Tradewinds

Yes. Definitely. I agree.

I just want to be able to trade objectively without emotion hindering me.

Traders can become compulsive gamblers. Financial psychopaths fit the well rounded job candidate profile. Eventually the behavior leads to forgery, fraud, theft, and embezzlement. Trading for a psychopath is simply an exercise in thrill seeking. The Shocking Statistic About Psychopaths On Wall Street

I think that using the terminology of Destroyer, Creator and Bouncer as a way to bring these issues into the conscious mind so they can be "dealt with" is very helpful.

I've been experimenting with Share Bar based charts for short term day trading, and have decided on a 2000 share bar. I'm using a 1 minute chart and a 2000 share bar chart. The price levels on the 2000 share bar chart are often more obvious than on the 1 minute chart. And sometimes the price levels are different, but I think they are more accurate on the 2000 share bar chart. The 2000 share bar chart will show price stalling at a certain previous level, forming multiple bars, then either continuing or reversing. But the point is, that it is clearly shown that more than the normal amount of bars are being formed at a price level, meaning that the market is hanging out at that level while orders accumulate in one direction or another before the next price move. A 2000 share bar chart will make multiple bars in one minute if there is a lot of activity. A one minute chart will only show a bar every minute, regardless of how much volume there is in that minute. So a share bar chart will show the price constantly hitting a level, then moving away, and going back to exactly the same price on multiple bars within that minute time frame. The chart shows price hitting a previous level right at a peak signal. The net volume is higher compared to the last price level. The price continues through the previous level and goes higher. The big red dots on the indicator show possible price peaks. The other dots show pre-peak signals, or a signal that price is going to move up from a bottom. It depends on the circumstances. A pre-peak signal occurring when the price low is sitting on support means that price is going to go up, not that it is peaking. A peak signal occurring when the high is right at a previous resistance, is tricky because the price could surge to another level. So there are 3 basic situations. 1) Peak signal when price is over last resistance. Good place to exit. 2) Peak signal when price low is sitting on previous support. Wait for price to go up. 3) Peak signal when price is hitting previous resistance, look for divergences and info from other indicators to determine trend strength.

What do you mean by regulation? Small retail traders just open an account and trade. What kind of regulations could they be breaking? Unless a person's trading is fully automated, or extremely well defined, I'm sure that purely random trading happens a lot. Entering a trade for any other reason than a well defined rule that is followed with discipline could be for a lot of reasons. Emotions. Fear, greed. Lack of focus, impatience. Yes, but the vast majority of people can not trade profitably. Of the people who can't trade profitably, some of them will try to find unethical or illegal ways to make money. Pressure to do the wrong thing is not unique to traders or bankers. A person needs some kind of moral standard and motivation to adhere to that standard. For example, I want to be able to give a good answer to God for my actions. Or a strong desire to do what is write because of a hatred for evil. Or to gain or maintain standing with someone important to you. For example, not wanting to let your mother down who you love. What would she think if she found out. Laws and regulations are not a motivation for people to adhere to them. The threat of punishment is only a deterrent to people who would probably do the right thing anyway. The real issue is what society, parents and schools promote and teach about the motivation to do good and not evil. Self-respect is a big factor. Even if a person gets away with murder, how will they feel about themselves? Some people promote an attitude that they are proud to be stupid. Ultimately we have to live with ourselves. It can go either way. It depends on how much pressure there is and how well prepared I am to deal with it. I'm not sure how many members of this group are institutional traders. A lot are probably just trading on their own.

I take into consideration whether the trend is at the beginning, middle or end; whether the price is choppy, and/or if the market is conflicted; the timing of news events, and how active the trading is. I've listed about 7 different factors. For 7 variables, there are over 5,000 possible combinations of those variables. It would be difficult to write a program that backtested every possible combination. Just trying to write a program that was able to accurately determine whether the trend was at the beginning, middle or end would be quite difficult. If the price has made a commitment to a direction, let the profit run a little longer, If the trend shows sign of weakness, you may want to exit at the first opportunity. The beginning of a trend might be choppy, or surge hard. You can scalp a quick profit and hope to get back in, but if the price takes off, then you missed out. If you don't take profit at the beginning, price may retrace back to the entry again before committing to a direction. In that situation, you need to have some reason to know whether it's just a big retracement before the real move, or a failure to trend. If the market is choppy or your indicators are conflicted, I would take profit immediately at any opportunity. I don't have backtests, data and statistics to back up my observations. I have multiple indicators. Some might be showing that the trend is weakening, while another might show there is a divergence that indicates the trend will continue. Then there are situations like lots of strong up volume, but the price is dropping back to a previous level right before the news comes out. How do you program for fear or speculation? I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just pointing out the difficulty. If you backtest for isolated conditions, and don't take all the market influences into consideration, then there is the possibility of surprise situations you were not expecting. Do you trust your backtested signal 5 minutes before the news comes out? There is what I call price 'Drift'. After a strong signal in the middle of a trend the price tends to overshoot the indicator. It's like if you accelerate real fast in your vehicle, and are not expecting any stops signs for a while, once you let off the gas pedal you keep moving in the same direction even after the cause of the movement has stopped. At the end of the trend, you aren't going to get any 'Price Drift'. You see a stop sign coming up, and put on the brakes. So, my answer to the question about when to exit is whether there is a stop sign coming up or not. If you can't see the stop sign, then you aren't going to know when to exit.

A common issue in all problems is human nature. Human beings tend to be less focused on the greater good, and more focused on immediate self interests. I'm not saying that people aren't concerned about the greater good, or are totally selfish, but there is a balance and there is a 'tipping point'. The founders of the United States knew some of the flaws in human nature, and they tried to create a government that would avoid these problems. For example, to much concentration of power, and the duration that someone is in power. Concentrated power and long periods of a person being in power tends to corrupt the person in power. So the United States has the 3 branches of government, and term limits. Sometimes life is as much about avoiding bad things as trying to do good things. Utilizing potential is being proactive and initiating something constructive. So it's more than avoidance of bad things. In a bad economy, people find ways to creatively survive. (Some of it illegal and destructive.) When you have no job and no money, you start looking for ways to make money. So you look at potential. For example, "Do I have gold that I don't need that I can sell?", or "Can I do work that is in demand that no one else is willing to do?". People switch jobs and move to areas where the economy is better. The 'Invisible Hand' guides people to match Supply to Demand. It happens out of necessity or desperation. It's unfortunate that things must degrade to desperation and hard times for supply and demand to be matched up, but that's the way people behave. The government should be working to help the economy utilize potential and match up supply with demand, but political self interest can hinder that. But the general public should not be relying on government to solve their problems. As soon as the majority of people start looking to government to solve their problems, the tipping point has gone to the side of apathy and the surrender of your will. If you surrender your will, then you are really no longer a real person, but just a shell with an emptiness inside. Entrepreneurs recognize potential and try to coordinate production, sales and distribution to realize that potential and make a profit. All the people who are unemployed represent underutilized potential. They could work, they have skills, but their skills are not being utilized to produce anything. Then the situation is one of a person consuming more than they produce. On the bigger scale, the United States consumes a lot, but I'm not sure the U.S. produces more than it consumes. The deficit would seem to indicate that consumption is outweighing production. So consumption seems to be outweighing production, and potential is being underutilized. The cause is the basic flaw in human beings to be more concerned with self interest than the greater good. For example, ship jobs to China, to make a bigger profit for a few people. Of course, it's not that simple; most people won't buy the more expensive U.S. goods. There is the self interest of the business to make more money, and the self interest of the consumer to get something for less money. Both are working in their immediate self interest. The end result may be that eventually everyone will be worse off. But that prospect is not the main concern for people. People do not generally think in terms of cooperating for the greater good. So what's the solution? Individuals need to look for ways to adapt and survive, which means looking for potential ways to make income and/or a profit. But unless that happens on a big enough scale, then the real problem will never get fixed. The world has prospered from the exploration of things like natural resources, but natural resources are finite. For example, all the oil will eventually run out. If there are 14 billion people in the world instead of 7 billion, then the old runs out, what's going to happen then? Unless there are other energy sources, it could be the biggest human catastrophe the world has ever seen. That's what your children and grandchildren will need to deal with. The general consciousness of the world needs to tip enough in the direction of the greater good for the catastrophe to be avoided or minimized. That means you and I need to be looking for ways to cooperate with each other and create a 'win/win' situation.

EasyLanguage has a reserved word named 'Self' that: There is also the reserved word, 'External' External: ["<PATH>",] [RETURN TYPE,] "<DLL FUNCTION NAME>", [ARGUMENT 1 TYPE, ARGUMENT 2 TYPE, ...]; C\program Files\TradeStation\Program\" is presumed to be the path. If the DLL is not found there then the system path is searched. If the DLL is still not found, an error happens. The Argument types are optional and are the types of data received by the DLL. External: "myLibrary.DLL", double, "MyFunc", int; The type of data received is an integer. This sample code calls the DLL: External: "myLibrary.DLL", double, "MyDLL", int; var: int DLL_Return_Val(0); DLL_Return_Val = MyDLL( self, 10);

I guess the SDK is a DLL that is imported into the DLL that you create. EasyLanguage_SDK.pdf

Yes, that is a consideration. I've thought about that. I guess to be safe, I would provide an indicator that would be very hard to trace back to the source calculations, or just show the signal itself with nothing to indicate where the signal came from. If it turns out to be a really good indicator, I'll just keep it to myself and suck all the money out of the market for myself. But I doubt that will happen.

TradeStation has something called the Software Development Kit or SDK which allows EL to But I don't know if I have to buy the SDK or not?

This is from the TradeStation site about where to place DLL's for access by EL. Understanding TradeStation-compatible DLL's - Part III

This is from the TradeStation Wiki: TradeStation Forum

I'm guessing the the EL help site probably has some DLL examples posted by people that will do different things.

I just installed Visual C++ 2010 Express and wrote a simple DLL from a U-tube example. #include "stdafx.h" #include <iostream> #include <Windows.h> using namespace std; int main (void) { cout << "This message has been loaded from a DLL file.\n"; getchar(); return 0; } I still have no idea how to run the DLL, or run it from EL.

I haven't really thought about what I want to do. I just wanted to be able to protect any code that I might happen to want to share. I would probably never become a vendor. I might let people use the code to evaluate how good my code was, or have select people use it. I'm thinking about having some kind of way to check the date, so it would expire after a certain date. I'm not sure what you mean by having the signal deteriorate? Do you mean that to many people using it will make it less reliable?

I've never worked with DLL's. I guess a DLL has to be created in C++ ? Which I've also never used. Are there other languages that will create a DLL? I guess there is an 'express' version of C++ that is free? Visual C++ 2010 Express | Microsoft Visual Studio

I've read that locked ELD code can be cracked by paid services. Does anyone know of any other way to protect Easy Language indicators? What do developers do who sell Easy Language indicators?

Can you attach the ELD strategy file? For those people with TradeStation, we could look at the results of the strategy.

Fire must destroy to live. Water simply is. In a fight between the two who will finally win? Fire kills it's very soul to live another flicker. Water joins and runs and flies in pools, and clouds and rivers. Fire jumps and sparks and spurts in violent consumption. Water falls and swirls and drips in playful waves unending.

With multiple data sources, a strategy will not allow orders to be placed intrabar. [intrabarOrderGeneration = True] ; If the above line of code is present in a strategy that has multiple data streams in the chart, the strategy will automatically be turned off by the platform.

Here's a picture of a chart with a 1 min. and 9 minute time frame. The one minute data is a line, the 9 minute data is candlesticks. I didn't know how to do this until I tried it. This could be useful. The bars can be made bigger, to make everything easier to view.

My broker does not show all the fees they charge in the simulated account. Which is very aggravating. Depending upon the broker, they may list the fees broken down, or lump them together. There can be platform fees, data fees, trading fees, Exchange fees and taxes. Make sure you know what they all are. Depending upon the platform, demo trade fills may be realistic or not. My brokers platform is terrible when it comes to realistic fills in demo trading. If the demo instantly fills the order as soon as the price is touched (touch fills), that is the worst platform to practice on. It will cause you serious problems. The price should 'Trade Through' the order price for the order to fill. For example, you enter a BUY order, the price should go BELOW your order price, or the BID should go below your order price for the Buy order to fill. You can send an order to close it immediately.

It seems that the market is reacting to different time frames at different times. It seems like sometimes the price is following signals from a shorter time frame, and sometimes it's following signals from a longer time frame. I'm going to be testing something new about how to determine which time frame to take the signal from. I'm looking for Uptick/Downtick consolidation on a 3 minute chart, and then looking at how long that consolidation lasts. If the consolidation lasts 5 minutes, then I'm going to take signals from a 5 minute chart. If the consolidation lasts 15 minutes, then I'm going to take signals from a 15 minute chart. I'm defining consolidation as BOTH lower uptick highs AND higher downtick lows. So both the upticks and the downticks are getting less and less, There is not much action, things are slow. Depending upon how long this decrease in activity lasts, that will determine what time frame chart I decide to use. I'd like to know what people think of this idea.