seem like only 5pillars know what to do with it, a must for him but a not for the rest http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1280976#post1280976
I tried the 1 month trial and downloaded all the applicable "classroom videos". I even spent countless hours using a tool they have that records the market youre in (which is a nice feature) however, after 1 month and endless e-mails (which either Trevor or the girl in the office promptly returned) I have to say I am even more clueless on how it works. Alot of work went inot developing it etc. but unless someone who either owns it or uses it says to the prospective buyer (or shows them) "here is how u work it" or "use this setting for a good scalping strategy"..... its lost on the prospective consumer/trader who is not going to dump his/her conventional system for MD.
It would work in markets which are dominated by pit/ring action, but most of those markets are not screen traded, copper comes to mind. I would think the analysis works in CL/QM, but most seem to apply it to stock indices, which are dominated by the action of the tape, not the futures. Is anyone applying MD-type analysis to the energy-markets? Granted, the crude market is still pit-dominated. I wonder if QM is viable as the majority of trading is likely CL pit arbitrage.
MarketDelta (MD) supposedly shows the strength of Buyers vs the strength of the Sellers at a given price. It does this, supposedly, by calculating the volume traded at the ask vs volume traded at the bid. Only market orders are used in the calculation of the delta. according to MD this is great information since the Delta is tracking ONLY "aggressive" buyers and sellers. So the buyer or seller entering with limit orders are NOT used in the calculations. Well MD just does not deliver any information that is really "tradeable". It is, in my opinion, just "smoke and mirrors" and a marketing ploy to sell the monthly $160 fee. If anyone can show how beneficial the delta as presented in the MD footprint charts is for their trade location decisions I will gladly pay substantially for a clear live demonstration.
I've tried the software on 3 separate occasions totaling about a year's worth of subscriptions. I agree with nkhoi and MACD. It is a sharp looking product. It gets you to think of the market the way that a floor trader may have thought at one time. It presents a chart view that is reasonably unique. However, bottom line for me it interfered with my trading. Support was excellent. I never was able to see a benefit to it in my trading. In defense of the product, I could see that a person who only wanted to use S/R for trading with no charting indicators, might find MD a nice complement to their trading toolkit.
look, it is NOT smoke and mirrors all it does is compile (in an interesting way) data that is already available to ANYbody who knows how to read tape. and as a futures trader, i READ tape. i notice bid vs. ask pressure. that's all marketdelta is. it is not a trading system, but neither is market profile. both simply take data and present it in a way that may or may not be useful i have DEFINITELY found utility in the index futures in discerning bid vs. ask volume. everybody wants a magic system that tells them when to enter or exit a trade. that's why all these retail traders fall in love with moving averages, and lagging indicators (i use neither) the reality is that institutions MOVE markets. retail doesn't. and marketdelta can help you see the footprints (no pun intended) of the institutions. however, it is not necessary. you can do the same thing with a free ELD, or even tape reading what bid/ask pressure (and market profile) and other things i look at help me do is FILTER trades. iow, staying out of a risky trade is just as important as entering a good trade. they help you filter out trades that may not be as successful. 90% of my trading is simply buying support and selling resistance. seeing how order flow occurs as support (or resistance) is approached DEFINITELY helps in anybody's decision matrix. i just think its overpriced, and it will not work with IB (since IB aggregates data), so its pretty useless for me. i have IB, Tradestation, and AMTD accounts, so i would have to get ANOTHER datafeed in addition to the actual program
For my style I found it was most useful as a volume/ market profile type tool - unfortunately only having one day available was a big handicap as you could not see yesterday and before value area etc. I never found the market delta itself and the footprint all that useful for my style. I did find that it helped me keep out of bad trades which is half the battle. A particulary useful way of showing the info i.e . NUMBER of trades at a level has been discontinued. Basically I found that the bits I was using could be duplicated in Tradestation with several previous days profiles available. At $40/$50 it made sense for sharper focus on the intraday demand/supply and start/end of minus developments + some other things. I understand they have added a number of things since I used it and it made sense when I was trading one index product almost exclusively. THE MAJOR problem I had was that it crapped out exactly when I need it i.e during fast HSI moves - presumably the Dot.net framework it is written in could not cope with the data flow.
I think MD tracks all trades (or at least all trades that are reported at BID or ASK). I'm not sure what it does with trades reported between BID/ASK or above ASK or below bid. It's not really true to say it's just tracking market orders. Stops and marketable limits also give rise to executions and these are part of the calculation. I wrote the code for my own charting to do footprint type charts. I must agree that I'm not that convinced of it's usefullness. You can certainly find nice examples but how general it is is another question. I think it is unfair to call MD a con. Apparently is does what it says on the tin. What is important is not MD the product, but whether the delta of trades at ASK and at BID is usefull. I suggest that it is very usefull nut no holy grail and needs to be used with whatever other tools are considered useful. Attached is a chart of DAX that I saved a few weeks ago. It is constant volume, 500 contracts per bar. The lower plot is a 7EMA of the "market delta". What is interesting is transition from +ve to -ve delta and -ve to +ve. There is nothing special about a 7 EMA or the bar widths - it's just an illustration
It is just another lagging indicator. The Delta does not lead. History lessons for lots of money. Read the info on their website or call Trevor. Makes a big point of Delta only based on "aggressive buyers and sellers" which MD defines as market orders. You programmed your own footprint charts -- good for you. I don't write code so i am left with the hype and the $160 per month. But hey if you are making money using it more power to ya...
You cannot programmatically distinguish between executions arising from market, stop and marketable limit orders, no matter what it says on any web site. A pertinant question sometimes might be whether agressive buying (for example) is due to market orders with traders taking a long position or stops with traders covering ahort positions. When it comes down to it everything is a lagging indicator including price - except the order book.