I'm not sure if you need to be a premium member to view this. it is a webinar by the guy that wrote that noise indicator I talked about before. He talks a lot about opening ranges, ACD, noise levels, pivots, and other measurements of volatility. I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing yet but for a guy like me that is pretty new to studying the markets from this angle it is pretty informative. http://www.bigmiketrading.com/webinars/jul31_2011/fat_tails_session_indicators/
I have heard anywhere from 15-25% of the time. Nuance comes into play b/c people have to agree what constitutes a "trend", but this was also hit upon in the book "Trade your way to financial freedom" by Van Tharp. I was going to bring this up, but held off until now. One conversation I heard constituted the majority of traders losing money to the fact that most are trend follwers/breakout traders b/c that is the sexy thing to do, and what is promoted in most books/websites, but since the market isnt trending most of the time, people are better off SMARTLY fading the market (ie. not doubling down) Again, not saying either is right or wrong, but I am glad you brought it up.
That's funny. I don't know any trend followers. I run a prop office and not once did I have a single guy trade trends. All of them were faders and all of them lost money. I think part of the reason for this is because when you fade, you have a reference point as a stop, and that makes managing the trade easier for some. Managing stops in a trend is much harder and requires far more work. But seriously, very few people follow trends, which is probably why it's so effective.
Maverick have you ever ran any stats to see if there is a correlation between narrower opening range and greater % of succesful breakout? I am curious if it is better because it is more likely to lead to a larger move in relation to the open or if it is because it gives an earlier entry point and therefore gives a better move in relation to the entry point.
Just years of experience. What happens when you have markets that trade in tight ranges is that stops begin to accumulate at both ends of the range. The longer you stay in that range, the more stops you have. Once those stops are taking out, you get the fuel needed for an explosive move. And obviously you get the benefit of a tighter stop.
Want to hear something funny. Sometimes me and another one of my buddies at my firm play a little game. Well go to the high/low ticker and pick out any decent volume stock. Look at the chart and see if it looks like its going up/down etc. Funny thing is we are very accurate in about one direction...usually the opposite!! lol Mind you this is for a little laugh, but sometimes just do the opposite of what we think. On the first and second try, we will without fail pick the top/bottom. It really is crazy after you do it. After the second consecutive look, its hard to tell your mind to do a natural reaction...after your already conscious of what your doing. My theory is that it will catch your mind off guard and the normal instinct to buy something going up or sell going down comes in to play. Really one of these days...some of the novice traders should try this. Randomness or does the 90% fail statistic say something more about market action?
Just to tell you...the natural reaction is always to buy something after it has already gone up a ton, or sell on the way down! I'd bet that most peoples natural reaction is the same...there has to be some type of system for this. Just get a new trader and sit him next to you and fade his trades! Just don' tell him what your doing lol
I'm going to list all the commodity ETF's since there is soooooo much interest (sarcastic) in commodities here. GLD - Gold SLV - Silver JJC - Copper PPLT - Platinum PALL - Palladium LD - Lead CORN - Corn NIB- Coco JO- Coffee BAL- Cotton SGG - Sugar SLX - Steel KOL - Coal CUT - Timber SEA - Global Shipping OIL - Oil UNG - Nat Gas UGA - Gasoline UHN- Heating Oil TLT - Long bond
I put these in my stock database I keep. It looks like a good way to do commodities for people like me who are scared to death of that limit up/limit down thing. I heard horror stories about that years ago about people being caught on the wrong side of a strong up draft and essentially being destroyed.