notouch

It seems to me that YM pivot points have been fairly useless in this whole uptrend. I can recall only a few days in the past few months where a pivot point has given a decent trading opportunity. I hardly even look at them any more and instead concentrate on previous highs/lows, high volume zones, fibonacci retracements and Market Profile. I think pivot points are more suitable for ranging markets. Weekly pivots on the other hand have been fairly useful.

My online savings account gives me 6.05% AER and the Bank of England base rate is only 5.5%! Instant access too. Look at a comparison site to see what bank offers the best rate where you are.

Oanda are one of the worst bucketshops of them all and have been known to increase their GBP/USD spread to 200 pips during data releases. Waveslider, these bucketshops are just glorified bookmakers who offer 400:1 leverage in an attempt to get their gullible punters to part with their money.

Liquidity wouldn't be an issue because your "broker" is a bucketshop and would always be on the other side of every trade. They claim to make money from the spread but actually make money by taking the other side of your trade. Slippage would be a massive issue.

I wouldn't say permabul I just have a long bias so even if I was expecting range trading I would still concentrate on taking longs at the bottom of the range and closing them at the top but not taking shorts. I think having a bias based on the long-term charts gives you an edge and keeps you out of bad trades. I could change my bias if I saw bearish developments in the weekly charts.

At the same time it's a good idea to look at the long-term charts so that you have a bias in a particular market. On the daily chart in the YM for example I'm seeing a topping formation. Just because I see that doesn't mean I'm going to trade it. The weekly charts are making me think that being long in this market is the best option. I think it's a good idea to think before you trade, not just react to whatever you see.

Is this the sort of thing you're looking at TheBramble? I find the Volume Profile superimposed on a candlestick chart very useful. As for Murphy I'm definitely going to reread the sections of his book on sector analysis and intermarket analysis to see if I can find any new light. Anyone who follows the treasury and stock markets together can see the close relationship between the two.

There are a few books around on sector rotation like this one Amazon.com: Sector Investing, 1996: Books: Sam Stovall I can't say I've looked into it much but there are analysts on Bloomberg TV who have explained the theory nicely. On the subject of value and Dalton did you notice how the recent "top" was almost identical to the one that Dalton explained in the seminar we attended a few weeks back? The migration of the POC was up for weeks then we had those few days of overlapping value which is a classic Dalton top, then a classic single-print selling tail then as soon as it went below value the markets went sharply down. I'm not saying we won't come back up but it was interesting to see because I've been using MP more as a longer term tool rather than just a day trading tool. Presumably they're all longer term traders in this investment bank?

Be realistic people. A trader is by definition someone motivated by money. If he was the charitable type are there not more worthy causes than wannabe traders? Of course he's in it for the money. I don't know and don't care how much profit he makes from his trading but I don't believe anyone would hand out their brokerage statements for other people to inspect.

That's because of the nature of a stop order compared to a limit order. A limit order is working at the exchange as soon as it's been accepted by the exchange whereas a stop order is accepted at the exchange but only becomes a working order once the elected price is hit. So when your stop order is blue it means the exchange has accepted it (assuming the exchange supports that order type).

Today was a nice confluence on technicals and fundamentals. We were at technical support and the BofE minutes were very hawkish so it was one of those "can't miss" trades.

I doubt even John Carter is trying to short all the higher opening gaps that appear in this market right now. It's silly to fight a megatrend.

Rotation from stocks to bonds is always a factor but there are no "no brainer" trades. Who's putting money on the stock market rally to end any time soon? Interest rate expectations is what it all comes down to for bonds.

I keep my eye on short sterling. It's traded by hedgers and speculators. Hedgers are banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, pension funds and anyone who wants to hedge against interest rate risk. Speculators are hedge funds, investment banks and large traders. You can also trade Gilt which is the equivalent of the US Treasury Bond. Participants are mostly institutional rather than retail.

Looking at the uptrend there seems to be a pattern of a big (ish) down day then a test of the low, rejection and back up again to new highs. I'm watching for a test of the weekly pivot/gap fill area.

I'm using it too and think it's great. Soultrader, any chance you can try to negotiate a deal with this guy to get us a discount?

Presumably they're looking to expand Google Finance because it's been running for a while but hasn't come close to Yahoo Finance or MSN Finance ... yet.

I thought I knew all I needed to know about candlesticks but then I read this book and realised there's a lot more to candlesticks than hammers and dojis. Well worth the read, especially for swing and position traders.

ECBOT supports native stops. All decent brokers should offer them.

I was thinking the same thing and the Philippines sprang to mind but then I looked at my collection of foreign currency notes and remembered they use the peso. I'm guessing it's PYenner's shorthand for GBP/JPY.

That's not real volume it's either tick volume or bucketshop volume (e.g. InterbankFX or FXDD), both of which are very unreliable. p.s. I hate to blow my own trumpet but my prediction in post #6 wasn't bad eh?

I have friends in investment banks who I've learned a lot from. Most investment bank work is not directly related to trading but a humorous phrase often used about traders is that they "trend towards zero", meaning in the long term they don't make any money. These traders are typically moved to another part of the bank. Only a minority actually succeed and make their career in trading. Investment banks are also moving at a very fast pace towards automated trading. They employ more programmers than traders. I've never heard of prop trading for a bank. What does that involve? There's a prop trading forum over at ET. Here's what one honest person says about prop trading: "I tried my hands at Prop trading about 12 months ago, it was the worse job I ever had, I was better off selling Kool Aide at the corner of Wall St & Broad, The truth of the matter was that I was conned by the smooth talking Head trader there, yes he sold me a planet in our Milky Way and I bought it, at least i am man enough to state that i tried it and I failed at it....I still love trading but the Prop Industry is nothing more than a legal Racket !"

I'm not sure that's right. Banks don't report trades, they just report their bid/ask quote. That's why when you chart forex you have to choose bid, ask or midpoint. On the subject of whether tick volume can be useful, I think it can for the higher timeframes but not the lower timeframes. 3 minute tick volume would have too much noise to be useful. On the daily or hourly charts though, it should be a good indicator of activity.

They're probably called trading arcades in Australia and are just facilities (like direct access to exchanges and subscription to services like Bloomberg) shared by traders. There's probably one near where you live. I personally prefer to trade at home.

Tick volume can increase even when no trades are going through. E.g. during the Japanese session the Yen may strengthen against the USD but weaken against the EUR so the banks will increase the bid/offer on EUR/USD to prevent arbitrage. So it looks like there's been an increase in volume even though there hasn't - it's just the banks' computers automatically doing their thing. It certainly isn't evidence of "Professional Money" intervening.