Budapest and a Great Story

I've brought the clan for a week's holiday in Budapest, Hungary. Last break before the run to the end of the year. Volatility should be awesome.

We arrived Saturday.  The city is divided into two: Buda and Pest and there are many bridges that cross backwards and forwards joining the two sides. Lots to see, thermal baths built by the Romans and Turks in bygone days and the best food in Europe. I'm trading a couple/few hours a day while we are here so the posts will continue.

I have to share an email I received last week. I get similar ones every few weeks. My premise when I started this blog was that I could teach almost everyone to trade profitably. The constraints were that they did the required work in the way I prescribed and that their financial condition was such that they did not have an issue with risking their account money trading and could live off other income until they perfected their craft in SIM.

The guy whose email I am reproducing below supports that premise. I want to emphasise that he is the one who deserves all the kudos. It was he that did the work. No mentoring from me apart from 500+ posts on the blog. My reply at the end of his email says it all.

Dear Tom,

Thank you for your blog. I have been following your blog for a good year now and I have put in the many hours to read and re- read everything you have posted. I find the information you provide of great value. Allthough that many people may believe it is all about the indicators or charts, I see the bigger picture what you are saying and I have adapted the same vision. That was the final piece I needed in my search for over more then 15 years to get to consistent profitability... Now I finally have reached that point... I hope I can do the same for other people in the future but I wanted to thank you for sharing.

greetings,

       (name and address supplied)


My reply:

Hi Xxxx

Thanks for the mail. I love getting these. It’s a big kick for me even though it was you doing the work. I'm going to post it after deleting your name as an inspiration for other who are still on the road to CP. When people see others do it, it helps them get the motivation to do what needs to be done.

You have a great life ahead of you in the best business in the world, but you know that.

Regards

Tom

LAST FRIDAY: I tweeted the bounce off the 26 August VAH @ 1179.75ish as it was happening in the ES. Glad to see that the crowd was watching (see the time stamps - London time):

1. verniman
   

   $ES_F: Bearish. Res 1187. Breakout Sell Pattern below 1179.75 Targets 1175 (Gap Unfilled) 1169 (61.8 Confluence) http://stks.co/4V1

   Sep. 2 at 1:58 PM
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2. 
   desifinance
   

   $ES_F good support at 1180 area, consider taking profit on some swing shorts at the open, bounce to 1201 not unlikely

   Sep. 2 at 1:58 PM

    from Twitter
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3. 
   verniman
   

   $ES_F: Bearish. 1181.25 Target Hit. Expect a bounce to 1200 or a drop to 1175.25 (Gap Unfilled) 1170 (Fib 61.8 Retrace) http://stks.co/4V0

   Sep. 2 at 1:58 PM
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4. 
   ElectronicLocal
   

   $ES_F We just bounced off VAH of 26 Aug. Watch out below if it breaks convincingly with order flow

   Sep. 2 at 1:57 PM

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   Information moves at the speed of thought. How I love this technology.
   
   But it's the trade that counts, not the call. Instant trade recognition and Instant trade execution is what is required.

JOURANALIST FEDERATION OF INDIA AWARD

!!!Good News !!!

NEWLOOK MULTITRADE PVT.LTD

        ACHIEVED 19th

JOURANALIST FEDERATION OF INDIA AWARD

                  as

BEST RETAIL CHAIN

       AND

Mr. GOPALJI SHEKHWAT best CMD

Inc. Magazine and Google want to hear your online success story

In my role at Google, I am constantly impressed by the innovative and entrepreneurial ways that small business owners take their ideas or passions, and turn them into thriving businesses. One of my favorite business success stories is of a small boutique in New York City called Loopy Mango. For over a year, their storefront was covered by a scaffolding due to delays in renovation of the building next door. To overcome this challenge, they relied on online advertising to find customers and share what their unique lifestyle boutique had to offer.







Does your business have a unique online marketing story? In partnership with Inc. Magazine, we're now asking businesses across the country to share with us how they've used online marketing tools to improve their business. The three most impactful stories will receive tickets to the Inc. 5000 conference in the Washington, D.C. metro-area on September 22-24, 2011.



Inc. Magazine is taking submissions here. Please share your story with us by September 7, 2011 for a chance to win. Winners will be notified via email by September 10, 2011. Also, visit Google@Inc on Inc.com to learn more tips and tools from experts about how to grow your business online.



Posted by Ria Tobaccowala, Small Business Marketing Team

Waiting for Jobs - Not Steve

London was quiet in the morning except for some nice Euro action. "They" were waiting for the Monthly Jobs report due at 8.30am NY time.

Today's morning trades went according to Flo. The Euro chart on MarketDelta show how well the even unfiltered Flo signals are working on the 5 tick range bar chart.

Using an algo, even just to identify the trades, is a great edge as it provides one half of what is required for CP: Instant Trade Recognition. Then, you need to act quickly on it to meet the second requirement: Instant Trade Execution. Using an algo to enter the trades ensures compliance with this aspect.

 

The most difficult part of a trade is the trade management, I think. This is true whether you are managing manually or whether you are programming the algo to manage it's entries. There are pros and cons for each method but the challenges of management are different for each of them.

For a manual management, you are reacting in real time to the context. For algo managed trades you are trying to look into the future and take into account different eventualities. You have the benefit of being able to backtest but the end product can be only an "average" management result. A good manual management should out perform the algo. However, the algo can manage 100 trades at the same time when I am struggling to manage 3, manually.

What Makes a Good Coupon? (And What Makes A Bad One)

Some people spend their whole marketing careers creating the definitive "Good Coupon" (ie: a coupon that brings the customer to you and yet doesn't cost too much in profit) and avoiding a bad coupon (usually a coupon that gets no response). Small business owners can see a dramatic improvement in their profits by offering coupon. To make a good coupon, you need to think like your customers. What would make you clip that coupon and go use it? What kind of coupon calls you to check out that business if you've never used them before? What coupons do you pass on?

Pick A Product/Service to Discount that your Customer is Actually Interested In
A coupon advertises a discount for a limited period of time on a product or service. You may have an low cost/high profit item that you WANT people to purchase however if that's not the item that is currently bringing customers in the door, your coupon (unless a deep discount) is not going to be as effective.

Don't Limit Who Can Use the Coupon
People dislike fine print. There's nothing I despise more than when I take a coupon and try to use it only to learn that my coupon does not apply to me because I am an existing customer. Why would you not want to reward your current customers for shopping with you? If you are discounting a service that only a very limited number of people can use, make sure you are offering a variety of coupons at the same time that together will include everyone.

Create Urgency with An Expiration Date
Expiration dates create an sense of urgency that your customer will need to act quickly to use and benefit from the coupon. Experiment with expiration dates. A date that is too close can be disastrous if your marketing strategy doesn't get the coupon out in time. Plus it doesn't give people enough time to redeem it. A date too far away will be forgotten. Depending on your advertising, what your discount is and the nature of your business, 2 weeks to 1 month can be a good time frame for a coupon expiration date.

Offer a Discount not just a Coupon
Statistics show that people don't respond if a coupon's face value is too small. I recently saw a coupon for a medical office that offered $1.00 off an office visit. Their visit costs, on average, $35.00 so their coupon gave me less than 3% off. That doesn't make me want to respond to that coupon at all. In fact I was almost turned off to the business itself for offering such a sad coupon. This is where you need to put your customer hat back on. If you see 10% off, 15% off or 25% off coupons - which do you respond to? You may cringe at the idea of offering a 25% off coupon but think about successful chains like Macy's which focus millions of dollars on this marketing strategy that people come shop with them more if they believe they'll save with their coupon.

Create a Coupon Strategy and Go For It!
If you want to do a semi annual or annual deep discount coupon then plan it out and market accordingly. If you want people to consistently check your website or store for coupons then offer a variety and consistently market them. Whatever you decide to do - plan it out and execute it. That doesn't mean you can't modify your plan as you find coupons that work or fail. It means you are taking an active role in this side of your marketing strategy.

Free September Desktop Wallpaper

Though I'm not sure I'm ready to say goodbye to summer just yet, I'm sure that by the end of this month it will feel like Autumn is in our midst. This month's chosen picture leaves me dreaming of boating and summer water fun while slowly getting myself excited over fall leaves, cool breezes and comfy sweaters. Enjoy!
Ashlei Jackson, Design Manager
There are two versions of the wallpaper:

 One for square shaped computer screens (101Kb JPEG)
Get Square Wallpaper Here

 One for rectangle shaped computer screens (127Kb JPEG)
Get Rectangle Wallpaper Here

 Once the image opens - right click and select 'Set as Background'
Please note that this is not a program or application that will modify your computer performance. You may change your desktop background at any time by going to your display options

Euro FX and DAX

This morning turned out to be a great morning in London time. It started off slowly and then the markets broke.

The charts below are unfiltered pullback signals in the Euro and the DAX markets. I didn't take the longs, as there was no real positive order flow, but then the Euro broke down.

I was too slow to catch the 1.5359 sell but it alerted me to what was to come: SOLD @ 1.4354. The better part was that it made me watch the DAX and 10 minutes later I was able to catch the sell @ 5762ish. My size on the Euro was smaller and I ran out of bullets on the way down, but I did catch the DAX @ 100% size as I had been alerted.

These are MarketDelta charts. The DAX's MarketProfile also gave good context to the trade. The Euro's MP always needs a lot of splitting and I had not done my homework on it when the market broke as I was doing a GoToMeeting. I paid the price for not being prepared - less profit.