Perfection?

After a lot of work I have finally integrated order flow bars (called volume imbalance in MarketDelta) and the Steidlmayer dynamic Market Profile into my trading pictures.

The dynamic Market Profile is very much the same as the splitting into distributions that I have been doing for years. Adding the order flow bars is as close to perfection as I can get I think. I use my original EL pictures and filter them with the order flow bars. I've been trading a lot of ES over the last 10 days to validate what I'm doing and it has gone rather well. Identifying key turning points and the order flow is very clear. The added activity of the HFTs was an added bonus as their presence and direction was pretty easy to see during those few days last week when things were crazy with volatility.

The chart below of the FESX shows a clear read of the order flow. The red arrow shows the trend resuming.

I'm hoping to get the ebook finished over the Xmas period and it will be going into the full details of what I have been doing.

The Book: Update

The Book has been going and going. Sometimes I think it's like that play by Becket, "Waiting for Godot" that I saw years ago.

These markets are in a transitional change and I'm not just dealing with Market Profile which is relative easy but showing the new dynamic MP that Pete Steidlmayer is still developing and then wrapping the Order Flow bars around it all.

Things evolved and need to re-write and more importantly, re-video, a lot of material. I've had to discard a lot.

We have several main influences of change including:
1. The Algos - both HFT and also a lot of retail and semi-professional algos
2. The disappearance of the Locals as exchanges went electronic. Customer order size means that instead of trading with a local, customers are trading with customer counter-parties
3. Extended hours trading has become more important as Asia grows
4. More severe and constant legal insider trading and market manipulation by the FED and ECB

I'm just a tiny pimple in the scheme of things, trading my short term time frame, reading what "they" are doing and trying to join their action. The Book will show how I track that  action using the tools I've mentioned in the second paragraph above. It took a while to get the degree of certainty that I now have and I won't release anything unless it really adds value to what people are already doing. Trading needs to be more certain. I read the order flow like a Google map except that I have no idea of the destination, just the "now" of what is happening. Reading the now lets me understand how the next bar or two will react to the now. After that it's all trade management.

So the Book is under way again in it's final form. Mostly embeded videos so you will be able to see what happening. After all, Order Flow is a moving thing.

To The Moon Alice!

Today's trade reminds me of that oft used phrase by the Great One in the Honeymooners. All I had to do was see the LONG and be able to hold it, or at least some of it. The BUY was clear in both context on the MP and the order flow.