ryounkin

This is free-market capitalism at its finest. Microfuzzy holds an oligopoly on OS software. Its only serious competition to date is Apple, which arguably produces a superior product, but limits adoption by insisting on proprietary hardware. This allows MS to market crap. Having just survived a malware attack that my McAfee didn't prevent or even detact and reading about viruses that can download kiddy-porn on your computer and get you arrested, I long for a popular version of Linux that will attract developers. I would have abandoned Windoze long ago if Tradestation had an Apple version.

From what I've read, Win7 will not be offered as an upgrade to XP. I avoided Vista. I'm probably going to upgrade my hardware in a year, so will wait to change OS then. Actually, if TS ever runs on Linux, Microfuzzy is history.

NYSE is open, the bond market is closed.

I trade the YM (Dow e-mini future) from 6:30 to 8:30. I often quit by 7:30. I find that I am most profitable before 7:30 and often give a lot back if I keep trading.

Breakfast! Over here on the Left Coast, the market opens at 6:30 AM. I usually am in front of the screen in my bunny slippers, drinking hot chocolate and eating steel cut oatmeal with raisins and pecans.

The latest version of TS (8.5) has Renko charting.

ISTJ I cannot imagine an extrovert daytrading. One of the great joys of trading is that I don't have to screw with anybody! No managers, no employees. Just me and the cat, sipping hot chocolate and doing battle with the forces of darkness that want to take my money.

I usually use pivots for s&r but in such a volatile market, they seem meaningless. Today we have had a 400 pt range. Yesterday was a 631 pt range and today's R1 is 240 points higher than the pivot. Not terribly useful. What s&r levels do you find useful? Buck

Since you are just beginning your quest for the Holy Grail of Trading, You might want to read Johm Murphy's "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets". It is full of techniques that were "Holy Grails" at one time, but they all stopped working or only work in some markets some of the time. There isn't a Holy Grail, or if someone found it, they aren't sharing it with the rest of us. But you will have to convince yourself of that fact. In my humble opinion, the skill to be learned is pattern recognition. Have you ever seen a chess Grand Master play 30 kids at one time. He can walk from board to board and make the next move almost intuitively. However, if you show him a board where the pieces were postioned randomly, he is lost. It is pattern recognition. I have read several books written by successful traders that suggest that it takes 5-7 years for them to become successful. Linda Raschke suggested that you have to look at a million charts. Do the math: 800 charts a day/5days per week/5 years. Buck

BTW, the YMM stops trading at the open of the cash market Friday morning, not the close Friday night. So don't have any positions open then or it will take several days to free up that capital.

Just for the sake of opening up the discussion, my answer would be that it is impossible to trade without indicators. Price is an indicator. Volume is another. The time frame that you choose to trade in is probably a third. Choosing to use candle-sticks or bar charts is a fourth. Looking at a chart and deciding the trend is fifth. Buck

The Aug low of the DJIA anf the S&P 500 were hammers. As we threaten to test those lows, is the resistance going to be at the narrow body or the low of the day? For the DOW, that is a a 350 point difference. Buck

For the YM: MACD set at 19-39-9 doesn't have a lot of whip-saw. Try it on a constant volume bar chart (500 shares has about the same play as a 5 min chart). Buck

I realize that there is a certain "Star Trek" qulaity to what I am going to suggest, but it seems to work for me. If you put on a set of headphones and play specific tones, you can induce specific brainwave. You want an alpha meditative state? Play a 10hz isochronic tone in your ears and you've got alpha. This is called "brainwave entraiment" and nearly all forms of entrainment balance the two hemispheres. This is the concept behind Silva Ultramind Control System among others. I use a $50 program called Neuro-Programmer from Transparent Corp. Google it, you might find it helpful. Buck

My mistake. In this part of the world, "Steph" is a feminine nickname. Buck

Steph- Didn't your mama ever tell you that nice girls don't hang out with stock traders? Buck

I start the day with Kenny Rogers singing "The Gambler": "Every hand is a winner and every hand is a loser and the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep." The I switch to an eclectic mix of baroque chamber music, smooth jazz, with some gregorian chant thrown in when trading is hairy. Buck

I trade ETFs. I like to keep two iterations of Time and Sales in a window. one to screen out odd lots (<100 shares) and the other set to screen out <1000 shares, to see what the "big dogs" are doing. On the same screen, I put a matrix also. You can format the Time and Sales window by left clicking on the window and picking Format 'symbol'.

Convinced that this "correction" still has a way to go. I have some puts on the IWM (R2K etf). Watching the Tlime and Sales of IWM, I noticed two buy trades, one minute apart. Each was for 1,001,400 shares ($78,000,000) at 78.5676+ ( ask was 78.13 at the time). 8:28 left-coast-time The first thought that jumped into my mind is that the same trade was captured twice by the system. If they screw up on $78M trades, how accurate is the rest of the data? Was it a real trade at all? Why did they pay $400,000 more than the ask? Buck

I couldn't get the ES an ER2 data for a while. You probably angered the data gods. Buck

Thanks Buck

In John Carter's book, "Mastering the Trade", he mentions that he set up audible alerts when the $TICK went over +1000 or under -1000. I can't figure out how he did that. Any TS wonks out that can help? Buck

Cool! Thanks Buck

I have been observing the futures market recently. My style is more swing trading than day trading. I have been reluctant to experiment with the futures market for fear of getting blindsided by a market swing in the middle of the night. Observation suggests that the overwhelming majority of the volume in the YM and ES occurs between about 10am and 4PM EST. Why is that? The market trades 24 hours a day. Why is all the "action" during business hours on the east coast AND can I count on that being the rule and not worry about getting whacked while I'm asleep? Buck

I have made a couple of observations lurking around this forum. -Most trade e-minis not stocks -Most trade one e-mini and not the others. What are the pros and cons of trading the YM vs ES vs ER2? -Is one more profitable? -Is one easier (more predictable) to trade? - Or is it just personal preference? Buck