FXWave: You want recognition, you are crying out for acceptance, you are making good solid published calls on ET and publishing a journal, and you are engaged in mortal combat with the slightest detractor and critical commentator. The fact of the matter is that the biggest bomb-throwers on ET with large numbers of posts relative to their membership time are, in fact, frauds. Trolls. Posers. Punters. If you can stand the pain, scroll back through their posts for true substance - actionable material as it were; none. There are some very good traders with real contributions who post here on ET, but their voices are drowned out in a littany of naive shouting. Case in point: the thread going on about bonds and 1% rates. There are some real gems laying in wait there, but the naive egos are shouting down the mature contributions. Did you know that you don't have to take directional risk to make a fortune trading? Did you know that most hedge fund portfolio managers and bank desks do not take flat price instrument directional risk? Do you really believe that some big swinging dick at Citadel is going to sell 10,000 bond futures based upon an Elliot Wave Count or a Gann Line or a MACD or a Stochastic? Not only "no" but "hell no". But he'll sell a Cal 12 ICE Swap Strips against a tanker in transit. Or he'll borrow $4B in the overnight repo market, buy $4B in 9 Yr. Off-the-run US Treasuries, pledge them as collateral to the repo facility, and turn around and sell them to the CME in the form of 4,000 CBOT Ten Year Note futures. ET is not representative of how it really gets done. Sell cars, wash dishes, whatever it takes, fund a modest account and establish a consistent track record. I don't care if you net $200 per day - if you can be consistent, people will throw money at you. Just find a way to be really consistent, and for real in a real live market, and you will make a living trading.
I agree RDT; I am not here just here to showcase what I can offer. I learned a ton over the years at another forum and significantly elevated my learning curve. Thanks for the encouragement!
Bone, Thank you for your comments. You made a lot of unfounded assumptions about me but all is well. I have an eye for direction as I have had plenty of practice. I worked at options trading desk for active retail clients years ago. They would occasionally have a complex option strategy so it shouldn't take me too long to get my head wrapped around trading contracts. I know I could certainly increase my odds with a simple spread strategy. As I have aged; I have less tolerance for day trade wipsaw nonsense and try to avoid it. I am very willing to take myself to the next level and open to learning new strategies. With what I have noted above and along the way; what forum or book; etc, would you recommend? Thanks
Well, if you're trading your own money do whatever the hell you want until you either run out of it or drown in it. If you want to establish a track record to the point where you can legitimately attract outside funding: 1. stop taking flat price directional risk immediately, and 2. stop with the calls on ET. Please Note: Jack Schwaeger hasn't published another "Market Wizards" sausagefest in a very long time; and Stevie Cohen, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Victor Niederwhatever have been newsworthy as of late. Common denominator? Flat price directional risk. Come to think of it, all is deathly quiet on the flat price directional technical indicator guru front. LBR, where are you? Larry Miller, check in! Ever notice when CNBC zooms in on a big bank or fund trader's desk, and there is no chart with Jack Hershey's fractal or an Elliot Wave count or a hanging Doji candle formation or whatever Murphy published? There is no book, because the publishers are all retail spec traders. Let me say this just once: a properly modeled correlation has a stronger risk/reward skew than any neural net, time series forward curve, or any technical study you care to recite. Period.
In vol; ATM VIX straddle against the VT and the VIX futures switches and flies. The 2/5/10 fly, the NOB, swap spreads, energy cracks, etc. (all listed product).
Most I can't discuss without having clients enraged - but the Japanese Yen versus the third month Eurodollar was great for several years. Canadian Dollar, Euro, and Mexican Peso each had long stretches of several months or more when they moved tic for tic with the crude oil future. Look at Valero stock prices versus the Gulf Coast crack spread. Look at Florida Power & Light stock prices versus the regional spark spread. Look at the Jan-Feb Nat Gas Calendar versus the Jan-Feb Heating Oil Crack. That's why I love a Bloomberg. Most of the big bank and fund desks are trading relative value - it could be a tanker in Gulf versus a Cal 11 ICE Swap Strip, it could be IBM 3-year paper versus CBOT 2-yr Note futures; that kind of thing. They either make OTC markets on inventory or bet on spread differentials. That is how it gets done. Desks rarely take directional bets. I'm talking an edge that models well technically and has strong fundamentals. An Elliot Wave Count is not an edge.
Well thanks for you for sharing. I would be interested in learning more on the subject. In terms of an Elliot Wave Count not being an edge; I would obviously disagree. The best trades that I have found have multiple edges that all point in the same direction and at the same time. When your Elliot wave count lines up with a significant cycle amid new developing fundamentals; you likely have yourself a massive directional play. The difficult part is patiently waiting for these setups. Sorry but I didn't forecast the Eur/Usd reversal 10 days in advance this month on blind luck!
Variance. You can call a trade "in advance" within the likely peak to trough stat-vol and it may be accurate... because it's likely to occur. Post one of these 10-day predictions here and I'll comment on the running stat-vol.
Great as I would love some volume confirmation....I have never had the luxury of using volume in FX as I don't have a reliable volume source so all my analysis is strictly price. I get away with it as I can find balance points on multiple time frames and I know where the volume concentration levels will naturally be. I don't use EW or see EWs in the flat traditional way as that has never worked for me. I do use the basic EW rules and use the quantifiable Fib ratios to qualify the wave sequence.