Spydertrader's Jack Hershey Futures Trading Journal

[terminator]

I am trading FTTS barely profitably on SPI200 end of day charts. I have a problem in that when there's an extended rally in one direction i keep on seeing alot of FTT'S which are almost always wrong.
This only occurs when day to day volatiilty is low and the index just slowly marches upwards at about 0.5% per day. its infuriating. Ive attached an example of the chart for you guys too look at

thanks

 

[Tums]

Quote from Spydertrader:

1. I currently have my 'offset' value set at 65

- Spydertrader

Spyder:
The number from indexarb yesterday was 70.10. How did you arrive at 65?

 

[bundlemaker]

Quote from terminator:

I am trading FTTS barely profitably on SPI200 end of day charts. I have a problem in that when there's an extended rally in one direction i keep on seeing alot of FTT'S which are almost always wrong.
This only occurs when day to day volatiilty is low and the index just slowly marches upwards at about 0.5% per day. its infuriating. Ive attached an example of the chart for you guys too look at

thanks

I suspect part of your problem is understanding what resolution level you are on and then being sure to apply the correct rule set. The 2 ftt's you have marked are indeed ftt's of DOMINANT TRAVERSES. What comes after a dominanat? NON-DOM. Then you get to monitor what happens at RTL. At a big forest level of trading, you woudn't be exiting except at a RTL break, which you didn't get until later.

Also, I note that you are missing a shallower channel staring from the beginning of the up move.

Finally, I believe that correctly understanding and applying gaussians would hellp you understand dom/non-dom and keep you on correct resolution level. In order to do that you must use color coded (black and red) volume histogram bars.

Hope this helps. Your difficulty appears to be a common one (previously experienced by myself for sure) but one that is surmountable with proper effort and attention to detail.

 

[Tums]

Quote from terminator:

I am trading FTTS barely profitably on SPI200 end of day charts. I have a problem in that when there's an extended rally in one direction i keep on seeing alot of FTT'S which are almost always wrong.
This only occurs when day to day volatiilty is low and the index just slowly marches upwards at about 0.5% per day. its infuriating. Ive attached an example of the chart for you guys too look at

thanks

labeling your pt1, pt2, pt3 can help you to visualize whether you have spotted the proper channel location.

use different color lines for tape and higher level channels. It helps you to see the forest better.

 

[Spydertrader]

Quote from Tums:

The number from indexarb yesterday was 70.10. How did you arrive at 65?

Please review this post.

Quote from Spydertrader:

Several methods exist for calculating the 'offset' value. Some have chosen to use the 'premium' value from indexarb.com, while others, choose to simply use the offset created by the difference between the YM and the INDU to 'zero out' the formula.

- Spydertrader

 

[terminator]

Quote from bundlemaker:

I suspect part of your problem is understanding what resolution level you are on and then being sure to apply the correct rule set. The 2 ftt's you have marked are indeed ftt's of DOMINANT TRAVERSES. What comes after a dominanat? NON-DOM. Then you get to monitor what happens at RTL. At a big forest level of trading, you woudn't be exiting except at a RTL break, which you didn't get until later.

Also, I note that you are missing a shallower channel staring from the beginning of the up move.

Finally, I believe that correctly understanding and applying gaussians would hellp you understand dom/non-dom and keep you on correct resolution level. In order to do that you must use color coded (black and red) volume histogram bars.

Hope this helps. Your difficulty appears to be a common one (previously experienced by myself for sure) but one that is surmountable with proper effort and attention to detail.

with the volume gaussians i cant seem to get tradestation to color them in (running 2000i). wondering if anyone has the script for a paintbar function to color them in. If any of you guys here have that that'd be greatly appreciated

 

[Spydertrader]

Quote from The Swordsman:

If you dont mind, i have a quick question for you concerning bars that take out both a new high and new low to the previous bar. Are there any rules associated with them? Do they signal anything with any consistency? 4/4 ES bar at 15:30 is an example.

Monitoring 'bar to bar' only occurs at 'Action Points' for Coarse Level Resolution (Forest / Tree) traders. Unless a trader monitors on the 'Leaf' Resolution Level, 'engulfing' bars have no significance. Some have named one type of engulfing bar "FT3's" - as a method to describe a bar which Forms a Point Three and an FTT on the same bar. However, note the significance for these 'FT3' bars results from their context (they formed a Point Three and an FTT creating 'action points' in the process) and not from the bar itself.

- Spydertrader

 

[Tums]

Quote from terminator:

with the volume gaussians i cant seem to get tradestation to color them in (running 2000i). wondering if anyone has the script for a paintbar function to color them in. If any of you guys here have that that'd be greatly appreciated

You should have an indicator named VolumeAvg. It paints the bar in colours.

In case you don't have it, here's one attached.

edit: I have uploaded a new attachment. This version draws 4 lines for PRV.

 

[El OchoCinco]

In addition set the Average input on the Volume Avg indicator to 1 period and you get a nice line across the the tops of the volume bars and the peaks and valleys and Gaussies really stand out.

Quote from Tums:

You should have an indicator named VolumeAvg. It paints the bar in colours.

In case you don't have it, here's one attached.

edit: I have uploaded a new attachment. This version draws 4 lines for PRV.

 

[vjr]

Quote from makosgu:

The problem with esignal is that it does not commit the extremes to memory. I haven't done the catching up on the thread yet but in gleening through your indicator, it appears as though the programing does not store the extremes. In a sense, you want to be plotting just like a HLC bar. That means, you always want to be plotting the MAX NEUTRAL OFFSET of the bar/fractal, the MIN NEUTRAL OFFSET of the bar/fractal, and the CURRENT NEUTRAL OFFSET of the bar/fractal. Your indicator is missing the extremes and appears to plot the NOW which is fine if your sweeping is on top of the ball. However, if your sweeping does not efficiently spot the data, you will have missed the datapoint/signal, hence the need to capture MIN/MAX/NOW. The extremes are important because they tell you how prevalent the upcoming ES move will be...

Time for me to join the thread. I've been following since the end of Jan. Ok, for all you esignal users out there. I called esignal about the above issue and below is their response:

"The Open, High, Low, and Close values are compared with each symbol in a spread for each 1 minute period, which gives you 4 values. Due to the nature of spreads, it can be possible for the comparison of the Highs to be a lower value than the comparison of the Lows or even the Opens or Closes. To account for this and display bars that make sense, the values of each bar in the spread results are below:

Open = Value of comparison of Opens
High = The highest value of the 4 calculations
Low = The lowest value of the 4 calculations
Close = Value of comparison of the Closes

It's possible that some of the Highs and Lows are the same as an Open or Close. If the interval is greater than 1 minute, the Highs and Lows of the interval are the highest and lowest overall values of all the calculations during the interval.

Once a spread has been pulled in from the server, the RT data then starts filling in with a true tick by tick comparison. This will then potentially create a problem when a user collects for a long period of time and then refreshes or if they compare between several people looking at the spread, so we've also added a function in the charting to cause the bars to adjust to the standard calculation at the end of every interval period. Because of this, you can see a bar forming and reaching a high or low that then changes when the bar is complete.

When designing this we talked with many of the corporate users as well as beta testers and everyone agreed that this was the best compromise since we can't effectively base the spreads on tick data."

Ok, the issue of not recording Max H/L on the 1 min chart can be fixed if you use a 2 min chart. So my question to Spydertrader is can we use the 2 min chart to help us slow sweepers to see extreme moves?

Thanks