Stock market tips and experiences

[Javi335]

Originally Posted by Vanity

Agree with you here +1

And then you see this ... is a satiric magazine? ...oh wait, is the Time

[mact3333]

as noted below 1 week ago, were going into the 1300's....positioned long with metals(AGQ, DGP, GDX) and TNA for past week.

Effective volume said we go higher 1 wk ago...talking about news is for suckers...news moves mkts for very short term only.

You guys wont make money day trading.

Originally Posted by mact3333

a bullish conviction bar today(we finish strong in upper 1/4 of bar) means were headed to 1300...1220-50 theory doesnt look likely now due to ECB/FED/CHINA money printing scheme...but thats ok...we just need a trend doesnt matter which way really.

Positioned long metals this am...money printing means metals should show strength...todays close very important...if we close strong which I suspect we will, I can no longer be bearish for the ST/IT...LT I am very bearish.

[mact3333]

short term target 1280....bears gonna get squeezed.

[MEMMEZZ]

Can someone please advise me on the best way to track the overall markets intra-day and longer term volume?
Thanks.

[rallysport]

Seems like S&P doesnt like market rallies anymore
http://www.businessinsider.com/break...gative-2011-12

[Vanity]

SPX hitting its 200 day moving average of 1264 now. this is the next resistance up, and a very important one. we have been trying to break the 200dma for the past several months now, and every time we have tried it has sent us back down to test new lows. friday we tried to break it and didnt succeed in holding it. this morning we broke it, and again did not succeed in holding it. this is a double failure so far.

Ironic, isn't it, that SPX hits 200dma and then S&P rating agency sends markets down below 200dma with downgrade scares

EDIT: new trading ranges: 1244-1265

Above 1265, we hit new 1300 highs without stopping. This would signal a very large decline later on as markets rally past 10% gains on small volume. This is reflective of what happened in October and mid-November crashes. Good shorting position on the top.

Below 1244, we MUST hold 1235 or else we are sent back to retest new lows. It may be likely to see a reasonable 1-2% pullback in the markets after a 10% rally.

[Rivenscyr]

any links to trading forums/communities guys?

Intrest rates dropped in AUS today

[BigDog]

Originally Posted by Rivenscyr

any links to trading forums/communities guys?

Intrest rates dropped in AUS today

i think there's one called bigmiketrading...

fwiw because most everyone in this thread is probably a retail guy... you're going to be more or less on the short end of the stick for everything.... thats just how it is...

rather than relying on magic indicators to all point up or down as mentioned previously... i highly recommend understanding price action.... the how's and whys.... otherwise not only are you going to be lunch for institutional, you're going to blow through your account really fast.... don't place trades because you read it in a thread.... put in the hours in front of your screen, and try to get a feel on your own of what you're seeing and why you're seeing it....

[Vanity]

Originally Posted by BigDog

i think there's one called bigmiketrading...

fwiw because most everyone in this thread is probably a retail guy... you're going to be more or less on the short end of the stick for everything.... thats just how it is...

rather than relying on magic indicators to all point up or down as mentioned previously... i highly recommend understanding price action.... the how's and whys.... otherwise not only are you going to be lunch for institutional, you're going to blow through your account really fast.... don't place trades because you read it in a thread.... put in the hours in front of your screen, and try to get a feel on your own of what you're seeing and why you're seeing it....

+1

[Rivenscyr]

yea yea, I just wanted to find a community of traders. Helped me in forex when trying to build my trading routine and method.

[mact3333]

I like......never trade based on what someone tells you unless it agrees with your own line of thought...others are used for guidance only...if you gamble either long or short for IT or long term, you have at least a 50-50 chance...if you trade for short term, your odds go down to 20% cause the emotional lability and whipsaws will make sure you go broke real fast.

Originally Posted by BigDog

i think there's one called bigmiketrading...

fwiw because most everyone in this thread is probably a retail guy... you're going to be more or less on the short end of the stick for everything.... thats just how it is...

rather than relying on magic indicators to all point up or down as mentioned previously... i highly recommend understanding price action.... the how's and whys.... otherwise not only are you going to be lunch for institutional, you're going to blow through your account really fast.... don't place trades because you read it in a thread.... put in the hours in front of your screen, and try to get a feel on your own of what you're seeing and why you're seeing it....

[BigDog]

Originally Posted by mact3333

I like......never trade based on what someone tells you unless it agrees with your own line of thought...others are used for guidance only...if you gamble either long or short for IT or long term, you have at least a 50-50 chance...if you trade for short term, your odds go down to 20% cause the emotional lability and whipsaws will make sure you go broke real fast.

i have to disagree here... if you have a commission structure that allows you to push a larger volume of trades, you can be much more profitable with a shorter time frame....

again considering most are probably retail guys this may or may not be profitable, but fwiw... shorter time frame will be much more profitable

[Vanity]

Originally Posted by BigDog

i have to disagree here... if you have a commission structure that allows you to push a larger volume of trades, you can be much more profitable with a shorter time frame....

again considering most are probably retail guys this may or may not be profitable, but fwiw... shorter time frame will be much more profitable

I trade short term and my odds a bit higher than 20%. I also agree with this, but its true the emotions get the best of most people in ST trading. Need those nerves of steel, and also large capital, for ST trading to be worth the hassle. Otherwise there is better methods of making money, for more sleep too.

[BigDog]

fwiw, i was pointing more towards automated systems for what most of you would consider short term.... even for a retail guy, you will have better luck with some sort of algo rather than trying to take a directional trade based off something or the other....
something like a mean reverting system where you're trying to work both the bid and offer works rather nicely in noisey markets....

a decent retail platform that allows c# implementation for algos is ninjatrader.... if you can spring for the platform costs, then something like TT would be pretty decent....


again as with everything else, it boils down to your appetite for risk....

[mact3333]

If you mean your commission fees are free then ok......otherwise those 10.00 trades can add up fast...98% of people cannot make a living off of 1/2 pt scalps...they would need huge starting capital and a blackbox quant algo's to make serious money...everyone here is retail and not some HF or institutional money.

You can successfully scalp by using services like Retracement Levels or even services that essentially follow moving avg's but none are even 80% reliable.

Best way is to play IT/LT trends, hence choppy sideway mkts are tough...esp if you play leveraged positions due to time decay...with futures you can ride it out without time decay but the drawdowns can be tremendous.

Or you can follow the Elliott Wavers and always be positioned short....

There are no easy ways to make money during bear mkts...only supercycle bull mkts where you throw darts can the avg Joe make money and be consistent at it...during true bull mkts, naive people can look at fundamentals and earnings and be fooled into thinking they know how the street works.

There is only one true answer...price speaks alone...effective volume and delta charts can give clues but you must combine this with cycle work to get the IT/LT trend right.

Its complicated and 95% of ST traders will prob fail until they go broke many many times before they are humbled and learn about how the mkts really work.

Originally Posted by BigDog

i have to disagree here... if you have a commission structure that allows you to push a larger volume of trades, you can be much more profitable with a shorter time frame....

again considering most are probably retail guys this may or may not be profitable, but fwiw... shorter time frame will be much more profitable

[BigDog]

Originally Posted by mact3333

If you mean your commission fees are free then ok......otherwise those 10.00 trades can add up fast...98% of people cannot make a living off of 1/2 pt scalps...they would need huge starting capital and a blackbox quant algo's to make serious money...everyone here is retail and not some HF or institutional money.

1) far from free.... fwiw, $10 roundtrip is ridiculous, plenty of other brokerages will offer significantly lower...

2) as far as algo systems are concerned, i believe you are rather misinformed.... the entire point of automated systems is to avoid drawdowns.... algo desk, retail bedroom trader, or goldman sachs... the point of an algo is to follow a very fixed system based on a set of predetermined rules to avoid emotional blackouts one may face if click trading...

Originally Posted by mact3333

You can successfully scalp by using services like Retracement Levels or even services that essentially follow moving avg's but none are even 80% reliable.

3) again, scalping is not about using fancy paid for indicators etc.... scalping is about observing price action.... your fancy indicator is going to get hosed in a blink when somebody comes in and sweeps the market three levels deep on the bid...

Originally Posted by mact3333

Best way is to play IT/LT trends, hence choppy sideway mkts are tough...esp if you play leveraged positions due to time decay...with futures you can ride it out without time decay but the drawdowns can be tremendous.

4) there is no play involved in trading, you take a/multiple positions based on a method that will give you a high positive expectancy... sideway markets are not tough to trade, leveraged or not.... a sideways market is indicative of a range bound movement.... rather than attempting to ride out a position and "hope" it goes your way.... one would be much better served unwinding a position and re-entering, scaling out an existing position.... etc...
again... you need to react based off price action you are seeing.... not what you are thinking....

Originally Posted by mact3333

Or you can follow the Elliott Wavers and always be positioned short....

There are no easy ways to make money during bear mkts...only supercycle bull mkts where you throw darts can the avg Joe make money and be consistent at it...during true bull mkts, naive people can look at fundamentals and earnings and be fooled into thinking they know how the street works.

5) again I disagree.... nothing is more profitable than a crash.... whether you do an outright short on volatility, negative gamma scalp, etc.... the potential to have profitable trades increasing astronomically the closer we get to a crash....

Originally Posted by mact3333

There is only one true answer...price speaks alone...effective volume and delta charts can give clues but you must combine this with cycle work to get the IT/LT trend right.

I agree to the point that price action is king....

Originally Posted by mact3333

Its complicated and 95% of ST traders will prob fail until they go broke many many times before they are humbled and learn about how the mkts really work.

yes trading is complicated, but whether you are short term, or long term or whatever term... regardless of how fancy of an indicator or indicators you use, or whatever trading guru you subscribe to.... risk management is key.... and no, you will not know how markets really work... you will only know how to manage your own risk based off the price action and your current position/s

[mact3333]

alot of resistance at 1270 ES, which was met...ST bulls should be cautious...could see some selling for abit...time to add imho while down.

[mact3333]

haha one of those guys huh...go back and read my previous posts on price action...lets here some of your thoughts on where were headed...

Originally Posted by BigDog

1) far from free.... fwiw, $10 roundtrip is ridiculous, plenty of other brokerages will offer significantly lower...

2) as far as algo systems are concerned, i believe you are rather misinformed.... the entire point of automated systems is to avoid drawdowns.... algo desk, retail bedroom trader, or goldman sachs... the point of an algo is to follow a very fixed system based on a set of predetermined rules to avoid emotional blackouts one may face if click trading...




3) again, scalping is not about using fancy paid for indicators etc.... scalping is about observing price action.... your fancy indicator is going to get hosed in a blink when somebody comes in and sweeps the market three levels deep on the bid...



4) there is no play involved in trading, you take a/multiple positions based on a method that will give you a high positive expectancy... sideway markets are not tough to trade, leveraged or not.... a sideways market is indicative of a range bound movement.... rather than attempting to ride out a position and "hope" it goes your way.... one would be much better served unwinding a position and re-entering, scaling out an existing position.... etc...
again... you need to react based off price action you are seeing.... not what you are thinking....



5) again I disagree.... nothing is more profitable than a crash.... whether you do an outright short on volatility, negative gamma scalp, etc.... the potential to have profitable trades increasing astronomically the closer we get to a crash....



I agree to the point that price action is king....





yes trading is complicated, but whether you are short term, or long term or whatever term... regardless of how fancy of an indicator or indicators you use, or whatever trading guru you subscribe to.... risk management is key.... and no, you will not know how markets really work... you will only know how to manage your own risk based off the price action and your current position/s

[Vanity]

Originally Posted by Vanity

SPX hitting its 200 day moving average of 1264 now. this is the next resistance up, and a very important one. we have been trying to break the 200dma for the past several months now, and every time we have tried it has sent us back down to test new lows. friday we tried to break it and didnt succeed in holding it. this morning we broke it, and again did not succeed in holding it. this is a double failure so far.

Ironic, isn't it, that SPX hits 200dma and then S&P rating agency sends markets down below 200dma with downgrade scares

EDIT: new trading ranges: 1244-1265

Above 1265, we hit new 1300 highs without stopping. This would signal a very large decline later on as markets rally past 10% gains on small volume. This is reflective of what happened in October and mid-November crashes. Good shorting position on the top.

Below 1244, we MUST hold 1235 or else we are sent back to retest new lows. It may be likely to see a reasonable 1-2% pullback in the markets after a 10% rally.

As expected, spx hit 1244.80 today and then rallied as high as 1266 before returning to 1260 in anticipation for tomorrow and Friday. MS has been doing very well

[BigDog]

Originally Posted by mact3333

haha one of those guys huh...go back and read my previous posts on price action...lets here some of your thoughts on where were headed...

not sure what you mean about one of those guys.... nonetheless, i'd be interested to see your thoughts if you can summarize them here....


as far as where we are headed? depends how much more kool-aid is going to be chugged... have europe coming out, quadruple witching next Friday.... and then nothing till Jan...

if I was to pretend to be an economist I'd say we're still going to melt up barring anymore disappointments coming out from europe (which is a very high possibility)

in terms of a trader, we generally flatten all models at the desk by close... so don't hold positions overnight.... on my own account i trade mostly es options but again try to maintain delta neutral for the most part and scalp gamma where i can and do hold popsitions overnight...

so in a nutshelll where are we headed? no clue, i try to stay neutral and scalp volatilty... again, a hunch we'll melt up for a bit and hit a brick wall.... somebody's got to pay the piper...

fwiw, eurodollars have been bouncing so should make for some interesting moves.... we'll see

[mact3333]

So who's gonna feed the kids when VIX below 30?...just kiddin ya bro...oh I see where you are coming from now...you are a daytrader...that makes more sense and no disrespect intended.

You will notice 90% of people on all websites whether its a trading site or car sites have a hard time with trading and investing, esp during bear mkts.

BTW, your definition of scalping and mine might be very different...99% on here are not trading ES, NQ or TF contracts...they are retail to the extreme...and so are you if you are trading mini's...unless you are a HF or a institution you are trying to piggyback for scraps from the big boys, hence effective volume charts will be important.

There are things like retracement level algo's that will give specific odds based on reasonably reliable back testing methods.

If you are able to stare at a computer all day you can scalp a point or two and make a living at it but its tough...emotions get in the way as your algo set stop loss can come off faster than you can start sweating...when youre highly leveraged with ES contracts and at 50.00 a point, you can lose your focus real fast, hence 90% of daytraders dont last 1 yr.

You can state casually on here you trade based on objective algo's whether its your own or a service based one and hence take emotions out of it, but we know this is extremely difficult to do no matter what your system is.

BTW, I disagree what you said about HF's and large institutions and how their quant box algo's diminish risk because it has been proven over and over again this isnt true...how many HF's have gone under over the past few yrs utilizing these exact techniques you describe.

Where were the quant boxes trading CDS swaps ...didnt GS go bankrupt few yrs back until the tax payers bailed them out?..didnt Lehmans go under?...MF Global?...these co's were using the exact same prog's you said minimize their risk.

The people who make real money without developing an ulcer are the ones trading based on IT and LT timeframes imho.

People on this thread need to see the IT/LT picture...VST doesnt work well for people with actual jobs......to scalp a few pts you could prob do this effectively by using delta charts, and just looking at intraday RSI and MACD readings and drawing simple TL's if you have your timeframe set right.

I am finding timing cycles more and more useful myself.

Originally Posted by BigDog

not sure what you mean about one of those guys.... nonetheless, i'd be interested to see your thoughts if you can summarize them here....


as far as where we are headed? depends how much more kool-aid is going to be chugged... have europe coming out, quadruple witching next Friday.... and then nothing till Jan...

if I was to pretend to be an economist I'd say we're still going to melt up barring anymore disappointments coming out from europe (which is a very high possibility)

in terms of a trader, we generally flatten all models at the desk by close... so don't hold positions overnight.... on my own account i trade mostly es options but again try to maintain delta neutral for the most part and scalp gamma where i can and do hold popsitions overnight...

so in a nutshelll where are we headed? no clue, i try to stay neutral and scalp volatilty... again, a hunch we'll melt up for a bit and hit a brick wall.... somebody's got to pay the piper...

fwiw, eurodollars have been bouncing so should make for some interesting moves.... we'll see

[Vanity]

Food for thought:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45588992