My chart from today Total +4.2 pts....but today's trading quality is not reflected in that number....I simply had a few REALLY BAD trades (note #3 for impatience and #1 for trading the first 15min....both against my rules)....I'm lucky I scraped out some profit today.... Going to cut size from 4 contracts to 2 tomorrow....staying at 2 until my trade "quality" gets a little better. Also its a Friday in late August...not the most conducive to trading.... Good Luck and Happy Trading everyone! -traderTX
Some great info you are sharing mccullek. I would advise that the DOM is the last thing a trader should be watching unless you are consistently batting better than Susana. So many fakes orders in a million different combinations can mean so many things. It will take you out of more good trades, than get you in. You know how it is, once you get in a trade you'll be watching every print and now the dom as well, omg 4k ask wtf, price dips 4 ticks sharply, get out....flattens long position The low today was 1263.25 right near the open then at 9:34 and 9:36 a 4k ask appears on the inside ask which actually gets traded the 2nd time, looking back at that order, prices pretty much traded above 1266 for the rest of the day So again I'm not kidding when I advise to stay away until you're very profitable and you want to take that 97% to 99, jmho http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42947&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 Your bid ask volume idea has merit. X-trader which I just started using has 5 ranges (5 bid/5 ask trade volume sizes) that you can assign a different beep to. In a fast market is sounds like popcorn going off and you can listen for the shifts in sound. Sounds great right, but not everything you may imagine it to be at the moment. Once again it may cause you to get out early of many good trades. So people use it from this level to the market delta technicians using Inverstor RT
np traderTX, I was only making the general comment that people devise their trading methods looking back though charts and practice on tick replay with all setups stops, money management listed only to trade the day listening/looking at every other distraction with they did not use to devise their methods.
Brutus, thanks for the feedback. Just to clarify we are on the same page though. It sounds like you are referring to the number of orders that are displayed as available for sale at each bid/ask price range. I'm not referring to that. I am talking about the actual number of contracts that traded at a given price. Normally you see a lot of singles and 5 or 10 contracts being bought or sold. Occassionally you will also see 20, 30 or 40 being bought or sold. When you see a hundred or so, that's a large number of contracts, so you know it must be a big player. When you see someone actually buy or sell 200+ contracts at one time, well, it's definitely a big guy or a fund. When I glance at the DOM, I'm just looking for any big numbers that pop up that actually traded, and if I see one, which side they were on.. bid or ask. Maybe we are talking about the same thing, but your post sounded like you were talking about the number of contracts available at the bid/ask, and I agree, never pay that any attention at all. That changes so fast you can't make heads or tales of it anyway. Again, I'm talking about actual buys and sells, not what's listed as available. Can you clarify if we are talking about the same things, or if I'm correct in the way I described it here, and we are talking about two different things? Thanks again for the feedback!
DOM- Depth Of Market sometimes referred to as the Order Book or Level II display Time and sales - also referred to as the tape.
OK, got it now. Since I don't have time and sales, I'm basically trying to extract that from the DOM. I'm not looking at depth of market, just actual contracts sold.
Another trend line break after a lower high in an uptrend. It would make the next move up shortable. This happened yesterday at the end of day. Here is a pic. Max