BlowFish

Ahh OK pardon me I must have missed that maybe it was on the other VBC thread. Actually I have been travelling a lot recently and probably just missed it. Of course the good prof didn't invent these bars or anything he's just a vocal proponent as I said. Quite right, many ways to skin a cat, glad you have found your own particular knife. Personally I quite like them with some what larger value bars to smooth out overnight session and lunch time doldrums to get the bigger picture. I also quite like using them with Drummond Geometry. It's kind of interesting to see how things change for example with Drummond 59's often turn into 53's. With candles A WRB often turns in to three white soldiers. (of course it would do if it was a high volume time based WRB). If you get a WRB bar on a CV chart it means something quite different to on a time based chart (it after all needs a large movement on relatively low volume to form). Interesting to see where you go with all this. Cheers.

Another link....haven't got round to watching this one yet http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8582.htm

BBC did a good radio program on peak oil a while back. Views from many authorities on the subject (both sides of the argument) where represented. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/drivenbyoil/pip/krpen/ I reckon we must be about there by now.

One of the key differences between sport betting (or any other betting) and trading is you have to 'actively participate' to get in and to get out too. Dunno this may have been mentioned in the poker thread, I didn't read that one. I believe Douglas talks about it in one of his books. Tied to this is that with most forms of betting you know exactly how much you have at stake and what the payout will be ...not so trading (though on the whole using fixed stops and targets lets you choose those parameters). IMO exits are so very much more important than entries. Another thing that springs to mind is that sport betting is far from zero sum with a bookie setting odds. Interesting post - the thing you highlight (bet size) and what that leads on to (risk of ruin) is key in both. Cheers.

Yeah Paltalk works fine.....not sure if you can 'push' charts that might be a nice feature. Paltalk would get my vote. I'm in kinda two minds about chat rooms....they can be distracting, having said that if you want get distracted the subconscious will find a way to find something to divert your attention :crap:

Just as an aside you might wanna take a look for posts by Bill Shamp (he posts as ProfLogic and another pseudonym I can't remember off hand, CharlieChan or something) over at Ellite Trader (dont stay too long it will corrupt your mind). He is a long time proponent and vocal supporter of constant volume bars. Amongst the dross you will probably find everything you could possibly wish to know about them. I use them for some applications but in others I find time important. Brown says he likes to see a good skirmish between bulls and bears (as do I!) but market participants withdrawing and price 'drifting' can tell a story also (a story that gets lost with constant volume bars). Some like to view 'corrections' for example as corrections in price or time, corrections in time tend to get lost in constant volume charts. This is not meant to be a criticism of CV charts - they are great for all sorts of things- Know your tools I guess am saying Cheers.

Be interesting how this plays out it certainly looks like a selling climax however it should be noted that the volume is much greater than the mid august low it is testing so could develop into a failed test. I'd be interested to hear what the VSA experts have to say (is PP around at the moment). This is exactly the kind of scenario that I mentioned a dozen or more pages back when is a selling climax not a selling climax. Certainly on index futures on iintraday time scales I have seen this sort of setup develop into a stair step down with even more volume on the next leg. Perhaps you could post a chart next friday tin? Much more interesting (and tougher) at the hard right edge. Cheers.

Carmilla and DeMark are lesser known ones you might want to check out.

Seems that if you know professional traders that would be the best source of the knowledge you seek. It is worth noting that a fixed $ amount is a poor way of measuring 'success' or 'consistency'. (as the second quote alludes to0) I mean $100k is great on a $50k account put pretty lacklustre on a $500k account. Actually its a poor measure for a whole bunch of reasons though I do kind of see where you are coming from. I actually approach things the other way round, I read what people have to say and pretty soon get an idea of what has merit and who is worth listening too. imho constructing your own set of market 'beliefs' is one of the key steps on the long and windy road. It also allows you to judge the veracity of different approaches and ideas. Cheers

Trying to 'predict' the market leads to a whole load of problems (not least of which are psychological ones). Sadly I speak form experience here:crap:. By all means anticipate a direction to enter, use a squiggly line, discretion, VSA, or even a coin if you prefer, it really doesn't matter so much. This is absolutely the least important part of the equation. Why do people (me included) spend a disproportionately large amount of effort on it. better exits will almost certainly improve your trading more than better entries! One thing that is key however is monitoring what is happening now and determining whether what you anticipated is actually occurring. Of course then you need to attend to business needs based on your observations of now, do you close, reverse or let it ride? VSA is a pretty decent monitoring tool. Actually It would be interesting to see if any one makes extensive use of VSA to exit? I have to say there is nothing so satisfying as covering a short into a selling climax with the rest and even reversing long. Of course not so fun when you then see signs of no demand and price takes another leg down :-) Cheers.

Ravin I recall having read that before somewhere could you let us know the original source? Cheers.

A couple of random thoughts. Someone once told me that in the ES traded at the floor pivot about 70% of the time (within a tick or two on a within the day basis). I got 68% when I put the numbers in Excel. Now that same person also used the pivot as a crude directional indicator above the pivot bullish below bearish. Fair enough but this clearly is not behaviour that could be expected from the test. (We would need to measure something like where the close would be compared to the open compared to the pivot) Seems to me that a strategy could be built to trade a return to the pivot based on the fact that 68% of the time you would get there. Opening range break outs are a strategy that hopes to capitalise on a certain market behaviour (un-confirmed by me) and that is that the high or low is 'often' put in in the first xx minutes of trading. Still no real thoughts on tools - Excel will do the job to a degree but it would be nice to have something simple and fairly non programmatic to use.

Its 100% accurate on tick charts. To be honest on 2 minute charts its fine too. Its actually the PvP that can change characteristics on 2 minute bars. Dbntina posted an indicator that gets round that by using ADE to take data from a tick chart and push it to an X minute chart. Cheers.

Random thoughts. The thread over at ET is one of the few I keep an eye on shame it is pretty much dead now. Interesting stuff. Casual observation show it to be 'real' though in practice the flip from bid heavy to ask heavy can occur as quickly as price can turn. Handy as a confirmation perhaps? To me this is like market delta in many ways it is more information that is not simply based on price but is more information necessarily a good thing? Actually combining market delta with order book analysis is likely to yield a pretty unique tool allowing you to see orders fillled @ price versus orders pulled @ price. There are two broad categories of order those that show on the book (limit) and those that don't (stop & market). Most people have a good idea where the invisible orders are hence to and froing as the market tests levels. Ironically the break out traders and peoples stops (invisible) will likely be in the same area the buy S/R traders have there limit orders. Markets exist to facilitate trade it is uncanny how they move towards size. This seems counter intuitive to some. It is a bit of a paradigm shift but offers an interesting perspective. For example if you accept this then it is easy to think of S/R as levels that actually attract price rather than repel it. Put another way price tends to move to them rather than away from them. Bracket Trader (and possibly other order helpers) show cumulative depth. IB offer a sample DDE spreadsheet that's easy to modify. Neoticker can also display depth info on charts. Great thread will be interesting to see where it goes.

Hi there, See your PM's. Am travelling at the moment but the current work is complete however I now want to incorporate multi day stuff and a histogram. The stuff that DBNTina is absolutely fine btw it ust cane be a little sluggish loading up...results are pretty much the same. That should do as a stopgap. Cheers, Nick

I think I can answer that and I am sure I will be corrected if wrong but for everything except position trading (the very last thread) the developing profile for today is used. So basically you have nothing until the first tick at 9.30. In the series on scalping Jerry suggests a way for jumping right in if you are keen for action! Cheers, P.S. are you in China yet Jerry? Hope you are enjoying yourself where ever you are.

Assuming you are USA based those are all pre-market. You need to be looking towards Asia. Cheers.

Risk of Ruin or Gamblers Ruin as you describe it is the most important statistic you can be aware of. Even discretionary traders with long enough statistics can work it out. Of course the art is to stop long before you are close to ruin and re-evaluate whether your method and/or models are still working. Recognising you (discretionary) or your system (quant) is operating outside 'normal' parameters is time for serious action Recalculating RoR based on current performance may be shocking enough to pull he plug immediately. Cheers.

Hi Jerry, I guess you are still considering how to present HUP's....gives you a well earned weekend off I guess! Still I missed my 'trading with market statistics' fix. In the meantime one thing that I am still considering is when to take breakout trades and when to take counter trend trades. (of course when in doubt stay out is also an option too). I know BO trades should be from the bands wrapping round the PvP. Counter trends when PvP & VWAP are 'close'. There are situations where both look like valid possibilities? actually I was hoping maybe a few more examples might help if HUP's are a way off. (scalp charts are perhaps good for this as things happen 'quickly'). Forgive me being presumptuous. Also it seems to me that there is case to be made for a trade you have not mentioned (yet at least). This is a counter trend trade when price is a 'long long way' from the VWAP (and possibly the PvP). For example if price is outside the 3SD and moves back in. Risky again because an 'overbought' market (not a concept I necessarily buy into) can remain 'overbought' for a very long time. Guess we can open a scalp chart and find a trend trade (that is counter trend to the 2 minute of the day). Cheers.

It's quite a quandary isn't it. On one level I really would like to trade a longer time frame 15 minute bars have a nice 'feel'. They paint quick enough to see some of the daily fluttering but give a good perspective of the main days move. Hourlies really concentrate you more towards the daily move than the intraday gyrations. The idea of trading a more relaxed time frame is appealing. Getting a position on early in the session, setting a decent 'daily swing' size target with a loose trailing stop - then going to do other stuff. (In your case maybe watching other markets! I'd probably go for non trading related pursuits) Maybe check back once in a while to adjust things for how the action is unfolding. In actuality I find however I seem to be somehow draw to lower time frames and quick scalps I think that's where my natural affinity lies. Often I find myself watching the DOM & TS in an almost trance like state! I guess that's the lowest time frame. Cheers.

Yeah I am always loath to recommend P&L without caveats. There are far far simpler way's to trade successfully for sure. Having said that there are remarkable insights to be gained for the persistent. Actually I was thinking more about the last statement it really is quite important. Daily bars are wider than hourly bars but also there are fewer of them. Well duh. We need to decide how much we want to make on a trade and of course how much we want to risk. This will give a strong hint for a suitable bar size. An alternate approach is to decide roughly how many trades we want to take in a day, we know roughly how many bars we need to make a trading decision. Again this will suggest a suitable time frame also. I guess I am stating the obvious but it never ceases to amaze me how many people overlook the obvious! Of course that's not the case here at traders laboratory! Another old cliche is that charts are the map not the terrain. It requires a different scaled map to get from say Mexico to Alaska than from I dunno the suburbs to downtown. So are you still leaning to drilling down to a smaller time frame? Cheer,

He he thats why I said 'maybe'. If you want to learn all about multiple time frame analysis and then some check out Drummond Geometry (also known as point and line). Only go down that road if you are prepared to put substantial study in (probably 1000's of hours rather than 100's). It might not make you a better trader but you'll be an expert on multi time frame stuff at the end! Actually he introduced me to several paradigm shifts, those alone where worth it for me. One is his idea of focus, if trading an hourly chart (focus) he will only look at a handful of hourly bars but with daily and weekly for context (gain just a few bars). Certain things must happen on lower time frames for the hourly to do its stuff. There are predictable things that must happen in other time frames for a certain event to occur on your focus time frame. I know this sounds obvious but can you get a 5 minute topping pattern while the 1 minute is still going up? While simply saying I wont take shorts on the 5 minute while the hourly is going up may save some bad trades its not a particularly sophisticated approach. If you look at time frames in a more 'integrated' fashion there is a lot to see. In candle terms imagine what a 60 minute long leged doji looks like on a 5 min. How do you want to be trading a daily WRB if your focus is catching intraday swings? For an hourly trend to finish is it likely to see distribution start on a 5 minute chart? What does a 30 minute 'squat bar' look like on a 5 minute (under certain circumstance this will give great trends back and forth on a 1 minute for example) etc. etc. If you trade 'signals' (nothing wrong with that) you are not likely to see these things or even care about them, and why should you. It is easy to get lost in the whole fractal chaos of "well daily is down but hourly is up and jeez 5 minute is sideways and my 1 minute is saying sell what do I do?" Getting back to the topic one thing that Drummond used to say 'the daily bar is wider than the hourly you know'. He would add that the hourly is wider than the 1 minute just to be quite clear. That's pretty important to take into consideration. Cheers.

Absolutely vital. One of the fundamental bits of the trading plan is instrument to trade and time frame to focus on. (maybe with a higher time frame for context and a lower one to trigger entries). Its one of the key things you have control over. Along with position sizing it has a direct impact on risk. (and of course potential reward). I think that's one of the reasons new traders and people with small accounts are attracted to ever smaller time frames. Of course the other key variable is position size but if you are trading 1 lot you cant go much smaller. Its tough they get forced down a particular path. Many other considerations too (lifestyle as you mention...scalping 5 tick charts is demanding & tiring). Its a major decision and not to be taken lightly. Cheers.

My relationship with MC is kind of love hate. It has great potential (which is like those school report cards ....could do better...) The good - its a one of payment when I grandfathered in it was only a coule of hundred bucks. It compiles easy language and even supports there API for .DLL's. I have had no compatibility issues though some do (mainly with systems I think). Support is pretty good too. (Needs to be sometimes)! The bad some basic things are poorly implemented or just feel un polished. There are numerous little irritating bugs and stuff that is a wee bit more serious (less and less). This in itself isn't so bad but it's taken a long long time to get round to fixing these things. Some of the things they think are 'acceptable' or just don't get are annoying in the extreme. For example there drawing tools are inconsistent in operation and just plain poor. There attitude is that no one ever made any money with drawing tools. Basic data handling and rasterisation (display) of charts have a couple of 'wrinkles'. For me these have to be rock solid before you add bells and whistles. Often they break stuff with new releases, fair enough caca happens, trouble is they often take a month or more to repair it again. Releases are very infrequent and 'hotfixes' almost non existent. Compared to Ensign for example they are streets apart. They have just made there forums customers only, other wise I could point you at a couple of amusing threads. I put an enormous amount of time and energy into MC for myself and providing feedback for them. I am loath to throw that all away. To be honest it is better now, even though it has been released for some months now I have seen more robust and polished software that is beta testing. I think there are a couple of people using it here quite happily (brownsfan springs to mind). I do wonder if he is still as happy the Open Ecry imterface has broken for the last 3 weeks and I believe he was using OEC too. Cheers.

Hi Cooter, To be honest my whole interest in the code side of things came from being slightly disappointed with the performance of traditional algorithms. All have noticeable delays when first applying and make my charts feel a little sluggish. I have code that I believe is now accurate, actually more accurate as it avoids some rounding errors associated with continuously summing. (you then have to be careful with overflow errors, no sign of that but I guess I should try it on the Nikkei & forex to be sure). It also runs pretty darn fast instantaneous for all intents and purposes. There are no loops in it at all. I just havent got round to posting it for a couple of reasons- a) I am still running it against various instruments conditions etc. b) Still running it against other code to make sure it is consistent. c) I have it in multicharts (which imports .ELD but wont export). Seems kind of naff to post it as a text file if I'm going to do it properly. d) Hasn't been that much interest (yours was the first enquiry) so I guess people are reasonably satisfied with what's out there. e) There is still something puzzling me with the VWAP and the algorithm that seems to be commonly used. No biggy but like a dog with a bone I am not ready to let go just yet. Cheers, Nick.