HighStakes

Thank you for your detailed reply, roztom. How`s day trading ES been for you lately, btw? I used to trade ES and have a lot of experience with it, but now want to focus more on CL since it is consistently more volatile, suits my personality better and the hours are a little better since I live in Europe. ES seems to periodically turn into a day trader`s nightmare when the volatility shrinks. Using a renko chart to stay in the trade is an idea I`ve considered myself, but for execution or identifying a swing high or low, I found that it was too slow for me. Good trading to you. Highstakes

Hello wrbtrader, Thank you very much for your insightful reply. It is an added confidence to hear that you and your institutional friends prefer minute charts. I will continue doing some research with this and I have already decided to use the 10 tick range chart in addition to the 1-minute. Good trading to you. HighStakes

Hello all, Up until now, I have been strictly using 1-minute and 5-minute charts for my day trading operation. A lot of guys, including a guy I know personally, bashes time based charts and accuse them for being random, noisy, etc. This eventually lead me down the path to upgrade to a quality tick feed such that I can explore these type of charts on my own. I`m now in the process of completing an extensive study of range, tick, volume and renko bars across different settings, and I have to admit that I`m less impressed than I thought I would be based on the hype. I still think the 1-minute chart gives a fairly good visual representation of the intraday movement and I don`t think it stands back for any of the others. I will continue studying the 1000-volume, 10-range, 512 tick chart, 13 tick chart, ideally eliminating a few of these and settling with one or two in addition to the 1-minute. There appears to be some added value with these charts and together with the 1-minute they may offer an extra edge, in particular for execution during momentum moves. What are your thoughts and experiences on the subject? I`m currently looking into the crude oil market, btw. Kind regards, HighStakes

You may want to write up your project and post it on guru.com and see if you get a good offer. The problem may be finding someone with knowledge of the financial markets, which may or may not be a problem. Actually, I did get a bid from a firm that had experience with financial markets, so I don`t think that will pose a problem. I`m currently working with a programmer that I hired from that site for a very friendly price. I have not yet received the finished product, but if he delivers on what he promises, I will be very satisfied. If he don`t delivers according to the project agreement, I can refuse to pay him.

Well, I took the plunge and have now bought MATLAB. I was pretty much already convinced it was the way to go and after watching several of the webinars on their site, I no longer had any doubts. It integrates very well with excel, so I will probably use both. I paid $205 dollar for the student version with the toolboxes that I want to use, so it is very affordable. Where do I get free historical intraday data? I`m upgrading to IQ Feed anyway and it will be no problem to start off with the data from their servers. For now, I have more than enough to learn the basics of MATLAB, but I don`t think it will be that long until I need decent historical intraday data for the work that I plan on doing. Anyone else reading who know any good forums or resources for MATLAB beyond what is at mathworks? Thanks in advance, HighStakes

Hello everyone, Thank you all for your helpful replies and please accept my apologies for the late reply. Thank you for your opinion and for those links. I`ll spend time with them over the weekend. As far as I can tell, the online community for MATLAB is not any less than that for R. I`ve read a few debates on R vs MATLAB and the consensus seems to be that MATLAB may be slightly better for the purposes I`m interested in and also easier to learn. Then, you`ll hear others who say just the opposite. Hello and thank you for your input. The problem with talking to geeks is that they may not be able to relate to us mere mortals when handing out advice, referring to two of my aquaintances who both are proficient programmers. Since I am not an Excel wizard yet and do not know any VBA, I was told by them that my time was better spent moving on to MATLAB right now. I have not decided yet, but I will probably buy MATLAB (student version) and try to get my fet weet and see if I feel it is something I can learn without too much effort. I know that I can learn it if I want to, but the question is how much time and effort I will need to put into it before I`m at a level where I can use it without too much pain. Regardless of whether I choose R, MATLAB, Excel, etc, the first step would be to buy data? You seem to know a few things here, so I would be appreciative of any advice on where to get it. I think 1-minute data is enough for now. The plan was to sign up with IQ Feed and use Qcollector to rip data from the feed. It seems like a very easy way to do it including automatic updates and real-time integration. Also fairly cheap, compared to many of the other vendors. I read some users who experienced bad high/low readings on the 1-minute historical values from IQ Feed, so that was a little discouraging if it`s not something that`s improved upon by now. You said, "get a download", do you mean purchasing quality data from a vendor as opposed to ripping of a feed? One option I see could be to buy tick data and then use IQ Feed to build on that since tick data is available for 30 days. I am primarily interested in only two symbols, ES and CL, and that could be affordable to buy from a vendor. Using only IQ Feed, I have a lot more at my hands. Hello Avarice, Thank you, it does help indeed. I`ll look over those links over the weekend, thanks. Have you needed to go through this process of scrubbing your data from eSignal? My system is short-term and I am absolutely dependent on accurate intraday data. I`m aware of the snapshots from IB, which happens to be my data feed and brokers today. That`s why I have to upgrade to a better feed, both for retrieving accurate historical data and also for getting more accurate tick/volume charts in real-time. My plan was to upgrade to IQ Feed and rip data from their database using Qcollector, but I`ve seen a few complaints about their 1-minute high/low values being out of whack. Need to do some more research there. Nice to hear that you are satisfied with MATLAB. I can understand what you mean by it being helpful to write the indicators yourself, to really understand it. For my current trading, I do not use any indicators, save a simple 20-EMA that`s really not that important. How long did it take you to get up to speed on MATLAB? I know it`s a fairly useless question to ask as we`re all different, but I`m asking anyway. I bought a MATLAB book from Amazon that looks great, but my shipment never seems to arrive. I plan on buying the software and follow along in the book, to see if it is something I feel I can learn without too much effort. I guess I need to find out for myself. Thanks again! Regards, HighStakes

Hello everyone, Old thread, but I ended up with a HTC android phone. Very satisfied overall for my needs. When I worked a full-time daytime job and traded the U.S. session in the evenings, it was very beneficial to track the AH market and news headlines while at work, so that I was not completely in oblivion when the time came to start trading. I use the CME group application for delayed futures quotes. Very nice application, but I greatly prefer the older version compared with the new update. The Bloomberg application is great for news headlines. These days, I still use all three, but the greatest benefit for me is that I can access Interactive Brokers TWS on 3G to manage my positions, if something should happen with my in house connection. Regards, HighStakes

Hello everyone, I would like to ask for some help in getting started with my project of statistical analysis, strategy development, modeling and eventually automation. I am a neophyte with regards to this type of work, but I`m not new to trading having studied the markets for close to 5 years now. I eventually decided I wanted to day trade and I`ve been day trading the ES contract for over a year now. The last months my results have started being satisfactory and I feel that I start understanding this market. I already use basic statistics in my trading, the most simple done by myself in Excel and some of it obtained from external sources. To clarify, I`m not a scalper, but attempt to trade the larger intraday swings. Now that I have more time to devote outside of market hours, I want to take my trading to the next level and start working more seriously with the data on my own. I consider it a long-term project. At first, I expect my work to compliment my current strategy and remove some of the current discretion in my trading. Eventually, as I learn more, I may re-write my whole strategy and eventually I hope to be able to automate my day trading. In essence, I want to become intimately familiar with the market that I`m trading and learn it inside out and capitalize on that. 1) Software for analysis I know a lot of people use Excel to perform impressive historical studies. Brett Steenbarger comes to mind. I already use some basic Excel myself and while it probably have a lot of potential for me right now, I feel that I will eventually run into some limitations and thus it would be better to focus on learning a more powerful platform from the start. After some online research, it seems like a mathematical platform such as MATLAB or Mathematica would be my best bet. More specifically, MATLAB seems to be the way to go for a trader after what I`ve read. Price is not a major issue for me, as I can buy it for a student dicsount. Are there some other options that I need to consider or is MATLAB the way to go? How big is the learning curve? I have no prior programming experience. What I like about MATLAB (not sure about Mathematica) is that since it is so popular there seems to be so many great resources online where one can get help to learn the platform. I also have a few aquaintances that know it very well and that should provide useful when learning to use it on my own. 2) Data for analysis This is probably where I`m most clueless and really could need some help. I currently do not have any intraday data for the ES market, so the first step would be to obtain that. Do I really need TICK data? It seems to me that if I could buy 1-minute data, that would be more than adequate for my current needs. Do I buy the data from a vendor such as TICK DATA? Or is it a better choice to upgrade to a quality feed such as IQ FEED and rip 1-minute data from there? I`m thinking both practically and economically. 3) Organizing and working with the data Assuming that I have now bought a platform and data, how do I organize, store and work with my data? Do I need to set-up a database? Can this be done in Excel? How should I organize and store the statistics and analysis that I produce? I`m sorry if this is asking to much, but I would be greatly appreciative if someone who got knowledge on this could help me cut some corners and point me in the right direction so that I can get started. If any books on the subjects are worth reading, please let me know. Thanks very much in advance, HighStakes

I appreciate the input, rwk. I`ve read well over 100 books on trading and extensively studied half of them. Knowing that 80-90% of what is written on trading is mostly useless and recycled garbage from guys who don`t know how to trade, I`m usually fairly critical, especially when it comes from some online vendor where the barrier for releasing something is pretty much non-existent. The other thing is that I`m not so sure how reliable reading order flow is in a market such as S&P, considering arbitrage and program trading. I`m intimately familiar with the works of Al Brooks. I read his book twice and then re-wrote it on the third time in a language I could understand. Learned a lot from him and myself:) SpideySense, When did you visit Oslo? I`m actually embarrassed over our capital as parts of it is dirty and full of visible drug abuse,etc. Glad you liked it though. Parts of it is truly beautiful Kind regards, HighStakes

Anything new here? Not sure what I can gain from reading order flow in the ES with my style of trading, but this is still a gap in my knowledge base that I may be interested in filling.

Hello everyone, This course (book + videos) came to my attention last week. It seems to fill a few gaps in my knowledge base and covers stuff I`m interested in learning more about. http://www.nobsdaytrading.com/ Anyone here who`ve read it yet? Thanks in advance, HighStakes

I also thought I wanted to be a stock broker at a certain point, but that was before I found out that a broker is basically a seller. Watch Wall Street Warriors and you will quickly see the difference between traders and brokers. Anyway, you will probably need a job while you learn the ropes, so working in the industry as a broker until you can make it as a trader (if you ever do, it`s hard) is not a bad idea if you like that type of work.

Appreciate it, TIKI. Thanks.

Hello all, I was very disappointed to find that Forex OTG is only available for iphone. Is there any similar apps (for free) that one can use for forex? Thanks in advance! HighStakes

This post does not make sense. You believe that the markets are random and that there is a 50% probability that it will go either up or down? Flip a coin? Then you say that "as you hone your skills you will become more proficient....." Which is exactly the point emg was making. It takes time to learn trading and the failure rate is high. Markets can go up, down AND sideways. Add commissions and slippage and it is easy to understand how someone who is not "proficient" can quickly become broke, especially trading leveraged instruments like futures.

Interesting analysis. Thank you! I live in Europe and do not have the opportunity to trade the market open. My personal trading session would be limited to approximately the last 4 hours of the US session. One important qualifier then would be that the market of my choice need to be active during that time window. My superficial impression (have not done much research here yet) is that the best moves in crude oil usually happens during the market open, while the ES usually have good moves during the close as well. Any opinions here?

Thanks, Laurus I will check out that presentation and look at Tharp`s new book. His book, "Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom" is probably among my top 10 books, so I`m already familiar with some of his work. Best regards, HighStakes

Hey laurus, Thank you for the support. Since writing this post I have decided to trade one market exclusively, but I have not yet decided which one. It will most likely be the e-mini S&P500, crude oil or possibly EUR/USD. Best regards, HighStakes

Thanks guys. It sounds very promising. I kind of hate being on work for 8-9 hours and not knowing what`s going on in the markets. Does anyone know if the same applications are available for Android phones as well? I would have loved to buy the iphone 4, but I`m afraid it`s a little pricey right now. Regards, Highstakes

I will read that book, thalestrader. Great post. If my prospect of annualized returns were merely 10-15%, I would never waste any time on trading. I`d rather work the extra hours with my current job and invest my savings in an index or similar. If anyone is interested, I may upload an excel sheet I made with montecarlo simulations of a trading profile. Commissions, break even trades, win percentage, average winner, number of contracts as a function of margin, expectancy, etc. Every variable (within reason) is included. It`s fun to play around with the variables and see what`s possible, how it`s possible, etc.

I`m a technical trader, but I don`t like to trade in ignorance of the big picture and recent news. So, I won`t place any trades purely off the news and fundamentals, but they might affect how I trade and even prevent me from trading. Much like you say about not wanting to stay in a trade during news releases and such. Many people say that smart phones give them increased freedom, but my view is the complete opposite. I see that most people are slaves to their phones and their desires, so I would actually rather avoid it.

Anyone? I found some old threads here, but would like to hear people`s recent experience as well. It seems like using a smart phone to stay informed can work really well. Not curious if it will give me an edge though, but it can save me some time probably. I have not decided whether I will buy an iphone or an android though. The new iphone is close to twice as expensive as the HTC Desire, so if I go for an iphone it will have to be the old model I think.

Hello everyone, I am considering buying a smartphone for the purpose of following the markets and the news during my daily job (lunch, commute, etc), so that I am not completely disoriented when I start to trade in the evening. I`m not sure if this is a great idea or not, but I would be curious to hear your guys experiences. Are there any decent applications that allows you to track the market in a meaningful way? What about browsing news? I`m of course not thinking about using it for charting The phone I`m considering is the HTC Desire. Looks nice Thanks in advance, HighStakes

Thanks guys, May I ask which other markets you are watching, brownsfan019? And how many trades do you usually average per day in crude oil? I`m not looking to place several trades simultaneously, so margin will not be an issue. I may consider trading one index in addition to crude oil. I don`t like that I can`t trade during the opening hours of the US session, especially with regards to crude oil, but I have to work with what I`ve got I guess

MadMarketScientist, Thank you! I agree 1pipatatime, Those questions seems very useful. Thank you for your insights! Regards, HighStakes