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Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition


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Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition

  #1 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
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Thanks Received: 68

I have plenty of trading experience but I not to much coding, so I am going to attempt to do this publicly in case anyone wants to help.

hello everyone i watched Sam028 webinar on wednesday, it was very informative. I believe he showed a lot of important aspects of playing with the colour of your indicator also putting arrows and price on the chart. the only thing that was not there was taking those points in the code and creating a flag or enum for a strategy to read and place orders.

so i have attempted to create something like what i am talking here to get support and help figuring up how to bring it to completion. the reason i think this is has value, is two fold one when learning to work with the markets it's the indicator that is important not the strategy, so you can easily do back testing about making adjustments while learning to trade, the second reason is when learning to code you only really need a strategy that kinda like training wheel for learning to ride a bicycle while learning to code.

So far all of the coders have said that it would be best to use a dataseries, but I am thinking about using enums

so here is my idea in a wireframe so to speak, the strategy code is from NT7's wizard



Indicator:
 
Code
Statement:
// creating plot colour changes flags in an indicator for a strategy to place orders by
____________

NameSpace:
public enum OrderLogic {
			Neutral,
			LongMarket,
			ShortMarket,
			LongStop,
			ShortStop,
		}
____________

Variables:
____________

Initialize:
orderState = OrderLogic.Neutral;
____________

OnBarUpdate:
____________

Logic:

// to be placed at colour changes for the strategy to read these

orderState = OrderLogic.LongMarket;
PlotColors[0][0] = longColor;		
BarColorSeries[0] = longColor;

orderState = OrderLogic.ShortMarket;
PlotColors[0][0] = shortColor;		
BarColorSeries[0] = shortColor;

orderState = OrderLogic.Neutral;
PlotColors[0][0] = Neutral;		
BarColorSeries[0] = Neutral;

orderState = OrderLogic.LongStop;
PlotColors[0][0] = longColor;		
BarColorSeries[0] = longColor;

orderState = OrderLogic.ShortStop;
PlotColors[0][0] = shortColor;		
BarColorSeries[0] = shortColor;
____________

Properties:
____________

pseudoCode:
____________

Strategy:
 
Code
#region Using declarations
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Drawing2D;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using NinjaTrader.Cbi;
using NinjaTrader.Data;
using NinjaTrader.Indicator;
using NinjaTrader.Gui.Chart;
using NinjaTrader.Strategy;
#endregion

// This namespace holds all strategies and is required. Do not change it.
namespace NinjaTrader.Strategy
{
    public enum OrderLogic {}
    
    /// <summary>
    /// Enter the description of your strategy here
    /// </summary>
    [Description("Enter the description of your strategy here")]
    public class WhitePicketFences : Strategy
    {
        #region Variables
        // Wizard generated variables
        private int longMarket; // Default setting for Market
	private int shortMarket; // Default setting for Market
        private int neutral; // Default setting for Neutral
        private int longStop; // Default setting for Limit
        private int shortStop; // Default setting for Limit

	// tickoffset is so the limit order can be adjustable 
	private int tickOffSet = 4; // Default setting for LimitOffSet
        private int stopLoss = 15; // Default setting for StopLoss
        // User defined variables (add any user defined variables below)
        #endregion

        /// <summary>
        /// This method is used to configure the strategy and is called once before any strategy method is called.
        /// </summary>
        protected override void Initialize()
        {
            SetTrailStop("", CalculationMode.Price, StopLoss, false);

            CalculateOnBarClose = false;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Called on each bar update event (incoming tick)
        /// </summary>
        protected override void OnBarUpdate()
        {
            // Condition sets LongMarket Orders
            if (Indicator(Indicator # values)./*name of method in indicator logic if any*/[0] == OrderLogic.LongMarket)
            {
                ExitShort("Exit", "");
                EnterLong(DefaultQuantity, "LongMarket");
            }

            // Condition sets ShortMarket Orders
            if (Indicator(Indicator # values)./*name of method in indicator logic if any*/[0] == OrderLogic.ShortMarket)
            {
                ExitLong("Exit", "");
                EnterShort(DefaultQuantity, "ShortMarket");
            }

            // Condition sets Neutral
            if (Indicator(Indicator # values)./*name of method in indicator logic if any*/[0] == OrderLogic.Neutral)
            {
                Variable3 = Neutral;
            }

            // Condition sets LongStop
            if (Indicator(Indicator # values)./*name of method in indicator logic if any*/[0] == OrderLogic.LongStop)
            {
                EnterLongStop(DefaultQuantity, TickOffSet, "LongStop");
            }

            // Condition sets ShortStop
            if (Indicator(Indicator # values)./*name of method in indicator logic if any*/[0] == OrderLogic.ShortStop)
            {
                EnterShortStop(DefaultQuantity, TickOffSet, "ShortStop");
            }
        }

        #region Properties
        [Description("MarketOrders")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int LongMarket
        {
            get { return longMarket; }
            set { longMarket = Math.Max(1, value); }
        }
		
        [Description("MarketOrders")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int ShortMarket
        {
            get { return shortMarket; }
            set { shortMarket = Math.Max(1, value); }
        }

        [Description("NeutralTradeDirection")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int Neutral
        {
            get { return neutral; }
            set { neutral = Math.Max(-1, value); }
        }

        [Description("StopOrder")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int LongStop
        {
            get { return longStop; }
            set { longStop = Math.Max(1, value); }
        }

	[Description("StopOrder")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int ShortStop
        {
            get { return shortStop; }
            set { shortStop = Math.Max(1, value); }
        }
		
        [Description("HowFarFromCurrentPriceLimitIsPlaced")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int TickOffSet
        {
            get { return tickOffSet; }
            set { tickOffSet = Math.Max(1, value); }
        }

        [Description("AccountProtectionPowerOutage")]
        [GridCategory("Parameters")]
        public int StopLoss
        {
            get { return stopLoss; }
            set { stopLoss = Math.Max(1, value); }
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

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 Big Mike 
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  #4 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
Thanks Given: 87
Thanks Received: 68

The Cost Of Tuition:
Since I am not a teacher my idea was to replay the larger points of the lessons I have learned along the way, and should you find any point one you can relate to please let me know, and if you have an differing view also please let me know, as I am be missing a piece to this rather large puzzle. Or even if you think I have missed the point all together let me know as I myself desire to have a well rounded view of how things work.

So with that said I am going to attempt to provide a road map of the path that I have come to learn on love the markets. I was tinkering with calling this thread "Learning to Trade: Fight Club Style". Because at times it just felt like I was Jack's raging sense of "they" are out to get me. But the more I thought about it that simply was not the case. So "The Cost Of Tuition" seems so much more realistic in my over all journey. And this is the over all truth to how the market works as it will let you decide how much you are willing to pay, for the lessons you are learning.

Books:
I am hoping that my perspective on the lessons I have learned will augment you from having to learn these same lessons. So a little as to how I was introduced to the markets. As this has coloured my perception of how the markets work and the lessons that I was willing to learn. I have started from nothing but the general public’s impression of the markets, so no one in my family was involved with any aspect of the markets. And so read over 35 different books to educate myself about the markets. Many were a waste of time, But a few are worth the measure of any good trader.

Amazon.com: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (9780471059707): Edwin Lefevre: Books
The first book I read in my study of the market was the story of Larry Livingston or better yet Jesse Livermore, I highly RECOMMEND you read it. I suggest it to everyone who’s asked me about learning about the markets, that this is the first book you’ll need to read because it’s "the market’s 101 classes book". And if you haven't read it in awhile I suggest you reread it.

Not only is it a great story but the lessons you can learn if you take the time to understand the methods behind what is being said it can unlock what I believe is the correct view on how one should interact with the markets.

Sidenote: Jesse trading tool set in my opinion was, tape reading of pivot points (which came later), I am rather sure he also had price action patterns he key off of.

Journals vs. Notes
I have never kept a "journal" so to speak, but I do highly recommend keeping detailed notes of your ideology as this will turn into your methodology. I suppose there is little difference between note taking and journaling aside from adding your feels and emotions to the page.

Market quip from my notes:
A few supply demand to many.

Remember all comments, questions, concerns, rantings hijackings, are up for discussion.
Any ribbing, trolling, flaming should be reviewed before posting and then deleted.

"Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition"
- a roadmap of my lessons learned as taught by the market
Follow me on Twitter Started this thread Reply With Quote
  #5 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
Thanks Given: 87
Thanks Received: 68

The Cost Of Tuition:
1998 the start of a clear tale tale bull market, this is the year that I learned all the public perceptions about the market were true.

My roommates good friend at the time had been following some forums of the day on penny stocks, he had once made 40k in a day. We had just got a cpu in the house, and so my roommate started trading tips online, tips from his friend (which were from the forums) looking up different forums, tips from anyone else he talked to about the markets. After he had set up his brokerage account, and lost his trading money, and then called his mother give him money to make his margin call, I went with him on his second time to make that payment, I still remember my little speech to him about how all I could see about what he was doing was no better than gambling and if I was going to gamble, I wanted to do it in Vegas while I was having so called fun giving my money away. And that was how I meet the markets. This has left a lasting impression on me, because this is the worst person in the markets, this is the guy whom not to be.

Books:
Amazon.com: [AUTOLINK]Tape Reading[/AUTOLINK] and Market Tactics (9780870340741): Humphrey Bancroft Neill: Books

There is not a lot I can say about this book other then if you are wondering why your not making money, I am guessing you have not read this book. All of the modern tape reading books are only rehashing the lessons of this book written in 1931. This is the fundamental principle of what is and how Price Action work.

Sidenote: The way I understand the markets, computers should be trading at the level of the tape. There is little point to having both a computer and human trade the same time frames.

Market quip from my notes:
Driving side of the trending direction.

Remember all comments, questions, concerns, rantings hijackings, are up for discussion.
Any ribbing, trolling, flaming should be reviewed before posting and then deleted.

"Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition"
- a roadmap of my lessons learned as taught by the market
Follow me on Twitter Started this thread Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #6 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
Thanks Given: 87
Thanks Received: 68

The Cost Of Tuition:
Between September 10, 2001 and September 17, 2001 the markets where closed, it did not really make any difference to me then, other than concern for my follow American. So now the date was September 18, although in my mind it’s forever the 11th of September that was my birth. That my 2nd Cousin, now my roommate at the time, had sat me down to talk to me about the markets about us becoming speculators, but it was because what happened on 11th of September and what happened to Price. This was the reason he wanted to talk to me. He had tried his hand at trading a few years earlier, mainly following the advice of his broker, he lost all he cared to before closing the account. So with the recent down spike in the market he was excited to tell me about trading options and how they worked. I told him I did not want to hear it if I was to gamble... but he politely stopped me, told me to sit down and shut up. He gave me a speech about the markets, and again I rebutted with what I had told my roommate, and he countered with logic.

Basically that there are plenty of companies and individuals that have been trading the markets of decades making good money, and all you needed to do was systematically learn how to trade the markets and there is no reason we could not be making money form the markets too. He wanted to do this with options and it just so happened that Optionetics was having a seminar the following night. Well to say the least we were sold. That's how I become a student of the markets.

Books:
Amazon.com: The Stock Market Barometer: A Study of Its Forecast Value Based On Charles H. Dow's Theory of the Price Movement (9781142653972): William Peter Hamilton: Books

This book was written in 1923 of a collection of the writings of Charles Dow, this book is still highly relevant today. Dow theory is a corner stone on Price Action I often say that his studies are the corner stone of technical analysis and not a lot of people know the foundation for Elliot Wave Analysis.

Sidenote: Dow should be more than just some indices to you.

Market quip from my notes:
Play the tide not the wave.

Remember all comments, questions, concerns, rantings hijackings, are up for discussion.
Any ribbing, trolling, flaming should be reviewed before posting and then deleted.

"Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition"
- a roadmap of my lessons learned as taught by the market
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Thanked by:
  #7 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
Thanks Given: 87
Thanks Received: 68

The Cost Of Tuition:
First things first I am so very glad I started as a newbie trading options. Options are a hard road but a great teacher, at least they were for me. Optionetics has a pretty good course over all I think although they gloss over a lot information I felt I needed to know, but maybe not needed to make money, but i am not that trusting of the details and I learned to conceptualize market behavior to understand what was happening.

I lost very little money trading options. I also didn't make much money either, as I had decided that I no longer wanted to be a 1040 kinda guy. So I stopped working, moved back home and began to read as I traded options. Since I had little money to spare also meant I had little money to trade, so I lost little. But I kept score of every cent I lost to a trade, or commission costs, sometimes my trade would be correct but the whole move was not enough to cover the cost of commission on the options, so on balance I lost. So I keep score because I wanted it all back, so I wrote it down. Options are expensive to trade in 1 lot orders the commission is crazy, but I could not offered to trade more than that so it was not long before I no longer had money to trade with, so I stopped trading I think I was about $500 from digging myself out of my hole to breakeven.

So began to think about all the ways to really make money trading options. Price Action was the key, momentum on Price Action primarily. So I turned to studying momentum and I turned to the forex market as I could still afford to trade there. Oanda.com had "paper trading accounts" I thought this was prefect since I could know learn to trade for free, the lessons I learned galvanized my foundation of how Price Action works in the markets, but it also showed me that the financial markets were also global markets.

Books:
Amazon.com: Elliott Wave Principle: Key To Market Behavior (9780932750754): A.J. Frost, Robert R. Prechter: Books

Elliot Wave analysis is just something you must learn, But by all means please do not trade by it. It is great for hindsight and reducing price action down to the probability courses of action, but I doubt you are looking to really trade in such a large time frame such as charting daily bars for your trading. Because to use Elliot in real time would equal the training of play chess to a high degree aside from also discovering a few of it's secrets. But all in all it is very important to have this background.

Sidenote: impulse, zigzags, wolfe wave, M &W, all quantify the same market action.

Market quip from my notes:
Like fire the markets are alive.

Remember all comments, questions, concerns, rantings hijackings, are up for discussion.
Any ribbing, trolling, flaming should be reviewed before posting and then deleted.

"Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition"
- a roadmap of my lessons learned as taught by the market
Follow me on Twitter Started this thread Reply With Quote
  #8 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
Thanks Given: 87
Thanks Received: 68

The Cost Of Tuition:
All this time I was teaching myself about the markets, everything was new to me. No one in my family cared about the markets, well other than my 2nd cousin but he was learning too. We had taken to different views to how the markets worked, both technical but to me his view was wrong. Our views are a lot closure today we have done a lot of backtesting and development work, I feel my view has only been refined as his has changed with the lessons we have learned, which puts us much closer in our view of the market ideology. The clearest lesson I have learn is that the more we changed and refined the principles of the indicators the more they all started to more in sync with other, no matter what was being measured. Being that movement is movement, uncompressed, compressing or compressed. These are the definable conditions of the markets, no one can argue this point with revealing their ignorance on the matter.

I grew up with lets just say the blue collar neighborhoods if even that, really more like welfare neighborhoods. The only thing I can really remember was the occasional “know it all” always seemed to say the same thing, “the only way to make money in the markets was trade counter trend.” Seemed to make sense as it supported our counter culture mind set too "We make our money doing the opposite of you! if we had the mind set to do so" Well these are the lens of the world I had before learning any other tangible thing about the markets and as I have come to understand, what is and what is not important about trading.

Books:
Amazon.com: High Probability trading (0639785382409): Marcel Link: Books

This book puts together is a very elegant way on how the tools of chart trading should be used to make money trading the markets. He also the only author that states anything close to a traders psychological state of mind that is worth using. In my opinion about trading psychology He says some things that are paramount on how I think a traders perspective should be, and he says it rather clearly too. A must read.

Sidenote: Forward testing is paper trading.

Market quip from my notes:
Your income is how many times you can put your 1k at risk a day.

Remember all comments, questions, concerns, rantings hijackings, are up for discussion.
Any ribbing, trolling, flaming should be reviewed before posting and then deleted.

"Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition"
- a roadmap of my lessons learned as taught by the market
Follow me on Twitter Started this thread Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #9 (permalink)
 
jupiejupe's Avatar
 jupiejupe 
San Diego California
 
Experience: None
Platform: Home Grown IN Development
Broker: Broker InteractiveBrokers
Trading: CL
Posts: 146 since Apr 2011
Thanks Given: 87
Thanks Received: 68

The Cost Of Tuition:
The main thing about the markets is your mental image of how the machine works. This is the primary logic of how you will get along with yourself as you are trading. If you want physiological issues, try trading counter to your personal traits, I promise you won’t enjoy that process. So if the hardest thing you can do is click a mouse you are not trading in a manor which suits you. In my understanding this is you protecting yourself from yourself. So people with bad ideologies leads to poor methodologies. Which in turn, turn to journaling, psychology and money management the catch-all band-aid for bad methodology. Don’t get me wrong psychology and money management, and note taking (journaling) are all important parts of your trading system, but they won’t fix a bad trading system is my point.

Well there are four indicators (I am speaking of the default indicators) I think have an important place in the trading world. Stochastics, RSI, DMI, MACD, they all measure different aspects of Price Action. Knowing how these work inside and out will be worth the time spent learning this, it should be a reaction.

The RSI and DMI I highly respect, these only move when price is moving in a direction. I use RSI to view trade able movement and DMI I use in reverse to show lack of movement or the end of a movement.

MACD is a wonderful tool mostly I couldn’t care about the lines direction but the gap between the lines increasing, decreasing.

Stochastic, lastly I love the most, it will show you anything you want if you filter that information thru it. But was far as Price Action is concerned, learning this indicator taught me what I consider my greatest discovery about how the markets work. I will talk about it in a future posting but I am going to be rather vague about it now for two reasons, just because it was important to me, does not mean you’ll care one way or another about it, and two should you study Stochastic and find for yourself the same thing I did, I do not want to lessen the impact it may make to your ideology of Price Action and how the markets work, as if someone had pointed out to me this factor I can’t say it would have been life changing.

And lastly charting multiple time frames on a single chart. I consider it the single best feature of NT7 in my opinion is charting MTF’s on a single chart, I hate the way they did it be I love them for doing it. This is all you need to understand to create your holy grail in my opioion. Sure there are a thousand ways to lay these out but no worries once your done it will make sense to the only person that matters.

Books:
Amazon.com: Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders (9780887306105): Jack D. Schwager: Books

Amazon.com: The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders (9780887306679): Jack D. Schwager: Books

Amazon.com: Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders (9780066620589): Jack D. Schwager: Books

By all means these books are not the last on the list, they just all go together. The Market Wizard series again these books are invaluable to learning how to view the markets, because the truth is, there is a strategy right for everyone, but they have to follow a few concepts. Of these three book I enjoyed the perspective of the last one the most, the added value of this book as that at the time I had read it in was current history, but also that the book had been written in 98/99 just before the peak of 2000 and had been updated with a where are they now after the peak in 2001. With the update the book very much showed anyone can make money in a hard trending bull market, but that simply was not the case in a sideways market.

Sidenote: Everyone ultimately gets what they want.

Market quip from my notes:
Market direction simply does not matter.

Remember all comments, questions, concerns, rantings hijackings, are up for discussion.
Any ribbing, trolling, flaming should be reviewed before posting and then deleted.

"Learning to Trade: The Cost Of Tuition"
- a roadmap of my lessons learned as taught by the market
Follow me on Twitter Started this thread Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #10 (permalink)
 
Mercury's Avatar
 Mercury 
PU , India
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Ninja Trader
Trading: Nifty Futures
Posts: 51 since Aug 2010
Thanks Given: 148
Thanks Received: 35




Hi,
Recently finished reading this book, was suggested by experienced trader.
No doubt, i gained a lot from this book.
Now i want to ask you about Marcel Link's other book " Trading Without Gambling ". If you read it, would like to hear from you.
Nice thread, definitely can correlate.

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Last Updated on September 17, 2011


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