vsa with Malcolm

a

http://www.leveragefx.com/ actually offers free eSignal data if you trade 10 lots with the brokers shown, and the cost is as listed for the others. It also provides you with the TopGun software, which seems fairly high end, although I know little about it, and I need more & different trading software like I need a hole in the head, LOL! - Software will not make you a better trader, or at least will rarely help - the holy grail indicator just isn't out there, and, although they all can help, the trader needs to know how to apply it.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8770/freeesignal.png

Dragan, Not sure what the comparison benchmark is in your example between Dukas & FXCM for the EURUSD ... yes, not so much the volume differences but the relational bar-to-bar differences are quite different ... but, since we started by looking at the volume for the GBPUSD downthrust on Friday, my demo Dukascopy JForex account still works, so I checked 15M, and they completely do not capture any higher tick volume, which is a huge red flag for the deep liquidity they profess to have, esp. since the total volume they display doesn't approach even 5K - for someone who claims to have liquidity that includes CITI, Barclays, JPM, GS, Hotspot and a who's who of others - the volume they are echoing back in their JForex platform is clearly not representative.

It's ironic that if my LP is Citibank and they had ~5600 ticks on that downthrust yet Dukas uses Citi as a LP and yet Citi's tick volume is not displayed - that's a point of concern to me. They are obviously not passing anywhere near all the tick data from their LPs back to the end user, or, they are somehow smoothing or padding it. Unacceptable IMO - and there may be some technical reason they will come up with - but that stacks things against the retailer. (Now that I think about it, they are probably displaying solely their own customer's orders as filled by their LP providers - meaning it is not a representation of the real market or any particular LP)

Intel and HiddenGap are correct, but I will add that any edge on being able to make a better entry decision due to the actual volume is beneficial. Hence, it comes back to my preaching of knowing who's volume you are seeing and knowing who is providing your liquidity. That's the value in eSignal, or at least with having a cross representative top tier LP. In the scheme of things, the couple of hundred bucks it costs should pay for itself in a few trades for most.

But don't get terribly hung up on it, as many do, since even though it's called Volume Spread Analysis, I'd say actual and factual tick volume is less than one-third of applying VSA successfully overall.

ibfx has similar templates to their software with changing colours
http://www.ibfx.com/Content/Images/Tools/grab-1.jpg

which gives me an idea i wanna try with some trend following indis,but as u said theres no holy grail,'

i find drawing supply levels the most usefull tool in charting,drawing them in 1d,h4 and 1h for a broader market market perspective,something i learned from frankn in trading with limit orders

seen esignal data for $25 which gives u delayed data,so i dont know they might give us that one,although i would like to hav a try and ask some more people that used their package

i find using volcanoguppy ideas good to use,with all sorts of moving averages and different settings,i gave some ideas to myself and created my own sort of template,the smoothed is for long term mid term averages and the simple is for main direction if it goes lower than smoothed crossover its going to that direction,i use this in 5m,gives me a closer look in the noise department
if u want to try the template just pm me,

http://www.forex.com/charts-esignal.html

forex.com offers free e-signal for customers of over 1000$

i heard a lot of people complain about them,theyve been charged with 500k fine from regulators,but poeple say that its mostly from their subsiadiry cms
i was with them before ,and had no problems except that their minimum is 10k lot, withdrew my money nicely,wat was left of it

Do you know how many times you posted on the same subject?....Any intention to stop it anytime soon?

LOL

Steady dragan, you're in danger of upsetting the threads rottweiler. It's been a while since our guard dog has had anyone to bite. If you look carefully, you can see his hackles coming up!!!

hi does anybody read the thread in http://www.traderslaboratory.com???

i heard it is very useful ...

I think GU-H1 is in distribution phase, because so many high vol up bars, and nothing happens, so I believe SM has been selling here.

Any thoughts?

Better than Karate Kid.

hehehe lol there intel

mima how many times have i mentioned this 3 times maybe?

hey if u dont ask and try u wont find out!

shit i tried over 2000 indicators ,evry one in the 1k indi box,u know what i find out at the end?
indis dont work!! no use
there couldnt be a better indi than ma and volume

To Beljevina:
Please take a look at a question that I asked the dukas support. As I know , their volume is shown in Millions, not in ticks or number of contracts. If you see for example 4683, it means 4 683 000 000 units (EUR, USD, GBP...)

http://www.dukascopy.com/swiss/engli...hp?f=5&t=23869

P.S Tomorrow I will post some interesting thing.

Maybe a question i should already have an answer to, but how do you go about figuring out a broker's liquidity provider?

Thanks!
Wishing a good week to everyone!

I had a discussion with a trader friend over the weekend. His question to me was where would I recommend he start his VSA journey? That got me thinking about the easiest way to begin down the VSA path.

The two charts below are designed to show VSA's dirty little secret. VSA can and does pick (or alert traders to) tops and bottoms. VSA is best used, however, to trade trends. The second part of the secret is that while VSA can Cleary be done looking at a naked chart-just look to Intel. Using indicators not as an entry signal method, but as a VSA method set up system is far easier and superior.

A lot of traders a drawn to VSA after trying indicator trading and finding it very lacking. I would certainly agree that indicator based trading has its faults. Method based trading (in this case VSA) with indicators can be highly profitable. Tactical Trader has some great insights on this and expresses them far better than me. Check it out.

One of VSA's first principles is that when Weakness appears, it appears on UP bars. And when Strength appears, it appears on DOWN bars. There are of course, exception to this rule. But for now let's focus on the principle in its pure form. We must conclude from the pervious principle that the time to get short a market is when it is rising-price moving up. Does that mean therefore that we should be trying to catch the top? On the contrary. We do only (mainly) want to be shorting on up bars, but we want up bars IN AN ESTABLISHED DOWN TREND.

This is where we can use indicators to our advantage. We can use indicators to define trend only. Whereas an indicator trader would also use them to define entry points.

Take a look at the charts below.

The chart on the right is mine and the one on the left is a TG chart from Mal. The instrument is the Euro on a 60 min/1 hour basis.

The "Top" is clearly identified by TG (VSA to be more exact). On the TG chart there is an indicator based set-up on the first red bar with red diamonds. Note this is the only indicator based set-up on the chart. If you miss it you're out of luck. Note that this is not an up bar. The first "identified" up bar is the No Demand that comes a bit later. This is a beautiful entry bar. The trend is down and price is moving up on low volume.

Okay, Jump over to my chart. That same No Demand interval is marked with the black arrow. The reason for an entry is the lack of professional activity on an up bar(This is the Method part of the set-up) in a market that is moving(trending) down.

How is trend defined? There are a couple of ways it is defined. Before getting to them individually, let's take a step back. If you are seeing a pink background, a falling Price Attractor Line (red), price below the PAL, momentum tone down and momentum flow down, why would you want to even attempt a long? It's the same thing on the TG chart. You have red bars, red diamonds , price below the diamonds, and Tone, Lock and Fire not shown but most assuredly to the down side. Why tempt fate and try and get long? Those green triangles may give you some pause, but they are certainly a siren's call to catch a falling knife. We all know what happened to the sailors that followed the siren's call; they ended up on the rocks.

I have to admit that this I was very much in the anti-indicator camp. But look at how much easier things are this way. The only thing one has to look for is No Demands or Up thrusts whilst the trend is down. As one advances in understanding one can add things like failed tests, 2 bar reversal and many more. But the key here is that the "secret" is one does not have to abandon his indicators in an attempt to call tops and bottoms. But rather one can use the squiggly lines to define the market trend and then simply look for narrow range up bars (in a down trend)- No Demand.

We all may strive to trade with the precision and beauty of Intel, but many would actually benefit by simply doing less. Rather than going from indicator based traders to naked traders, simply go from an indicator based trader to a Method based trader that uses indicators.

This is a very interesting and well written post...

That's interesting. And maybe I'm slow, but I don't get it. Dukas answered with the following:
http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/824/dukasanswer.png
The Bank's offer of 50 MIO is from that of a market marker, isn't it? Or, does it assume the 50M will be bought by the spot market? Aren't we missing the actual price of the euro? If they're offerring it at 1.3401, do we assume it was all bought up by Dukas customers? Or, did only part of the 50M get picked up by Dukas, and it's assumed the rest got absorbed by other brokers? But the bank is a market maker, presumably ... would it not be on offer from the bank as a LP, which means when it hits the market as supply, it is getting bought? Yet, the Dukas response says it counts as a sell? I don't have my JForex access handy, but they show only one volume I presume ... IMO, an unclear answer.

Ask them! Take a look at the link to Dukas I provided for an example, many other brokers will outright mention it on their sites. It is tricky to find though, sometimes in part because there are various type of brokers out there, and they don't want to show all their cards, ie., weaknesses, because it would compromise their market position.

Many MT4 brokers are simply white-label solutions picking up the infrastructure from a much bigger market player or even another broker, and then simply rebranding themselves. It's kind of like setting up Bob's Roomba Vacuum shop, yet you have no warehouse, no stock and very little infrastructure and employees, because all your products ship - and even your customer service - is run by Amazon, who puts a from "Bobs Vaccums" label on your shipped vacuums, and their call center agents know someone is calling on a specific tel #, which they know to then answer as "Bob's Vacuums, How can I help you?"

Take Integral who for example aggregates numerous LPs and packages up their liquidity into a technology solution that they then sell and offer as a one-stop shop to brokers like PFGBest, ODL and others, along with a MT4 bridge, if that's a platform that broker uses, along with other higher end platforms. Am only mentioning that because, I don't know how PFG would answer a question on who is their LP - I suppose the answer is found via Integral's site and solution.

I have written about this many times on this thread but here it goes again. If you want a cheap extremely reliable volume feed for forex use
Sierra charts (17 dollars a month). I have both esignal and sierra as well as tradeguider and fx futures data and can say that seirra matches volumes of any of the elite providers with 98% accuracy. Another option is using fx future volume at quote.com. They are owned by esignal and is a cheaper option if you want to trade this way. (I think around 60$ a month.)
The only days where using fx futures data for Forex analysis may get you into trouble is on witching days (contract roll overs and expiries); but you shouldn't be in the markets at those times anyways.

As for the weakness seen in the GBP, I think we see higher prices this week.

weakness in GU ? ....same as you expecting a nice 350 pip return on my 1,55 long

sierra charts
$40 a month an i checked their demo trial and they dont have many symbols ,and u have to have login data for data providers

huh? Ive been using them for years. Look harder.
http://www.sierrachart.com/index.php...lTimeFOREX.php

And im not talking about the demo trial, buy package 1 for 18 bucks a month.