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Frequent large market orders of mostly one type (buy / sell): Conviction
Market orders consistently overwhelming limit orders: Momentum
Frequent large market orders failing to overwhelm limit orders: Absorption
Market orders becoming smaller & less frequent as price moves: Exhaustion
Some of this stuff can be seen just in charts, but only at a higher level, i.e. you can see the result of the activity but not the actual activity itself. So it's harder to interpret.
You can also use order flow to spot things like spoofing, flipping, front-running, icebergs etc. but that's all a bit more complex.
Apparently a guy at the prop firm I did a course with was excellent at spotting flippers on the DOM & would consistently make a killing off them.
Edit: I think really though the most value is being able to get a feel for the mood of the market & how it's specifically behaving at the time. You can tell if it's waiting to move a bit before everyone jumps in, or if it's just dead quiet, or if it's a raging 50/50 battle, or if there's someone trying to push it somewhere. But all that comes from screen time. You can see the results of these things on charts but you can't see why it happened. It's a bit like the difference between actually watching a football game, and just watching the scoreboard.
There are actually many ways to trade and it's definitely not just orderflow trading only or swing or directional trading.
There are possible trades on Forex working on possible usages of correlations on top of employing order flow trading. For example price looks like it's going up, and you are long usdchf, but then price reverts and your now confused, you can have an additional long eurusd, with a stoploss or hedging order, such that if price hits both maybe your at 10pips loss on both, so max 20 loss, but if price explodes, and you net 50 pip on eurusd and lost 10 on usdchf, you net up 40pips, so it's a long straddle, and if it's a chop, and both survive you could leg em out maybe on 10pips each netting you 20pips total.
So the thing here is there are multiple kinds of edges, portfolio or correlation edges, trade identification edges, execution edges, trade management edges and such, it's really up to how you prefer to manage trades. In the end, it's about getting and edge and working the edge, so once you can take the bad luck portion out of the equation, and use management of trades to counter that part, it's left with good management and good luck which is your alpha generator.
So stuff like this sort of are hybrids between basic trading skills plus additional skills like portfolio manager skills in managing the portfolio exposures.
So concepts like this attempt to exploit the right tail and block out the left tail, and let luck work in your favour, while if it's normal circumstances, you'd probably have to manage trades well. So when luck works in your favour great, but otherwise your managing trades skills kick in to make your alpha.
Now I'm just confused about what my next steps should be.
Hi CMAC,
I may be just another voice and I know too many answers can be confusing. What I did at the beginning is I asked myself, what kind of a person I am. I personally like to know how stuff works and why that is - not meaning you can explain everything at all time, but when you can't you know the time is not ripe. However, that is why I started looking for a mentor who is also actively trading himself and has a background I do not have. if you study say 3 years whatever you are just doing the same, right? And too me it was the best I ever did because it builds a fundament, that really helped me starting the whole thing.
Reagarding orderflow: I somehow stumbled over order flow as well and to me it is the best tool ever, combined with marked depth though. Because it is live data and there is no such thing faster than live. By learning how to read into the intentions of a party and put the live data into context you will be able so sense what is going to happen. I am still working on that skill too but at times I really feel being one with the market.
hope you find my answer useful if not please ignore it. If you do have any specific questions do not hesitate to reach out, I will be happy to answer as best as I can.
Thanks for your post Wernersabel. So how did you go about finding your mentor and do you still keep in touch with them today? Do you have any examples on how you were able to feel like one with the market. Thanks
I watched a couple of different webinars about trading strategies or webinars from trading schools / accademies. It was a process to find what I wanted to. I tried to filter out everything that made sense to me and i went from there, youtube is pretty good for that manner. So one webinad led to another, one step after another and finally you find what you are looking for. A japanese saying is: "the teacher appears when the student is ready". I won't remember everything but I can give you some milestones. And yes I am still in touch with my mento after 2 years I can reach out anytime I want (no extra charge) he is kind of an anker, good to have.
Hmmm, feeling one with the market is had to describe but l'll try to transfer the feeling. I am sure I can remember any given situation where you felt like what was going to happen before it did (i.e. see the plate fall from the waiters tray)? That is just how it feels like. I mean nobody really knows what is going to happen not even the market itself. All I try to do is point out significant price levels and then watch order flow in context with price movement to determine what is likley to happen. I have the picture in mind how I want to see price acting for a reversal or a continuation because that is very similar all the time, so I know what to look for. Of course that does not mean I am right all the time but if I am not I am able to close at a very small loss. On the other hand - what I am currently working on - is I want to let my winners run and add to my position if I am in a winner. Of course I prefer to have a high winning rate but that system works as well if the winning rate is moderate.
Did that make things any clearer? Or would you like to jump on skype?
Well, it sounds like you hadn't spent that much time or funds on trading education within the last ten years? Which is good in that a lot of it out there is bunk and most vendors don't even trade themselves for a living , much less even use a live account. I've been on and off about the same time where I started with options and forex before I learned of futures here. Generally all these markets work with similar price action, so there's not all that much difference between for example, how the 6e futures moves from the Eur/Usd. If you observe the futures with your demo ninjatrader, you may notice that generally the minis have more volume than the micros. Of course the popular futures instruments are leveraged and generally need a bigger account than forex which can be scaled down much easier. I'm actually looking to get back into forex trading and am seriously thinking about only using IB or TDAmeritrade as brokers for forex since there's still too much unregulated among the myriad available "revolving door" forex brokers even after all these years.
For your trading, my 2c is maybe you need to brush up on more ideas of price action and market structure to help have a better feel for the price behavior & movement outside of the indicators, and maybe some trade management. I don't use dom orderflow and prefer to examine the formation "movement" of candlestick bars and the resulting bar as my "orderflow" gauge instead.
Here are a couple of sites with a lot of free trading information nicely organized where there is no need to purchase anything for viewing them. https://forexop.com/strategy/chooser/ , https://www.thepatternsite.com/ Also, maybe check out tradingschools.org if you hadn't done so already. After reading scores of these sometimes entertaining reviews and helpful response commentary you can get a good or confirmed idea of how all these scams typically operate and what to stay away from. Good luck.
If you lost 50 K buying the market all the way down and then selling it all the way up, giving up is probably a pretty good idea for you.
Trading the market is an exercise in psychology. 80% or more of our efforts should be focused on trading psychology. We can be self taught much more effectively then we can by finding a coach or a mentor. It does take time effort and energy to learn the psychological part.
I have been working on the psychology and trading live for several months now. Trading live on a very small scale basis. It’s the only way to learn trading. You cannot learn how to trade without trading the market live. My worst down there was 2K and my best up today has been 1k.
I started out with the two Mark Douglas books. Then I read two or three Kiev books. Now I’m working on Steenbarger books. I have also studied a few books along the way about positive thinking and meditation techniques.
For me the best book by far was trading in the zone by Mark Douglas.
Trading is 80% psychology and in my opinion less than 20% methodology. So forget about all the different platforms and methods and all the different markets and just pick one that you can trade on a small scale every day and stick with it.
Become your own mentor and your own trading coach. Learn how to monitor yourself and your thoughts and your actions and your activities and start journaling about everything so that you can get a feel for how your mind works and what you are thinking and feeling all the time.
Most new traders are deceived into buying the market the whole time it’s going down and selling the market the whole time it’s going up. That’s what I was doing the day that I lost 2K.
But make no mistake about it, it’s all about psychology. We are self deceived into those types of destructive actions and it takes extensive mental training, exercises, and practice in order to correctly perceive what the market is actually doing and to act in our own best interest.
You may want to look into trading the ACD method by Mark Fisher. The entire method is based off of range extension (price and more importantly time) of the opening range. The most important part of the method is that you always know where you are getting out if your wrong. As long as you follow the rules of the method and have discipline you cannot, I repeat you cannot get blown out of the market (whichever market your trading).
Thank you outersphere, that sounds exactly like my style. The book I found by that author is called the logical trader. It sounds really good.... ordering a used copy now for about $30