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Quote from JB3:

Care to explain what exactly are you looking for in the T&S, and share some stories or tips on why the specialist system added to your profitability? Thanks in advance.
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Most of this is outdated and of little use now, but in time and sales window I look for last price, last trade size and exchange, I used to have a separate small window with last nyse trade price and size. This together with new york best bid/offer price and size and the nyse open book (during the first years when it just came out, not now) used to give me very good picture regarding the stock I'm trading.

For daytrading the volatile NYSE stocks during 2000-2005 being able to get into and out of positions at reasonable prices was as important if not more important than correctly predicting the future short term moves for the stock. To do this you had to be a couple of steps ahead of the other traders with your orders and anticipate specialist's actions and prints before they happen. It's a little complicated to explain for me, but basically you didn't want to place any market orders with specialist after important levels were broken, and were rewarded with price improvements for your correctly placed limit order if traded "with" the specialist. Big intraday gaps and price slippage/improvements were very common for volatile stocks.

In today's market all the common 1 - 1 bid offer, last trade size don't tell me much.

Currently I'm trading 2 setups. If I'm trading a big gap up I hope it to come down a little bit right after the open on low volume and buy a few shares, and have the stock go back up and brake the high, I'll try to add some more to my longs and exit them for profit after big volume shows in prints on the way up, or if stock starts going down, for a loss if the low of the openning range is broken.

If a stock gaps up and goes higher right from the open I will look for some big volume prints and try to short there with a small stop loss, and hope the stock goes down from there, hold it for a big profit or a small loss.

Same 2 things but in reversal for stocks that gap down.

Like I said the nyse bid/offer size, last trade prints, the speed with which the specialist filled my orders all used to give me good indications regarding the short term moves in the stock, now I'm looking more at overall market conditions and stock sector and longer trades with not as precise exits as I used to have before.

Don't hesitate to ask about anything, I'll try to answer as best as I can, I love talking about anything related to trading.
 
LM, WFC, BDX, GD, TEL, DV and pretty much any of the financials, I will probably concentrate on gap ups instead of gap downs for today
 
lots of premarket and afterhours trading today, that's why the number of stocks traded is relatively big, please ignore the 774 profit for 200 short CVD, since I put that short trade today afterhours at 40.75 and the platform is showing the p&l from the closing price, tomorrow morning it will correct itself and show negative 774 for that stock, the final p&l today is +316, about 8000 shares traded total

it was a very interesting day today, didn't hold my profitable trades as long as I shoud have, but on the positive side didn't get hurt too bad by my bad trading in BDX, that stock was a trap for me and could have done much more damage

its been 3 decent up days considering the size I have been trading, so tomorrow I'm going to increase size to 300-600 with 500 dol. max loss for the day, very excited about this

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to get today's correct number add 774 to CVD (read my yesterday's post for explanation), so final is about +300 for CVD and +387 total, 4000 shares traded total

was watching too many stocks at the open, missed a good trade, and traded wrong size (100 instead of 300), so I'm buying the second monitor earlier than I thought, probably right after I finish writing this

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I have a question in regards to the stocks you trade and how you look at volume/T&S.

It is said that volume moves price, and we definitely want to ride the coat tails of the institutional buyers/sellers. I do this by looking at the prints to see who the aggressive buyers/sellers are when we approach the 5 min opening range, then I trade the breakout/false breakout of that high/low opening range.

The one problem I am having is when trading these stocks is reading T&S.

When T&S is screaming I end up getting fooled by retail buyers whipping around 100 share lots, then having the big dogs fade the false breakouts. Or in the other case, having the pros swipe multiple levels above the breakout, leaving me with slippage and fuming once they dump their position by hitting the bid and bring my blotter in negative.

Do you look at all the prints that go through to determine if its retailers or institutional?

If so, do you filter your T&S to only display trades larger then "x" and if so can you recommend a number that would be a good filter, provided that the pros don't iceberg their trades into smaller lots to hide their moves.

I have a filter of 20 contracts and more for my ES T&S, and its helped me, but I just don't know where to start when dealing with Equities T&S.

Sorry for the long read i'm just trying to get your insight based on your experience.

Thanks and happy trading.
 
lots of earnings today but not many stocks for my taste, will trade FLS and CB, maybe CVX too

i will answer the questions in previous post around lunch time
 
Many years ago the best trader I knew at the time told me he had a separate tape for prints of 5000 shares or more for the NYSE stocks that he was watching. So I tried filters for different amounts of shares to see if it will give me any edge, and it didn't. Since I was watching only a couple of stocks any given time I had no problem following all the prints, no matter how small, unless the stock would do over 10mil. shares for the day. In my mind of course I give more importance to bigger prints, and nyse prints used to be more significant, but not so much anymore.

Also now a big order can be broken into number of smaller sizes and routed to different ecns and exchanges to hide the true size, but what can't be hidden is the total volume for the time period, that's the main reason I'll look at the volume part of the chart.

Another problem with setting a filter for size prints is that I will trade different stocks on different days and its not so easy to immidiately figure out the correct size for the filter, 1000 shares might be a significant print for one stock and nothing for another.
 
LNN had a crazy open, it was down 2 in premarket when i started watching it, and dropped 5-6 points within a few minutes, very exciting to trade, unfortunately didn't make anything on it

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