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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
As I am preparing for 2012 trading, I've been doing quite a lot of homework over the past couple weeks. I've nearly finished another two trading books, sorted through and rebuilt my charts from scratch, done some backtesting, done chart analysis on a lot of different markets, reviewed average swing sizes... (I have also been preparing physically for the new trading year; added to my regimen of health supplements, been doing cleansing teas and herbal formulas this week, increased my workout intensity, yoga is kicking my butt.)
Since I am anticipating expanding my instrument range, I have been doing some studies on daily volume and volatility of various markets, seeing if I can standardize the range charts I am familiar with to work similarly in alternate markets. I am uploading a few of the study documents that were created recently, thinking someone else might find the results interesting. Or maybe I will come back to this later. I save so many trading files over a year's time (currently 185,929 files in 1,395 folders under the main folder "Trading" ) it might be nice to have this journal to help reference what I was thinking at the time I made them.
Attached are;
1) "Crude vs Multiple Instruments" - This study was an export of various ATR settings, plus volume, to get a feel for how I might apply the range charts I typically use to other markets. While I was there, I also looked at the daily equity volatility. CL is the standard reference, and all comparisons are to that instrument.
2) "Tick Value - All Instruments" - Can't get more self-explanatory than that. Easy export from the NT Instrument manager, but still was interesting to see in dollars.
3) "CL 6 range swing length 4-11 through 12-11" - This was a continuation of a study I have done in the past, and just did on roughly 30 days data earlier this week, but takes in a much larger data sampling than I have ever done. The swing lengths were calculated using PriceActionSwing (a brilliant piece of work by @dorschden, and I doubt I would have ever gotten as far on this study without it.) BTW, this covers a total of 10,493 "swings", a decently large sample data.
For some reason I neglected to cover the bottom two instruments in my PDF print range, and then had closed the parent document and had to reformat again. Attached is the multiple market vs crude again, this time with Silver/SI and Corn/ZC.
On a very unrelated note, I use a beige background with black bars (or red/green candles). The eye strain is too much for me with white on a black background. I have read tons of research that is conflicting on whether a light background or dark background is less stressful on the human eye. So I just went for a light colored but not bright white background, with dark bars. It works for me and gives me as little eyestrain as I can imagine, compared to how my eyes felt with both white and black backgrounds. Would be interesting to hear your take on it Gary, as you seem to like darker backgrounds.
I'm not sure Josh. I have tried a lot of color combinations. I don't know if you saw the recent charts of 8 different markets, but for that analysis I have chosen a white background with all black bars.
But, on my trading screen, I have the exact same timeframe with a black background and all white bars. Then, on my main entry chart I was using the BackgroundGradient in blue and green, because it made me feel more relaxed. But, I have recently rebuilt my 6-range chart and removed the BackgroundGradient. I believe the blue background actually made me slightly prefer long trades, so I am going all black background for awhile on the range charts.
I started on all white screens in NT, but had all black in Tradestation before NT, and before that, all white in Scottrade. I do know I don't like a lot of different colors at once. The most important thing is that it is easy to see what I want to see, and for me that means simplicity.
