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Just thought i would point out that for anyone looking into the volume ladder its worth looking at MARKETDELTA :: HOME I'm sure most have already but there's a lot of free information there that has helped be get to grips with it. Hope this helps someone.
Market Delta's site has some great videos and webinars. I just installed a trial of Market Delta today, it's built on top of Investor RT which I have been testing out for the past month. I like having the volume ladder & my other charts all in the same package and you can get the volume ladder on historical charts.
In learning about order flow here are some other resources, I'm not suggesting to buy any of these as some are quite expensive. Most have free videos you can watch:
- emini watch
- fulcrum trader
- order flow analytics
- l2st - I just joined their trading room
- Mind over Markets
- anything related to market profile
I've been backtesting it and I think it can work. I will test mine trading it live on Monday. I set it up to alert me when there's a signal so it shouldn't be too much of a distraction.
You know what you know but you do not know what you do not know.
You do not see things how they are, you see things how you are.
In life you do what you want but you do not want what you want.
I'll have to see how it goes in real trading but I do see a few already:
- the ladder display is slightly better. you can have the histograms and bid/ask on the same chart
- works historically, no recording and if your pc crashes you don't miss anything
- the crosshair will highlight a bar on all my charts. sometimes I want to see the ladder corresponding to a bar on my other charts.
- the workspace of Market Delta and just about every other charting platform (Investor RT, Tradestation) is far superior to Ninjatrader. I can switch workspaces in the time it takes to blink. so this means my desktop isn't cluttered with 10+ charts. I've always hated that about NT. I don't know if I check the euro in the video I posted but I'm constantly checking different markets
- Market Delta also has market profile which I'm learning
- The volume breakdown indicator has a lot of features (like statistics, momentum, delta change, etc.) that could be programmed in the GOM framework but don't yet exist. (See the attached chart). If someone could write those for GOM that would be great.
Some disadvantages:
- market profile is expensive ($200/month)
- zenfire won't backfill so you need a historical data source which makes it $225/month if you're not using IQFeed
- their license is per computer and it's a pain if you crash for example you can't just switch over to another computer (you have to transfer the license but you can't do that if your pc crashed!). To truly have a backup you have to purchase an extra license (at a discount).
- I like having the chart markers for my trades on the ladder. That's very helpful and I debated trying Market Delta because of that. However Market Delta should have this capability soon they say.
- I don't know RTL and I'm sure that C# is much more powerful. this means if I want to use any other indicators I've written I need to have a chart open in tradestation or ninja.
- If you're an indicator fan, there are lots more for Ninja.
no perfect solution here. I know BigMike is trying Multicharts. I haven't looked at that. My idea set for next week will be:
- Market Delta for order flow
- Tradestation for cycles & Turning Point Oscillator
- Ninja for the DOM
I'm working on timing my entries and cutting losers short and I'm doing it on Ninjatrader because I can do it several times with market replay to get practiced.
I made a new indicator this weekend. As many of you know, I do not find price based indicators useful. In fact I use only a couple, the sine wave & EMA. So when I see an idea for an indicator that does not use price, I'm very interested.
As an aside, the data we have for trading is what you see in the time & sales window.
If you are trading only one price, you're using only 1 of the 5 data available to you. For the past 9 months I've decided that I was going to leave price alone and focus on the other 4. It's been fascinating.
So this indicator is called "Pace of Tape". I got the idea from this thread and this video. I then made my own version.
So far I'm just playing around with it but I do think it has potential. As price approaches an area considered to be below value (for longs), pro's will start scaling in and that causes an increase in the number of ticks. They will buy as much as it takes to stop the decline, lifting the offer if they have to to move price up. Once this is done the tick frequence will go back to normal levels as the "dumb money" then starts covering and going long, chasing the move. And then it repeats at the next top.
Let me know if you find it useful and if you have ideas on how to use it.
I have a manager in the back office who monitorings my trading activites. Here's the conversation we had this morning:
She wasn't paying attention this weekend when we discussed my weekly goals.
Last week I went back on sim so I could focus on using the ladder in my trading.
My long term goal is to get off sim and back to real money and provide a consistent source of income.
My short term goal for this week is to have no losing days, and make over $200 per session. I trade two sessions, morning is dax and afternoon is crude.
So this week I'm on sim. I don't want to rush it. When I go to real money I need to do so with total confidence. I build up that confidence by having weeks of consistent profitability. For those who have never traded real money I recommend months of consistent profitability because no matter what they say when you trade with real money it's not the same.