A New Suit

One of the rights of manhood that I went through, was as soon as I had a bit of money from working, I wanted to go to my father's tailor and have a suit made to measure.

It's interesting how the process works.

The tailor was a friend of my father, another immigrant, who had been a professional of some sort - lawyer, accountant - in his previous life, but his profession was not portable to Australia. He noticed that other immigrants were starting to make more money and could pay for high quality made to measure suits. So he hired a real tailor - the guy who actually cut the cloth and sewed the suit - opened a small work room and started a bespoke suit business.

There was one problem. The tailor to be had seen what a suit looked like finished - everyone has, and he had seen a bolt of cloth. Problem was that he didn't know the process that turned the bolt of cloth into a well fitting suit.

Needless to say, this guy went on to a 50 year career making bespoke suits for local businessmen as well as Sydney's rich and famous. He reverse engineered what had to be done by pulling apart completed suits and figuring out what he needed to do, so his working tailor at the sewing machine could do his part,

Here is yesterday's ( Wednesday 24th March) ES chart with FloBot trades. It was a normal day where scaling out really paid off as there was no follow through. The all in and all out traders did even better. These normal low range days don't give you much but you can do better as a discretionary trader. The day needs to be traded with outside in setups. Its harder to identify these trades early but you can look at what happens at support and resistance areas. If you see a turn in the order flow at these areas with over bought or oversold condition (depending on a potential LONG or SHORT), with a switch in momentum through the CCIs, you have a trade. Once the day has graduated to 3 rows of TPOs and perhaps range extension, you have more information and can trade  into the direction of the range extension but from the other side of the VA. These are high percentage trades. Once the Market Profile has developed more you can trade in both directions but being aware of the extra risk in trading against the range extension direction.

Census 101

LEETSDALE, Pa. - I am now officially a public servant. At 8:39 a.m. today, I raised my right hand inside the borough building here along the Ohio River and pledged to participate faithfully and honestly in the federal government's census count.

The first day of census training was simple, although I must have signed and filed a couple dozens registration forms during the eight-hour shift. Those typical bureaucratic forms ranged from direct deposit information to confidentiality agreements. And it felt great to know I will be earning my government paycheck by working rather than raking in taxpayer money due to lack of employment.

The room was filled with 25 people of various backgrounds, ages and professions (or lack thereof). Most said they were retirees, although a few of us in there mentioned we were without a job. This position will supplement our income and give us a much-needed feeling of being productive.

The initial phase of the job for this crew will last for about four weeks and focus on counting people living in group quarters. That includes nursing homes, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and prisons. Fortunately, I don't know of any prisons in the western Allegheny County zone where I'll be working. We continue to train Thursday and Friday before the crew leaders cuts us loose next week.

I'm looking forward to getting back into the workforce.

The Short Cut to Success

There is a thread on TradersLaboratory that I contributed to. The OP suggested I was keeping what I did secret and that I should "reveal all my secrets".

During the last 6 months or so since this blog began, I believe I have set out a short cut to success in this business. Following this roadmap, Kiki became CP (consistently profitable) in less than 6 months, albeit with personal mentoring from me, but still using the roadmap I set out in the blog.

I wanted to paste my answer to that TL post below in case you don't read TradersLab.

Guys, you are looking for a pre-packaged mechanical formula for discretionary trading. That is a contradiction. "Discretionary" means "discretionary".

To me a setup is like a picture. When the picture is "right" I enter the trade. Sometimes I draw on where the support is, sometimes momentum is more important. Order flow is always important but sometimes its the VB I want to see right and sometimes the CVD must be trending. It always depends on the circumstances.

The only way to "get it" is to do what I did: look at what happened just before a good trade triggered. That's why I push SIM trading so hard. Until you recognise FOR YOURSELF what the difference is between a good setup and no setup, you are doomed to lose. You want to run before you can walk. There is no substitute for the work to train yourself to see.

Now as far as the FloBot is concerned, that is not discretionary trading. Its mechanical trading, which is something different. The rules for FloBot are not discretionary. They are specific but general. The performance from FloBot will probably not be as good as a discretionary trader. Its strength lies in the trader not being required to focus 100% one hundred percent of the time and also because a trader can trade a number of markets at a same time.

If you can't work out your exits yet, why don't you do what I suggested in the blog: take all your profits at the first logical scale point or at a fixed minimum profit objective. If your win rate is as high as it should be, you'll make money.

Since I started teaching Kiki to trade and writing the blog, I have received many, many emails from people who have turned their trading around and become CP (consistently profitable) by using what was in the blog. It's all in there. Providing mechanical setups for discretionary trading is not doing you a favour and I won't go down that road.

There is no free lunch to becoming a trader, a doctor, a lawyer or any profession. A student needs to follow the curriculum, study hard, do the practice. The exams then are easy.

SIM Trading is Boring and Trading Plans Suck

I have received hundreds of emails and comments from traders looking for CP in this business. Lots of them were very hard workers and put in a huge amount of effort and found success like the guy whose email I am pasting in below. Others are still on their way to CP, putting in the time, asking questions, SIM trading until they define their trades. Good on you all. I'll let this trader speak for himself:

Hi, I have sent you emails a few times pobably don't remember, asking very basic questions haha...

I have been studying everything I can about trading for 5months now, and lucky for me I happen to run into your blog about 4months ago, printed out every chart you have ever posted, read through every post and comments below, studied, analyzed and finally started practicing in simulation about 2 and a half months ago.

For about a half a month, I ended up loosing, I could not understand what you were trying to tell me, then looking farther into and studying more specifically how you enter your trades, what similarities I see and marking 2-3 requirements per trade, I went back to your charts to confirm that the same situation happened when the same type of trades were made.  I than went to my historical data for 5months, and started looking for the same entry criteria and started marking winner/looser, and why it won, and why it lost.

After loosing 15k, on 3 contracts for 3weeks, (mainly from trading too much at every turn), I decided to do as you say, and follow the exact setups I have marked in my plan.  I have written down a Continuation setup that I felt was the same as yours, as well as a reversal setup I felt you followed.  After 2months, I am now finally in profit at +3k, which is simply amazing and I have nothing but gratitude for all your help.

Looking through today's post you posted a single trade, with a chart.  Looking at that chart made me excited since the criteria, the way you read the order flow, all matched up exactly to how my reversal setup was marked in my plan, and could not help but send this long over due thank you email.

You have taken me from someone who knew absolutely nothing about day trading, to a CP in a matter of 4months, and have given me courage to finally choose to switch over to daytrading full time.  I will forever be greatful for all your hard work and generosity.  Thank you again.  SC

This is another great success story. I must have about 30 or so like this -  people, both male and female, all ages, who have become CP by following the way that I taught Kiki to trade. There are no free, easy shortcuts. The roadmap I have outlined in this blog has PROVEN to work for many different people of all walks of life and education. I truly believe it will work for most of you too. 

From weddings to health care

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Apparently I missed must-see TV on Sunday while attending my stepsister's wedding. Rather than cracking a tall, cool Budweiser and watching the totally bizarre vote on health care, I spent my night at the wedding on Florida's first coast.

Sure, I had fun throwing back a few while spending the night with my family, but I would have just LOVED to watch all the crazies (aka: Republican congressmen) march on D.C. just before voting against Obamacare. I mean, were the Republicans really applauding the protesters who spit on Democratic politicians and yelled gay/racial slurs? Did one Republican congressman really call a fellow colleague a "baby killer"?????

And here I thought the drunks at the wedding were out of control.

Do I love this bill? Not really, because I'd prefer a single-payer system where everyone pays and everyone benefits. But our democracy usually results in these types of unsatisfactory compromises. But I'm OK with that because this is a major step in the right direction.

Still, I would've liked to watch our infantile elected leaders interact in a way that makes rowdy wedding receptions look tame. Maybe next time.

Back to Basics - Going with the Flow

 Every day I get a number of comments to this blog as well as a host of emails. Many traders searching for CP seem to be caught up in looking at the trees rather than the forest.

I trade order flow and enter positions either leaning against support or resistence or when support or resistence is broken AND momentum is in my favour.

If reading order flow has been a problem, then one way of solving this is what I did with Kiki in the early days: ONLY TRADE OBVIOUS ORDER FLOW and pass on anything that is not 100% obvious. OK, you will miss a lot of trades and your profit per trade will be lower due to late entries but your WINRATE WILL BE HIGHER.

I think you know that for me, winrate is hugely important. Winrate is the centre of my universe because I can build everything on it: average profit per trade and more importantly, I can increase my size to earn what I need.

So when is the order flow obvious? Well, its in the eye of the beholder. For Kiki and me, it's the smoothed Cumulative Volume Delta.

Today's chart is not a trading chart but a chart that I have market up to show a trade that could have been taken when the order flow was "obvious". To get this trade, I first looked for a turn in the order flow from the smoothed CVD. I then qualified the bar for my momentum and support or resistence entry criteria to decide whether it's a trade or not. If not, I wait for the next bar and repeat the process.

If you look at  the marked entry bar, you can see the starting point of the analysis is the turned sCVD. Price had come down from a high. The bar before the marked entry bar, where I would have entered this trade as I am aggressive, showed the possibility of a change from BUYERS to SELLERS. The VB already clued me in. So when it was "obvious" that the order flow had turned, I saw it broke the EMA support and the CCI showed the momentum was down. A perfect trade. These major turns in the order flow are forgiving of a later entry as there is so much profit in the trade. These major turn are the ones that make your daily bread if you scale out rather than taking an all in-all out approach. The major turns are characterised by these new highs and lows. If you did your SIM work correctly, you will be able to recognise these easily.

Blue is dead...

We had a perfect tether flight on Saturday, followed by a bad free flight.
The vehicle started well, but as airspeed built up it started to spin.
It got to about 1Kft then started down. It went unstable probably due to the high rate of spin.
and started to leave the area of the pad and was heading toward the spectator area so I aborted. Both the software driven and RC only vent abort worked.
The vehicle is totaled.

The micro sd flash chip from the vehicle physically looks ok, but gets very warm when power is applied so I've gotten no data from the vehicle.

I had a camera pointed at the bottom of the motor with a good view of the vanes and if I can recover data from the video camera SD card it should provide some information.
The camera was destroyed on impact, the SD card is fine but the camera did not close the video file before impact. So it shows zero length.

Any advice on how to fix this?
My approach:
I've got some utilities for manipulating bare SD sectors that I use for my data logging cards.
Using this I wrote a utility to copy all the sectors off the Cameras SD card into a big file.
So the original card is safe and I won't mess with that.
I then wrote a short utility to copy the exact same sectors contents back onto a equal sized SD card. I'll then run chkdsk on this duplicate SD card.

One rub is that while the SD cards are the same brand and size they report slightly different numbers of physical sectors, will this mess up the FAT table accounting? The card I'm copying to has more sectors than the one off the camera.

The cards is formatted as FAT16 so I can start tracing clusters by hand and reassembling file chains, but its been along time since I did FAT table stuff by hand with a hex editor.
Any recommendations on good tools to do this?


If that does not work,
any other ideas on recovering the video data from the SD card?