Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

For the Small Trader, from a Small Trader (by b2fnow)

By -

This post is for the small guy. If you’ve got plenty of money in your trading account, you can stop reading right here, unless you are just curious what the perfect setup will be for little or nothing; for the small guy.

Any other small-fry traders out there? Anyone with less than $25,000 trying to day trade is financially challenged. Anyone with less than $5,000 is super-challenged, and a small-fry trader.

I’ve used technologically advanced trading platforms like Realtick through TerraNovaOnline for $300/mo, and many others, and it’s all wonderfully beautiful and complex. But NinjaTrader also has programming capability and back-testing capability and a built-in simulator like some of the premium packages such as TradeStation, and all the features necessary for trading.

I want to help people see that there is a way to trade both the Forex futures and spot market for free, i.e., no data fees, no exchange fees, no platform fees — zero overhead — all free. Maybe you will try it if it costs you nothing. I get nothing out of this, maybe a thank you.

Check out this link to the NinjaTrader trading platform with the free Zen-Fire data feed, and download the 30-day free trial. I’ve seen them extend the free-trial period three or four times.

http://www.ampfutures.com/index.php

Here’s a screenshot of one out of five of my NinjaTrader futures screens.

Home Screen

Here you have Level II quotes, the Control Center is slid over to hide my personal info, and on the right is the SuperDom for one-click position entry. It also enters and manages stops, targets, OCO orders, trailing stops, and multiple positions; very intuitive. The Market Analyzer at the bottom is my Watch List (black background), but notice in the last column that it notified me with a number one in the right-hand column (condition True) of a breakout in the eMini, Dow mini, and Nasdaq futures. It also beeped at me to wake me up to do something. NinjaTrader is an excellent alternative to any trading platform you may have that is costing you a monthly fee.

I prefer Mini Dow Futures and Forex Futures, but I'm a small fry, and I'm swinging for the fences with too much leverage because of a small account. I become afraid to hit the button when highly leveraged and miss a lot of trades, get out too early, and generally don't trade my system or follow my plan simply because of the huge swings in my account due to leverage. I tend to trade my account value, rather than the trading plan. Like a lot of you, I'm a day trader, without the option to hold overnight because of the leverage. But with the Forex spot market, you can leverage down to zero, and even the small fry can hold a position when he/she knows when to hold 'em.

For free, I can do this forever. I’m not pressured to overtrade when my trading overhead is zero. Commissions are $6 total per position, so I can jump in and out quickly and more often with only one point necessary to cover commission fees. But I’m still too over-leveraged when trading Futures. So I set up another account, on another computer, and use NinjaTrader Forex to trade the cash currencies in a mini account. And again, all for free.

You think that you might be willing to try trading Forex futures for free? Good, huh? Here’s the great part. I drug out an old 1GHz Pentium III computer with 500MB of memory, added two dual video cards, and it runs NinjaTrader Forex cash currency markets with four monitors just fine. Oh, and did I mention, that for free, I can keep on keepin’ on.

I don’t think you can run both the Futures and the FX currencies on the same machine, because they have two different licenses and conflict. So drag out that old machine; you got nothing to lose.

Drawbacks

Yes, you do have to open one or two more accounts and fund them both. But you can start with as little as $1,000 in the futures account and $500 in the FX account, both through NinjaTrader. The broker for the first will be through Dorman, and the latter will be through Forex.com (forget FXCM). Margin rates for the futures account are all $500 or less for the currencies and index futures. Oil is higher, but who trades oil? At TerraNova, they wanted $2,700 margin to trade the Dow Mini and $3,500 to trade the eMini. At NinjaTrader, they only require $400 margin for either, and I can trade six contracts if I want with the same money I had before. Geez, how much trouble can I get into now?

NinjaTrader only comes with two weeks of intraday historical data, and no daily data. You can download the daily data at the following links for free, and your intraday data will build over time. You can trade stocks through NinjaTrader, but you will have to pay for a data feed; the cheapest I’ve found is $45/mo, but here’s a complete list.

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/helpguide.html?HistoricalData

Free Forex historical data: http://www.fxhistoricaldata.com/

Free Futures historical data: http://pitrading.com/free_market_data.htm

As soon as you download the free trial, set up your Market Analyzer first with all the contracts you want to watch to begin accumulating historical intraday data. The charts you setup will also start accumulating data, but you may switch or close the charts. Set up the Market Analyzer to accumulate the data you want.

If you want to see the NinjaTrader Support Forum and all their strategies and indicators you can download for free, go here:

http://www.ninjatrader-support2.com/vb/index.php

Here’s the NinjaTrader Help and Support Guide

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/helpguide.html

See ratings and discussion for the different Forex and Futures brokers and platforms here:

http://www.elitetrader.com/

Forex broker ratings:

http://www.goforex.net/forex-broker-ratings.htm

Like you, I had to work hard to stay afloat in 2009. The last day, I devoted part of my holiday to the better good of this forum and your success. Don’t waste it; get going and make 2010 a year of harvest. You have everything to gain.

 

Happy New Year!

Other useful Forex sites:

http://www.babypips.com/school/market_hours.html

http://news.tradingcharts.com/forex/headlines/Forex.html

http://forex-trading.bluecollarnews.com …

master trader?

http://www.robbooker.com/

useful e books:

http://www.rapidforex.com/

http://www.traderssecretcode.com …

http://www.1forextrading.com/

Forex simulator:

http://www.expertworx.com/pm/Forex%20Market%20Educational%20Game.htm

Free Charts

http://www.dailyfx.com

Blogs

http://the-forex-trading.blogspot.com/

http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/

Economic Calendar

http://forexfactory.com/

http://briefing.com/Investor/Public/Calendars/EconomicCalendar.htm

List of Forex Platforms and software

NinjaTrader platform

http://ampfutures.com/

http://forexplatformslist.com

http://www.forexnode.com/systems/

http://trading.web22.net/

http://www.marketiva.com/index.ncre?gid=3371

for beginners

http://softwareforexreviews.blogspot.com/2009/10/forex-software-project.html#comments

http://www.automatedleverage.com/

Greetings from The Jersey Shore

By -

Jerz shore 

 

After reading countless postings on numerous blogs (don’t worry, Tim – SoH is still #1 in my book) it’s abundantly clear there’s no shortage of opinions out there. And we all know what they say about opinions, right? Some of these bear case scenarios are well-articulated and thought-provoking. Hell, some of them might even end up being correct too! For example, we can all provide plenty of reasons why China is going to be the new economic powerhouse. But it’s just as easy to explain why over-investment in China will hinder their economy. And the list goes on. We can theorize and debate, but ultimately it’s the charts that tell us how right, or wrong, we are.

Below I have included a chart of the Wilshire 5000, a very broad measure of stocks. You will see one window has the weekly bar charts for the past 11 years. The other window has the 50, 89, 150 and 200 day exponential moving averages. Normally, I add the standard deviation of the moving average as a buffer, but I will forego this for now. If we’re in a bull market, the chart should look like this: 50 day EMA on top, followed by 89 day EMA, then 150 and finally 200. The reverse is true in a bear market. As these averages transition from bull to bear mode, you should also be seeing a change in the chart pattern (ie: head & shoulders tops, broken trendlines). I marked bull & bear based on the golden cross or black cross (50 EMA crossing the 200 EMA). Simple, simple stuff.

Greetings from the Jersey Shore Chart
 

The big patterns (which no one can manipulate), the multi-year trendlines and the moving averages are all telling us the same story: we’re in cyclical bull mode. I’m not Pollyannaish enough to tell you we side-stepped the crisis and from here on out everything’s “coming up Milhouse”. I’m all for speculating as to what the next macro-catastrophe will be, but I’m also interested in keeping my head long enough to trade it.

That’s all for now. Happy New Year.

With love (the kind you pay for),

Scalded Chimp

1-1-10

By -

Twenty-Ten has arrived, and of course I wish all Slopers a Happy New Year. I had a pleasant – although typically quite tame – celebration, and I'm going to spend the day packing up and taking the long drive home.

If there's one graph that, in a nutshell, captures the essence of 2009 for me, it is the one below. It's nothing fancy – just the UCPIX mutual fund, based on the double-inverse of the Russell 2000. It nicely expresses how 2009 was a fantastic, virtually uninterrupted, bull run.

0101-realucpix

But there's another graph with meaning for me. Yesterday, when I was involved with something else, I glanced across the room and happened to glance on my big screen a graph of DIA (the Dow 30 ETF). It was almost like a cheesy romantic moment ("across the room, their eyes met…….") because I was absolutely struck at what a marvelous graph it was. More on this in a moment.

0101-ucpix
 

OK, the moment has passed, so I'll continue: if I had been simply dropped into January 1, 2010, having missed 2009 altogether, I would look at a graph like the above and start doing handsprings. I'm a chartist. I rely on them for my decisions. And a chart like the one above is a slam-dunk, jumping up-and-down, scream it from the rooftops short.

Now, since I did not in fact give 2009 a miss, it's a little awkward expressing these sentiments, because just about every bearish notion and postulate in 2009 led to little more than looking and feeling foolish. But, even with all the ruckus last year, I am trying to see things clearly. And I really, really like what I see.

Added to which, it agrees quite nicely with my long-term chicken-scratch about the market, which has been spot-on since I scribbled it together 20 months ago (newer readers, please note the date axis is meaningless). I am entering the new year with 50'% of my capital committed, virtually all of it to bearish positions. I intend to augment the positions that do well as time goes on.

Now, I don't get real hung up on any kind of magical meaning to the new year. Those people that pledge to lose weight? Most of them will stay fat. Those folks who want to kick smoking? Most of them will keep puffing away. Personalities, habits, and dispositions are difficult to change, and human nature isn't known for its strength and determination in the face of inertia.

Likewise, just because 2009 was brutal for the bears doesn't mean that 2010 is destined to be great for them. But I'm cautiously optimistic, and if I may offer my own attempt at a resolution – in spite of my cynicism about the tenacity of such things in general – it is to more fully accept responsibility for my trading successes and failures. I think I've been pretty good about this, but I could definitely do better, and I think such a frame of mind is healthy for a trader.

So with that, I will commence a long day of packing and driving. Enjoy the long weekend, and I'll be back on the blog first thing Saturday morning.