OK, I gotcha. That *was* a big fat gap a few days ago, wasn't it. So you were looking for any signs of a bounce off the bottom of it? On the 2 minute the bounce was more visible so I'll have to look at both 5 and 2 minute charts now!
You're right about years. I've been looking at this stuff for about as long as it took to complete my college degree. Even when you get "good" at trading (i.e. consistent) I'd wager it'd take a few more years to get so you can quit your day job.
I'm becoming more consistent, but still in my...
Hiya porgie without giving away any secrets of your system, what tools do you use for backtesting and where do you get your data?
I've been using wealthlab on Forex data with pretty good success. Finding free data for index futures is hard...
volente, what's the mechanism that produces the opportunity on options expiration day? Is it options being exercised causing an unusual supply/demand for stocks?
Yeah, I was thinking I was the master of trend lines with a 70% success rate over the last few weeks. YM is quite trendy which is good, but the last 2 days have been apparently random.
I've been paper trading with zerolinetrader's simulator as my IB front end. I use IB's charts which work just fine.
The plan is to transition to zerolinetrader for real trading in a couple of weeks.
Now here's a big question volente. Why YM? Why not ES or NQ?
I like YM for purely newbie reasons. The tick size is small so it gives me more room for stops and therefore risk management.
Hey those links are great volente, thanks!
So if you're going long you open a limit order at the ask and if you're selling short you open a limit order at the bid?
I was always a little worried about market orders since the market could suddenly do something weird just as I hit the "buy at market" button. Maybe that worry is well...
I admit it'd be difficult for me to replace my current income through trading. I'm not sure that's my true goal in all this however.
More than anything I'd like to be financially independent. This means that I'd like to be able to reach a point where being an employee is optional and I...
volente_00, what order types do you use mostly? limit, stop, market?
I've been paper trading using market entry with limit PT and a trailing SL and it seems OK. I'm just looking to see what others do with this YM beast.
Just to add fuel to the discussion, you might consider looking at TSim+, a free front end for IB. It also has a nice simulation mode and autotrading capability via text files.
The web site is
http://tradingsimulation.com
BTW, I've used zerolinetrader and have no complaints about it...