Greetings all gentlemans=) Well first of all I want to apologise in advance for my english. Nor it's my native idiom nor I have ever had a good live practice except short dialogs while traveling or clubbing abroad and usually being drunk enough to think - "yeah, now I'm professor of foreign languages and can speak even martian.." Here is my story in short but I'll try to make it colourfull: I started trading career in July 2001. I was 20, it was my last year in university and I had a hard earned stake about 2000$. And as you could understand it won't last for a long time -) Later I borrowed money from father, then OP's money etc.. Allmost all of them gone to the market and in spring 2003 I had about 1/15 left of what I used to owe for the moment. It was not fun, I really felt my ass starting to smoke -)) But it's turned the lesson was somehow learned... I saw also that my broker fees for that years were more than the money lost. I decided to change broker and persuaded him to give me a try with a 1:20 leverage and fixed monthly fees if I'll be able to make a definite trading volume. And it's worked. In these years russian stock market was volatile enough, I had 200-300 trades in a day average. Discipline was my priority #1. No TA, nada. I didn't believe it's working because saw a lot of struggling people around and all them lost and gone. So my method was tape reading, discipline and a little bit of gut feeling =) Seems like my story is not short already... In winter 2003 I payed all my debts with a interest, nobody ever knew I was in such a hole except my girlfriend and one very close friend. Even earlier I have reached market liquidity limit for my scalping methods. My account grew constantly but I am as a trader no. One year later stock market volatility began to diminish dramatically. I started to look for forex/us markets. First account was opened in early 2005. It took two 5000$ accounts for me to understand that tape reading is not working here. Not a big money for me at this times but pretty enough to start thinking another way. From that years I became a ET'er and read all information here I found interesting. I should say that the biggest influence on me made Spike500, while reading his thread here and PM'ing I believed IT COULD BE DONE in a systematic approach So since 2005 I was working on my method, testing hundreds ideas, charts of all forms, programmers for automating and backtesting etc. etc. I tryed 6E, ER, ES, NQ, CL all of them. For sure I continued to trade russian market all this time (2008 was my best year) and making a very good living. I always wanted to daytrade, never take positions overnight and so was my researching. But as all of us know volatility died global, years going and despite all my passion to trading at this moment my goal is to free time for Living, to do other things I'm interested in, to have more time with a family. Well as a result I came with a 4h systematic approach and going to apply it first to trade RTS (russian trade system) index futures. This instrument have a solid liquidity now (so I'll be able to grow my size for a couple years, at least I suppose so) and moves not bad comparing to others as well. I use Esignal charting platform so those of you who have it could look for a ticket RI H3-RTF. As for targets I decided to have a round one - for 100% yearly, let alone possible compounding. This target suppose trading with a leverage about 1:3, 1:4. I'll stop trading the method if my account suffer 25% loss. Russian market opens tommorow, 8 January, it will be the first trading day for this year. For holidays my system gone with a longs, but this doesn't matter and nor I'm going to count it in this journal. I'll try my best to put all the trades in advance here, so no cheating possible Why I'm doing this ? To be honest I don't think journals help a lot with a discipline, I wish they do )) But I never tried to and another thing - maybe I'll improve my english skills. BTW. I'm spending a winter time in Dominican Republic, North Coast. So if anybody going to have a vacations here we can have a couple beers and chit chat personally Feel free to ask questions and correct my english also -) And give me a time to answer it's a hard work for me ))
Hi cookding -) I just watched the DOM and I watched it really carefully. Don't know how the dom for US stocks looks like but in russian market we have 10-10 dom (10 best bids and 10 best offers with a volume), last few years it become 20-20, seems like a progress but I don't think so. I always have no more than 4 doms opened in my working space so constantly looking for just a 4 stocks and was actually married to them. Well I should say that back in the days tape reading worked much better. Volume and orders were real, correlation between chips worked fine. Nowdays it's becoming worse and worse every year. I couldn't recommend or inspire anybody to start learning this skill at these days, sometimes rays of hope happens there when volatility spikes occuring but it happens very rare. Vice versa if my method going to work fine maybe this journal will inspire some struggling traders to continue their findings. And who knows perhaps the time of tape reading going to return some day. Events like 2008 definitely could give a fuel for this -))
Hi med, So there was no formal training or information on Dom trading that you have received? Do you look at the print (time and sales) against the dom or using XTrader type platform to get the total print? Just curious. Thanks. Regards, cook
No, I never had a mentor nor any book helped me in tape reading. Cook, I don't clearly get what you mean by "total print" so I guess the right answer is: I look at the dom against time and sales. Ninja trader for example have a very similiar dom and time and sales -)
What I meant by total print is the total contract hitting the bid and ask which is being displayed along side on platform dom such as X trader. You can add jigsaw depth of market tool (from jigsawtrading.com) on the ninja, it will sum up the volume hitting at the ask and the bid at the moment so you don't really have to add them up or estimate by watching the time and sales. I look at the spike500 stuff in the past... It looks pretty tough to crack... sticking with the tape for now.
Ok now I see, I have never had such a tool for russian stocks, so from this point of view seems like it's not necessary . But futures are completely another story. One day I worked with a MarketDelta software analysing market profile, I liked it but didn't come with anything useful for a system. As for Spike500's stuff, yes it looks pretty complex, as far as I remember he use 3 time frames, determines trend strength has a few custom build indicators for it. Though his system has a very clearly rules he said me in PM that it can not be automated and human presence is a must. But for me it was enough, I believed him because hi was a first person I saw makes strictly calls in advance and results were fantastic. He made it for a several weeks then stopped because a lot of folks here were shitting on him. What instruments are you looking in ?
spike500 has a very consistent philosophy regarding the relationships of the timeframes... Few of the guys I know only zoom in and leaning on the larger timeframes but the smaller timeframe can lead larger timeframe too (this part they religiously ignored) .... so they are trading with the higher timeframe trend and fading the smaller timeframe trend... trading half of the possible scenerios and ignore some scenerios. In the case of spike500, he is consistent both zooming in and zooming out... it is a bit crazy... For me doing that I would end up with very little trades or left with late trades but I guess he has tools that work well with his philosophy. I am scalping ZN (US treasury note) futures... yep boring as hell and eyes bleeding... learning here and hope to up the volume one day. Obviously I am more interested in discussing tape reading than the trend systems for my own benefits. ;-)