So, I made it a step further with this experiment today. In TS7, I set up an alert to trigger with every tick in a 1 tick ES chart, irrespective of bid or ask. I was somewhat floored by the experience of listening to the market trade. It has definite rhythms! I guess this is what many would use a squawk box for. I don't know why these rhythms were less aparent to me before, except that on the screen, I'm not aware of the minutia of order flow throughout the entire day. Basically, it was an aural representation of tick count. I was really blown away. There were several points throughout the day where I might have traded on what looked like a breakout without sound, but with an aural representation these were more easily identifiable as false starts.
This may sound a bit silly, but the first rhythmic pattern to emerge repeatedly was most similar to what I believe is a "cha-cha" (and I may have this totally wrong... I'm not a dancer). During extreme runs on ES, I noticed a tendency for orders to cluster in a 1, 2-3-4 .... 1, 2-3-4 pattern. This happened throughout the day. Another prominent pattern was that higher velocity breakouts happened in more of a machine gun burst rhythm. Finally, there was plenty of noise. I hope that what I was hearing during saturated periods was indeed a market rhythm, and not just TS's quote server burping through the traffic. Any thoughts?
I'm encouraged by this initial experience and want to take this several steps further. Specifically, I believe tgregg's idea about assigning separate tones to the bid and ask would add much depth. I was also thinking it would be beneficial to separate those tones between left and right speakers, buyers all on one side, and sellers on the other. I may post a recording of what I heard today to give others an idea. It really was enlightening.
Logistically, I believe there are several ways to accomplish this. Since TS7 will only let you use one alert sound for all alerts, this would require a custom solution. Given my tools, I think my best bet would be a java application that receives price info from IB, and triggers wav files accordingly. Unfortunately I have little experience with java or the api, so I will be starting from the ground up on this. If anyone feels they can contribute, please do. It may take me a while to get this simple app written.
Thanks very much everyone for sharing your ideas and anecdotes on this topic. Much appreciated.
Sean
This may sound a bit silly, but the first rhythmic pattern to emerge repeatedly was most similar to what I believe is a "cha-cha" (and I may have this totally wrong... I'm not a dancer). During extreme runs on ES, I noticed a tendency for orders to cluster in a 1, 2-3-4 .... 1, 2-3-4 pattern. This happened throughout the day. Another prominent pattern was that higher velocity breakouts happened in more of a machine gun burst rhythm. Finally, there was plenty of noise. I hope that what I was hearing during saturated periods was indeed a market rhythm, and not just TS's quote server burping through the traffic. Any thoughts?
I'm encouraged by this initial experience and want to take this several steps further. Specifically, I believe tgregg's idea about assigning separate tones to the bid and ask would add much depth. I was also thinking it would be beneficial to separate those tones between left and right speakers, buyers all on one side, and sellers on the other. I may post a recording of what I heard today to give others an idea. It really was enlightening.
Logistically, I believe there are several ways to accomplish this. Since TS7 will only let you use one alert sound for all alerts, this would require a custom solution. Given my tools, I think my best bet would be a java application that receives price info from IB, and triggers wav files accordingly. Unfortunately I have little experience with java or the api, so I will be starting from the ground up on this. If anyone feels they can contribute, please do. It may take me a while to get this simple app written.
Thanks very much everyone for sharing your ideas and anecdotes on this topic. Much appreciated.
Sean
