You are missing a lot. Among your posts in this thread most of what you are stating is not the commonly view held as reported by most authorities. The relationship of cash to futures is one of the most rewarding very short term indicators available for making money. this is particularly true of the DJXX and the YMXX and their relationship to DJIA. Very short term means the lead time demonstrated by the indicator signals relative to the action time required by traders. the incidence of the signal and its duration would be much like the way an auto scrunches down for a moment when a person tries to make a quick start at an intersection when the light changes. Think of a high performance car. This occurs before the leap forward effect that is the longer term effect of accelerating out of an intersection. The things that you have incorrect so far are as follows: 1. You have no signals to regard. You are not as yet able to see the market. 2. Your general understandings are, in fact, opposite of the nature of things. 3. Your views are the opposite of authorities. 4. Your time frame of connecting to the market is very delayed and not operable as a trading advantage. 5. You have no basis for presuming anything about cause and effect between two separate and differently functioning market instruments. 6. You are very unfamiliar with the types of traders in this market context, nor do you know how and when they do what they do. 7. Your CRT display is not set up to be able to see the market, apparently. All of these things can be corrected. It takes work. You need to begin to consider developing a plan to learn about how to go about learning. Turn around and go back ten steps and start over. There are many approaches about doing the work that may be ahead of you if you take it on. You must refrain from just being oriented to a view that anything of value is obvious. When it comes to money the participants in making it have almost a religious ferver and they do not part with it lightly especially when the league they play in is at the top of the pile. you have chosen that playing field vis a vis the DJIA (INDU). Get to understand that the trading world that appears to be apparent in ET is one that is shallow and is generally an expression of people who are likewise shallow and do not "get the job done". ET is set up and operated for a set of reasons. That is what happens here. Do not expect to succeed if you identify with this sort of genre. Being exceptional is a requirement to play with the smart money. Smart money telegraphs the market moves cogently and perfectly. Its trail is what you see clearly and that is at a point in time after the smart money has acted and placed itself directly opposite you. You are the dead meat the smart money eats. Right now you are perfect dead meat because you have drwan the wrong conclusions about what is going on. Your job is to move ahead TWO steps. step up and be abreast of the smart money and then step one more step to be standing in a place to "anticipate" smart money actions. The best place to BE is smart money and think ahead as smart money does. It is the opposite of the Forrest Gump/success modus which is commonly exhibited by the B people in ET. So get a couple of books on the grad school level that differentiate the smart money trading persuations. One example is Larry Harris and his book Trading and Exchanges and the summary on charts 8-3 and 8-4 and figure 8-1 which is block diagrams of the heirarchy of all traders. It is very easy to pigeon hole posters into one of the blocks as you will be able to see in a while. Soon you will be able to straighten out everything as you will be reading a great deal about how to get into the right box. To do a trade using the subject of your query it goes like this: You are monitoring the cash (DJIA) and DJXX and YMXX with respect to both price and volume as a display of the last available data in columns on three rows. You have a five column log sheet that is continually updated. The three columns that are important are entitled Squeese, stretch and neutral. Your log is divided in ranges that allow you to handle each 10 points of the YM price conveniently. In stretch you note the stretch values at the given time and you note the newer and more extreme values immediately. Do the same for squeese. To trade, you enter pairs of numbers in the INDU column and the column for what you trade (I trade a lagging index of INDU for convenience in making money). You are associating the offset of cash and the index with the price of the index. And you use this to trade long or short, appropriately, when signals are given to you. The price the smart money enters to go long is written in your trading log at the time it happens. So is the price the smart money enters to go short. These ae too late signals to make as much money as smart money does. So you operate ahead of the smart money by anticipating when the smart money is going to arrive at these values and you front run the smart money. You are entering at the same time and direction as smart money. So above you have read a load of stuff that makes no sense to you. You didn't ever consider making up a log sheet to write down anything about what you are querying. Well I have. And I do many many other things concurrently that enable me to front run the smart money. So Monday you have the opportunity to begin something. Monitor the market. Make up a logging table of some sort. Learn to "read" the market or in other words, let the market speak to you. At this point you have never seen the market. I attached an example of a log sheet. It is not what you would expect. It has little data on it. I spent a lot of logging time getting to be able to only have to make key pertinent notes (sufficiency principle) But what you do see on the sheet is that I am totally personally calibrated to trade. I am able, in effect, to take a milli second snapshot of the time rate of change that will be required for price to get to the place where smart money will trade. Since I am trading a lagging index of smart money, I just front run the the traders in the lagging index with timely market orders. Notice I put the prior close in the middle of my sheet. Don't expect to understand much of anything I post here. Using takenoprisoners as an example. He posts that I sound to himlike one of his profs at a school I was actually an ajunct prof at. He may have graduated but he is still like a carpenter who has 20 years experience by repeating the first year 19 times. he can't get what I say because his market experience has driven him into a corner he built. you are just in a place where you have made no effort to learn directly from the markets. everyone starts out the same way. no person starting out can even imagine how to learn directly rom the market. My learning curve has been a long one. When I used to post prints, I was accused of using a particular software the critic (Nitro) was familiar with to fudge my prints of a day's mentoring results. This is a way out irrationality for this turkey to make. A novice nailing 17 points on the ES is not a possibility for this type of person. It shows, on the other hand how very unreal my comments and viewpoints are to these kinds of people. Since the list of billionaires came out I compared my potential by dividing my best single day into a billion dollars. This isn't a real answer because I would really have to go through the compounding as well. But it is nice to see 586 as the "dumb" rough answer. at 73, I only have to a couple of good days a year to be where I want to be financially. You need to shape up and get some thoughts on paper about how you are going to have a plan for learning about this stuff. Don't be stuck like takenoprisoners and Nitro are.
stepped off into learning it the easy way by coming here........nothing to learn here.......watch what u r trading....nothing else and u might reach the highest level............not likely but it is possible.........my 100% system proves it but it is not for public consumption.........gift or sell..........just moved to 100%... last week.........was 4 or 5 less for a long time.......don't expect to do that........be happy at 75 or so..............too much required to go further.........takes it's toll on emotions.........THE TREND IS YOUR FRIEND.........BUY LOW SELL HIGH.......BREAKEVEN IS WONDERFUL .............ONLY BAD THING IS LOSING...........
GROB, please excuse the harsh comment......i can easily see u know what most don't........seriously....i am not smart enough to go where u do but i do have ducks in a row enough so to be okay long term............trading intraday that is......have paid my dues in time/hours/years/....sweat and tears..........not sharp enough to shorter tne learning curve.......but still very happy with final results...............TOM........grob is correct and if u can take all he will give i believe it will keep u on the correct path to goals, as long as goals are realistic.......
Ok, it is as simple as this: Reread easyriders post, then go out and get a copy of 2 or 3 technical analysis books and learn what all those zig zags represent, each bar has a message. Forget all the esoteric nonsense, forget about finding the "WHY" of what caused the last moves, even if you found out WHY it would be useless by then anyway. Many new people that come into this game think it is harder than it really is (myself included). When you get to where you understand how easy it really is you will be enlightened to learn that the 90% that fail never loosened up enough to reach that point. Learn technicals, go easy and go slow, .....it will come..... The world is your oyster if you get this right.....
=============== More power/prosperity to you including your last week high percentage; & to keep things in a humble perspective, 10 +year charts are useful on anything.Sounds like you do great with 1 trend; 2 trends work well also. Looks like Grob has custom made sheets, fine; college rule notebook can be customized nicely also. Smallest of the small time frame traders may find this amusing & thats fine also; more measuring can cut some slippage /commissions & increase win %.That can cut some profit also, so while i wish had time to record many indicators & lots more stuff but don't do that much.
Another one - I'm sure there are money making opportunities in the hours before the cash opens at 9:30. Anyone have any insights/strategies about those few preceding hours?
Yes, don't do it.............save yourself the trouble and loss..........but u won't like all who must suffer to learn that what they think might be wrong.........
================= Premarket is also a good time to review where eod price was yesterday . And wouldnt weight it as important as regular market hours; usually glance on it anyway. Remember @ one time Realtick nicknamed it; ''irregular market hours''
Hello Grob/ Jack, just ordered the book you mentioned. Is Larry Harris identical with Lawrence Harris, who wrote the "Winners and the Losers of the zero-sum game"? Well, I'll see. I actually was about to ask about internal market structures, since I'm just beginning to investigate US indices. Especially I want to understand which traders move what % of volume in what market, so as to understand actual signal flow. After I've read the book I might come back to ask. I'm sincerely grateful to your posts, I just built a Forex setup inspired by a remark you made years ago. (None of them goes by unnoted.) Nevertheless I dare to disagree with the last sentence I quoted. What I imagine is 3rd order cybernetics in action, hopefully in the next 15-20 years I'll get there... May all beings live in peace...
I think the book Grob was referring to is here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/01...f=pd_bbs_1/102-3029175-3727328?_encoding=UTF8