some data that I'd like to turn into an oscillator but I'm not sure how. Ideally I'd like my oscillator to go between 0 and 100 if possible but that's not totally necessary. I've been playing around with the stochastic formula and also MACD. It seems those are the most used to make oscillators. To take a couple examples, I'd like to make an oscillator of the put/call ratio. One could say it's already an oscillator but it's not centered around zero and it often leans one way or the other for long periods of time. Another example is the TICK index. I'd like to come up with an oscillator for that. Another example is I'd like to see if I can use the overnight range (using ES for this example) to make something useful. I have no idea if this will work but I'd like to give it a shot. I can handle the coding, so if you feel like sharing some ideas I'll code it up and post the code & charts for everyone's benefits. I'm hoping we can come up with something useful together.

Interesting discussion, thanks to everyone participating for helping me to understand how this works. From what I read of the Wyckoff theory, the composite man establishes a position in a stock and then drives the price up, finally dumping the shares on the public. The analogy in Pruden's book is to the fashion industry, where clothes are sold (dumped) to the public at discount stores and the public doesn't know it but the clothes are out of fashion, just as the shares are out of gas and can't go up any more. But as AgeKay points out the institutions are responsible for the majority of the stock volume. So I think, as another poster said, there are smart institutions and dumb institutions. The public can't absorb all the stock. My original question is because the service I referred to calls a volume increase with price increase "selling volume". From my experience with IBD & O'Neil, when there is a big price move on big volume it means institutions are buying and it's positive. This is usually the criteria for entry using O'Neil's method. But this service is saying that such a thing means price is going down, which has been my experience the majority of the time when trading IBD's buy points!!! Could it be that both are correct? That the market volume service is saying price will go down (short-term) and IBD is saying price will go up (long term)? That's the only explanation I can make of it. I find the whole thing a bit confusing. Price goes up 5% on 2x volume. The optimistic person says "there are a lot of people buying". But the pessimist says "There are a lot of people selling". How do we know which side is right?

I have a question about volume driving price. I wasn't sure which forum to put it in but I choose this one because based on what I know of Wyckoff (admittedly not a lot) volume is a major part of the method, and also because I know dbphoenix is a volume fan. If there is a more appropriate forum for this question then please feel free to move it to the appropriate place and accept my apologies. I just today read this about the SB volume oscillator: I had thought it was the opposite. That if price goes up on big volume that institutions are buying. But here they are saying the opposite. Could someone elaborate on this? Thanks!