Tom,
I wanted to email and thank you for the contributions that you have made to your blog, and, specifically, for your replies to my comments.
Though I have been trading for about 15 years in my long-term account and short-term trading for 10 of those years, it was only in the last 5 that I decided to transition to full-time trading. I've been a successful software development project manager for a little over 20 years, but I'd grown weary of either being the boss or working with one...... I knew that I wanted work that I could do from anywhere, and that would challenge my curiosity for years to come.
So I began to plan my leap. I won't go into all the details, but it involved transitioning first to a job with smaller development teams, then to a part-time consultant/part-time trading, then, finally, to full-time trading. It was within that transition that I found your blog (among others). Learning to understand your style while creating my own trading plan resulted in many "a-ha" moments for me. Risk management, decisions based upon incomplete information, understanding how complex systems might devolve into chaos--I saw echoes of skills from my previous career in your writing and in your work, and I admired your experience and your generosity with advice.
I'm still in my infancy as a trader, but thanks to your reminders to keep trading simple and profitable before moving forward, back-testing until I'm confident that I understand my strategies, and trading my plan, I feel more and more confident in my interpretations of the daily flow. I'm consistently profitable, and I'm beginning to increase the number of contracts that I trade.
I've attached a screen print of my trades today. I have a partially automated notification/entry system, but my screen looks like a Xmas tree compared to yours. I tend to think in icons and color, so I try to take advantage of that....
Thank you, again, and thank Kiki, as well. I hope everyone is your family is well.
Getting mails like this one more than make my day. Trading successfully is life changing. Good on you Jeff!!
I've posted Jeff's chart below.
I also use TradeStation like Jeff. I'd be curious to know what he (or other TradeStation users) are using for Market Profile.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Jeff, I also have Tradestation, but I can not find a way to display VAH, VAL VPOC. Can you please point me to where I can find that? If you can, I can leave you here my e-mail...
ReplyDeleteAnon 17:58, there are a few 3rd party MP add-ins, non of which I found adequate. An inexpensive option would be to use the free Ninjatrader, feed it with TradeStation data and use the Fin-Alg MP add-in which costs $250. If you want to really use MP, you need to be able to split and merge the distributions.
ReplyDeleteAnon 17:59, I haven't found a good MP add-in yet either. The MP on my chart can actually be set up within TradeStation.
ReplyDelete1) Open a new Window and choose Matrix as the type.
2) Right click in the Window and choose Format Columns.
3) Remove all the columns except the "Vol Bars" column.
4) Add the "Vol %" column in as the second column.
That's how you do it for a volume-based profile. I calculate VAH and VAL manually from it each night.
For a TPO-based profile, here's a TradeStation video that shows how to create those.
1) Go to https://www.tradestation.com/support/tutorials/default.aspx
2) Choose the Market Analysis tab.
3) Play the Create an Activity Based Chart tutorial video.
Anon 18:07: If you mean the horizontal line markers on my chart, that is custom code that I've written for TradeStation. It isn't automatic; I manually enter in the values, but I'd be glad to share it with you. Just click on my username at the beginning of this comment, and drop me an email.
ReplyDelete