Beating the HFTs

Its been estimated that the algos are responsible for almost 70% of the trading volume on futures markets. So as the pit locals disappeared as the pits were made redundant, the algos came in to take their place.

I've been writing about this transition for years and I think we have now come to the new normal although there will probably be more evolution due to regulation and technology changes. Most traders are still trading as if the old normal was still in existence.

Seeing the writing on the wall I started using hybrid trading also some years ago as chronicled in this blog. I defined hybrid trading as using an algo and turning it off and on and choosing different logic for a specific context. This is, I believe, what is required to beat the algos. The speed and reactions of an algo are needed to match the speed and reactions of algos if I want to win trading short time frames. Also, my algo can read and react to the order flow much quicker than a human can.

I have hybrid algos in MultiCharts, Ninjatrader and MarketDelta. The Ninjatrader version makes more efficient use of the PC's resources and now, with Ninjatrader 8, there are microsecond time stamps on each tick so that the order flow can be correctly followed. Each platform is better at something than another platform so it is a matter of using the one that best meets your needs in both functionality and ease of programming.

My algos use a button system that allows me to combine a number of conditions and rules with specific orders that will only execute when everything is true. The pic shows the completed Ninjatrader 7 version which requires tick recording. The Ninjatrader 8 version, is still being developed but has better volume capabilities in addition to correctly tracking order flow.

The functionality needed is a series of buttons that allows me to create a triggerable set of rules that shoot an order immediately those rule conditions are true. I watch the context and when I see the right context I arm a number of the buttons so that the algo can trigger the order from my Virtual Private Server that is co located at the exchange so that I get a less than 2ms latency from the moment that the conditions ar met and the time that the order hits the exchange matching engine.

The series of buttons decribe some context as well as order flow conditions. There are also trade management buttons so that I can have the trade management orders shoot out immediately I have a fill.

 

This type of functionality is available in a number of platforms out there now.

Nothing Has Changed Except Everything

If you go back to the beginning posts of this blog you will see that I emphasize that the math of your trading plan has to work or you can't be CP.

That has not changed nor can it ever. The three legs of the stool ate win rate, average profit and average loss. Those three metrics have to work to enable CP. However, there are many permutations and computations of these three metrics. basically, a high win rate allows a lower average profit. That's how scalpers make a living, keeping losses small too.

Remember, you can still be marginally CP if your win rate is just 35% as long as the win to loss ratio is 2:1 or greater.

That being said, if one randomly puts on a trade either long or short there should be a 50% chance of profit. If that is the case then just putting on a trade and having your stop loss marginally smaller than your profit target should make you CP as long as commissions are covered too.

So why do most traders find it difficult to get to CP? The answer has to be that they don't follow the trading plan. As someone who is also guilty of that sin more often than I'd like to admit, I understand the problem. If this is the issue then putting the majority of your effort into becoming more disciplined must be at the top of every trader's To Do list.

My focus for the last year has been to use technology to help me better execute my trading plan. Its not the latest indicator. Its not the latest methodology. Its just following order flow and managing my trade so the math can work.


Happy Holidays to everyone and I wish you all a profitable 2016.

PS. The everything that has changed is the markets. No Locals except electronic locals and lots of algo action. But its still just order flow.

Getting to CP just by tweaking your stops and targets.

I want to revisit an oft mentioned topic that I wrote about back in the early days of this blog such as this post.

A critical part of a trading plan is the trade management. There are three legs to the stool of trade management that are important:

1. the stop
2. the target
3. the win rate

The math has to work!

I have often said that a high win rate is important to me. That's a psychological dependency. So my trading style takes that into account.

For example, if I have, say, a 75% win rate then I can have a stop to target ratio of 1: 0.34 and be above break even. If I have a win rate of 34% then I can have a stop to target ratio of 1:2 and still be just above break even.

The math of this is critical for being CP. The style of trading doesn't matter but it needs to be created around these numbers.

So the starting point to your methodology is finding your trading pictures that will make you CP. As, say, a 34% win rate trader you can create a stat of average winners much more than twice your losses then you can make a good living.

If you are not CP then maybe its possible to get to CP by tweaking just this trade management portions of your trading plan. You may have the right entry strategy but are managing your exits incorrectly. But it requires discipline.

FDXM is Coming!

There will be a new listing om Eurex on 28 October, next. The miniDAX. It will be 1/5th the size of the existing DAX futures contract - 5 Euros a point: 2.50 a tick.

Those of you who have been around a while will remember when the ES was born out of the pit traded SP. And look what happened there. The DAX is an exceptional contract and I expect the new mini contract to become very popular due to its volatility.

https://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-en/resources/circulars/Equity-index-derivatives--Introduction-of-Mini-DAX--Futures/1976324

How Sweet It Is!

My thoughts are often on the fun things I've experienced in the past. One of them was watching The Great One, Jackie Gleeson, with my Dad. I've posted about Jackie often in the past. "How Sweet It Is" was one of his sayings. When I'm disciplined in my trading which seems to be more often as I get older, how sweet it is.

Order flow in context. That's all there is to it. Today's first 75 minutes or so as a 1 lot trader. This could be any market: DAX, ES, CL, GC, 6E, ZB to name a few.

This 75 minutes in the DAX brought $600 plus on a 1 lot with no losers.

The Power of Context Order Flow Trading

Today's charts and trades show the first 90 minutes or so of the DAX using Context-Trader and its buttons.

The DAX started the day with a gap up and a sell off. It then found support at below the VAL but within the overlapping Profile's buying tail.

The 90 minutes ended with over $1,000 profit on a 1 lot initial entry using my DoubleDown trade management rules.

Order flow was very clear although some of the level 1 resistance points did not hold. This brought in the DoubleDown rules and resulted in no losing sequences again today so far. This is day 4 for me without a losing sequence.

I'm trying to show that you don't have to trade large size to make reasonable money once you have a good trading plan. Starting with a 1 lot size with DoublingDown is the way to start. Once you are CP on the minimum size, scaling SLOWLY up becomes a lot easier. The trap to avoid is to increase either too quickly or to a size where the outcome of any one trade matters.

Order Flow Misunderstood + Consistency

Going through the websites of trading software vendors and trading education, I see that the words "order flow" have become a buzz word to sell. Sadly, most of what I've seen has little to do with what order flow really is.

Maybe I am being charitable, but perhaps the reason for this misinformation is that very few of these vendors or so called educators have actually traded order flow. The purest form of order flow was the live face to face trading that took place in the pits. In the pits, we were the market and what we did was the order flow.

Now, with electronic markets, traders are one step removed from order flow. We are all pushing orders into a bucket where they are electronically matched. Without that pit experience, this new type of order flow is much more difficult to understand. Looking at just what is traded on the bid and what is traded on the ask is not the answer as it misses the basis of what needs to be seen: the flow.

Markets continue in a specific direction until they don't. This up and down flow takes place on every time frame. A successful trader picks one of these time frames and trades the ebb and flow of the orders. That's how we make money consistently. Understanding how this ebb and flow happens and being able to see and track it is fundamental to being CP. There are three trade locations that are important to understand and to watch the flow move between them:

• Over bought
• Over sold
• Mean

That's what we traded on the floor and that's what I trade today. Context-Trader and it's buttons allow me to be as quick and disciplined as I was on the floor. A trader needs to use every edge available to compete and the competition with the algos and HFTs is getting stronger.

I'm posting this morning's DAX trade on a 1 lot basis as I was doing a training session and wanted to demonstrate the consistency between today and the previous P&L post, both in money and in win rate and other stats. The credit goes to the methodology and the software tools I'm using. I'm posting not out of boastfulness but to encourage everyone to trade the real order flow not some mythical invention of people who have never traded it. 

Context-Trader, Doubling Down and CP

In a post yesterday, I was asked about Context-Trader and doubling down.

Context-Trader is an add-in I had programmed that takes the different components of the context I use and puts that into buttons that you see in the chart. I can use many different combinations of those buttons, much like someone playing a piano, to meet the conditions I have in my trading plan for a trade. I can activate these buttons well BEFORE the trade is due to be triggered. That is to say, I see the context setting up and I arm the buttons to monitor that context so that when ALL the conditions are met, a trade is triggered. My trading charts are 1 MP chart and 1 bar chart with indicators that help define the context. When the context for one of my trading plan's trading pictures is setting up, I arm the appropriate buttons that will trigger the trade INSTANTLY at the moment that all my conditions have been met.

This is a manual discretionary process although by using the buttons I prevent myself from being able to take most non trading plan trades.

The platform runs on a VPS so the latency is only about 1ms. So I'm sitting on my mountain in France and I'm not impacted by the distance I am from the exchange. I also have something that reinforces my discipline and helps me keep to my trading plan. All of these things help keep me consistent.

I believe that this way of trading is a quantum change in discretionary trading. The win rate can be consistently as close to 100% as it was when I was a floor trader. While win rate is only part of what I need for CP, I know that it is very difficult to put on a trade unless you have one. Once I have a high win rate, all I have to do is manage the math and make sure my losers lose less than I make - trade management.

That's how we come to doubling down.

Expecting to consistently have a perfect trade location is a fool's errand. If a trade goes against me then I have two choices: stop myself out or find the correct spot to double down and improve my average entry price. The first choice means I lose money on a trade that could still be a good trade. The second choice allows me to stay in the trade and exit at either break even or at a profit.

Not all trades are suitable for doubling down. However, most of my trading pictures are trades that are suitable for doubling down.

I would not day trade without being able to double down. That's how important it is to my trade management.

The chart below has two real money trades that I did specially to show the power and confidence of doubling down. Both were exited at break even.

We now have the right technology that can get many many more traders to CP. Whether its MarketDelta, MultiCharts.net or NinjaTrader - I use all three with programmed buttons - a discretionary trader can become CP much more easily using it. The learning curve has flattened.

DAX Trades this Morning

I was asked by a prospective student to show what trading can be done in a two and a half hour period trading just one lot so I thought I'd make it public. I started trading the DAX on the open and traded for two and a half hours with a coffee break part way through. The chart shows all the actual trades executed using real money and I've also added pictures showing the trades in my log and my P&L. The charts are MultiCharts.net and the log is from NinjaTrader. The trades were executed using my Context-Trader add-in and a scalping trading plan that I created.

 

 

 

 

The result was a profit of 812.50 euros (about $US900) less commission. If you look at the trades you'll see a number of double downs followed by scratches. This resulted in no losing sequences although a leg of the double down had a loss that was offset by the profit on the second leg.

This is fairly typical of this very short term trading plan. It can be done with increased size. I'll be trading the DAX afternoon U.S. RTH session for another 2 hours with my usual size.

ContextTrader: Scalping

Lots of opportunities in these volatile markets. Today's short video is a scalp trade with a 1 lot DAX that earns 100 euros jobbing in and out using my programmed buttons in ContextTrader. It was the second trade of the day. I have various context programmed into the buttons. I am watching a bar chart with indicators for context as well as my split Market Profile chart. I then arm the buttons to take trades in the context I want using order flow. This trade is one from a scalping trading plan. Its a 1 lot trade so that you can see what can be achieved with just 1 lot. The red/green button at the top of the chart allows me to change size on the fly.

The trading plan reflected in the video is trading just 1 contract in the DAX can produce many trades every day with targets of from 100 euros to 300 euros, again depending on context. I devised this trading plan for a student. DAX is a great market with a 2500 day trade margin it can produce 100% a day using the Context-Trader buttons and this trading plan. There is no magic although the trading plan requires the Context-Trader buttons to execute it correctly.

Catching the Tradeable Highs and Lows

Its worth learning how to correctly split MPs as the splits reveal the real support and resistance. The S&R in today's DAX is a typical example. Then you've only got to find a way to hold the trade long enough. Scaling out is a good way.

Intra Day Volatility Equals opportunity

Intra-day volatility in the stock indices is very high. Lots of action. Although increased volatility can be more difficult, what I do is to focus on outside in trades - fade the fast moves. This gives lots of trades every session.

The downside of this approach is that when the market goes into trend day mode - and it can switch part way during a session - I need to only fade the moves opposite to the trend, trading only those that pullback enough. Trading shallow pullbacks means it takes longer to discover I am wrong - bigger risk and the balance between risk and reward may not meet my standards.

Summertime

Gershwin's "Summertime" is a great song. This recording by Billie Holiday is a wonderful example.

Summertime is well and truly here but it brings lots of opportunities. One thing that happens when the markets gets quieter is that I may have to reduce the size of the bars I trade and make my entries more aggressive. I just get the trade on ad then decide whether I want to keep it or not. Trade location is even more important than usual when its quieter. Having a good trade location means that I can usually scratch a trade if I think I'm wrong.

My eBook is Here!

Today I posted my eBook: Trading Order Flow in a Market Profile Context. You can start reading the eBook by clicking the tab: The eBook at the top of this page.

I will also be posting recorded live trades using my methodology and charts starting soon. I'll Tweet when these are posted to the ElectronicLocal YouTube channel.

Sell that Resistance - ES

Its groundhog day most days in the markets. I have my trading pictures and when they appear in the live markets and are confirmed by order flow I just have to pull the trigger. Selling that blue line resistance was revealed by MP. There was a double resistance here - the blue line and the VAH of that distribution. It was the order flow that showed me which one to sell.

 I'm just finishing tidying up all the typos in the book so if you want to follow my methodology you will have a roadmap.

The Book

The book will be posted to the blog by the end of the month - June 2015. And it is free. Look for a tab at the top - BOOK. I am still having some Amazon issues but it will be published there as soon as those issues are resolved. The upside to having the book in the blog is that you can ask questions and also translate it into other languages.

The chart below is today's ES. Very typical use of my methodology. You can see that the MPs have been split and the resulting resistance revealed. The arrow shows the sell short point based on that resistance and triggered by the order flow - top of zipper and VAL of distribution.

There are trades like this in most markets and the techniques I have been using well before this blog started are still working well. Adding the raw order flow component has just made them better.

Context and Order Flow

There is a great misunderstanding about order flow and context. I see this from both emails and people I am mentoring. This misunderstanding can be corrected by looking at markets in a different way.

I have repeatedly espoused that CONTEXT RULES. I have also said that order flow needs to be read in context. For example, strong buying can be initiative action that will continue or it can be stops being hit at the end of an up move. To distinguish between the two, I need to see the context. Context is made up of Market Profile and indicators that tell me where I am in context. Indicators no longer trigger trades. Order flow triggers trades. Indicators tell me trend and its strength, where the mean is and how far I am from that mean.

An analogy to this is tennis. We have a tennis court with a net and lines. That is our context. As a player we watch where our opponent hits the ball in that context and how hard. We look at where he hits it from.

I draw your attention to the lows of the open on 5/22/2015. The previous day's Profile was split to reveal the VAL support that held on the open. Then look across to the order flow chart. The price bounced off the support on the open and then pulled back to provide the entry opportunity. From there it was just profit.

Splitting

The correct splitting of the Profile showed this resistance. It was not visible before the split. I know there are lots of support and resistance areas on a chart so which one will "work". That's an easy question to answer: "the one where the order flow reverses".

Support and resistance areas are decision points. Order flow makes the decision.

Follow-up to Friday's T-Bond Post. Great Trade!

Friday's post showed what was possible in the T-Bonds. As it turned out, price went lower after my post so the market opened inside the VA.  My bias, of course, was down so I was looking for a sell. Although it opened at the POC I didn't take a LONG because of my envisioning but I was ready to sell at the VAH. The pic tells the rest of the story. The level of profits on this trade were very dependent on what the trade management strategy was in my trading plan. Scaling out allowed for better profitability although the bulk of my profits were taken at the VAL with a trailing stop after that.

I plan on adding Part 1 of the eBook to this blog soon. Look for a separate TAB when you arrive at the blog.

No Substitute for Preparation

I've often said in this blog: "The harder I work the luckier I get". Its Mayday and Mrs EL's birthday holiday here in Europe so I thought I'd share a part of my daily prep on the T-Bonds. As I write the 30 Years Bonds are trading around  159 12/32nds, above yesterday's value. The picture speaks for itself and lays out my trading plan for today's trade of ZB. The horizontal lines are support and resistance areas.

The Profile give me the "where" and I look to my bar charts with the usual indicators (for context) that I use and of course, with the order flow volume bid and ask information for making a decision about the "when".

Lots of Action on FED Day

I didn't know where to look first today. Everything was moving: DAX, ES, ZB Euro and, of course the BUND.

I spent most of my time on the floor in the Bunds from  the day they were first traded on LIFFE, before the DTB existed. The Bund contract was taken from LIFFE by the DTB by making it cheaper to trade electronically That was the beginning of the end of pit trading for LIFFE. I was an early user of the DTB terminal that I had to use from my clearer's office - there was no PATS yet. PATS was started by an American LIFFE Local who saw the future of trading.

Anyway, the BUND was a great market on LIFFE, especially during the years of German unification after the Wall came down.

Today the Bund is still a great market. It has gone through a quieter period but its really worth trading now. If you are in a different time zone and looking to trade something in your ETH then maybe the Bund is for you. The cream coloured buttons on the order flow chart are algos that I can arm with a single click when the context is right. Trigger is the order flow. The indicators and MP are the context. As you can see, the indicators are the same ones I've used since forever and can be seen in this blog since 2010. They now are part of the context that makes understanding the order flow much easier.

Why Does a Support or Resistance Break?

Most traders look at some form of support and resistance. Lets ignore the fact that some so-called support and resistance is neither support nor resistance and talk about why a real support or resistance does not hold.

With the evolution of electronic trading, more information is available. In earlier times, the retail trader was at a great disadvantage to the institutions and the so-called smart money. Now, we can all be smart money albeit that we may trade smaller size than the banks and hedge funds, not to mention the HFTs. Technology has become cheaper and accessible to us all.

So the answer to the question that I posted in the heading to this post and which was asked by a blog reader in an email:

I had a challenge figuring out these longs today in ES, because market was trading right into resistance, and the risk / reward that i was measuring didn't favor the longs at those points.

I'm wondering how I misread the situation.  (Please see attached)

The answer is very clear both to the topic post and to the email: Its what is happening with the order flow that breaks support and resistance and also what tells me when the support or resistance is likely to hold. One of the tools I use is the volume imbalance between the BID and ASK deltas. I use a number of other order flow tools.

This Stuff is not Difficult if You Have a Trading Plan

Zipper Follow Up

The T-Bond trade from yesterday turned out to be much better than expected. I say "expected" although I can never tell how a trade will evolve. All I can do is enter based on my trading picture that has probabilities highly on my side. The rub is then to try and manage the trade to get the most out of it. Not easy to hold a trade for so long when most trades don't go that distance. It's only possible if you trade multiple contracts and take enough profit as the trade progresses that allows the "luxury" of holding a runner(s) that you are prepared to exit at Break Even if the trade reverses before you can exit this last scale. I must confess that I was not still short at the bottom. The point just below the zipper was the logical exit point for me but there was a re-entry picture to go short again into the gap using that context plus the order flow chart.

This management style is not for everyone. A style where you are all in and all out can be just as valid with the right back tested management rules. The math has to work.

Zipper!

Just returned from 8 days in Dubai. Its an amazing place. The skyscrapers there dwarf what you see in New York or anywhere else. Everything old becomes new again. Hard to find a building older than 10 years or even 5. 90% of the people there are expatriates working tax free.

Today's chart is the 30 Year T-Bond. I've traded Bonds since 1982 when I met the father of financial futures, Richard Sandor. He was working for Drexel Lambert. Another broker that I had met brought Richard to my office in London to get my business. Needless to say, he did. Richard is a very remarkable man.

Anyway, the chart shows a nice zipper. Most zippers get run sooner rather than later. But to ve sure, my order flow chart will tell me when. In this case I'm happy to sell the VAL of the distribution above the zipper and sit till either "ching ching" or price is accepted inside value. Or, my order flow chart tells me that I need to exit.

Where and When

Peggy Lee had a song, "Where or When". For me, trading is "where" and "when". The two pics below each give at least three or four great trades with a couple of hours: the ES and the ZB, both great markets. The MP provides the "where". I mark up my Profile before the RTH market opens and I know in advance where I will do biz. I then use order flow to provide the"when" component of the equation.

 

 Two completely different markets but similar patterns and similar opportunities. Market Profile is probably the greatest tool devised. It is perfect of telling me the "where". I can use it for the "when" out of the box but by using order flow charts, Volume Imbalance charts as marketDelta calls them, I can get an even higher win rate and more profit.

I'm in Dubai again this week enjoying the sun. Australia is still a little too far for a week's break but hopefully the planes are getting faster.

Its Still All About the Context

Understanding what "they" are doing is not so hard when you read the order flow in the context. That's what the book is all about.

Progress on the book is good although I had some time off for a minor medical procedure. Life is like that, I've learned. Anyway, Part 1 is pretty well nailed and am waiting to finish the current training I'm giving so I can lock down Part 2. Part 1 is dependent on Part 2 so that's where I am.

The pic below show the split DAX Profile from yesterday - split before the market opened today. The support and resistance worked perfectly and gave me what I needed to read the oirder flow in context.

Lots of Trades are this Clear!`

I'm in the process of doing a training that I'm recording to use in the new book. We're at the point of creating a trading plan. My trading plan consists of a number of trading pictures, each of which has its own "rules". I've written "rules" in quotes as these rules are not mechanical rules but rules that allow us to recognise specific trade opportunities. Each picture has certain order flow and context requirements and we learn to recognise and react to these opportunities instantly. No umming and ahhing required. Its a picture that is easily recognizable.

The pic below is this mornings DAX. As you can see, the distance between the VAH and the POC was worth about 750 euros per contract. We have 4 trades in that space taking out much more than 750 euros per contract. And we haven't even gone down to the VAL....yet.

Trading orderflow in this Market Profile context allows us to make very high win rate trades with low risk. This context allows us to see the potential profit and risk per trade very clearly before we enter. In this way it is easy to see whether a trade should be taken. A properly constructed trading plan is a critical part of the process to CP.

Kung Hey Fat Choi

Happy New Year to all my Chinese friends! I will be visiting Asia later this year and look forward to seeing some of you again.

TBonds Have Zippers!

Today's trade is the TBonds. I used to trade a lot of Bonds in the 1980's both off floor and on the LIFFE market as a Local in the pit. Today's trade is pretty self explanatory. I love zippers. Price usually runs along a zipper.

I'm trading more TBonds again as I have a training session under way and my student will be trading them. I'm making dual use of the training by recording them for inclusion in Part 2 of the eBook. We worked on the tools and theory this week and next we will embark on live markets. These will be recorded too. There will be other markets that we look at. This week did watched a lot of DAX and some ES but we'll look at NQ and perhaps Gold and Light Crude and maybe the Euro future.

Day Traders Rule!

I've really been enjoying these markets. Up one day and down the next. There are good intra day moves. The longer term traders are having a tough time. With all that is going on in the world I expect this volatility to continue all year in the stock indices, forex, crude and gold, not to mention the interest rate futures. We have a plethora of markets to trade to suit the speed requirement and time zone of everyone.

Market Profile is a key part of understanding both directional bias and where trades should be looked for. As the great Mark Twain wrote:

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
There seems to be more misinformation out there about Market Profile than most technical analysis tools and methods. I guess its because its something very real, very good that was developed by a trader not by a smooth talking salesman. Lots of people have hopped on the band wagon and given their own interpretation. Pete Steidlmayer believed in self discovery. He didn't clearly tell his students, including me, what to do. As  said before. I discovered the existence of Market Profile in the early 1980s and immediately ordered the manual from the CBOT. It was useless for me. I then met pete and studies under him. Still didn't get it. Met Jim Dalton and took his class. Still lost. Went back to Pete. I knew there was something very valuable there but could not see what. It was a few years after that the penny finally dropped.

To learn how to use Market Profile effectively I believe that you need to observe. But I also think that you can save lots of time and money if someone shows you how he uses it. You can then know what to look for. The book and videos will do all that and more. Part 1 is almost ready and Part 2 is going well.

Splitting Market Profile

This chart of today's ES shows the importance of context and splitting the Profile.

The high and low support and resistance of the tradeable distribution is only visible with the split. All I had to do when price was near those extremes was to look for the reversal of the order flow.

Widowmaker?

The DAX used to be my nemesis many years ago. I traded other markets that supported my DAX habit. It was not a cheap habit. But I persevered and the DAX became my bread and butter.

If you look at today's pic you can see how wonderfully it behaves with the MarketProfile. Of course you have to get the split done to see where the real support and resistance is. There are 3 S & R areas that the price tested so far on the chart.  I had the price near the high of the day so far marked on my chart as a selling point as soon as the market opened. The VAH of yesterday's split distribution was a buy point the first time. As price was accepted in the VA, the POC became a target.

ALL these areas had to be qualified by order flow and additional  when price was there.

Contex, Context, Context

Since starting this blog in 2009, I've been emphasizing and emphasizing that context was king. Context is even more important, if that is possible, when using the latest technologies to identify order flow. Identifying what "they" are doing depends on context. Is the order flow responsive or initiating? BIG difference. The difference between a profitable trade and a losing one.

Today's DAX is a great example. You can see on the Profile that price started going up the zipper. The order flow bars showed buying and selling but it was the BUYING that was where the power was as you could see not only from the price action and trade deltas but from the context of the Profile and the other context tools that you can see on the bar chart.

The eBook is going well. Part 1 will be available FREE on Amazon once it is ready. However, Amazon does not support embedded videos on self published books so Part 1 will have static pictures rather than the videos that you will see in Part 2. Part 1 is a complete overview of what I am doing now and how I do it. Experienced traders will be able to use the information in Part 1 to evolve their trading methods and styles to incorporate many of the things I do if they think it fits them.