I'm also really interested if anyone is using MP to pull money out of the markest. to me it looks great in hindsight the same way a chart does. Whenever I have looked a t a MP chart realtime I have always got the feeling that it is not telling me anything that I can't see from a normal chart, and more specifically is doing it with a 15-30 minute delay. It just never seems to have really caught on does it? I can see it as having value to longer term traders in the same way that looking at 15 minute candles gives some indication of what to expect in the daily. Stiedlmeyer seems to not be too committed to upgrading his software and the attempt in his 2002 book to identify it with stocks was probably a marketing move. Jones has a vested interest in promoting it as Cisco clearly has made an investment in this area and if nothing else it would be a differentiator (as with CBOT). I am interested in what both these have to say if for no other reason that they have pulled money out of the markets (rather than purely from the seminar circuit) over years of trading. If there is anybody who is using MP consistently as a decision aid in their trading to the point where they would miss it if it was taken away I would really like to hear from them. It seems that many in this thread are experimenting with it. There do seem to be a couple of people who are using it on this board http://lightning.he.net/cgi-bin/sui...t+Profile&number=19&DaysPrune=1000&LastLogin= In the meantime I will put on my flameproof suit. The concept seems interesting but I suspect I might waste time learning a system that might not repay the investment. Looking at the value area today the market seems to be obeying a MP rule but it is also stopping at a MA and a resistance line - I suspect that is the case in a lot of cases. The nuances of MP seem to be th nuances that come from experience.
The best explanation of MP has been written by J. Dalton: Mind over Markets. The key to trading Mp profitable lies in the understanding that time triggers the trade and that the resulting MP-structure is just the confirmation.
Market Profile is NOT a system, it is a method by which to understand how an auction market functions. It explains all time frames (ie. whether you position trade or scalp). It is not some mysterious guru's tool, it's another name for statistical quantitative analysis. And it's not perfect, nothing is. It is also being further developed by various parties in significant ways. I'm constantly amazed by questions like, "is it worth my time?" to study. Why in the world would you trust anybodies answer. Especially on this board. Check it out for yourself. Compare what the theory suggests to what you observe. If it appears useful, then pursue the idea, if not move on.
I did check it out and as I said above couldn't really see anything that I was not already seeing, which was the point of my thread. Hence the question to try and get some feedback on wether there was nothing really there or I just wasn't seeing it. Thank you, I can get a pretty good idea on whose posts are based on trading experience and worth placing weight on and who are the buzzword regurgitators. Yes I know its an intuitive decision support tool for reading auction markets that gives no signals per se (so it's positioned as a non signal decision support tool?). and yes I know what a normal distribution is, and even what Kurtosis is, and yes I read the books and even looked at it real time in markets I trade - both equity and futures So far Nobody has actually said "This is how I use it to make money" have they? Even experts on it with names like 'bundlemaker'. Are your comments based on actual daily profitable usage or a few MP buzzwords from Dalton's book or a website? And guess what, I am posting here to avoid the situation of spending time on something that may not be worth spending time on. Learning from other peoples mistakes is called 'wisdom' and you have to be a few years out of high school before it kicks in. If MP is being developed in significant ways by various parties I would love confirmation of that fact but it seems to me to be a gimmick that fell by the wayside and is being brought to the fore again because there is a new generation who have not tried it. Stiedlmeyer appears not to be one of the parties developing it in various significant ways as far as I can tell. Ditch, Thanks for the book rec. I thought it was a good insightful book on market's per se and far more useful than yet another book on wedges and MA crossover even for those parties not looking to take up MP and develop it in meaningful ways.
What kind of confirmation would you like? I personally have helped develop an autmated system (yes, it's profitable) based on the ideas, I am in a room everyday that makes use of it to scalp with, I wouldn't know what to do without it. Auction market theory explains what happens and why. It works. I have found nothing else that accomplishes what MP does. I believe you're badly mistaken about Steidlmayer. I am intimately familiar with Capflow software, it's user base, and how it functions. It's leading edge stuff. There are others doing similar work. But nobody can prove this to you. It takes MONTHS of studying the available material to fully comprehend the implications.
I use the market profile almost exclusively to trade EuroDollar (not FX); 10yr and 30yr; and used it in the past to trade bund, bobl, schatz and euribor. Of course I also use candlesticks to identify larger trend lines, but my intraday trades are based exclusively on the MP... it would be pretty tough to explain how I use it exactly without sitting next to you and showing you how I derive levels and the like...but what the MP does is provide a real time graphic representation of both time and price in a way that is, in my opinion, easier to interpret than traditional ohlc or candles... here is one of the ways that I use it...if the open is higher or lower than the previous days' value area, and then drives back into that value area and double prints there, it is likely to trade through the entire value area range...works about 80% of the time and at least gives an indea of which way it is likely to trade... of course there are all sorts of things like this that can be derived from MP patterns...but that isn't necessarily what sets it apart...I just find it much easier to 'see' the market when it is represented this way (always at 30 min intervals). the reference to Dalton's mind over markets is a good one...that book is very good for figuring out how to use the MP...
here is one of the ways that I use it...if the open is higher or lower than the previous days' value area, and then drives back into that value area and double prints there, it is likely to trade through the entire value area range...works about 80% of the time and at least gives an indea of which way it is likely to trade... anyone who traded the US10yr today with market profile saw the above in action...opened above yesterdays established value area, drove down and tested the top of it and was initially rejected; came back down and established a double print within yesterdays value and proceeded to trade all the way through it stopping exactly and the bottom of yesterdays value...you may have been able to predict this with candlesticks, but it was a hell of a lot easier to see onand decide to get short looking at the MP...hope this helps...
Thanks for your input trdinglife - wil take a look. There's something very alluring about that distribution curve.............
Do you differentiate MP use between markets? e.g. would you apply this method the same way to ES as you would to ZN ?
I've looked at market profile briefly a couple of times in the past but never could make it "work" for me. I've seen papers written on the subject but they were so lengthy I never read one all the way through. I viewed the archived seminar on the CBOT web site this weekend. It was the concise "to the point" explanation I was looking for and now I've decided to take another look at market profile.