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To the honorable Mr. Cheese, I have been thinking about this statement for days and how it jives with your other posts. Are you suggesting this could be a starting point for developing a system which exploits higher gyrations or do you see this as another strategy entirely. To state it...

If you have ever had any personal experience with someone diagnosed as bi-polar then Jacks ramblings would make more sense, not logical sense but "understanding" might be a better word. A good friend of mine was diagnosed as bi-polar and I'm no psychiatrist but listening to him speak is very...

I think his revalation of not needing an edge tells a lot about what he is doing. It means that rather than depending on something that happens sometimes (gaps, reaching S/R, etc) he relies on markets simply doing what they aways do. Hence there is no "edge", it's just a matter of taking money...

You are correct about when the contract expires but you want to add another two days (5 trading days before the 25th). That is when volume of the expiring month typically criss-crosses the volume of the new month for CL. For NG it's a similar thing. It expires 3 days before the 1st of the...

I also have AT&T's DSL and I was having similar problems for years. On a fluke I bought a newer model of the original SpeedStream modem AT&T gave me (found on ebay) and that solved it. The newer ones do a lot better job at filtering noise, error correcting, etc. I have not had to power-cycle...

Obviously from our different experiences with odd lots the answer is "it depends". I have found that a better approach is to run your system real-time but instead of actually executing trades just log it along with time & sales include bid and ask. Then review each trade and judge for yourself...

I have found just the opposite. I used to have a bottom-fishing strategy with < 100 shares that occasionally had fills BELOW the posted low for the day. These were limit orders though. Market orders may be a different story.

So here is the big question. Are you going for relative returns or absolute returns. If you are going for absolute returns then I assume you would want to balance each long (good earnings stock) with a short (bad earnings stock) to cancel the effect of market direction and that would add a...

OK, I think I get it now. Essentially every trade is offset with an SPY order, it's just that when there is an opposing stock in the opposite direction the two SPY orders "cancel out" and are not required. This works because the equal-but-opposite market component of the opposing stock serves...

If my hedge worked perfectly you would make no money (+ costs). Using SPY seemed pretty random to me but I see now there is some chance you would make money - to the extent the market does what the opposing stock would have done. If that's what works I stand corrected. I really like the idea...

What do you mean by "excess returns"? I guess I missed the point of the opposing trade.

A safer bet might be to use an ETF which is in the same industry as the stock you are hedging. For example if the stock was a financial stock you might use IYF or IYG as the offsetting position rather than SPY (IYF is a Financial Sector ETF and IYG is Financial Services). Great thread btw.

This is one area where coming from a software background rather than a trading background actually has an advantage. In the software business everything is seen as a work-in-progress. Windows, Mac and Linux is a work-in-progress, so is Java and yes, so is TWS. So a person coming from a...

The way I see it peace-of-mind is the name of the game. Bug IB, rant and rave, it's all good, but now here is how you do the peace-of-mind part. Step 1. In the Administration section you can open a "Simulator" account. It has all the trading privileges and data feeds of you main account...

I'm now sure how much work you want to do to accomplish this but here is a tool that Java programmers use regularly to do just what you want: http://www.duckware.com/jexepack/index.html This enables you to create a "normal" Windows exe file (using IB's jar's) which you can simply double...

Have you looked at JSystemTrader? http://code.google.com/p/jsystemtrader/ It is Java based and only works with IB and has no stock scanner but it's a place to start.

I was using Yahoo data 2 years ago in a profitable system and I can testify the data quality (although not perfect) was as good as or better than the data I was getting from another for-pay provider I was using. I don't really know how Yahoo can justify providing this free service year after...

I looked at my long rambling posts this weekend and thought "OMG I've turned into Jack Hershey" so I am VERY glad hear it made sense to you. I don't know why I felt compelled to focus on these sticky issues. Full speed ahead in the direction you are going, by all means!

I am in the middle of getting up to speed with an intraday system and I'm finding that a much tougher nut to crack. I'm profitable simulated (my own simulator and IB's) and I have traded it live a bit but I'm just not comfortable with it. I think multiple systems tuned for different markets is...

That's a great story. It seems what is most counter-intuitive produces the best results. I better let you get back to whatever you are working on now - probably a shorting strategy that works best in bull markets LOL!