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I can too....yeah that is a pain when you have long posts
Another trick is that I can add back those images through editing
When you see the images disappear, if you catch it soon enough you can edit them back in.
You do that by pressing the edit option but you see no option to add attachments.....but if you press "Go Advanced" then the window turns into a normal window and you will see the original attachments there but for some reason they are not valid....
Now you can simply re-attach those graphics and the erase the bad ones and embed the good ones,
......................................
Keeping the original window open long time does not seem to be the problem for text...only the attachments. I have thought there was tome time constraint on the attachment window but cannot prove it or reproduce it.
so I do the text and inserts like this now
After I finish the verbage I go back and upload the attachments and replace the
=========> insert graphic here
With the appropriate attachment.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
yes it is interesting to see my ideas applied to commodities like this
Could you perhaps post a chart here on a different subject than @Malthus
the indicator parameters to use are
Stochastics k%(30), d%(3) and if you have the option of stochastic type use Slow Stochastic .... not Fast Stochastic. The Slow Stochastic is the fast stochastic with a 3 timeInterval SMA applied
MACD (12,26) no signal line
and BBwidth (20,2)
If you can post 3 charts 1hour, 10 min and 5 min interval that would be great
I see an excellent and ongoing long play in the hourly chart
See how the Slow Sto keeps you positive.
the play starts on the right with the rise of the Slow sto then the MACD followed by the BBwidth trigger.
Mid Nov 13 to mid Nov 15 looks like a sell from the look of the Price and and Slow Sto....but look below at the BBwidth and MACD....no dramatic up slope on the BBwith and the MACD stayed basically flat. Also note the fall beneath the lower BB....head fake to me
I would have stayed the course here and continue to hold
I find it more difficult to see opportunity in the shorter timeframes. I suppose this is due to the rapid changes that occur and the difficulty to respond in a timely fashion
I did see a couple of long opportunities....the one on the left is very short but is preceded by a double bottom in the price. The last one is the bast and has just strated on the right.
There was a reasonable short in the orange box.
I have to say the one hour chart is easier to read.
Since you mentioned to try something other than what @Malthus posted, I decided on Crude Oil futures (CL), because:
1. They should have no relationship or similarity to the S&P 500 futures (ES) that @Malthus put up, or to any other equity-based future or chart;
2. I don't a single thing about Crude, so it would be new to me, too.
Before posting the charts, I want to go into the question of time vs. tick charts. (Sorry if this is already well-known to you, but I think it matters here.)
You probably know that futures are essentially traded around the clock. But there are definite periods when the number of people trading, and the size they are trading, is very much higher than other times. Generally, the high-volume times are what are called the "Regular trading hours." This pretty much matches the NY session for equities or the Chicago session for commodities. After that is the Asian session, until the early morning in Eastern time, and the European session, from about 2:00AM ET to about 11:30. The "pit" or regular session overlaps that, usually beginning 9:00 or 9:30 ET.
So basically, for most futures, a pure time chart will have a long expanse of trading hours when not much goes on, and where the trading probably is not actually significant.... and then a short span when all the major activity happens.
OK, so here are some charts, at last .
I had to look up the regular trading hours for Crude, which I marked on the charts. I am also showing the volume, which, I think, tells a story. First, time charts:
Then I took a stab at setting up some tick charts that are roughly comparable to the time charts, in terms of the space given to the regular hours. Tick charts build their bars based only on the number of trades; a 7500 tick chart's bars all have 7500 trades in them. Volume is not exactly the same for each bar, but it will be close. Importantly, the parts of the roughly 23 hours of the trading day that are not too busy get only the chart space that their activity warrants.
At least, that's the way I look at it.... We can look and see how that theory works out with these indicators:
Lastly, here's the daily chart for comparison:
A long post, sorry about that. If these ideas are not new to anyone, I apologize for going on so long about them.
I hope that this post does not suffer from the nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) Disappearing Chart Glitch.... I'm posting all the charts at once after writing the text. You'll have to tell me if they don't make it up.
From a TA perspective, I see no advantages to Tick charts over Time charts. So I want to address that in your excellent post first.
This increased activity is compressed to compensate for long periods of relative inactivity.
I hear so much on this site that "indicators are useless" and following "price action" is the better approach. It is no wonder, to me that standard TA indicators do not work well under these circumstances. They were designed to work in a constant interval environment.
It is sort of like my comments on MACD where I state that the shorter the interval the less error in the calculation of the averages for the MACD
Well with Tick charts you compound that error, since the averages are based on a variable timeframed closing price in the case of MACD....for Slow Stochastics or Stochastics in general...you select a certain lookback (I use 30 time intervals) but in one case that might be 30...in another it could be 100 due to inactivity and compression
These indicators would not be valid at all. Even Bolliger Bands may also suffer.
It would take a lot of checking to see if that was true or not.
So there should be a whole new types of Indicators that be applied to Tick charts...but I doubt that is done...it would be the same indicators used in equal time charts.
Let me ask another question (excuse my ignorance on the subject as I do not trade these things in reality.
If the market is now displaying Asian market numbers....can you still buy/sell on this market? Is it more difficult due to fewer traders available to accept you buy/sell bids? Or is there sufficient volume for trades but you just don't get the "ACTION" of volatility in the price?
I ask this because when I watch trading here on BM, I am shocked at how traders are scalping such small intervals... trades that last MAYBE 10-20mins.... in and out. Rarely do I see a hold of over 1 hour.
When I look at the North American market charts also, I see a lot of volatility. Charting becomes more difficult the more fluctuations that are occurring within a time period Predictions that I can easily make in the Stock market are not as easy in the commodities market...you have to watch that chart like a hawk as I see it.....very stressful.
Perhaps the quieter Asian market numbers are easier to work with?
So in summary, now that I understand the different between time and tick interval charts...I doubt very much that traditional indicators apply at all AND if they are used may result in incorrect conclusions.
PS: your charts came through fine.... As I have stated before, it is when you insert graphics as you need them as you create a post taking15 or more mins to create that the trouble with disappearing charts occur IMHO. leaving markers in your post where you want the graphics then overwriting those markers with the graphics as a last step seems to be the solution.... a mystery , the problem is.
I'm busy all day today, unfortunately, so I can only hit some high points.
I use the "traditional" indicators in assorted ways, not always traditional in the sense that the elementary books say (I don't think I want to sell just because an oscillator is "overbought" for instance -- it can stay that way a long time ), but I have, and do, use them the same way on tick charts as I would on daily charts. And, over time, I expect I have used most of them. (Bollingers and Bollinger Width too. )
I'll have to pass on a more detailed discussion on that right now; but I did go through a period when I wondered whether not having fixed time periods would mess them up, and I decided it did not.... not that I am asking you to just accept that, of course . At some point that would have to be shown to be right or not. But I did want to say that I'm no stranger to the question. Maybe later we can go further into it....
I agree that many, many who post on futures.io (formerly BMT) are trying to scalp for little tiny moves. This is not necessarily a good idea, because you can be wrong much faster that way. And, of course, it's easy to be wrong in the markets. Also, with futures there is enormous leverage, which can magnify losses as well as gains. And I think most people who try it are going to face disappointment or disaster. Many have never traded live before, and have dreams of endless riches in their heads.
For what it's worth, I have had experience over a period of time doing longer-term trading: stocks, ETF's and options on them. However, right now I am working to become good at trading futures for the "little tiny moves" I just wrote about. So far, I have to say I'm still learning. Slowly.
But it gives me something to do, and I don't have to worry about earning a living, so I am doing it. That does not mean that I have no interest or familiarity with anything else, nor that I am focused on only one thing.
I wanted to put that in, just in the interest of disclosure.
Back to the discussion, I have no beef with indicators. On futures.io (formerly BMT) the fashion shifts now and again, as, I suspect, the naive find out that they lose money with method x, so they try method y. I do not attribute indicators being out of favor to tick charts or any other charts, and I do see people using them on tick charts, and some other fairly odd things, and they work, when the person using them can make them work. Anyway, that may all be for another day.
As to the Asian session, my only point is that the trading that occurs then does not have the power to move the markets much in the sense of where the whole day ends up. In other words, most of the time, if you look at a daily bar, the trading that caused it to do whatever it did probably came from the regular session. If price goes one way with small participation, what the heavy-hitting traders do during the regular hours will have much more real impact, either way.
So, if someone is trading based on daily bars, they are basically seeing and relying mostly on what was done during the regular hours, anyway.
I would not want to trade much during the non-regular hours (sometimes called pre-market hours) because the light activity, in my opinion, makes any move thin and fairly suspect. Sure, you can trade electronically any time over the roughly 23-hour period, but I don't think the low-participation times are that reliable. (If I did, it would be with tick charts.)
There's another way to skin this cat that I see people do, which is chart only the regular hours. So for a stock, that is the NY open to the close. I think that most (almost all) minute or hour-based charts of stocks do it that way, because very few stocks will trade outside the regular close. (I may be out of date on this, it's been a while since I looked at stocks.) But if you chart ES (S&P 500 futures) on a regular hours-only basis, which many people do, then you have exactly the same type of chart.
Does it work? Yeah. Because it just cuts off the less-consequential part of the trading day and focuses on the main part. That is not too different from tick charts compressing the less-consequential part. I do like to know what has happened before the regular session, because it's not completely inconsequential, but I take it as a hint, not much more.
My main beef with only plotting the regular hours is that it can give discontinuous jumps if price gaps up or down from the previous close, which will distort indicators some in early trading. I do think they are robust enough to withstand it, though. Also, I do want to know if the open will have a gap, and the only way to know is to look at the pre-market.
I wish I could go on, but time is not something I ever have enough of, and I will just keep typing unless I stop now.
As to these questions, though, I think there is a potential test case in applying the tools you use to different markets that are sliced up in different ways (tick/time/whatever).
If you can take a look at the charts I put up, I'd be interested in what you think, whether on the time or the tick charts.
Thanks for reading all this (assuming you did ). I do get carried away....
Bob.
Edit: as a PS, all I ever actually trade is the ES (S&P 500 index futures) and sometimes YM (Dow 30 futures), mostly in the regular session. I'm really a stock-market guy still, and I have never traded a traditional "commodity" like Crude oil. They scare the hell out of me....