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Kiwi

Market Wizard
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Everything posted by Kiwi

  1. The correct answers are: - you'll have to decide what works best with your method but longer term trades are psychologically easier. - quite possibly but see answer 1 and test each.
  2. Welcome shyvoodoo, I'm a "psych component" fan but you'd have to have a very very discretionary approach to achieve 100% "mental". I think most develop plans to improve their expectancy and to reduce the impact of the psychological component. If you planned well enough at the start and were well trained I suspect you might feel that there was no mental component (because your trainer protected you from it).
  3. I now do it all with free software. Amazing how it can catch up with the likes of Acronis. 1. Cobian Backup for regular backups of my data files (runs automatically as a service if you wish). 2. Macrium Reflect to make images of my disk partitions. This allows me to: a) restore my windows environment in 20 minutes if a disk or other failure occurs b) save a clean image of windows so that I can restore it every couple of months and just reapply any programs that changed in between times. this prevents the creeping windows slowdown that occurs when programs are added and removed from your pc. my c drive is never more than a week old
  4. Be aware that rollover orders (which increase in the last few days of the month) don't show in the book but IB does report them in the volume.
  5. Actually FDIC or SPIC failure is not enough. IB have to have the money in the wrong place as well. So the probability of FDIC/SPIC failure may actually be higher than IB failure.
  6. Borrowed from another forum: There banking practices are described on their site along with the insurance and insurance levels for your account. They're more than likely to be safer than you bank unless your banks is government guaranteed and the government in question isn't about to inflate your money away.
  7. Db, You're absolutely right. Now I am going to avoid saying But. But how? You don't need Monte Carlo sims. Markets are still demand/supply etc. There is an interesting thing I've noticed, and its that each market is a little different in how those things play out. How the pushes take place. How far a move is likely to move. And Steve's suggestions about characterizing the statistics of your markets give you a chance to refine your strategy and recognize changes over time. IMHO adaptability, like discipline, is a key characteristic of the successful trader. I'm expecting my markets to change as the recession/depression plays out and might just do some extra thinking in this space over the weekend. Have a great break everyone.
  8. Yes. There is a lot of learning in simple monte carlo software. Just take a recent string of 100 wins and losses and use that as fuel for testing your risk of ruin at various bet sizes (as a proportion of your equity). An excellent tool.
  9. And here we move to shouting again (thank heavens someone removed your shouted header). And the subtle s/he insult. Excellent. I see you're also at war with some people who would prefer T2W's quality not be further reduced by your threads. Here is how a spammer operates. He offers something free (didn't TRO used to offer a free pdf once?) But its not very good. Not enough information. Which doesn't matter to me, or db or brownsfan because we have got it already. But, for the poor newbie to the site who is still struggling to understand, its bait thats hard to resist. So another spammer takes a few bucks. And there are a lot of newbies out there. So a lot of people get scammed just a little by each spammer. That's how it works.
  10. So given your timezone ... does that mean your trading stoxx during dow times? You are actually trading the tail not the dog? Thats an interesting way of avoiding shakeouts. Clever, if thats what you are doing. How's depth? I used to trade Bund and Eurofx but it was in my evening so I started trading HSI when I became aware of it. Back then 190 points was a big day. I liked the trendiness and technical readability. Its also very exciting and the opening times suited me. In August last year some big swinging dicks from Shanghai started trading it and really screwed my pooch. So I gave it up. Now I trade SPI for an hour or so after opening and SPI and STW for the closing two hours of the day. The first hour of SPI gives good technical moves. Then I take lunch. Then the last two hours of both usually offer me a few good pullbacks to take some points. I am expecting volatility in all markets to decline soon (how soon I don't know) and will probably move back to HSI if that happens as SPI and STW will drop to until their daily ranges are too low for me.
  11. The question of reliability is an interesting one though blowfish. I use IB tick data to generate tick charts. I have for the last few years. I know that backfill won't give it (because backfill is limited to 5 seconds per bar or 30 seconds per bar or whatever best granularity your chart package requests from IB). But in real time my tick charts spread out fast action so that action I wouldn't see on a minute chart after a breakout becomes clear and tradable. So for me, the tick chart is reliable (I don't care that the maximum ticks per second is 10 because thats still 600 tick or 100 6 tick bars in 1 minute). So, for my use, IB ticks are perfectly "reliable." The show slow progress during slow times but spread the action out for clearer signals during fast action. Personally, if you draw channels and trendlines or other angled lines on charts I recommend that you do that with minute charts because tick and volume charts distort them depending on current speed of action. But, although thats a common view, its just one view.
  12. James, I think the question of who is rude and arrogant is nicely answered in this post. TRO is continuing his little games here as he has at T2W, babypips, etc etc etc. Anyone who asks for clarity will be insulted. Eventually he gets banned. We're getting recycles of the T2W game. Just check out his posts there (I did so after he arrived here to remind myself of his tactics). As always he is really here to attract business for his other offerings.
  13. Rather than us asking lots of questions which would result in an unstructured explanation at best how about a change in your mo. Rather than publish chart after chart after chart why not start with some explanations of: a) the basis for your method b) how it works c) how it is used d) the way in which one would choose rationally and unemotionally to exit. Explanations like "when price slows down" wouldn't seem to meet most peoples' criteria for clarity. Also, you might avoid the "if you don't understand it, go away" type response that you have used on other sites. That's insulting and unhelpful.
  14. JKLM, to answer the question: is ib data useful for tick charts one has to know why you want to use tick charts. So, why?
  15. No. You actually get the last price and accurate or probable volume for that 0.2 seconds - there may be other prices during that period but they are not represented. Thats why IB did the 5-second bars ... which do contain an accurate count of volume + a bar representing OHLC for the 5 seconds. But never a tick count that matches other tick counts. Its not that its complete crap - just that if ticks happen more frequently that 0.1-0.2 seconds then the missing count is missing. It can still be very useful - its just not a count of all ticks.
  16. An excellent thread, and I'd ask you to carry on Steve. I had only one real issue with atto's excellent original post and it was his mention of the phantom of the pits "if the trade isn't proving right, get out" approach. I get the impression that people take such wisdom without thought about how their own methodology is working out and it combines with Steve's point above to cause struggling traders to exit from trades before their edge has asserted itself. My own method takes advantage of big boy volatility to get good entries but I have found that any attempt to tighten stops, trail stops, or demand that the trade works out before its time has come reduces my expectancy. So, my contribution to the thread would be to amplify Steve's point and suggest that "general wisdom" must always be adapted to the method you choose to extract money from the markets. PS. I would add a 4th to Steve's list: many retail traders fail because they are unable to do in real time what they plan to do while the market is closed.
  17. I suspect, Blowfish, that bucketshop spreads can be better than the underlying because either they're fading the bulk of their losing customers (like good bookies) or because the mix of customers somehow allows it. I guess you'd have to plot the real time difference between the bs and ib say and analyze whether they're altering it somehow.
  18. In a first past the post system your voice is only actually "heard" if you vote in a marginal electorate. The rest of the time voting is more of a ritual than an effective tool to achieve a government you want. Emotion is as good a reason to vote as any: it's what drives the economy and probably drove the invasion of Iraq. Its also what drove that soldier's family to vote in much larger numbers than in earlier elections. Funny thing - emotion - it generates my living and yours too if you're a full time trader.
  19. My own suspicion (for stock indexes) is that volatility will drop way back. STW is at getting down to half its peak price so even if nothing else happens you might suspect intraday range will scale down to half. SPI has had a nice range all year - but in 2002 it used to do 20-30 points a day. I like at least 60 pt daily ranges and would prefer 100 points. So, I am collecting HSI data again (range got too large for me from August last year; but used to typically be under 200 points a day) and thinking about some 4 hourly forex pairs. A trader doesn't have to know what will happen - just how they will respond
  20. I have mastered the ignore function so I don't mind having it there. I may even want to have a look at it some time. Maybe
  21. An interesting change (perhaps promoted by Chrome) is that Firefox has really sped up its javascript handling in the latest betas. I'm using the nightly releases (live dangerously) and they have become really fast to render complex javascript containing pages. Surprisingly so. The reason is apparently something called TraceMonkey: " About TraceMonkey TraceMonkey adds native code compilation to Mozilla’s JavaScript engine (known as SpiderMonkey). It is based on a technique developed at UC Irvine called “trace trees“, and building on code and ideas shared with the Tamarin Tracing project. The net result is a massive speed increase both in the browser chrome and web page content. Playing with TraceMonkey TraceMonkey is currently available and enabled by default for testing in nightly builds. If you want to modify the types of JavaScript that are executed using TraceMonkey: "
  22. Another interesting argument for simplification: your brain has recently been shown to use the same areas for "working memory" that it uses for "self-control." It's also been shown to tire (as suggested by Denise saying "don't trade when you are tired or mental static is high). If you do a self control act then you use up some of your reservoir of self control - but if you use your working memory you also use up some of your reservoir of self control. So, if you exercise your working memory (lots of complexity in your trading system will achieve this) then your self-control will decline and you are more likely to act poorly in response to your emotions rather than following your planned responses to your emotions and, thus, your trading plan. This is also another reason why day trading exposes more issues than swing trading - with swing trading you have time to replenish your brain capacity before next making trading decisions.
  23. Beside the little house under the TL symbol is a little person --- explore him for additional joys MK Although, if like me, you find it doesn't work edit the + out of the URL and it will work. James, James !!!
  24. Denise, Although I agree that suppressing emotions is a bad idea - once they arise they should be recognized and addressed - it is possible to take actions that will reduce the frequency and strength of emotional response to an event. I think that strategies to 1) reduce the generation of emotional responses (and their strength) and 2) keep the forebrain in control when the emotions do arise has been the most useful thing I've gained from your material. I've been pleasantly surprised by my ability to achieve both of these things by a combination of reading scripts at critical points (actively reading seems to avoid involvement) and by changing how I perceive certain situations to prevent emotional responses that used to plague me. I've been disappointingly unsuccessful at digging deep for the archetypes but it seems that I haven't required that so far. Something you might enjoy if you haven't run into it already - the concept of self binding is very interesting and relevant to the trading environment (even if multiple selves don't prove to be the ultimate model of choice) First Person Plural
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