TOS is easy. Just setup a panel with the number of time frames you want to view. Then inside each of those panels you set your own time frame (5 min, hourly,daily, etc). The panel is that square tick tack toe looking box in the upper right hand corner.
I use Sierra Charts. With Study Overlay and Spreadsheet studies, I can get anything pretty much anywhere I want.
Well, I have them all on one grid. I would think it would be rather messy to have 4 or 5 different A levels up and down all on one chart over lapping each other. The grip approach is much nicer in my opinion. I have a grid that shows the intra-day, weekly, monthly and QTR levels all on one grid. So I get a quick snapshot.
thanks Mav, after looking at it I tend to agree....that grid feature is nice. We're looking for some possible rotations in energies today. rb/ho beat us to the punch, but could see cracks start to lose momentum higher today as well....not ACD completely, just some risk / value rotation stuff we look at. you trade relative value whether you think you do or not (same with currency) Mav opened my eyes to that in this thread in some of the original posts.
was having drinks with a trader yesterday and he said basically the same thing, there's a big disconnect between the paper crack spreads and what refiners are actually able to capture. he said it's going to be a lot like what happened with the front spread (he's been calling a big gap down in this for a while) in the last week. at some point, the virtual (paper) spreads will start to move in the direction of the actual physical spreads.
Since I've been away for a few weeks I'm going to put together a post tonight on how one should separate market fundamentals with ACD and how in my opinion one should use fundamental information with ACD. It's an important topic and one that I think causes great confusion for traders in general.
So here are some thoughts of mine on the role fundamental analysis and ACD. Broadly speaking one has to be very careful about mixing the two. The reason for this is it can cause the trader to "choose" the path that supports their bias more. For example, one is long IBM on a technical signal and the stock craters and the trader now cites fundamental reasons for staying long and not getting out. This is very common. Another example is using price action after the fact to explain fundamental news. Example: IBM is up 5% today and we find out after the close that demand for PC's is picking up in China so we equivocate the 5% move to the China news. One of the key tenets of trading is accepting the fact that we truly don't know and will never know the "real" reasons why markets are behaving the way they are. That can make many uncomfortable. It's also one of the reasons why many turn to conspiracy theories to explain things (insert anything here about the FED). What I have found over the years is the same approach that traders such as George Soros, Bruce Kovner and Michael Marcus use. They tend to use fundamentals as a filter to look for trades they think will have follow through and use technical to enter and exit those trades and be careful not to mix the two. Soros was very good about this. He formulated a theory or hypothesis. But waited until the market agreed with his theory before he took action. For me with ACD, I think one can incorporate fundamentals, but they should be used to look for opportunities, not to explain price action. We have to remember there is often a dislocation between market prices and fundamentals. I have found more often then not that the 30 day number lines usually line up really well with fundamentals. There often is no need to explain why a certain product is doing this or that. Some traders find comfort in knowing a reason for why a certain product is going up or down. The question then becomes what does one do when the fundamentals say buy but ACD is saying sell? The age old saying "price is truth" is more often right. I think as long as one can safely keep the two separate and not use fundamentals as a reason to stay in bad trades or to go against price action, the two can work well together.