MadMarketScientist

Traders Laboratory Members, Here's another freebie training webinar you are invited to attend. Nothing to buy or cost to attend. Just free trading education for our valued TL members. Thurs, Sept 16th at 6pm Eastern Introduction to Pivot Points. How pivot points are used in conjunction with other indicators to find areas of support and resistance. Presented by Jesse Richard. Jesse is a Series 3 registered Commodities Futures Broker and a Principal of Fast Trading Services LLC. Before getting his license, Jesse was a full time e-mini and stock options trader. He spent time with a major U.K hedge fund based in London before joining the Fast Trading Services team in 2008. This educational webinar is being held this THURSDAY, September 16th at 6pm Eastern / 3pm Pacific and it'll cost you absolutely nothing to attend. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/333018560 Free Webinar - Intro to Using Pivot Points in Your Trading

Traders Laboratory Members, Here's another freebie training webinar you are invited to attend. Nothing to buy or cost to attend. Just free trading education for our valued TL members. Thurs, Sept 16th at 6pm Eastern Introduction to Pivot Points. How pivot points are used in conjunction with other indicators to find areas of support and resistance. Presented by Jesse Richard. Jesse is a Series 3 registered Commodities Futures Broker and a Principal of Fast Trading Services LLC. Before getting his license, Jesse was a full time e-mini and stock options trader. He spent time with a major U.K hedge fund based in London before joining the Fast Trading Services team in 2008. This educational webinar is being held this THURSDAY, September 16th at 6pm Eastern / 3pm Pacific and it'll cost you absolutely nothing to attend. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/333018560 Free Webinar - Intro to Using Pivot Points in Your Trading

Traders Laboratory Members, Here's another freebie training webinar you are invited to attend. Nothing to buy or cost to attend. Just free trading education for our valued TL members. Thurs, Sept 16th at 6pm Eastern Introduction to Pivot Points. How pivot points are used in conjunction with other indicators to find areas of support and resistance. Presented by Jesse Richard. Jesse is a Series 3 registered Commodities Futures Broker and a Principal of Fast Trading Services LLC. Before getting his license, Jesse was a full time e-mini and stock options trader. He spent time with a major U.K hedge fund based in London before joining the Fast Trading Services team in 2008. This educational webinar is being held this THURSDAY, September 16th at 6pm Eastern / 3pm Pacific and it'll cost you absolutely nothing to attend. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/333018560 Free Webinar - Intro to Using Pivot Points in Your Trading

Thanks for getting the thread moving again. I took a look at FEED as well - see attached - I looked at a Daily chart though I also like looking at 195 Minute on swing trades. Mine showed short which you can see though it does have the chance to trigger a long which you can see on the "+" on the chart. Of course given that huge downtrend not sure I'd be loading the boat on it but it's there.

Traders Laboratory Members, Here's another freebie training webinar you are invited to attend. Nothing to buy or cost to attend. Just free trading education for our valued TL members. Thurs, Sept 16th at 6pm Eastern Introduction to Pivot Points. How pivot points are used in conjunction with other indicators to find areas of support and resistance. Presented by Jesse Richard. Jesse is a Series 3 registered Commodities Futures Broker and a Principal of Fast Trading Services LLC. Before getting his license, Jesse was a full time e-mini and stock options trader. He spent time with a major U.K hedge fund based in London before joining the Fast Trading Services team in 2008. This educational webinar is being held this THURSDAY, September 16th at 6pm Eastern / 3pm Pacific and it'll cost you absolutely nothing to attend. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/333018560 Free Webinar - Intro to Using Pivot Points in Your Trading

One other quick thing about constant range bars/CRB or range bars. There are two different kinds. When you use a plugin on Metatrader for example it doesn't typically allow any overlap of the high or low of the range bar to the open of the next bar. Whereas if you are in Tradestation for example, their "Range Bar" allows the next bar to open equal to the high or low of the prior range bar. If you want to set-up a matching Range Bar to something you'd see on Metatrader from within Tradestation you actually have to use what they call "Momentum Bars" -- Tradestation has both and this is the difference. Might seem like a small difference but if you're using indicators to trade it actually will likely end up with very different trades as the charts will be different. Not drastically but enough to change set-ups. Just an FYI. MMS

Thanks for the analysis Phil. As a quick reply to some of the comments above, I'm onboard and basically agree that if you're daytrading you really don't need to know or try to predict the bigger picture and it can end up causing more harm than good in your trading. Frequently after a day of trading people will ask me how the market did today and I simply have no clue. Even if it's a market I traded I honestly don't know if it was really up or down since I was trading the intraday movement and not paying attention much. Usually I'll pull out my iPhone and go to the stock app and look for myself at the daily/weekly to get a handle on the bigger context. So I've learned not to even think about it with my daytrading decisions. However, I do think it has a place. I do have long term investments. I have mutual funds. I do care about the longer/bigger picture. While it doesn't impact my daytrades I do have to concern myself with the longer term and try to make moves if any. There's 401K's, college plans, and funds. Not to mention if you own a home, or have a job you care very much about what comes next on the big picture. I think these two work independently of each other but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to 100% detach from the "big picture" -- though I agree it's essential you do when trading the small picture intraday. MMS

Trader Nick, Good idea to just finally get it going. I will put a reminder into our weekly email that goes out on the top posts. We'll get that in there next week and hopefully help you gather more traders for the discussion and sharing of ideas. Thanks. MMS

Good call on: 1.5520-1.5470 range could be seen as attractive for opening short positions in the pair going into Friday. Profit targets of 110-200 pips, for hopes of collection early in next week’s trading, could be set at the 1.5360-1.5320 range. Several times has entered the short zone and then dropped -- nice calls on those shorts - definitely found resistance there. MMS

Share your broker experiences here - - we need lots more reviews and all of you trade somewhere: Broker Reviews The more we get in there the more useful it becomes for all of us. If you have a couple of minutes post one. Thanks!!! MMS

Gringo, Great analysis and thanks for posting the charts. AAPL for me has been a long-time favorite to trade -- usually I end up trading the straight calls or puts when I get a set-up I want to take. It is a favorite of mine on the daily chart but I also like it quite a bit using 195 minute and 130 minute charts. They behave almost identical to the daily chart since they are "slow" but you get 2x to 3x the number of trades which can help in case you get bored waiting for set-ups on a daily. That's bad to admit, but it happens to me sometimes. Others that I have found trade very well on the daily include ADSK, WYNN and of course GOOG. MMS

This would be an interesting one for me to hear about as well. I am in a city where they have one of their offices so I get very nice invitations about monthly to attend their freebie seminar which I assume sells you into a paid presentation. I do have a friend who went to one of the freebies and thought the presentation was professional though he did not sign up for the more official multi-day training. I think the different offices were or may still be franchised so I wonder if there are any variations by location.

winnie: Thanks much for posting your trades this way. It is very valuable and anyone who posts ahead of time with their analysis is doing all of us a great service since much can be learned by others strategies, especially in real-time. Thanks. MMS

If you're like me, your inbox is stuffed with people promoting this new "2.0" release of the Triad Formula for forex. I am curious - does anyone have any feedback about them or the product? 1.0 came out several months ago and was heavily promoted. I'm not anti- all systems like some people, I do feel some vendors really do sell legitimately valuable strategies/education but think it is more of an exception to the rule. I'm curious if any of you know anything about this one since it seems to be heavily promoted and hyped right now. Thanks.

A couple of trading days since my last update, but returns remain very consistent. Friday and Monday were up over $3K combined. On Friday Crude Oil did very well for me with two trades that went $0.25 per contract ($250/contract x 2) and I was trading 2 contracts there, and then 1 contract a different way but that one ended even. The Dax didn't do much but did end slightly positive and picked up about $200 on BP Futures. Today, it was all about the Dax as it had a really nice long trade that started about 1:25am PST/4:25 am EST. I find to trade the Dax successfully I have to trade it during the European prime market hours. I have yet to have real success with the Dax in US hours so I rely on some automation to at least get me into those trades since I'm sleeping during that time. Maybe if I move to Hawaii I can actually trade them live - if I did I'd do better since I like to make some small subjective moves but as it stands now I rely on automation of my rules to get me into the Dax trades. I'm not the hugest fan of automation since I think it takes away a lot of your ability to pro-actively trade but for me this is an example of either getting these trades or trying to do them live and really having no life due to sleep deprivation. I choose the former and just deal with some of the shortcomings. The other observation I have is thank god the summer is over -- trading has been significantly better since late August -- and for me the mid June through July period was the most challenging of the last 12 months so really nice to see things back to what I consider normal. Hope it stays that way for a bit.

Should be posting timestamps in CST. I believe time where the server is located. Thanks guys for posting your ES trades. Very informative. MMS

Nice job Phil - solid return and good job to ride that quick short down.

Thought I would join the fray again since its been a little while since I posted about how my trading is going. September has been pretty good so far. You can see my summary below. What's interesting is I'm about 50% on winners/losers (it's actually a bit better due to the way Ninja Trader reports when you trade/execute on multiple contracts) but I'm nearly 2:1 on my average gain to loser amount so that's really pushing me forward. My best trades this month probably were a long I was holding on the Dax futures that took off with the employment report, and actually today was really nice with the Crude Futures oil inventory report that came out 11am EST on Thursday -- normally it's Wednesday at 10:30 but due to the holiday came a day later. My approach is to always wait 2 minutes and then trade that market -- it usually has great movement for about an hour. I'm trading these markets as of now - though I do change this at times....Crude Oil Futures using Renko Charts -- 5 cents and 10 cent renko bars. Dax Futures using 377 Tick charts. British Pound Futures using 10 pip renko bars. I do add in EURJPY at times also using renko but haven't had a chance rencently. I sometimes change between BP Futures and the straight forex GBPUSD but BP I like since I do better on spread since I'm just paying commissions and maybe a slight slip compared to at least 3 full pips spread on GBPUSD. Anyway, I'll try to update this periodically during the month as interesting things come up for me.

Want to win a $500 Amazon.com Gift Card? How shiny is your crystal ball? It's time to put it to good use in the TradersLaboratory.com Market Prediction Contest. You know you can blow away all those talking heads on TV and the so-called experts and predict the market with greater accuracy. After all it appears most are more than likely using magic pixie dust, hope, prayer and snazzy guess-work. You can do better right? Well, even if you can't jump in and take a stab. You might be handsomely rewarded for making the best guess. Here's all you need to do. Post here in this forum, between now and September 22nd your prediction where the Down Jones (INDU), S&P 500 (SPX) and the Nasdaq Composite (COMPX) will close on 12/31/10. Give an explanation or analysis if you want to sound ultra-smart or just consult your psychic and tell us what those closing prices wll be. Whomever is the closest when we add all three of these market indices closing prices will be crowned the TradersLaboratory.com Market Prediction Champion (TLMPC!!!) This is quite an honor, a badge that you can wear proudly, brag about to friends and family or just simply talk trash amongst your trading buddies and frenemies here on TL. You can only enter one time per person and there are no "Editing" of your post allowed (nice try:).) However, seek out your trading friends and have them enter and then demand a percentage when they win as your finder's fee. Not to worry if you don't come in first. We'll offer some cool second and third place prizes. 1st Prize: $500 Amazon.com Gift Card 2nd Prize: $200 Amazon.com Gift Card 3rd Prize: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card Take our money and get those entries in now. In the words of a great market prophet from years gone by "Let's light this candle!"

I believe Sierra Charts also can integrate with IB data and something called J-Charts. I haven't personally used Sierra Charts in a number of years, and have never used the other so I can't give you a good direct compare of them vs. Ninja. However, I think you'll be in good company with Ninja. MMS

You are right. There are issues you have to account for because definitely, they do not plot every tick/pip point. On the example I'm using a 10 pip renko bar. So, if the price closes a bar and then goes up 7 pips but not 10, and then starts to sell-off and goes down 10 pips (from the lower of the most recent bar printed) you'll never see that move of 7 pips to the upside. It will only complete a brick if there's a full 10 pips above the high of the most recent bar, or below the low. Like bricks being stacked on top of each other, etc... For that reason I only trade it a certain way. Where my entry is either at the close of the renko bar, or a full increment above/below -- meaning 10 pips higher than the high if I'm buying, or 10 pips below if I'm selling (or whatever length renko you are using) -- then I make sure my targets are some multiple of the renko bar size -- let's say 3x that renko bar so in this case 30 pips. Same with the stop. This way I know that I will always see my actionable items on the chart -- nothing will magically disappear which would happen if you are willing to trade on numbers "inside" of the renko bar. If you do any automation it's a great (read: bad) way to get amazing results -- that end up not being replicated in real-time since those bad trades go away as phantom trades - but in reality you are actually in them. I learned that the hard way with renko. Once you work with it this way though I really do like them at least for certain markets where I'm trying to trade in a way not to capture every twist and turn - or small move. The ones where I'm trying to capture the major move for that session or market hours I'm trading since much of the other smaller noise gets filtered out. Hope that helps a bit. MMS

Well, you got me there -- though for me that means trying to be right on a technical basis 65% of the time for the next 5 to 30 minutes. Ask me what Crude is going to be in a week, 30 days or a year and I'll take out my Ouija Board or the reliable Magic 8 Ball...... MMS

Of course, this got me thinking. What would go on the "Trading Soundtrack"? A few random ideas.... There are the obvious classics... We are the Champions - Queen The Winner Takes it All - Abba Chariots of Fire Music The more current.... Winner - Justin Timberlake & Jamie Foxx All I Do Is Win - DJ khaled The Winner - Drake 3peat- lil wayne R. Kelly - Sign of Victory And, of course for the loss.... You Can't Always Get What You Want - Rolling Stones I'm Losing It - Akon Come and Get It - Badfinger Fade to Black - Metallica Of course with a few of these going in the background I'm not sure what would be worse - having to hear some of these songs or a really bad losing trade but I digress.... MMS

That part I'm not clear on - whether regulation prevents you from taking advantage of what's offered overseas - like you mention with spread betting (or online gambling for example) I know that up to this point, I know a number of people who have had no problem opening accounts overseas and in many/most cases the funds are still being deposited held in segregated accounts in the U.S. -- I believe FXDD is holding them with Chase in New York. Not sure if this new regulation somehow prevents this -- or how it could be enforced. I'm sure they would lead you to believe it is not allowed but whether in actuality not sure. MMS

It will be interesting to know if anyone has it to that level of detail. What I can say based upon my observation, not logging every event of course, but over 15 years trading is the extreme misses or beats of the numbers are the ones that lead to big reactions and trends. However, I've been shocked many times to see a big move or gap - reach a quick point of exhaustion and quickly reverse. I find that numbers that come in-line or just above/below tend to have a short lived reaction. I have my doubts that there is any really reliable play that can be made strictly based upon the level of the hit/miss of these key reports. Just my observation. MMS