This thread has been cleaned of all it's garbage and off-topic posts. Thanks to those who didn't respond to the trolls, for as I've said countless times when you respond/quote them it only: 1) reinforces and repeats what they said 2) gives them the attention they crave 3) encourages them to make further posts 4) gives the mods more work in cleaning up the mess If any trolls or off-topic posters show up again please ignore them. Thanks.
A while back, I spent a three days weekend programming channels in excel. IN the end I simplified things by eliminating VBA and instead relying solely one formulas (and array formulas). Here are a bunch of snapshots from today. You will notice that a channel will disappear once price returns back to point one. This is to free up the formulas for newer channels and keep the xls working efficiently (the old channel is no longer valid at that point). I made no effort to mark gaussians, but I use volume to indicate breakouts.
Hey Clym! It looks like you've got plenty of tapes and channels on your charts! Is it all automated or does it require some user input? Do you add additional chart series (dynamically), or do you have a preset number of channels that your model will draw? Your one screen shot shows quite a few worksheets! Your chart looks a bit tight (bunched), but I think you are on the right track.
I am using live formulas for the channel calculations with no user input. Right now I use 6 sets of formulas for up and 6 for down (12 total). On a few occasions, I have had a need for a few more.
What charting software do you use for trading futures and what do you like/hate about it? I'll start myself about mine... I currently use quotetracker pro: -it's free -has nice functions for drawing channels/qaussians -does PRV con: -backfill sometimes messes up (in combination with interactive brokers) showing one large volume bar that is not correct. This one is really bad as volume is very important. -doesn't have any scripting for automating ftp/fbp/... and a second question: does anyone here use a mac for trading futures?
Hi, I use IB with QT & Amibroker. I have never experienced a problem with QT backfill and volume bars. In fact the bars compare very well with Amibroker. You can use QT paintbars to indicate the ftb/fpb etc. The only issue I have found with QT is the annotation. Copying lines, text and moving them is a real pain with QT and hence I use Amibroker for my annotations. In fact if I can annotate charts in QT as easily as I can with Amibroker I would stop using Amibroker asap. NinjaTrader is showing promise but they have an issue with IB volume data. NT only updates the volume using the last trade snapshot message and ignore the volume update message. Since the last trade is a snapshot (every 5ms), the volume bar lags the actual volume buy about 10-20% on each bar (easy to see by comparing to QT and Amibroker using the same IB feed). Also it doesn't have vertical scrolling. HTH
I use QT (without text annotation) -- it will mark inside/outside bars using paintbars, candle background, unfortunately, you cannot align the background change to the prior period. Only centered on candle or projecting forward into the future (which QT considers the current period). NT does a good job if you know how to code what you want. But if you do a lot of manual annotation real-time like I do, it is a nightmare to me. Manually drawing the trendlines is horrible on NT after using QT for so long. With QT, I never have to remove my eyes from the chart because it is all done with the mouse. With NT, you need the keyboard to start any line and cannot turn projected extensions on & off. To switch from ray to line w/o ext requires DELETING and re-creating the line!! When you adjust the slope of a line in QT, there's a "ghost" where the line was before the move began -- that is VERY helpful when lengthening a line - not so in NT - so you must be able to see the points when adjusting the line or have a very good artistic memory. You might as well delete the LTL and re-create if you need to stretch it out. My eye is just not good enough to manually extend the line without affecting the slope. If you leave stay in draw mode active, then you cannot change line colors or thickness, or even edit/select the line for copying, deleting, or moving. I have no idea what they were thinking. I have the impression, that unless NT implements a Channel draw tool as others like ensign & TOS do, and make extensions optional, I will never switch to NT for daily annotation. I definitely consider QT worth registering & will continue to register it. Sure wish QT could record and replay market data... That and painting prior candle periods are the only things I've requested that they've not done. Everything else I've requested, QT team has implemented now. BTW, I pay for IQFeed because I wanted reliable data.
Thought I'd chime in with my Ninja experiences. If you need to extend an LTL line, a quick trick to do it is to click the line you want to extend, CTRL+C,CTRL+V, then use the line you just pasted as a guide for your original line as you extend it to keep the slope consistent. As far as changing line colors and thickness, I had not noticed a problem. To get to draw mode, I just press F2 and draw my line. When I click the second time to place my line, it goes out of draw mode and lets me select the line so i can right click to edit thickness/color or to cut/paste. I'm not sure what it is, but after getting used to NT I actually think it's easier to use than QT, and about on par with Ensign.