Steve46 Thank you for your comments and helpful chart. Are you using the IB's Pivot calculator to work out the daily pivots points? Differenet calculators have different readings!! By the way what's Calburg's DDF line? There was a similar pattern to YM if anyone was trading it today. Like Friday it made the high of the day by 10:00 then failed. I will elaborate on this after the close of the market. Samson77 Please no private messages in relation to anyone. I was also conned by a conman along with many others. "Many of us were had." The conman is here on ET. My assertion is, If one can take money out of the market as a good trader why prey on newbies. In that I am with Steve46 all the way, he has my support, by the way I have seen his logging of real trades in one journal. Care to read it?
Thanks Seven" Dr. John Clayburg and Josh Lukeman (and a lot of other traders) use a convention that is called the DDF. It is a line that you put throught the middle of the first 5 min bar. In theory, you would trade long above it and short below. One approach to using the DDF is to wait for the first hour and then draw a vertical line through that bar. If most of the action is above, it signals that you may expect an up day. If most of the action is below, expect a down day. John Clayburgh has written a few books and I like his work. I think however that the markets are in transition now and the concept has a more limited utility for traders. For instance, for my markets (the ES and Russell) it is not uncommon for the open to consolidate in a range right away and then break out later in the day. The DDF could be used to scalp, but as a predictor of overall market up/down direction it may be limited. If you have time, check out Clayburg's most recent book (sorry I dont remember the title). Good luck Steve Edit: Sorry, I use Excel to calculate pivots. Just program the formula into Excel and then you can calculate the daily, weekly and monthly pivots on the fly. If you are interested in how to use pivots in your trading, you may want to read John Person's book "A complete guide to technical trading tactics" published by Wiley. I think it was $60 USD. Worth it in every respect.
After screening so many of these forums, posting some reply's, and asking questions( many unanswered ), I can say that I learned something from Steve46 today. I hope , from myself and others , intelligent questions be asked so there can be a postive learning curve for the new traders.
Okay then boys and girls (you too Samson) I have to run off, but wanted to offer a quick comment. Seems to me that folks are resistant to doing the research into yesterday's, last weeks, last months price action. Thats okay with me, but I do want to provide one example of how important previous price action is. Attached see the chart of the Russell with 15 min bars. Look at where today's price consolidates, then scan left and check out the previous action. You can see where price did the same thing back on the 21st. Just a couple minutes ago, you guys were discussing whether or not to short the YM contract if it moved past a certain price point. Some of you wanted to go long (and Blackguard did) saying this was his "bonus trade". I wonder would you have been interested in that trade if you had looked back and seen this consolidating action on the right of your chart. As I mentioned earlier, this was early for a late day reversal (typically they happen near the last hour) and we didn't see evidence of significant buying coming into the market. Anyway it is something to think about. This principle works IF you are observant. As I mentioned before, Mark Fisher uses this principle to his advantage in his book "The Logical Trader". The method isnt for everyone, but the concept of referring back to a previous time period to get a clue as to future price action is a good one. See you folks later. Steve
steve46, Which part of "I'm on holidays" did you not understand. I haven't followed all of this thread I was just browsing BUT if I get the jist of it steve46 is trying to bestow the importance of Daily, weelky and monthly highs lows etc.. and their importance when intraday trading. As much as I hate to agree with steve46, I could not agree more with the importance of being aware and trading around previous numbers. I didn't trade today but I had a target of 10838 if the 10940 AM gap closed ... that target was last weeks low. I constantly use weekly and monthly highs and lows as targets and s / r levels and suggest to anyone that you be in constant awareness of ALL key timeframe levels.
I marked this daily chart last night but still didn't believe that the market will touch the low @10834. The numbers speak for themselves.