There is plenty of shared experience and info here at ET if one takes the time to look around. Some great threads on S/R, ROC that I've learned much from. Some good info on options if that's your thing. Now if you're looking for someone to sit you in a high-chair and spoon feed you a trade everyday, you'll be disappointed. Bottom line is, for all the bullshit in these threads, and there's plenty of it, there are some pearls of wisdom to be dug out if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty. Work at it!
Always an interesting subject, this one. I suppose you could say that everybody is entitled to their opinion up to the limits of their knowledge. .........and there lies the nigger in the woodpile. I pass on some of the little that I know to several people who have PM'd me over the course of time. Whether it helps them or not is for them to comment upon since we are all looking at the same chart and reading it to varying depths with the predictable varying outcome. However, some of them come back for more and so they must feel that it is doing them some good. One or two people however stand out in my memory. Firstly, I received a PM from a guy who had a background in high tech computer science and at the age of 50ish offered to do my coding if I showed him how to trade the ES during RTH morning. He had read something that I had scribbled and apparently liked it. I thanked him for his kind offer but said that my coding is so simple that even I can do it, but I would pass on a few of my thoughts on rapid trading anyway for what they are worth. Firstly,I asked him several definitive questions concerning win/loss, time in trade, tics scalped etc etc based on the ES morning session. He can back with a huge mail which I returned and simply asked him again for the likely figures he thought were possible. This time he came back with a brief mail showing ranges. They looked reasonable to me and I told him so. Then I asked him to take the lower expectation and the mid level expectation and calculate them in a manner that would produce a range of his likely net earnings for a morning session. He then came back at me demanding to see my audited broker statements, in fact he was outraged. After reminding him that he approached me with nothing to offer that I did not already have, he calmed down and came back telling me that all he every wanted to do is just make a few bucks each day to cover his living expenses so he could retire early. I pointed out that all the risk is in accumulating the net daily tics, not in the money. I never heard from him again. The next guy was also straight forward. He asked for my help and then proceeded to tell me how wonderful the MACD was.... never asked me whether I used it or not. I said, why don't you calculate it by hand each day and send me a scanned copy of your calcs after 10 days. Never heard from him again. Because there is no set curriculum for trading beyond a living, ET will always be the entertaining place that it is. I find that ET is enormously helpful to me at times, both for the breadth of thinking and knowledge and also for it's depth. The key to engaging in it wisely is to simply stay away from any general discussion concerning trading because it is this subject where Posters can truely exhibit the sum extent and therefore limit of their knowledge.
LOOK PEOPLE call me evil and fucked up if you want but the simple truth is information is out there so who wants to learn, they can but I won't spoon feed, no one helped me END OF DIScussion
Yes indeed. Traders out to maximize potential of each daily trade don't get it. Traders out to make daily money live by it. Osorico [ The TicCollector ]
One person who made 10 mil did help me but not because he wanted but because I was smart enough to read between the lines
I suppose you could say that everybody is entitled to their opinion up to the limits of their knowledge. .........and there lies the nigger in the woodpile. Thank ya massa for showing your knowledgeable opinion
happy retirement, here are 5 Things You Should Do After You Retire http://www.find-retirement-community.com/html/article/5-things-you-should-do-after-you-retire/
Big bids and offers really are there to lure people in, but that can provide valuable information. What if it comes out mid-day that a company raised their earnings forecast, and you see giant bids come in on the level II which repeatedly get sold into and come back? What if the buyer showing the bids has already proven beyond any reasonable doubt that he has an intent to buy and that owning the stock at that given point is an extremely high probability trade? Figuring out how the buyer is disguising himself as a piker - I can go over specifical trades if you would like - provides extremely profitable information. Does he keep coming back with 700 share bids and step them up? Just because people play games with the open book and level II doesn't mean they're not worth looking at. Seeing how someone is working an order, and when the order is no longer being worked the same way or having the same effect on price, is extremely important. Maybe a stock is up 3 dollars because of a guy who brings in 5000 share bids on Island and then waits until they get filled and then brings them back at the same price level until he gets filled, until he finds the price is trading too high so he starts stepping the bids up and repeats the process for 3 points. What if now, when that bid gets brought in, it immediately gets taken out - several times in the row, whereas before, when a bid would come in, everyone would take all the offers in front of that bid and drive the stock up 25 cents? What if, for the last 3 points, the bid would come in at a higher price or, if taken out, at the same price, and now the bid is starting to come in lower? I.E. before, he would bid 25.25, come in, get taken out, and come back at 25.25, then get filled, and then start coming in at 25.40... now he's coming in at 28.10, 28.10, and now 28.00, 27.90... Something is changing. Trading is about detecting change. At this point, the sellers are starting to have more control. What if we see a big print on the offer on a plus tick for 55,000 shares, if before the biggest prints were the 5000 share prints going off on the bid and one 12000 share print at a big offer? What if, now, for the first time, the 5000 share Island bids stop coming in? Can you seriously argue with me that this is not a good time to be short stock, or that having access to the Level II does not help you in this situation? Fake size isn't an issue because throughout the trade the bids proved they were real. If suddenly the bids come in on Island for 5000 shares and then start pulling - something they never did before, I will just see that they're full of shit. If I see them pull sometimes but sometimes get filled, I'll know that asshole market makers/floor brokers/specialists/institutions/daytraders/whomever are playing games and that I should move onto another stock. No matter what happens, I learn information I couldn't otherwise have. Generally, though, that large print will signal to me that the buyer is done - especially if the orders on Island stop coming back. If after that print, the buyer starts bringing his bids back at higher levels and is able to drive the price up forcefully again, then I'll know that the seller is done and the stock is a buy. Either way, to assert that the information I attanied through the Level II in the aforementioned situation can't be used is absurd. I just made the above scenario up. I see situations like that all the time, where a huge amount of information shows me that the price will go in one way - it's a sort of logic. Because no matter how much I tell anyone what filters I use, why I entered and exited every single trade, and even why I avoided taking certain trades... they still won't have my judgement. For me, every trade is a unique story, and the more I've seen it in the past and the more I think I know what is going on, the more convinced I am that waht I think I see is actually happening. So I can tell someone all that I know, such that he spends less time on the path to developing poor judgement... but taking anything of use from me and using it to compete for my fills is not something that concerns me.