Hi, I'm enjoying your thread.

I was puzzled by the reverse button comment, though. Here it is:




Is this different from what you want?

I can't add to the the NT/Sierra question. Sierra does look to have more capabilities, but my charts tend to be kind of simple, and I have not felt much need to change.

I do hope you find something that suits you and that you like.

Bob.

I’m really idle this morning so I write…

About job in the industry I will tell you my story it will maybe inspire some of you about what to do and what to not do.

When I was a teenager my parents always found me summer jobs and I hated that. One summer I told them stop unless you find me something interesting. My father had a friend who was a broker and he gave me an internship. At that time I had no idea of what I like but this internship was the best experience of my life. Of course I did nothing, just watching, asking questions etc…They send me to the floor (as a guest and since that I have kept my access card in my wallet ☺) They were also doing a lot of prop. trading (they collapsed in 1987 lol) and I remember as it was yesterday that the head of equity trading ask me one morning : give me an idea what should I buy this morning ? I did not hesitate a second because I’ve just read an article about bullish expectations for gold so I said gold mines. And this mother fucker just bought a lot of them ! I was about to collapse. I did not remember how the trade end, I did not know why he has done it but I was hooked.

After that I’ve done a B.A of science with a major in math and a master of finance. But during my university time I have created 2 small businesses (nothing to do with trading/finance) so my results were poor. When the time arrived to find a job all the big names wants to hire me but not as a trader (because of my average academic records) but as a sales (they though that a guy who create business is certainly a good sale person). I took the position but I hate it. I spent my day cold calling fund managers. I realize soon that I was a “second class” citizen and that there is very little hope to become a first class one with them. But my plan was the following, a big name is good for your resume and after 6 months I've started sending BS resume to small names but this time for a trading position. A little BS + a lot of passion = success. After that every thing has been easy. People won't blame you for your BS if you have passion. They will forgive them and understand why you have done that (and in fact most of the time they will find out during the first interview but at least you had the chance to have the interview and it is what is important. Of course BS does not mean lies. At this time I wasn't sending resume saying I'm the best trader of XYZ but I wasn't saying on the other hand I'm a lousy sales...)

Good luck.

Trading:

I’ve try to replicate the way people behave on a trading floor. And of course it’s by definition imperfect since it is an electronic market (so no sounds, no personal interaction, etc…).
Most traders on the floor are not brilliant people capable of making accurate long/medium term prediction about the market but they are very efficient and very well trained to react to the trend (I’ve almost always been wrong trying to predict a market).

My system is based on the simplest rule of the market: something that has started to rise tends to go higher; something that has started to decline tends to decline more.

I don’t want to use indicators because I never see one really working and the more degree of freedom you introduce in your system the more it will be optimize to react to the past but the less it will be optimize to react to the future.

I don’t want to use time-based chart because I think they don’t tell the real story. They put emphasis on open and close prices. But honestly on the floor who care about a close or an open price. When you are trading you are not looking you watch and say: ”hey, I’ve just traded the open price of the 1 min candle…”.

I use range charts and I set my range for my primary graph at ½ R. I also use Renko has an indicator of congestion, support and resistance level (here again renko boxes set as ½ R). I don’t take a trade based on renko but I use them to avoid some trades.

Range charts tell me 2 things: of course the direction of the market but also its pace (do I have 10 bars in 1 min or do I have 3 bars in 10 min).

The system has at this point only 2 degree of freedom (2 free parameters):

1. Entry Long: buy if you have N highest high in range bars in the X time frame.
2. Entry Short: sell if you have N lowest low in range bars in the X time frame.
3. Exit Long: stop lose reached or entry short signal.
4. Exit Short: stop lose reached or entry long signal.
5. Ignore Entry when renko is on a congestion level or if it failed to brake support/resistance.
6. When in congestion use entry short and entry long rules only has exit rules if you have an existing position at this point.
7. Stop set at 1R (see above for R). No trailing stop, no profit targets.
8. And the most important rule is of course no discretionary decisions : don’t override a stop because you believe in your position, don’t cut a position because you think it has reach a max profit. This is by far the most difficult one to follow.
9. The other important rule is : be consistent. If you play what I call a session (since it has no real meaning in globex) play it till the end. If you play Asian close and Euro open stay in the market for the whole time, if you play US stay for the whole time. Don’t be discourage if you have 4 or 6 loss in a row. Don’t enter in the market if its for 1 or 2 hours, there is no part time job in this industry. The only mitigation for this rule is important economic news, play it or leave it but be consistent.

I will post more detailed results after and will comment them but in average this system generate 30 trades per day. The success ratio is around 55%. The average loss is at 0.8R, the average gain is at 2,5R.

This system seems to work on stocks but I think that the transaction cost will significantly reduce its interest. For futures my broker is IB the cost of a round trip is between 4$ up to 6$ per contract. Slippage is not a problem on very liquid contract with a bid ask spread of 1 tick (stop order always as market order, entry order could be market or limit depending on the pace of the market).