The ACD Method

It took me a long time to learn this. When I joined the firm and before I was in a group I would simply scan the market for the most volatile stocks and day after day I would get killed. Once I joined my group my mentor showed me the value of hard work. Anyone idiot can scan for volatile stocks, even back in 2000 all it took was 10 seconds. The hard part was doing your research and looking for the more nuanced names. Once I found these names they were so much easier to trade. Very little noise, lot's of movement and very easy to read the tape.

Mav,
Yet another great post. Do you have anything else to add for those actively trading futures and/or forex markets intra-day rather than stocks?
 
It took me a long time to learn this. When I joined the firm and before I was in a group I would simply scan the market for the most volatile stocks and day after day I would get killed. Once I joined my group my mentor showed me the value of hard work. Anyone idiot can scan for volatile stocks, even back in 2000 all it took was 10 seconds. The hard part was doing your research and looking for the more nuanced names. Once I found these names they were so much easier to trade. Very little noise, lot's of movement and very easy to read the tape
Hello Mav,
I'm guessing that ACD was not involved in the trading you describe above. Am trying to tie this to your "Hint: ACD can help you do this" comment. If you were using ACD back then (and maybe you were) how would this have impacted a scenario such as this? Again, not asking for your secret sauce.
 
Hello Mav,
I'm guessing that ACD was not involved in the trading you describe above. Am trying to tie this to your "Hint: ACD can help you do this" comment. If you were using ACD back then (and maybe you were) how would this have impacted a scenario such as this? Again, not asking for your secret sauce.

I've discussed this at length throughout the thread but I'll mention it again. The number lines provide an excellent tell that is often NOT in the charts. I would look for stocks that that have been dead and buried for the last 6 months that have NOT been confirmed and now are showing improving number lines and are about to confirm. Those stocks often have explosive moves and they are NOT on anyone's radar...yet. Keep in mind that once they make those moves, Johnny 20 second chart scanner guy will be in there to muck it up. But you'll get the easy money before he arrives. This can be applied to stocks, commodities, FX, whatever. Focus on the stuff not everyone is talking about. In FX land this will NOT be the most watched pairs usually but the cross rates.
 
I've discussed this at length throughout the thread but I'll mention it again. The number lines provide an excellent tell that is often NOT in the charts. I would look for stocks that that have been dead and buried for the last 6 months that have NOT been confirmed and now are showing improving number lines and are about to confirm. Those stocks often have explosive moves and they are NOT on anyone's radar...yet. Keep in mind that once they make those moves, Johnny 20 second chart scanner guy will be in there to muck it up. But you'll get the easy money before he arrives. This can be applied to stocks, commodities, FX, whatever. Focus on the stuff not everyone is talking about. In FX land this will NOT be the most watched pairs usually but the cross rates.

So basically you need to automate the number line across hundreds of stocks (at least), then look for improving patterns with current low volatility? Suggested software to do that?
 
Sure, this is what I did a long time ago when I traded stocks actively intra-day. At the prop firm where I use to trade we use to focus on listed stocks and specifically mid cap stocks. Say MGM was due to report earnings today. That stock was going to be messy. One of my favorite stocks at the time was IGT. They made the slot machines that went into casinos. Nobody was watching IGT, they were watching MGM. MGM would report a strong EPS report and IGT would fly. Let's say on an AVG day IGT had a 1.50 range. Today it would move 5 pts in a straight line on the back of MGM's numbers. It was easy money and nobody was in it. We did this everyday. We look at any stock that either had earnings, earnings revisions, or any event that materially affected their earnings (not up/downgrades) and then looked for names that would be impacted by that news, not the main stock, maybe it's suppliers, it's customers, it's competitors, etc.

It took me a long time to learn this. When I joined the firm and before I was in a group I would simply scan the market for the most volatile stocks and day after day I would get killed. Once I joined my group my mentor showed me the value of hard work. Anyone idiot can scan for volatile stocks, even back in 2000 all it took was 10 seconds. The hard part was doing your research and looking for the more nuanced names. Once I found these names they were so much easier to trade. Very little noise, lot's of movement and very easy to read the tape.

The stuff that everyone trades is messy. Oh sure they move all right, all over the f*cking place. How does that make them tradeable unless you think you can extract alpha from a random noise process. So is this easy? Good Lord no. If it was everyone would do it. Most the guys were lazy and ran simple scans in a minute or two and jumped right in. Buying..selling...selling...buying, getting stopped out over and over. Breaking their monitors, throwing them across the room. Yeah, those were the good old days. In my trading room you could hear a pin drop. It was very quiet, we were very focused.


In your experience does this still work today or have too many people caught on to this? When it comes to competitors they usually move in line (eg if M reports good earnings then JCP and KSS will also move up)
 
So basically you need to automate the number line across hundreds of stocks (at least), then look for improving patterns with current low volatility? Suggested software to do that?

Pretty sure Mav uses R, lots of people (like myself) also use Python.
 
So basically you need to automate the number line across hundreds of stocks (at least), then look for improving patterns with current low volatility? Suggested software to do that?

If I was going to make my living solely from daytrading, I would automate. One of my partners did it using Python but R would work as well. The other alternative is to manually score a basket of say 50 diverse names that nobody watches (i.e. midcap names) with modest volume.
 
In your experience does this still work today or have too many people caught on to this? When it comes to competitors they usually move in line (eg if M reports good earnings then JCP and KSS will also move up)

You have to dig deeper. So going straight to the obvious competitors won't work today. Think outside the box. Software today makes it very easy for lazy people to get info that took us hours to find 15 years ago. You are going to have to be a much better detective than that today. Although the good news is, today you have much fewer daytraders to compete with. When I was doing this the market was swamped with daytraders. My firm alone had 1000 all doing the same thing I was. LOL.
 
My number line only confirmed
Hello Mav,
In many, many posts you refer to your number line "confirming". Would you please elaborate a bit on what it means for the number line to confirm. First, without any additional qualification, I somewhat assume that when you use the term "number line" you mean the 30NL. It makes perfect sense to me that a daily, weekly, monthly, etc A level would confirm by price going above/below that level by an amount that would signal a confirmation. As the NL is is a sequence of numbers (a time series) I don't quite get what you mean when you say that the NL confirms. For example, if the 30NL goes above the highest of the last N (say 10) values might that be a confirmation? Thanks
 
Hello Mav,
In many, many posts you refer to your number line "confirming". Would you please elaborate a bit on what it means for the number line to confirm. First, without any additional qualification, I somewhat assume that when you use the term "number line" you mean the 30NL. It makes perfect sense to me that a daily, weekly, monthly, etc A level would confirm by price going above/below that level by an amount that would signal a confirmation. As the NL is is a sequence of numbers (a time series) I don't quite get what you mean when you say that the NL confirms. For example, if the 30NL goes above the highest of the last N (say 10) values might that be a confirmation? Thanks

Tony, the textbook definition was two consecutive closes at >=9. The idea was not to get faked out by a single +10 print. I don't hold strictly to that. I generally look for that level to hold. In other words, look for constructive development i.e. NLs moving higher vs lower. And also relative 30 NL movement. For example say AAPL's 30 NL was getting stronger while the ES was getting weaker.
 
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