daedalus

^^ You can watch the full movie on the original link I posted up.

Thanks for the kind words gents! Site has been getting a lot of positive feedback and it makes the hard work well worth it. Cheers!

I wanted to take a quick second to let you all know about a project I’ve been working on for the past couple of months. My life has been turned on its head and I’ve been forced to re-evaluate a lot of stuff. One of the things I decided I needed was to pursue my passions for cars, entrepreneurship, and helping others out with useful consumer-grade logic. So I came up with Legit Lifestyle. The site is aimed at car enthusiasts who want to enjoy the finer experiences in life but can only do so on a realistic budget. Basically it’s meant to be a resource for those who haven’t “made it” just yet. Every month we will be featuring a new car photographer and car enthusiast to speak about what drives them and how they have become successful at what they do. In addition we will be conducting product reviews of enthusiasts-based equipment and apparel, writing how-to’s on starting your own business and investing, taking trips to car events across the country, and bringing content to you designed to maximize your life and your dollar. I’m very proud of the work put into the site and the content it reflects. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but most of our content is designed to stimulate ideas and success for our readers. I would hope you all can take a second to check it out and see what we’re all about. And if it’s not too much if you can spread the word via Facebook and Twitter (or any means) I would be most grateful. I’ve set a small goal to try and reach 5,000 unique visitors in our first month but I can’t do it without you all. As a small bit of motivation each Retweet or Facebook “Like” gives you an entry into our contest to win an “I Am The Stig” T-Shirt at the end of the month. Full details on how to maximize your chances are on the website. So check us out! If you have ideas, questions, or suggestions for the site please email us or let me know in this thread. We are interested in talking with amateur or professional photographers, car enthusiasts of any sort, and entrepreneurs of any success level as long as you have a passion for what you do and a desire to make a positive impact in your life. If it sounds like you let us know at: contactus@legitlifestyle.com http://www.legitlifestyle.com Thanks for looking!

^^ I'd love to see the dividend payout list. I'm trying to put a portfolio together as well for the first time and kind of wanted to go that route as well.

Yea I've been re-reading my own posts within this thread... I had forgotten just how damn smart I really am sometimes.... But seriously... this thread has so much good info in it. Truly epic when you think how abysmal most trading forum threads end up.

I guess the thing i'm always interested in is the possibility that the "status quo" has changed in our markets. I mean, you look back historically and as thales pointed out with his charts, these DB's on the yearly charts lead to big rallies and the markets continue to rise rise rise... But as TheDude, I feel, rightly pointed out... the US is effectively bankrupt. And at no point during our history have we been in as much debt and had our country effectivly owned by other nations... So all those charts, based on all those fundamentals... are they even valid with the completly different situation we're facing now? Economically we are screwed and as of yet it hasn't really even been touched on by the mass media. When you look at what our country has done with its debt levels (and what it continues to do) I have to ask myself... are we in a completely different game these days? One thing is as sure as the sun rising tomorrow is this - sooner or later we will have to endure that pain and its gonna be the end all be all of pain. And I can't imagine ANY positive earning report, stimulus, or bernake B.S. can save us from the cold hard facts that the good times have possibly come and gone and the status quo has done a 180. Any thoughts?

I'd love to see more trade examples MMS. I've always heard that renko charts can be deceiving on how they are formed and that for backtesting purposes you can't really take the fill prices to be valid... am I mis-remembering something. Ever have issues with them?

lol... says the man making consistent profits trading crude...

Short term bull... then expecting them to get spanked into the end of the year.

Any and all of your suggestions would be good ones. I personally think it might be conducive to trail stops with either an ATR strategy or with some kind of bar count. Gotta win big with a strategy like this.

A simple strategy... This should work on any pit traded contract but you'll need to monitor the OPENING price. Thats the key. This is not my idea, but an adaptation of something I found on youtube one day and I simplified. Kind of makes sense as the opening price determines the bias for the day... this simple idea looks for initial direction to reverse, and to ride the wave of those protective stops getting hit. Use: 10 minute bar. Buy/Sell stops for entry. Opening price off 8:30 candle +/- 1 tick. 1. Wait for price to make a push in a certain direction (typically wait at least 1 bar can't use opening bar as entry). 2. Note the opening price. 3. Wait for price to trade back THROUGH the opening price by >1 tick, cent. This is your entry. 4. Stop placement depends on the market but place them logically outside of the previous swing low/high for starters or a few bar back from the trigger bar. 5. Make your own take profit rules to manage trades. I've attached a few examples using GOOG and the YM. I would hesitate to use this as much on the currencies because there is no pit traded time (not really at least) and your looking for volatility during the open to define the trend which 8x's out of 10 isn't present prior to the asian open in the currencies. Just thought this basic idea could be utilized by many. As you can see its barebones idiot proof and it has EXCELLENT risk:reward. Not all of them are created equal but I think it would beyond easy for everyone to walk through a few charts and note what makes the best patterns and which to avoid. I leave that to you. Hope this helps!

^^^ Don't know but MT5 was just released a month or so ago and its got sweeping changes to its capabilities.

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Awesome discussion gents! I thought I would chime in on what i've been reading and researching. I've ended up down a road I never thought I would walk. I ended up stumbling onto the 101 basket trading thread after reading more and more of the author of the M W thread and his "hedging" strategies (which really aren't hedges at all). Heres the original 101 thread: Simple Trading Method with trader101 @ Forex Factory And heres an interesting more recent revival and re-evaluation of that idea (goes a lot into explaining the core ideas and was very helpful in getting me to understand some of the logic): T101 basket trading system - math analysis - Forex-TSD There is a strange simplistic logic about this idea. Do any of you have experience with this strategy? It seems like a lot of people are able to generate a LOT of pips with it in a short amount of time but as the 2nd thread builds on, it still requires some kind of signal in general terms whether or not to buy or sell all the pairs. Anyway, i'm only partially through the first thread so there is a lot to learn but for me, this is something I never thought to look at and its generating a whole lot of ideas I never considered before. Cheers! T101 rules made easy v3.pdf

If you're ever in Omaha i'd love to pick you're brain!

I appreciate all of the input here folks. I'm personally at the point where i'm going to stop pursing this specific concept. And continue a different discussion here: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f229/rethinking-every-concept-8332.html#post101997 Cheers!

Well not every concept, but as I just was spinning my wheels in the scalping thread I wanted to start a new thread with new ideas to discuss and keep them separate for those in the future searching and browsing this forum. Basically this search has got me questioning everything i'm currently doing (as its not going to well) and looking at everything I used to scoff at and ignore for ideas to apply. What i've found is that it seems like all of my trades are too "finite" and what I mean by that is i'm killing myself for a couple ticks here and there and the moves typically aren't there on the smaller timeframe to reward proper R:R. As i've said when I started this thread i'm throwing everything i've done out the window and i'm re-evaluating it all. Specifically longer and higher timeframes in the currencies. When I started out I was trading a 4H chart and I had phenomenal account growth with simple pullbacks. I think the thing that worked for me was that when I was entering into a 4H trend I had multiple factors in my favor that I no longer do: - Stronger momentum vs. "noise" signals. - Follow through would lead to massive winners (>100 pips) vs. my current 6 tick "winner" and thus better R:R. - Less noise. - More movement... even the bad signals had opportunity to go 20 or so pips and let me get to par easily. - Lots of time to get out... if things were looking hairy it seemed like there was a lot of time to analyze the situation and wait and see what price did. If it came back against you it was ok because you could still jump out at breakeven or near it. - Less "fakeouts". - LESS SIGNALS. I am beginning to realize a lot of my failure has come from trying to dissect everything down to a finite level where i'm playing for minute amounts of ticks. If something worked on the 4H chart then I was trying to apply it on the 4M chart so I had more signals. The ironic part is I never thought I was the guy who wanted the action... I just wanted a few good signals a day. But in my process to reduce timeframes on every concept I think i've ended up chasing my own tail by producing too many entries. I've stumbled onto two great thread on FF that really peaked my interest. I'm trying to come up with a simple cross application of both and using basic ideas and the broad profitability of higher timeframes to lead me out of my dry spell. They are: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=242404 and http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=245149 Now before MadMarketScientist comes in here and bans me for linking you to another forum please read them if your so inclined and report back for discussion. I find the idea of these massive stacked winners very intriguing as well as the bare bones simple entry method of 3MW method... when you start looking at charts like that in basic pullbacks to an ema or something and using that entry criteria I see a lot of opportunity previously oblivious to myself. I've put SOOO much detail into an entry criteria... maybe its time to go zen on these bastards and simplify EVERYTHING. Worry about the R:R and let the trades appear in the most simple manner. Anyway, like usual probably not the most lucid discussion but i'm eager to hear what you all think like always! Cheers! (I've attached three PDF's of summary's of the two threads if you'd like a quick skim of the "meat" of the ideas) Building an equity millipede page 44.pdf Threes Explained.pdf Threes Explained 2.pdf

Seems like a real simple method using this momentum filter would simply be to wait for counter trend pullbacks and sell the continuation using buy/sell stops at prior highs or lows of the swings. This is kind of similar to how you trade using pullbacks and ADXVMA's isn't walter?

Well after more testing (well actually only on 4 of the 6 pairs) it became obvious it was a flawed idea. The initial results looked awesome but that's only because i'm an idiot and had the spreadsheet doubling the amount of ticks won. Once I fixed that error reality hit home. Now I think its fairly obvious you need a VERY high win rate (>90%) to justify this kind of thing, the thing was, my win rate on the entry I was using was only around 60%. Nowhere near good enough. Here were the combined results at various targets using this entry: What this shows is that with a hit rate at best of 60% you're best results still stay at trying to reach 1:1 on the trade. Now is this to say that its a invalid concept? No. But it does mean that my trade setup wasn't as successful as it needs to be for this idea to work. As far as the scaling out many of you have been discussing I too have never been a fan. It always seems like a psychological crutch for "reducing risk" (or in my view reducing profit) and having massive amounts of risk when the inevitable straight out loss comes along. I never got how the TTM guys got away with promoting the philosophy when its pretty hard to get the numbers to justify that kind of management. Back to the drawing boards. :crap:

So taking into account all we have discussed i've been moving forward with a method using range bars (6R) and doing some testing seeing the types of stops needed and different targets. First things first, 1 or 2 ticks just can't quite cut the mustard. You really just can't overcome commissions in the currencies (higher than e-mini's) and you have to hit extremely high win rates >90% to be somewhat sustainable. So my testing has been going on in the currency futures using a 6 range bar chart. This example is from the 6A. It assumes an 8 tick hard stop, 4 tick initial targets and then, inspired by the edabreau material adding on a 2nd contract to allow for "runners" to occur. Then its just coming down to optimizing that runner value and how to manage it. For right now I just threw out a slew of take profit targets rather than looking to chart patterns for exits as that introduces a level of interpretation to the managment. Its interesting to see how the > the targets slashes the expectancy and how those results play off one another. What I find interesting is that you're honestly better off taking a higher expectancy result that gives you less profit (4 ticks) than going for a 5-8 tick target on the 2nd half that doesn't hit nearly as often (a 15-30% decrease!). This changes when you start taking BIG profits on the 2nd half. That being said... this method is profitable even on 1 contract assuming an inverse risk : reward of 2 : 1. Maybe we aren't as all insane to consider this as we thought. I will tell you this... i've never been good at holding for gold. I've always felt my personality and my trade plan were at odds. The major reason i'm pursuing this at least a bit further is because I feel this type of trading (quick in and out) really meshes with my personality. All the guru's say that you need to trade in a way that suits you... I think its worth a shot. I'm great at sticking to my trade plan and executing it to a T, but the plan i've been executing has always been at odds with my emotions and I think there is something to be said for that. Anyway, without too much more rambling i'm going to run these kind of expectancy tests on all the pairs and see what comes up. Cheers!

Thanks for all the positive input gentleman. I have been playing around with all sorts of things, doing more backtesting, and coming up with some ideas and shooting others down. One of the things that I came back to this week was a thread started by edabreu on here. Its here: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f229/my-trading-method-6848.html if you need to check it out (and I highly recommend it!). But the thing that has stuck with me is a quote from his blog... I think this quote kind of captures the essence of what i'm trying to exploit here or at least challenge. I've put so much time and effort into trying to predict where the market is going to move to in broad terms that maybe i've missed the point... that what I should focus on is the immediate future because thats where our best edge lies. And maybe this "scalp" method is actually a full fledged method in disguise if more contracts were added and traded in a edabreau fashion of locking in the quick initial profit and then letting the other half ride for big gains. Anyway, this probably isn't that coherent as i'm fairly deep into a bottle of kumquat liquor my friend brought me back from greece but hopefully you'll see where i'm going... focusing on what we can predict about that next bar or two and then letting things fall where they may. Cheers!

Can I ask what your typical win was and what your typical loss was? Obviously R:R comes into play but I think with a bit of compromise the logic could work. The strategy i'm thinking of using would have a loss negate roughly 2 wins... certainly not 30.

I am to a certain extent but i've traded these type of setups enough live that I know it will happen but honestly its a fairly rare occurrence for the areas i'm getting in at. But yea, it has to factor into these results and its something i'm very aware of. The other thing though is that I get positive slippage roughly about the same amount I get negative slippage... getting filled at my price when the market doesn't move beyond it, etc... So I think overall the effects will negate themselves somewhat. The other idea I was kind of playing around with is rather than take the breakout fill, since most of these moves retrace a couple pips waiting for a better fill maybe a tick or two below the breakout level for the fill which could reduce risk (keep same stop level just change fill price) and increase reward. However, this would negate the moves that simply blast through those levels and turn them into pars rather than gains. But its something worth considering all the same.

So I started digging into a little testing... and before we start lets get it out of the way... these results come from an obviously small sample of data. To be statistically significant these numbers would have to play out over 100's of trades at the least. But for the sake of discussion lets assume these numbers were to hold. What can we tell from them? These were the results from the last week (all the historical data OEC provides) in 1 market (the 6AU0) on two different timeframes, the 125 tick, and the 250 tick. The triggers for the trades are systematic so there is no discretion involved in whether a signal fired and the entries use a buy/sell stop so the exact price of the fill is known for this data series (assuming no slippage which i'm not going to try and model - yes it can happen, yes it will happen, but a tick or two here or there either positive or negative should negate itself in the long run). I tracked the total length of the initial impulse move until it retraced to entry or reversed and monitored the amount of backfill (stop level) required to get the most out of the move. The "Max Real Profit Fill" tracks the furthest the move went minus 1 tick to guarantee a fill at a given level. (ie. if I went long at 90.66 and it went to a high of 90.70, 90.69 was the highest point I could have gotten a fill to exit the position, thus a number of 3 would be put in this column). The rest of the results are fairly straightforward. What I found interesting was the profit factors... even though the 2 pip exits had a nearly 100.00 profit deficit to the 3 pip results, the profit factor was substantially higher due in no small part to the significantly higher win rate. But keep in mind that those numbers aren't exactly reflective of the results... 3 pips don't really have a 80% win rate, they still have a 93% win rate (only 1 trade flat out failed), but the 2 pip gained trades would turn into par's and not losses. So what do you guys take away from this data (mathematically insignificant as it is)? I personally feel that the 3 pip profits might actually be a bit better even though the profit factors are smaller. I think in a larger data series the win rates between those two levels would even out a bit more especially when you consider the actual win/loss compared to the win+par/loss outcomes. Anywho... interested to hear what you all think. Cheers!

As i've been digging into this more and more i've come up with a entry trigger that seems to be >90% for at least a 2 tick move (from the fill price) sometimes much more, sometimes thats it. My Thoughts/Concerns thus far: - As far as the risk side of it, i'm still not talking about risking 100 pips to get 2, but i'm more of the mind of trying to risk 8-10 to get 2-4 ticks. So not devastating when a loss occurs, but a drawdown certainly. Whatever I end up on its going to have to be heavily supported with backtested data. - The other thing I have to consider is commissions, and thus markets traded. If you're scalping for 2 ticks on the YM/NQ thats great, but then thats 10 bucks BEFORE commissions. After your ~4ish dollar commissions, 40% of your profit is gone. That's kind of hard to swallow. But if that 2 ticks is on the 6E/J/S then your profit is around 20.00 after commissions and it only eats up 20%. Obviously the 10.00/pairs are somewhere just below this. But this is certainly an issue. - Timeframe is important. Obviously the larger timeframes have the same moves as the smaller ones but typically a bigger % moves of that reaction point can be expected. So I think its going to be very crucial (and supported with data) on which markets and timeframes you're trying to exploit these concepts. Go to small and the average move on the break won't be enough to get your couple of ticks, go to large and the risk you'll need to avoid being whipsawed out will be too large to keep things reasonable. Just a few things I have been considering. Thank you to everyone for their input and posts thus far. Everything has been excellent!!! Very constructive and thought provoking and its really helping me look at all the angles. Much appreciated!