Stating The Obvious and The Quest For Wisdom

is it possible to give detail of what this info was about?


thanks in advance.

problems in Greece etc and the reaction of the markets???

Interesting...that you took note.

Yes lets be careful here folks

I trade price action, and use a "chart" but the underlying core beliefs of what I do is ALL based around flow(albeit in a visual sense ala James16 which is obviously a HUGE part and impact on my style). I hate that there are these categories for traders. Anyone who knows and sees(which I post more then regularly even in the public j16 thread) knows that everything I talk about goes deeper then just a bar and boils down to the location and story behind that location(the technical analysis doesn't work BS doesn't fly, it doesn't work when you don't know what you are doing like anything else in life). Those that follow James16 that don't know and understand what it is he shows dismiss it b/c there isn't some secret, but the core concepts of it have a much deeper meaning to them(call it whatever you want). I know people who use some very complex princples by looking at a chart and they have no clue they are doing that b/c they have just followed what others are doing and replicating and they are doing GREAT! So labels are pretty meaningless.

Prior to DS's great time with me I was a PA trader, and it was just the incorporatation of my understanding(thanks to DS) about the underlying workings of the market, to the PA style that fit me(I made it MINE). I have no idea what will fit anyone else, nor can I tell you what the will be. No one can tell you that. If you don't OWN your method, you will never truly understand what it is you are doing and ultiamtly somehwere down the line you will be on to the next thing. Help is great, everyone needs it. But don't try to be someone else in the end, be you. I have a method that now is beyond comfortable, allows me a lot less chart time, I take roughly 10-15 trades a month(and this varies this month I have 3 trades) and I don't feel any pressure either way. I understand my variance, my potentials, and I will land somewhre on the line.

There were many great points made in this thread by multiple people. In the long run this is NOT an easy business. Looking back things are much easier to see and I believe truly in simplicity in the execution of trader. Every great trader I know might do different things, but they do it in a very clear and simple manner. You can not replace time and experience. You just can't. THis is a BUSINESS. You must treat it that way and be in it for the long haul(no ONE taught me this more then James16). It is an insane growth that will occur. Not everyone will make it(most will fail). But give yourself a chance and treat it as a business.

So yes, DS knows where we stand. He is one of the great influences on my trading along the way even if me and him trade completly "different"(from an execution standpoint, which shows many ways to skin something). It's the trader mindset that is the most important IMO(well not just my opinion, see the great posts in this thread). He taught me to think and not just do. And that has helped me great in my personal journey. There is no doubt many others who have had a huge impact many of which don't come around these parts no more.

Well this got runny and jumbled but I didn't want to go through each post and make a response.

I appreciate the hard work of those trying to get it. I know it isn't easy.

Rock on DS stay in touch via PM I don't get around here much these days but will try to keep up!

Enjoy the rest of your weekends,

Mike

yeah, you go with the flow, but you are on a battlefield my friend, don't aim for such silly things as retirement, income or independence (from what? yourself?) - there is no such thing to be found in the market, you wouldn't go to war thinking about your retirement plan would you? you wouldn't float around the ocean in front of fighting battleships with your little fisherboat to earn a living. you wouldn't be ready to die by the sword just because you're sick of your boss.

Come on now. The Market is just the market. The market is a battlefield is nothing more than an analogy. Seeing the market as a battlefield is something a person constructs in their head to give themselves some type of context or point of view. If it helps you to see the market as a battlefield that is fine, but hardly 'the reality'.

What next, someone is going to say the market is a circus with a bunch a clowns running around... Oh, wait a second.

.

Mike,

Many thanks to you for taking the time to write a great post. You're right,trading is a business and I just wanted to point out that most start-ups outside the trading world fail to. It takes years to establish any worthwhile business and even when you're up on your own two feet there are no guarantees. Looks what has happened in the last few years-- giants have fallen. Some of the most notorius investment banks, the Titanics of the banking world that could never fail now rest deep in the murky depths. Whenever you stray from reality and get greedy, lazy, prideful, or stupid, you deafeat yourself. After you have aquired all the knowledge you need to succeed you're only half way there. I'd venture to say that the other 50% of it lies in the quality of your character and your willingness to work hard and make sacrifices.

Here is a quote that I'm sure I've shared around FF before but I think it fits here:

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. Thomas Jefferson

Unfortunatley most people are not willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices because of the pain involved. But, to those who are willing, it is certainly possible.

I think we are in agreement about TA. I don't think it's a complete waste of time, but as you said, it's important to know whats going on behind the scenes. I beleive that if you know the flow, you really don't need anything more than a simple trendline to help highlight low DD entry places (one of a gazillion options). While there may be people who can use TA to make a profit while not really knowing whats going on, I personally would not want to find myself in that sort of position. I think that is border line irresponsible, but to each his own. If you take trading seriously and want to treat it as a viable business, then knowing every aspect of what you are doing is crucial (IMO).

So since you've only taken a couple trades this month are you holding those positions or were they very short term? Just curious.

Thanks again for stopping in man. We all appriciate it.

nothing new just blabla....

You are very right Scott

I trade and look for locations that are of interest to others. These locations are going to draw heavy orderflow/attention/supplydeman/whatever you want to call it. Once I do this I use my chart reading abilities to make a judgment on the story that is unfolding. Nothing is a guarantee, and I work from there.

My trades are generally lasting an hour to a week depending on the timeframe. One of the 3 was essentially picking the very bottom of this current up move of the Euro. Which is a big NO NO in the myths of trading I think this move lasted roughly 32 hours. My most recent trade last all of 6 or 7 hours. So it does vary. I just try to do my best with each situation and work from there. I consider myself ultra picky and pretty strong discipline in what I do now. Without those 2 components nothing works. I work with a lot of traders now and I think those are the 2 traits that most lack and build towards. I often say it is what we do in between the good trades that define our success/failure.

Again just my experiences and for those that disagree I appreciate that as well, it is what makes us human. It is the comments that reside above this post that I stop visiting the public side. I believe in positivity and that is often bred around here anymore(or at least a lot less).

Mike

One more thing..

Speaking of price action and flow. I think it would be a worthwhile exercise for those of you who are interested to look at a lot of the common PA setups and ask yourself what the implications of the flow are within those setups. Since price is determined by orderflow, what happens in someting like a dlhc for example? What is the nature of the order(s) that would cause a double low at the same price? Also, as Mike stated, what context is the setup occuring in?

Just for the heck of it.. I'd say there is a large limit sitting at that low. Somebody is willing to put their cash on the line because they know something I don't. Even if you were watching DOM at that point and you didn't see size, it doesn't mean size isn't there (there are easy ways of seeing it anyways). So you veryify a large order went off and then you see demand for immeadiacy come in via market orders evidenced by the high close. Will more demand follow to effect a sustained direction in price following that PA? There's no guarantees, but after considering all there is to consider, if things line up then pull the trigger while controlling for risk.

Just thinking out loud.

Hey Scotty

I skipped a lot of the posts since a lot of it simply rehashed stuff that I have read 100 times, but I missed this and want to say congrats on the new born


Mike

Mike allways generate post of deep wisdom, anyone who know him will be grateful for his words. you definitely stand out with your post and if anyone would know where to focus his mind he will be released by any pain, you would have A-HA moments from where you would never look back.

All that matter in the equation it's YOU,it's a tough inner journey.

Lets go a step further and bring in the equation your day to day life. If you are not living your life purpose, you know what it feels like. You may will go from feeling bored, anxious, resentful or even combination of several of these. You wish your life was different, but don't have a clue how to change it.

What missing is the soul-satisfying work of your destiny. An inner journey will put you through the process of creating a solid foundation on which to stand as you gain control of your life and begin to live your life purpose.

The same is with you gaining consistency.

I hear a texan man (many of you already know him) who simplfy all the above in a statement "what is stopping most people is what is in between their ears" now your job is to go beyond this words and find what matter for YOURSELF.

all the best!!

Ps:This are just my judgements,so it's up to anyone if he wants to pick notes or not.

just read my above post, maybe you will find some further clues.

Although I'm in opinion that it isn't healhty for yourself to think like that, remember these are just my thoughts and don't take anything personal anyone.

all the best!!

Thanks Mike! Yeah, her name is Adeline Jane, we call her Addie. She's a red head like her mom, I think I'm in for it..Two of them under one roof.
Plus, the dog is girl too. I'm losing ground here quickly.

It's amazing how bringing a little one into the picture can change your perspective. I completely underestimated how it would affect me. I suppose it's one of those things that you just have to experiance to really understand the gravity of it. Anyways..Thanks for the congrats. I'll tell Addie that Elmer Fudd say's hello.

congrats on your daughter scotty, she's a beauty
all the best to you and your family, take good care of them

you too, i'm just saying be aware of your surroundings, no offence!

Forex, the Awesome Deception of the Trading World

By Bogdan Caramalac

There is something, a truly hard core BAD state of how things are, in what pertains markets, and especially retail trading, or what is now widely accepted nowadays as retail trading. From day one that step into retail trading, you feel there is something wrong, but you cannot really grasp it, you are flooded with a lot of information about markets and trading, dubbed by a simultaneous lack of proper tools and trade conditions. You don’t like what you trade, you don’t like how you trade, you don’t understand why what you need can’t be traded, or can’t be backtested, why the leverage may not be proper, why you get slipped, WHY CAN’T YOU DO THINGS BY THE BOOK! And more important why the hell they wrote books about things that are not available?… But nobody answers : it is how things are. You shut up and enter the program. Take what is given. And try… Until you don’t put the questions anymore, and gradually you will see only one thing in trading : FOREX. And one way to do it : indicator-based trade – be it for one pair, or for many forex pairs, in a non-interacting way, similar algorithms, replicated over and over again, in different fashions, but lacking the understanding of every moment existing relations between instruments, especially between instruments that are naturally designed to relate, that are, in many cases, not even available.
Forex has a become quite a mainstream in the trading world nowadays. The most liquid , but also the most unpredictible market of them all, is for years at the fingertips of the retail trader… However, how could it happen that the most dangerous market has become the one that’s easiest to be available? Have no doubt on the dangers of forex : it comes packed with heavy leverage, and the technical analysis, the one that has so much accent on it, comes from old stock market technical analysis, where it is really effective, from the standpoint of nonleveraged trades and daily charts. For years, beginners are sucked into the forex vortex of promises like mosquitos to the light. All kinda half informations , about how to interpret charts, how to interpret news, where to set the take profit and mostly the stop loss, how much the leverage to be like, they are all leading 95% of the herd to fail…
Problem is, this makes overall forex a scam . Sure, there were enough scammers that bought themselves yachts or submarines from the scam of trading against the clients, by betting that they will lose. For some scammers, it turned bad – such as Neuimex, taken over by a trader – but most scammers were fine with their scam. But I’m not talking about this, forex is an overall scam: it is a Hollywood of trading , a “dream machine” attracting more and more traders. Even if brokers are honest, their profits are going up simply from spreads , as the herd mass is growing, especially now, in times of crysis. At least for non-american brokers, because the americans have the NFA on their head and have to face a deteriorating client portfolio because of the no-hedge madness…
Now, things are becoming more and more interesting… Forex is touching mainstream. From a simple trading activity that was advertised by brokers, it has gained social ground. An entire plethora of blogs, magazines, social sites that brand themselves “fx Facebooks” are constantly promoting Forex. You read that well . It’s Forex not trading.
Let’s rechapter forex features:

 

1. uncontrollable leverage – for the very poor trader, even small trades are automatically leveraged (e.g. you have $100, trade 0.01 lots=$1000 , leverage 10);
2. technical analysis applicable only on some fx pairs and some timeframes;
3. most platforms are non-automated;
4. MetaTrader4, the only free automated platform [that matters], is not a server solution ; even more, it has slippage or execution slowness as the broker pleases;
5. Lack of events on MetaTrader4 – makes arbitrage detection very slow;
6. Manufacturable quotes – aiming to prevent any form of arbitrage. Sure, they trade real, inefficient markets, as we all know that markets are. But you, the retail trader, you trade efficient markets! Cause brokers remove arbitrages. And you know how Harrison – Pliska call the traders in efficient markets? Open your finance book : it’s right there, at financial theory, it says … martingale equivalent operators… and where did you know martingalers are? That’s right, in Casinos! Let them have the safe profit, you take the fear…
7. You’re at broker’s mercy – if they don’t like something, they might charge you, cancelling profits;
8. Bad institutional view – put forex near your name and you’ll be in retail for life – the institutional career becomes a fading dream – after all, success in forex is about talent – normal people (i.e. institutional traders and quants) think in terms of strategy, arbitrage, execution speed, high frequency trading – you think about indicators…

How did it come to this? The worst market of the world for the retail trader, on all brokerage sites, on all blogs, and now, even on social sites. Emotional value added to madness. Social success dependant on forex? [Curses, the girls will see the those bad trades, but I can't erase them...] Are you guys sane?
How, in the God’s name, could you stand up to this Vegas-view about retail trading, about your money for God sake, a continuous we want our clients to win, not to earn money : “you are not allowed to hedge forex with futures”, “you tried to take advantage of swap”, ” you took advantage of quicker information from an institutional platform” ? Isn’t the forex really a disease of trading, pitched over by marketers to make it look good ?
Is all advantage on the side of the marketers? Is really noone standing on the side of the trader ?
It seems that the birth of MetaTrader5 really disturbed the forex propaganda machine. When a platform that threatens bringing multiasset trading, event-driven trading, including futures and options, at the hand of the retail trader, the propaganda machine had an organic reaction of opposition. It lives by selling, after all, the forex dreams. It doesn’t sell anything useful. I mean, tens of thousands of traders really believe in forex. The machine tells traders lots of stories about forex… It somehow managed to tell them that indicator-based trading beats arbitrage! So, betting and staying with fear, beats profiting with safety. Why? Well, arbitrage means other markets – it means futures, it means options. Why that? Because these are different markets, having different dynamics, and the relationships between them allow a more selective exposure to what is selected as risk and what is selected as opportunityBut wait! These are not cool!. Futures , stocks … these were traded in the 70s, as about options… who trades options? Forex is cool. The hell with arbitrage! Forget arbitrage, bet on the indicator! This is what the forex deceivers tell you, hell, some of them may even believe what they say. Because they know that you are addicted to being cool. “Appearance and reality … they are always different from each other”. Your car is cool, your girlfriend likes you for being cool. So you’re not allowed , you will not even want to trade something that’s not cool. Here, in retail markets, emotion has prevailed over reason, appearance has prevailed over reality… There’s no talk, ever, about the quality of trading. Just forex commercials – like the forex itself is gonna make profits, not trading strategies. And even if the talk moves to strategies, it’s forex enclosed strategies – no other assets. Don’t you wonder why there is no talk of other markets? Like there are NO OTHER MARKETS BESIDES FOREX ? There is no advertising on hedging with futures? Or hedging with options? No talk about the real trading strategies? Used for decades in markets by the masters of the system? The ones that had automation available before you having a computer ? Of course, with the “help” of regulatory bodies. Somebody really had an interest in dumbing down the retail trader, transforming him more into a market gambler rather than a “market businessman”. Cause otherwise how could you have advanced option trading platforms that are not automated? How in the God’s name you have TradeStation, or OptionStation without option automation? (If you don’t believe me, hit www.tradestation.com and find “Automated trading, as it relates to direct-access electronic placement and execution of equity options trades, requires manual one-click verification before order is sent.” on their page). Or look at equities and options stations. Quotes are delayed, by most of them, 15 minutes. This creates a blackout window where you trade on present quotes, by seeing 15 minutes back data. What about automation? Carefully done, don’t let the trader get the data! Look at OptionsXPress XML API. All it needs for trading (in the terms of replacing the front end, but not real automation) but not for getting data. There must be something important about options… Who had the interest to create such legislative mechanisms to stop option automation from being put in practice? And after all, let’s just remind you that MetaTrader is a russian trading platform. It’s not the americans, the ones that made trading and markets popular, the ones to come with free automation in trading. It’s the russians. Isn’t that shameful for the ones that call themselves the inventors of the free market system? Because they always talk so proud about their system of interconnected markets covering equities, futures, options and other derivatives, all the wonders in financial inovation. Ain’t that strange, that the word “system” has a solidity appearance, making you imagine a market system functioning as a whole, while everything that the americans made in markets is shattered into dozens of pieces… Forex trading platforms, with visual quotes to push buttons on ; futures & equities trading platforms , that are not the same as the forex trading platforms, and finally, the last category, option trading platforms, that are mostly looking like combinations between browsers and excel sheets, that have no automation available! There must be something hidden in option trading actually, that they made the retail trader think in terms of browsing and picking, rather than defining analytics procedures and automatically trading. The segmentation makes it hard for true trading systems to be put together not only technically, but also financially, because they need cross-margining (i.e. netting). Again, the appearance of the “market system” , so solid thing, probably only for the big banks (e.g. the ones that bought the bankrupt investment banks), and so shattered in reality for the retail trader… Even small to mid-sized hedge funds encounter problems when it comes to netting. Account openings and arrangements cost money, relationships and take months, then, most are at the hand of prime brokerages that make the arrangements.
Let’s face it, markets were never designed to be retail (and think well about this, it explains why NFA rejects CFDs, so cheap and available for retail trader to take positions in equities and derivatives, why it rejects trading forex in the same account with other classes…) Look on older economics books : banks are always “sophisticated investors”, and the literature had the audacity to call retail people (investors, traders, etc.) as “naive” (implying “stupid”). I think every student or investor that find that he’s called “naive” in a finance book has a rage feeling at the sight of the word! But it’s scientifical so it has to be accepted! But that was just the appearance. The reality was that the retailers were not dumb, rather they were powerless, because the technology was on the side of the masters, as it is case today, with the high frequency trading engines. Something was lost, however, in time. Quantity took place over quality for institutionals, and their trading style shifted from arbitrage across multiple markets (the case of LTCM in the 90s, when the bond arbitrage was abandoned, starts to show the trend, the first big collapse of an alpha hungry mammoth) to a few markets , like equities and institutional forex, where they use the high frequency algos. Somehow the retailers curse touched them: the intermarket arbitrage profits are too small to justify huge trading costs: trading platform costs, exchange colocation fees, PhDs salaries. Thus, they are in a continuous , hungry hunt for alpha, because they have too much liquidity available that has to give good returns, and the only way to do it is by a huge number of small successful trades – and most of the time arbitrage opportunities in terms of liquidity will be too small! A perverse effect that will prove soon helpful for retail traders is the specialization of high frequency algos. I think there is a separate parameter set for every stock , and for every forex pair. I may be wrong, but I am certain that equities and forex are the wolf packs hunting ground. This orientation led to neglecting futures and options, thus creating latency arbitrage windows big enough for retail traders. It is time for an automated, retail, qualitative trading, spanning over multiple asset classes, and MT5 may be the first platform to achieve it for the retail level.
And now, when the propaganda machine is threatened by MT5, that will come with all the things that a normal trading platform is supposed to have, by any normal person that has read about markets the voices are louder and louder against it. I read several viewpoints on MT5. Quite everything that the platform is supposed to have in the future is nothing, has no importance , compared to the dreaded no-hedging issue. As if the ones writing these analyses really know what hedging really is! Analyses focus mostly on station looks, charting, lack of strategy tester, and mostly this hedging issue. People, get finance books and read what hedging really is, before you start attacking MetaQuotes! Trading is, simply, buy low, sell high. Money is being done with arbitrage! And where the arbitrage is not clear, it’s surely a statistical arbitrage. This is what makes money. Be it forex-futures, stock to stock, forex/forex, underlying/options, or even high frequency trading, it’s always a statistical arbitrage. Even the CDSs were theoretically an arbitrage, but with a long bias, of winning more from collected premiums than paying out on defaults – and this was a faulty expection, because was no data to sustain it. Remember – even the LTCM geniuses were thinking that they “arb”, as much as the insurers that had to collapse in 2008… Banks have touched a technological level that’s unparalelled by anything that’s in the retail world, and people attack the only free platform that will at least give good chances in trading, just because it lacks the fake hedging issue. Sure, pseudo-hedgers might say that their trading style is arbitrage-like. But how could it compare to quoting , or volatility arbitrage?
Forex is a big business. But not the forex per se, the forex itself, it’s the commercial forex. And everything that threatens this big dream machine has to be stopped, including MT5! The system is so deceptive that noone has even to push the button to launch an attack on forums and blogs. It’s simple, the lack of education will do it by itself. Deluded traders will unknowingly attack MT5 for stupid reasons, quite the same as their own limited view about trading. So important is to be long and short on the same instrument, everything else does not matter! Like a carriage horse that sees only the road ahead, our fx trader doesn’t see but indicators and contrarian trades! Welcome to Forex, this Awesome Deception of the Trading World – where people don’t trade what has to be traded for profit, but trade what is cool because it’s cool. If you ever traded because it’s cool, you fall in delusion. Sure, forex with all its reality is in the front eyes, but you don’t understand this reality. Forex with its own marketing is not an illusion, because illusion is a perceptive disturbance, rather forex, the way is marketed, is a delusion, a BELIEF DISTURBANCE that manifests thru the marketing of certain ways to trade, dubbed by limits in trading platforms, wether they are in trading capacities, backtesting capacities or both.
WAKE UP!

I say this only in a cheerful joking sense...

You should change your avatar message to "English Butcher."

Thanks for the post..This must have been written by a true expert. <- Insert sarcasm here. those Institutionals and scientificals are really something.

With all respect, unbridled positivity is ignorance. Would we live in the world we do If no one had ever questioned what they were told to be gospel? This forum requires the questioning of what others say because that is how we learn and separate the useful from the non-useful. I respect that the PF requires unwaivering positivity for its smooth running, any PF does. I'm not comparing Skunny's Fib forum to J16, but had I (and others) continued to be positive then we would have been fleeced for a much longer time. Obviously complete positivity is good thing if you are actually being taught or told something that is true or works. Even though/if (I have no experience of the PF so can say either way) the J16 PF is amazing and everyone becomes profitable after a few years, I doubt any kind of regular negativity will be allowed because it would jeopardies the site because as we all know, negativity can spread like wild fire.

To sum up, negativity has its place in this forum but probably doesn't in the PF.

Regards, Leon

95% of traders lose money. Which means that 95% of their beliefs are wrong Or how another person on this forum put it, "95% of traders lose because they are taught how to lose on forums like this".

@Parazite: I've read a lot of quant papers, and not even one of them used candles. This got me thinking.

I've notice that you're also against candles. What are you using then? Continuous time series? How do you sample them when you want to see the big price picture (ie: longer TF)?

Just for fun I wanted to build all the possible 240 sets of H4 candles for the last months of EUR/USD. One set starting at 00:00, the next at 00:01, and so on until the last set starting at 03:59. Then do a short movie using the pictures to see how the pattern is morphing depending on the starting offset.