Speaking of stocks... I'm still going hard on my ACD programming adventure. I've got my software scoring all the components of the sp500 every day with the idea that I'm going to use it to manage my meager investment account. To date I have put all my money into the sp500 on a monthly basis and obviously through sheer luck and living in an era where stocks have done nothing but go up that has worked out well so far. I'm looking to take things up a notch without necessarily turning it into a trading account. I'm doing some stuff with forex too and I am trying to keep all the riskier trading activity in that account. Here are some ideas I have so far: 1. For trading the SPY/ES it seems that by tracking the ratio of positive to negative number lines, one can time the market pretty well and at least get flat when things start to look ugly. 2. For individual stocks, I am leaning towards sorting them by 30 day NL at the end of each month, and trading them off a 10 day NL for entry and exit. Just thought I would share what I'm working on right now for my conservative stuff. I am proud to say that I got short equities on May 12 and flat on the 19th, but didn't have the balls to get long on the 19th like I should have. Still fighting that trend in my mind... Here is my sp500 output tracking the ratios of various levels of NL IE ratio of +2/-2, +6/-6 or more etc...
is the top row the ratio of + to - NL? Do you think this provides anything substantial over say...something like a list of advancers and decliners each day? Also, what software and program are you using to score each component of the sp500 automatically?
I like the bit about edges not happening to be on the timeframe you prefer. I've had to adapt. http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-market-is-not-broken.html
Sorry I didn't really explain it very well. The bottom 4 rows are the ones that I am really using. They represent the ratio of some different categories of NL's. I don't know yet if it is an improvement over advancers/decliners. I need to check that. The program is one that I have developed over the last few months.
I've hesitated quite a bit with this post, but this little discussion has prompted me to proceed. I would like to reach out to all those who use ACD and Python for programming, which is why I'm not asking in the Programming Forum. I would like to learn enough Python to do ACD stuff and perhaps analyse market structure, as in the length and duration of swings and pullbacks in 10 minute charts, hourly charts, etc. I looked at Automate the Boring Stuff with Python and Learn Python the Hard Way and I didn't like them, so I ordered Python Crash Course. I don't want to learn how to create a web page, games, or send emails. Let me explain. I didn't learn Excel. Of course I did learn basic syntax, cell references and stuff. Beyond that, I taught myself whatever I needed. The lookups, when those were inadequate Index, Match, regression, histogram, frequency, and so on. Today I'm pretty good with Excel as it directly relates to my needs. Many things I still don't know, don't need, and don't care about. I would like to do the same with Python, purely for ACD and market analysis. I know I will have to learn the basics, working with files, the language, but I don't want to spend time on the whole nine yards, just what I need. So, can any of you who has journeyed down this road share the books that helped, online material perhaps?
@justrading I have coded up a simple system that hooks up to IB and executes using IB in Python. That said, in order to do that I had to learn basic OOP(coding 101). While I will point you to Khan Academy, Treehouse and etc, you will find that is incredibly basic and the learning curve will be very steep. Coding is one of those things you get out what you put in. TL;DR: Look at Quantopian. You will still need to know how to code though.
Thank you for the tips. I know it's going to be work, not sure why I'm embarking on it at my age, but why not, markets and ACD are what I do every day, and I've no idea when the days will run out.
I was worse off than you when I started as I had never even done anything remotely advanced in excel. I bought several books and found them pretty useless for what I wanted to create. They did help for learning the basics of the language but later I found free websites that were better. The most useful resource I found was stack exchange. To date I have yet to post a question there. After finding the right way to phrase a question, I found that it had already been answered on there. I would recommend mapping out what you want to accomplish in simple tasks and start figuring out how to code them. IE write code that can input 5 minute data and return the high and low of the day. Then try and write code that can return the high and low of x time to x time during that day. Then one that instead of returning the high and low returns the time that it was made at. Most of my code is stuff that i found online, copied and pasted and through much trial and error modified to fit my need. I could never write it from scratch and honestly I can't really explain how it all works from memory. I definitely don't consider myself a programmer at this point, but I did manage to create what I needed. I will say it took a lot of hours and I didn't enjoy 99% of it at all. Good luck!
@baggerlord @mav74 Very elementary/ignorant question....looking at this chart it broke support on 5/11, same day NL went neg. I've noticed this before on others posts on using NL, so what is the advantage of NL over straight charting ?.