Spydertrader's Jack Hershey Futures Trading Journal

I really wouldn't worry about it as there are no differences on your charts that would affect a trade one way or another. The same events unfold, but if your computer is 1 second slow in processing a bar may be a different color or close on an uptick instead of a downtick. The data feed is fed to your computer and your computer interprets that into the bars you see on your screen. Now if you start getting FTTs and PT3s and B2Bs and R2Rs where you shouldn't be, or only half as much volume as other people get, then you should start worrying. But for now your energies are best spent worrying about more important things.

Best regards,
Pr0crast

 

Walk with me a moment (push your chair back from your monitor) as I try to have you 'see' through my eyes and look at the Big Picture. If you look at your chart, you appear to have two forests coming together to form a 'V' shape (Orange Down and Blue Up Channels). Now, I see absolutely nothing incorrect or wrong with such a view, but I subscribe to a slightly different viewpoint when it comes to 'tops' and 'bottoms' of trends. For me, the market doesn't 'stop' and 'start' so much as it rolls through a turn. This is just the way I view things. To place it in perspective, we often hear traders speak about the transition of one trend to another trend in terms of, "the market rolling over."

While true, the channel to which you refer (My Red and Your Dotted Grey) appear as any other 'fanned' channel, the difference resides in the context. When Price breaks through an RTL on decreasing Volume, the market has told us the current channel is incorrect. As such, one must draw a 'fanned' channel in an effort to insure Gaussians match the correct channel.

When Price breaks an RTL on increasing Volume, the market has said, "While the previous channel was correct, the current trend has changed." In such an environment, the next question becomes, 'How much has the trend changed?" In our particular example, I view the period of time within the red (your grey) channel as the market transitioning from Dominant Down to Dominant Up.

I view the market in such a fashion when we have a recent High (New Point Three of the Red [Your Grey] Channel) which fails to 'take out' the previous recent High (Previous Point Three of your Orange Channel and my Point One of the Red Channel). To me, the market (at this point) simply finds itself "rolling through a turn," rather than, stopping one trend, and then, starting another.

Again, I attach no level of 'correctness' to either 'view' of the market. Both viewpoints obviously work, and we ultimately arrive at the same place, through slightly different routes. Continue to use whichever 'view' you feel best allows you to 'see' the changes taking place.

I hope you find the above information helpful.

- Spydertrader

 

OK, I've had a lot of PMs regarding my Excel chart of the DOM.

I do not want to distract from Spyder's recommended syllabus or spoil the pace at which he wants to introduce elements of the DOM – so by all means start using my chart but please don’t use this thread for questions on design improvements or getting it to work. If there are major issues with it, PM me, but remember it is given free, “as is” and it is not supported.

Pre-requisite: Makosgu's PRV spreadsheet which already has the DOM DDE feed. I cut out the PRV sheet as I no longer needed it, thanks to the recent QT enhancement. This makes everything run faster and Excel remains responsive so you can tweak the chart in real time as required.

I’ve attached the chart (it's actually 3 charts in a row with some simple logic on the DOM numbers) which is linked to hard wired DOM numbers to get you going with the formulas I use. You have to link to your own DDE derived DOM numbers in your sheet – and there are several ways to do that. Once you have linked in to the right numbers, save, close, open and allow macros and updates to run. Check the chart is working in real time. (Adjust the horizontal scale as required by double clicking it.)

If it does work first time, as it did for me, you will probably shout "Holy Shit!, why didn't I do this earlier!"

Enjoy, but please don’t get distracted by it – remember where it fits within the toolbox.

P1

 

QFT. As always, thanks for your patience in addressing my question.

 

Please see attached an example of an xls that I put together to show various characteristics of the DOM in real time summarized as follows:


1. This is an IB feed using standard IB DDE syntax, performance is good because excessive calculations are not taking place. Data is replaced instantly in each cell.

2. Left most section shows the DOM Ladder,3 columns, price,size, accumulated size.
I colored the ask side with green and the bid side with red, but only colored to the largest size in each level. This allows you to see the wall easily.
The yellow color is used to show which side has the largest accumulated size.

3. Middle section, For each of the 5 levels of the DOM a Horizontal bar that expands or contracts based on the corresponding size.

4. Right section, Similar to the DOM ladder on the left side, this only shows the biggest wall amongst the 5 levels of each side, plus the immediate inner pair.

5. I will post the actual xls later today

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<img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1489644><br />

 

Very nice Mikey. This one does not require any other excels, correct? Ive been requesting this for quite awhile. Thank you guys for all your work and for sharing it.

 

Thanks Pointone and Mikey for sharing.

Good trading to all

 

Chart for the morning.

Not easy to trade. Low volume.

regards,
Ivo

 

More than half the bars were "extreme" volume...

 

Spy, do you pay attention to flaws on the YM for signals of change/cont, or does that not fall within the constructs of "sufficiency"?