I hope to move up to the ER2 eventually but it is not a good market to learn on, imho. The most important thing when learning is to keep losses small. If I had $25000 I would practice on spy or dia.
Riamaan, The basic trade is... The Macd 9-12-26. Is it above or below the zero line? Wait for the macd is cross the zero line then take the trade. For an early indicator (signal) use the 8 or 9 sma on the price bars as a early set up. But, the macd fools around at the zero line (gotta watch for that). If you read page (1) of this whole post it sums up exactly what the trade is. The other 160 pages are nuances of the whole thing. You should read them also. It's basically a good system...Just like a old pickup still chugging around. Not super hi-tech but not lo-tech either. Just a good basic simple system that we have all been working on for a couple of months now that everyone can watch on their computer programs and verify. snarlyjack
My confusion stems from the fact that on my charts, the 1:00 candle closes solidly above the 8 SMA, but the MACD doesn't close above the zero line until 4 minutes later at which time price is already 2132. So I'm thinking you're not waiting for the candle / bar to close, but just watching the MACD realtime and if it crosses zero line, jump on and let time tell whether or not it stays there. OR My charts look different than yours. BTW, I have QT and Ninja Trader charts. Both are identical.
Riaamaan, Ok, let me see I have to turn my system back on and take a look at it. Omnitrader is what I use. It looks like, at 1:04 the macd just flashed a buy to the long side. By the way, on my system when the macd crosses the zero line it flashes a green flag (long) or a red flag (short). Also keep in mind that I use Bollinger Bands with a setting of 8 with a standard deviation of 1.76. I do not use 8 or 9 sma on the price bars. When I look at my system, The bollinger band ( 8) the price bar just jumped over the 8 as the macd just crossed over the zero line. So at 1:02 the price bar was crossing the Bollinger Band middle (8) 12117 on the ym. At 1:04 the price bar had a clean cross of the BB (8) at 12120 (h12127, L 12116, o12117, c12125) Anyway I took the trade at 12120 (1:04) and closed out the trade at (1:20) at 12146 on the ym, 25 points. Maybe the difference your talking about is: when I went to the Bollinger Bands I took off Trader28 early entry of sma 8 or 9 and put on Bollinger Bands middle of 8. Which might be different but should be very close. 8 with s/d 1.76. See 5 or 6 pages back. I like Bollinger Bands better because they show a better exit point and I can see what the standard deviation from the middle is. I have mine set at 1.76 s/d for short term trading. In reading up on Bollinger Bands from what I have read is some people use s/d 2 for longer term trading or s/d of 1.5 for shorter term trading. But on my system 1.76 seemed like the perfect number. Who knows for sure? But I like them. When the price bars start bouncing on the bands (or close to the bands) in my mind that is a early warning of a exit and I watch the bars very closely. If it starts moving against me I'll close out the position. Hope I responded to you in good english. I was thinking and typing very quickly. snarlyjack
See page 158 and on... I took the candles off and put colored bars on. I think the candles were messing me up and with the colored bars with (h.l.c.o.) I can see the action clearer and still have the red/green colors. But I guess this is where everyone is different... Hope this helps you!!! snarlyjack
Snarly, Thanks for taking the time to explain what you were seeing. That early warning detection system you have is nice (flashes green for ZLC). My system doesn't have the center line for MACD, but I get the jist of the system. I just don't have the capability to see it as you do. It's OK. I can still see the benefits of implementing MACD to augment the original system.