ssternlight - Besides maybe Woodie, do you know of anyone that is consistently profitable trading CCI.....thanks.
My observation was that Woodie wasn't really profitable -- there were lots of bad calls there that got "covered" up. The rules kept changing as well. What may have worked before I got there certainly didn't work while I was there. During the time I was there, he went from minute to tick charts to volume charts, added new patterns, discarded old ones, started giving seminars, pushed esignal, booted people who tried to find ways to make his stuff work, etc... In short, it wasn't a hard and fast approach. It constantly changed -- that's both good and bad. I used to hang with DrBob back in the day -- about 4-6 of us had a little subroom there. He used a longer term cci to condition his entries and was fairly consistent on bonds (ZB mostly). I left before he became a moderator much less got booted and started his own room with Dharma. As I look at my own evolution as a trader, I have to say that this was a non-educational detour that thankfully led me back to backtesting and system trading. Please don't take my $.02 as the holy grail but that's the way I see it now.
Back to systems trading - Smart Man!!! I spent a week in Woodies room about two or three years ago and that was all I could take (he kind of put me to sleep each day). I am not smart enough to use a CCI and be able to make money consistently.....it is all systems trading for me too. So what products do you trade in your systems?
I have not really followed Woodies room at all, apart about 2 half mornings over the past month, so I can;t really comment on the consistency of the calls made there. I do dislike the idea of lemmings following one mans ideas in the hopes ofgetting rich without having to study or work really. (But thats for another thread). As regards CCI, if used properly it can make you a lot of money, my systems are based on CCI,, its not all I use as that would be foolish but it can and is productive. If someone has the patience to play with it enough using more than one time frame then you will find some way to make money. Using a 5min tf only is like having a wank with both hands tied behind your back- - there are things that you can do but its not that good. Just my 2 cents as well
I visited Woodie's seminar in Prague this June (had a vacation there and it would be stupid not to spend one day to learn something interesting) and can definately say that there is nothing magical about Woodies CCI at all. For example, for ZLRs Woodies DOES NOT use only CCI. He uses and recommends proprietary Sidewinder, but it' not a secret that SW is just a combination of LSMA and 34EMA to define a trend which people like GB007 use for ages. So no surprise ZLRs really work with MA filter. At least for me they do (though I prefer to rely on price action rather than indicators, they are all too lagging for me, even CCI). The same with other patterns with exotic names like "Vegas" etc. When I saw Vegas I asked Woodie: "but it's just a divergence isn't it" and he just said "yes". So presonally I can't imagine how such essential things like trend retracements and divergences cannot work. They are the essence of the markets, so they are bound to work. The main strength in Woodies system in my opinion is his position management. He definately cuts losses short, doesn't let the profit turn into a loss and lets the profits run. And it pays off... So I had quite a positive impression from Woodie. He just properly uses things everyone knows about but 90% don't follow and absolutely no surprise he makes money with it. BTW he said, Mark Douglas is going to mention him in his new book which will be released soon. We'll see. My 2 cents about Woodie...
Fx traders - the "woody pivots" included on the woodies cci esignal template will give false readings when trading fx. Woody has altered the classical Pivot Point formulation (previous days HLC/3) to (previous days HL and todays open x 2). This may be fine when trading stocks/indexes when there is a gap open to take into consideration, but trading a 24 hour market there is no gap open. If you were to use the common GMT midnight as the "start" period, then using "woody pivots" would put too much emphasis on the opening price - and the PP, S and R levels would be all out by a few pips. Thats assuming you even use such stuff - (I just take the default of my screen). Re Woodies CCI methods: You don't need to go into the chatroom and you don't need to go to the seminars - it's all freely available on his website for anyone to try it out and use it anyway they like. Same for the templates. I've only been in the chatroom on 2 occassions - interesting to see it all i must say. The work that is being done at WCCI at the moment on "ghost" trading is pretty interesting; Madscalpers "confluence of timeframes" work is also good stuff (on his website posted earlier in this thread). Clint_tx had an interesting write up on regular divergence (as oppossed to the "published" reverse divergence), OLM came up with the "slingshot" nuance of the ZLR (I know this because I asked him personally). Dharma and drbob are heavily into AMT these days (basically fib. concepts and using range charts). drbob came up with 5034z and 50140 (in essence zlr's that looks at the 50cci for confirmation - in it's simplest form it is higher timeframe analysis to gauge the strength and direction of a trend). He also popularised SAG (Shamu After Ghost) - quite a radical variation of two existing WCCI patterns. Point is that a number of long term profitable traders began with "classical" woodies approach and then branched out into there own areas of interest - putting their own "spin" on things. Someone mentioned that this stuff is for scalpers only - you can swing trade (or trade micro-swings) using WCCI if you use larger timeframes - the patterns are the same be it the fastest tick charts to Monthly charts.
Will be great if Mark employs a writer to make the darned thing more readable than the last two books.
actually they have been calling, or suggesting that if one does the learning curve and sees the patterns and just trades "the damn patterns", as Ken Wood frequently says, then they would see quite a few trades for 20ticks, both in the YM and the ER2 all throughout the month of August. that's the best endorsement I can give on him, his room and his system, which others accurately stated is more than just using the CCI alone. It is more than just using a few indicators in tandem, its also applying what has worked in the past as it adjusts (curve fitting scenario) to what is happening at present in the markets, both short term day trading and midterm trading (over the past few months). as far as showing proof of one's trading account or results, well that's so subjective as to beckon the question of why would one want to other than endorse the method of the learning until one is earning approach... other than that, I believe one would need to be a licensed securities / futures broker, so as to have the legal protections of the existing securities laws, as I believe that request to show proof is a solicitation.... cheers
This is the first thread about Woodie and his room that is not full of garbage. Wow, how refreshing. I have been lurking in the room for 3 years and have found it tough going. Until I added a couple of tweaks and now it works well, but it would be awfully tough to automate. I wait for some qualified ZLRs....the qualification being there has to be some volume to thrust it. Any surge of volume with a zlr works. How do you see volume? You can use a volume chart. You can look at level 2 in order to see if there are some big orders waiting. You can use tick or volume charts instead of time. Or you can go in at times when the volume will peak like economic announcements. Anything with a star on it in Econday is great. Trading at volatile times is contrary to the Woodie philosophy. But I find it gives me the best opportunity to make money. I would rather make few trades with a little size. Than a lot of small trades. Makes for an exciting 15 minutes though. LOL. I enjoy some company when I trade. The nicest people hang out there and we have some fun conversations on Skype.