Trade ES or YM for a Living

Quote from loanfinder:

buy this book and start studying:

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Trade-McGraw-Hill-Traders-Edge/dp/0071459588

in regards to calculating pivots, i suggest you ignore the 24hr H,L,C recommendation and opt for intraday time frame(if you decide to scalp).

if there ever was a holy grail for trading, this book is it.

good luck. you're going to need it.
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John Carter's book is the holy grail???? Please tell me this a joke? He has a few good things in his book but most of his set ups are crap.
 
Quote from CJMan:

John Carter's book is the holy grail???? Please tell me this a joke? He has a few good things in his book but most of his set ups are crap.
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he's just another marketer. i would never buy books unless i see proof that the author really made money himself. very few people have made money in commodities. i never even heard of john carter. i heard of jimmy carter but he made money selling peanuts.
 
Quote from jack hershey:

You may wish to reconsider.

Think of this as a possibility.

Make an excel sheet and annotate a row for each poster here.

Make the columns be topics that each has offered in this thread and if they are making money go back and pick off five or six more topics that they have offered.

Then make up some new columns for what each could be doing to improvee their market observations. Add some columns for how they could be making decisions and add some columns for how they do actions.

You will then see how each can be improving and that what some do overlaps other's efforts.

What it all will look like is a progression.

Lastly, add a column to rate the person's performance right next to his handle. You can use the terms beginner and advanced beginner and beginning intermediate to cover all the bases.

Change the color of the entries in the cells to depict the general aspect of the trading. For example color each leading indicator of what is traded as yellow. If an edge is represented then color the same edge set ups with the same color.

Save green for winning elements that deal with keeping a person in the market at all times (All RTH's)

Use Pink for the items that keep the person on the right side of the market at all RTH's.

Green and pink will give you the winning traders

If you find that a person is not using tragets, color his handle bold and balck. Target people will fail over time because they are usurping the market's role.

Finally add a column near the handle that says "HASN'T SEEN THE MARKET AS YET". Put an upper case 'X" in that column for each row.

Add another column labelled "USES PRICE TO TRADE" again put an X in for everyone so far.

Add another column labelled: USES TIME TO TRADE"., Do not put any X's in this column for any of these handles.

As you think about becoming a trader, you need to do several things. What you see on your excel sheet is largely a collection of standard orthodoxy ways of doing things where 90% of the traders fail.


As you see one reason is that apparently no one has a platform that works. Add a colimn that lists the names of the platforms being used by the handle. To see the markets nowadays requires three or more platforms. Note that no handle has three or more platforms listed.

Another reason is that you need to add coded stuff to make the platforms work as well. Add a column for listing the names of the extra coded itiems that a person needs to have to make the combination of platforms work that he is using. I have over 10 for example that relatee to the our platorms I am using.

So at this point you are getting close to seeing that there is no learning going on to become a trader if you are not seeing the markets and if you have not recieved the required extras from someone who is using them.

Go look at the extras listed on various web locations. You will see several that are crossovers that appear on almost all web lisitngs.

Next go to the automated trading web sites that deal with coding. Here you see the "snippet" story. Snippets are names for code blocks that also are sourses of the extras.

All trading can be coded and all trading can be displayed in two ways. One way is the usual stuff on platforms and extras. The other way is just a bunch of indicator lights and nothing else on the screen.

What does this set of indicator lights represent? You guessed it. It is what is needed to monitor the accumulation of profits all day long.

The lights simply tell you that you are in the market, you are on the right side of the market, you are trading the max cars the market can handle, and you see a blink once in a while that says you just parked some more profits in the bank.

I do not notice the imposition of any struggle here. I do not notice the requirement of a lot of time passing here.

These handles are people who are inventing stuff to get a partial view of something. They invent their way out of trading by losing money or not making very much.

The alternative is to know that the market is always right and to to what it says all the time and take all that the market offers out of the market as the market operates. It all works in NOW and there is no betting or guessing going on.

Start with six lights. (This is programmer talk for the minimum optimum system.)
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i was reading this input, then realize thought it was u, why can't u ever say what u want to say in 3 lines, da waste my time !
 
Trading for a living means consistancy. Psychological factors in trading make this nearly impossible for most traders. You cannot "teach" traders this. It's an acquired trait.

Having an open mind and a systematic way to "ride" a trade, and at the same time exiting a loser is the key. The difficult thing is accomplishing this. Too many people get hung up on the "money" and never the trade itself. You will have a losing trade.......that loser does not symbolize whether a system works or it doesn't. What symbolizes whether your system works is PERCENTAGES---CONSISTANCY.

In addition, Trend is KEY in this market. Too many traders either look to play a reversal on the trend using an "edge" or divergence or other crap like that OR they look for a retrace. This makes no sense unless you're position trading/hedging. If you're scalping why wouldn't you ride the buyers? That's what the whole point is. In essence that's what many of the pit traders do too. They front-run and then exit.

Lastly, the elements that go into a market are supply, demand, a time factor, and LAST is price. Price is just a number, and never an indicator.

You need to understand these elements before you trade. Too many new traders consider the "evolved electronic" approach to this game. In the 70's and 80's traders did great without computer screens. So consider that for a while.


There's several ways to trade in this market but what it comes down to is a percentage better than 50. A systematic approach is the best way to achieve this. How you go about this approach is up to you. It doesn't get any easier than that.
 
You can't make long term money trading futures because someone wins and someone loses each trade while your broker takes commissions from you.
 
Quote from mde2004:

You can't make long term money trading futures because someone wins and someone loses each trade while your broker takes commissions from you.
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Depending upon how big you're trading, commissions are meaningless.

If your first comment applied to everyone, no one would be here doing it. :)
 
"Psychological factors in trading make this nearly impossible for most traders. You cannot "teach" traders this. It's an acquired trait"

you most definitely CAN teach people this. i do. also, many successful trading firms employ psychologists etc. for exactly this purpose. imo, no matter how good the methodology is, a trader without sound EMOTIONAL grounding will almost certainly blow up. most traders will not recognize their emotional shortcomings, nor will they take the steps to rectify the situation (hiring somebody who can help them)

as for the person who said you can't make money longterm trading futures cause it's zero sum, you absolutely don't understand math. poker is also zero sum (and just like trading has commissions, poker has rake, so that factor is there as well). are you going to claim you can't make money longterm playing poker. i have done VERY WELL (before the ban) playing poker, and many of the same rules apply - emotional management, solid business plan, proper risk assessment, understanding of probability etc.

the vast majority of traders will lose money in futures. but at the end of the day, the EXACT same amount of money is won and lost in futures (sans commissions). plenty are MAKING the money you as a losing trader are losing. you can take the steps to step into the winning camp.
 
Quote from athlonmank8:

Trading for a living means consistancy. Psychological factors in trading make this nearly impossible for most traders. You cannot "teach" traders this. It's an acquired trait.

Having an open mind and a systematic way to "ride" a trade, and at the same time exiting a loser is the key. The difficult thing is accomplishing this. Too many people get hung up on the "money" and never the trade itself. You will have a losing trade.......that loser does not symbolize whether a system works or it doesn't. What symbolizes whether your system works is PERCENTAGES---CONSISTANCY.

In addition, Trend is KEY in this market. Too many traders either look to play a reversal on the trend using an "edge" or divergence or other crap like that OR they look for a retrace. This makes no sense unless you're position trading/hedging. If you're scalping why wouldn't you ride the buyers? That's what the whole point is. In essence that's what many of the pit traders do too. They front-run and then exit.

Lastly, the elements that go into a market are supply, demand, a time factor, and LAST is price. Price is just a number, and never an indicator.

You need to understand these elements before you trade. Too many new traders consider the "evolved electronic" approach to this game. In the 70's and 80's traders did great without computer screens. So consider that for a while.


There's several ways to trade in this market but what it comes down to is a percentage better than 50. A systematic approach is the best way to achieve this. How you go about this approach is up to you. It doesn't get any easier than that.
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That's a good post. Alot of good insight.
 
Quote from whitster:

"Psychological factors in trading make this nearly impossible for most traders. You cannot "teach" traders this. It's an acquired trait"

you most definitely CAN teach people this. i do. also, many successful trading firms employ psychologists etc. for exactly this purpose. imo, no matter how good the methodology is, a trader without sound EMOTIONAL grounding will almost certainly blow up. most traders will not recognize their emotional shortcomings, nor will they take the steps to rectify the situation (hiring somebody who can help them)

as for the person who said you can't make money longterm trading futures cause it's zero sum, you absolutely don't understand math. poker is also zero sum (and just like trading has commissions, poker has rake, so that factor is there as well). are you going to claim you can't make money longterm playing poker. i have done VERY WELL (before the ban) playing poker, and many of the same rules apply - emotional management, solid business plan, proper risk assessment, understanding of probability etc.

the vast majority of traders will lose money in futures. but at the end of the day, the EXACT same amount of money is won and lost in futures (sans commissions). plenty are MAKING the money you as a losing trader are losing. you can take the steps to step into the winning camp.
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Exactly my point. That's what I had the "quotes" around the "teach". What I meant was that there's no sound rules on how to teach a person this. Every person is different, and so unless you have a professional to guide you it can be very difficult.

On the other hand there are successful traders who have learned through trial and error, however it certainly takes perseverance.
 
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