Martin D

Not many people are active in the forum so you might get a better response in the chatroom. I've seen @leilajake mention she's on it now but not sure who else

Old content got removed from the education centre, they put them to trading terminal a few days later after a lot of people (including me on behalf of newer traders, it would've slowed my journey a lot in it's current state) complained about the removal of content but I looked again recently when someone else asked and couldn't find them there now either. Maybe @Abiel can give you the official answer about there complete removal from everywhere or whether they're stored somewhere else.

Hey, I'm also from the UK (Scotland) and living in Australia (Melbourne). In terms of advice at that stage it's already covered in a lot of material such as Andrew's book, stay in SIM, test out different strategies, risk management etc I think a lot of the other stuff comes when you get through that initial few months of just learning the beginner stuff and you begin to develop questions of what you're getting right/wrong and things to pay attention to, until you've taken that initial step it would just be information overload and you have nothing really to relate it to. One other book I'd recommend for your early days is Anna Coulling "A complete guide to Volume Price Analysis" Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

well the surfaces are notebooks which are essentially slimmed down laptops in the way they operate rather than a tablet like the ipad. We used to use surfaces at work years ago but had to upgrade to laptops due to lack of power (they're more for people who are constantly on the move so need something really small and light and only do basic stuff on it like surfing internet or doing basic documents), you would need to check whether spec would be ok for DAS as I don't think it's a crazy heavy program (DAS should have a minimum spec for their software if you google it). I personally went with a gaming laptop with that kind of money or Andrew recommends/travels with a Dell (https://bearbulltraders.com/technology/) as alternatives if you need something with a bit more power.

For that specific question, the short answer is yes. However, there are different types of stop orders though so if you use a stop limit for example then you can be jumped and if you're not there you can end up with a hefty loss but a stop market order is giving them permission to fill wherever so you can get a bad fill on that as well, getting jumped on a limit would typically happen on more illiquid stocks but it can happen on anything particularly if they're filling a huge order due to the priority of how orders are filled or if you've set the limit amount too tight e.g. 1c. Also stops don't work in pre/post market so if you were trading around that time or your power didn't come back on in time to exit before the market close then you could be subject to overnight gaps. In other words it's just better to have an alternative option to close positions should it happen such as being able to close on your phone or actually phone your broker.

Yes I use leverage but my rules are around trade size rather than using a certain amount of leverage. For example (not my real numbers), if I want my stop size on TSLA to be 50c and I want to risk $100 on my trade then I want 200 shares, regardless of whether that means I'm using no leverage or all my leverage that's the trade I want to take. Of course with margin you can get yourself in serious issues if you don't trade properly and abide by your stops but that's for each individual to assess their own risk of not doing that (and if you can't then trading is probably not the right career).

Not all cheap stocks and it depends how you play them (are they in play). Just saying it's not as easy as playing any stock in that range the way that you see the mods play TSLA, AMD etc every day even when they're not necessarily in play (they're often moving with the market), stocks in the $20-$50 range you just need them to have a catalyst to generate the liquidity on a lot them, if you're a catalyst find the trend type trader then you can follow those stocks around with catalysts and you'll likely be fine (there's just not as many around as there was in the past few years). Through Covid for example those types of stocks were played a lot because the travel sector was often in play every time there was a drop off or spike in numbers or some new variants was found or some vaccine news or whatever, however at the moment the catalysts tend to be more around economic data so the market as a whole moves and so we're more playing those big market names at the moment because that's where the liquidity is.

I am one of the traders Angela mentioned who tends to trade AMD, AAPL, TSLA etc every day. For me they are more predictable because of the higher liquidity and the types of institutions required to move them run on algos and those algos have certain behavior that you see over and over again. I will trade stocks "in play" as well because you can get big directional moves based on news, this is also fairly predictable as they are trading large RVOL because longer term participants are involved, in this scenario I can see within the T&S/L2 when things are beginning to change. The exception is the float of the stock rather than the price for most traders as once you get to a certain size in your trading smaller floats can be difficult to trade, there are some stocks which is too easy to turn the price. You basically need to be able to get in and out easily without slipping too much on the spread and you need sufficient liquidity that anybody can't just dump it 50c with a $50k account (there are a number of $20-$50 stocks where you can do that on a daily basis if it doesn't have huge RVOL on news). Companies like the big US airlines (AAL, DAL) for example have a big float so that doesn't tend to happen even though they're a cheaper stock price. That said I can still find a $3+ move way easier on TSLA than I can $0.5+ move on a $50 stock (unless it's got a great catalyst), for instance on Friday TSLA was an obvious false breakdown just before 10:30, not saying you would catch the whole thing but if you did it was a $9+ move, this is the ATR at work, a $1 move in that type of price stock and a $50 price stock are very different. To quote you, the things you may be missing are therefore, ok you can make $50-$100 or whatever on the stock but what is your end goal and is it still feasible on the stocks you're trading, if I use Andrew as an example, he just can't trade a lot of stocks with his size, he would get too much slippage on his stops because there isn't enough liquidity for him. Also you say risk management will stop the greater risk of loss but is the liquidity there on your stock to be able to get out with the risk you want? it may be fine when you're trading 100 shares but if you want to get to 1k shares or 5k shares then it's not the same thing. Not everyone wants to get there or maybe it's not an issue on the stocks you're actually trading but that combined with the predictability for me are the reason I choose higher priced stocks. If you listen to the morning show with Carlos, he says "no volume" to half the stocks he gets suggested and this is basically what he means, he doesn't think it'll move predictably/that a relatively small amount of money can move the stock. He'll also says look at that spread (or something along those lines), basically he's saying you'll be down big when you get in because you've jumped across the spread and then your risk management may not work very well in being able to get out because there's just not enough liquidity on the order book, this is the reasons a lot of us trade big stocks most days (particularly at the moment where most news is market wide news rather than company specific news)

You don’t need to subscribe to anything in IBKR to trade with DAS, it just APIs your order through them if that’s your broker

I've never traded while under 25k so I don't have any direct experience, I didn't answer you the last time you posted hoping someone with direct experience would help. However, the one that is mentioned by BBT is CMEG (it's still on the website but I haven't heard it mentioned in a long time). From what has been said on here I'm told they have higher commissions than IB (who most here use), I think they tend to have less short inventory which shouldn't be an issue with your strategy and they are obviously foreign HQ so may not have the same level of protections. Again none of that is from 1st hand experience, just 2nd hand info that I've heard over the years.

It's still in that link at the bottom (before all the links to other places on the site)

Not sure whether you're using Aiman's parabolic reversal as Angela is discussing or whether you have you're own entirely separate one like I do. However, to me the trade isn't a reversal because it hasn't really properly trended. If you look at your 5 minutes it's really more of a range (admittedly not a very clean one) and so the volume is the breaking of the range because a lot of the people who were long in there will stop out there because it's taking out the bottom and breakout traders may enter. This can either be a trap so the big players or market makers grab their liquidity at lower prices before we re-enter the range and potentially go long or we can retest the range and then it'll continue short. If you want to know more about this type of price action then look up Wyckoff.

Hi, Are you after something in general or do you mean what to track in relation to your strategies? In general I only track win/loss ($ per trade, per timeframe (day, week, month, year) & % win/loss for the higher timeframes) and R (Total & per trade). For me really R and win/loss % is the two things you need to control to improve trading but that of course means improving strategies or psychology etc which is where most of the data comes in. Strategy is partly specific on what strategy you're using and what is important to it, for example some plays may heavily rely on T&S/L2 and some may rely more on levels. What you track is therefore not uniform and so would need delve into more strategy specific. Psychology is not something I track but a lot do and depends whether you have psychology issues you need to deal with. For me it was only really overtrading so tagging whether I followed my rules or not was sufficient to getting me out of that (seeing stats on rule followed trades vs not). Other than that I'm in tune with whether I don't feel right and so I simply don't trade if I'm sick or whatever.

Andrew did a video on it on the Bear Bull Traders youtube a couple of years ago, just scroll back a couple of years and search for commission

You have ticked specifically that on options? Overall experience is irrelevant as far as they're concerned it has to be specifically in Options. Many people have come across that issue with IB (including me) and that has solved it. I'm pretty sure you don't need to be a professional to trade options in the UK and I did a quick google and it said it's fine. If you have still have issues then just give them a call and they'll tell you what the issue is.

I suspect it's the same as the other instruments within IB all around the world, you need an appropriate level of experience (where you fill in time/trades). After that if you come back (I don't know whether its log out and back in or wait a little bit of time) and ask for permissions they'll sometimes ask you to take a test and if you pass then they'll give you permissions. It's not always that exact process but it should be something along those lines, I don't think you need to be a "professional" trader unless something within UK law stipulates that but I doubt it. (you don't need to in other parts of the world it's just the IB experience requirements).

It's only and educated guess but I'd assume the lack of a space here between the RANGE and LowPrice would be causing an issue because it's two different calls. So basically this instead. TriggerOrder=RT:STOP STOPTYPE:RANGE LowPrice:Price There may be other issues but I'd try that first.

Hi, No they're not the same thing. It's quite a wide ranging topic. There are multiple ways that people try and determine where the market is going to turn or find support on a pullback: - There's indicators such as pivots, moving averages, MACD, RSI etc they have no actual power on the market except people look at them and therefore it can be an area of increased trading liquidity which causes the market to do what is expected from them. - There's support and resistance which is basically where has the market turned previously, previously the market failed to get through X price and so it way fail to get through there again, there's many different timeframes you can look at this to find different timeframes participants (5 min, 1hr, 1 day etc etc). Again as people are watching this area it can be somewhere the market turns or if it gets through then breakout traders may enter causing an additional push in that direction. - There's also supply and demand areas, this is similar to support and resistance but it's more concerned with volume (and so it differs a bit). If a stock spends some time in an area then a lot of traders will have their entries there, if we go off to the long side and then come back to that area the theory is that those people will defend there positions (or be looking to build a bigger position in that area but run out of liquidity the last time it was here) and so that area of supply will act as resistance. Basically there are hundreds of different ways people try to work out where a market will reverse or find support on a pullback. You just have to build your system and look to confirm it with order flow that shows other people agree with you. If you're looking for what people typically refer to as support/resistance then this is what Carlos and Peter do on the morning show everyday, just watch them and they typically answer a couple of questions if you're unsure of something.

I do almost the same but I don't use DAS anymore, I use TWS to execute (and bookmap for watching the market) . My order now has an auto stop of a dollar and TWS has chart trading so I just drag it immediately where I want my stop. After that I key my OCO orders for my profit targets and cancel my original stop order. If I want to move them around I just drag them on the chart.

I don't know if there's a way to do exactly what you ask in DAS but what I used to do was enter on a hotkey then set a "range" stop. So select stop in your montage it defaults to a Limit stop I believe. In that dropdown you can select "range" and type the high and low price. If you're looking for bigger moves this works fine, obviously wouldn't be suitable if you had a scalping entry and your stop could be taken out in seconds.

The two Price calculations on the 2nd bottom row?

I don't know/didn't see the discussion. What does the DAS chart look like around that close period? I've looked at the futures charts I have access to and it didn't trade near that price at the close (no prints there). I assume it can only be some kind of rouge (delayed) print like DAS does sometimes that screws up the charts or a close time issue. I can't see how else it would be so far away from price. Is the DAS R4 figure a typo though? just the close price wouldn't cause that kind of variation. I have a file that calculates a number of levels to look for confluence areas as part of my watchlist, it agrees with numbers you've given for IB etc but if I only replace the close price you've given for DAS I get $4037.54 so is the High/Low also off?

When you say the correct number of shares what are you expecting it to do? I think this hotkey is based off a % of your buying power amount. I'm not sure exactly how it would work without testing (and I don't use DAS anymore so can't) but if you were in more than one position at a time then it may be taking that into account in your buying power so for each additional position you may be getting less shares I don't think this is the hotkey where you need to click on the chart (like a lot of people here use) and it also doesn't look like it has the STOP order part on it so what you're using isn't designed to do that. If you can explain exactly what it is you want to do I may be able to help point to the closest Kyle hotkey

Hi, most people here use DAS, including Carlos (I used to but don't anymore). If I was choosing one or the other then I'd choose DAS but Bookmap complicated matters for me. It depends what kind of trading you're doing, if you're a scalper like Andrew then DAS is better. The executions are better so those split seconds count as you're entering at the point of the market where you often expect it to go immediately. This is what DAS is going for, quick executions. IMO the executions in TWS are fine if you're looking for more point to point moves but aren't as quick as DAS. In terms of charting TWS is missing some features that DAS has that people here use such as highlighting bigger orders on Level 2. However, this isn't a strength of DAS either vs other providers (as I mentioned their focus is execution speed) for example things like volume profile is incorrect in DAS because they use a less data intensive method for the benefit of speed rather than do it accurately (I asked them to do it properly but they refused and said they don't intend to fix it). Therefore depending on what you're using you may be fine or you may have issues with charting (with both) which is obviously a difficult question to answer for a newer trader. DAS has replay which is also helpful for a new trader but BBT now has a free replay on trading terminal so it's not as big an issue now vs when I started. DAS hotkeys are more customizable, things like fixed risk hotkeys are missing in TWS. So DAS has the edge throughout but the reason I went to TWS from DAS is Bookmap, imo it helps tremendously read Time & Sales and Level 2 and my decisions as a result are much quicker (far outweighing the benefit of DAS execution speed for me, also should point out DAS was around 200-250ms delay for me vs I think 50-100ms for some NA traders because I'm based in Australia), many members here use bookmap. It's lacking education content in BBT at the moment (but I believe is coming) because Thor is the only mod who uses it and has just started. I'm using bookmap to chart in the shorter timeframe and make decisions. DAS therefore became a $200 a month (stocks and futures) platform just for execution and I don't see the value for the type of trading I do (not scalping). I only use TWS for a little bit of charting and execution really, I won't necessarily continue executing in TWS as it doesn't give me everything I want but doubt it would be DAS either. As I said most people here use DAS so I will say my opinion isn't the consensus opinion.

It can be representative of everything except how you react when real money is on the line. Most people will react in some kind of way and so then it becomes difficult to gather accurate stats on your strategy which then spirals as you struggle to find your strategy issue without accurate data and your psychology issues about money make you do things because you doubt your strategy more and more as you lose and have no inner belief that it works because you don't have the data backing it up. If you deal with everything except the money aspect in SIM then at least you have the crutch of knowing the only thing stopping you is money psychology issues, if you don't then you'll be dealing with a wave of issues that all overlap and you'll struggle to dissect what the problem is. Speaking as someone who had patience issues, are you treating SIM like a game for learning (you don't need to take a trade to watch how the market moves) or because you're impatient waiting for your setup? If you're trading really small size (with a goal of only $250) then it's still a game to most, couple of dollars here or there who cares? (unless you're in such money situation that you need it which presents it's own issues), if you go higher then you have the issues I mentioned above. Trying different setups in SIM is fine, like maybe your trying Thor's pivots and Aiman's reversals and John' HOD etc to see what you like best. Those are genuine setups you can gather data on, if you're just pressing trade for the sake of it and not gathering genuine data then I'd question your patience. I did the same thing so I'm not criticizing just asking whether you're being honest with yourself (because I wasn't). You said slightly but what about comms when trading small size (it's a bigger proportion). It's a typical new trader mentality to think about the winnings, what about the potential losses? If you lose $250 (or more) a month instead what does that do to you? Can you afford it or will it take you out of the game? Many come in under capitalized take their hail mary shot and exit trading, that's why the statistics of failed traders are so bad. I can't speak for you personally but the typical trader experience is live too early, pay market tuition, either push through it because they have the patience and the capital or exit the industry. It takes some a year, it takes some 3 years (or longer - there was a post on here a couple of months ago that took someone 4 and a half years to get back to breakeven) to get profitable and so you have to be realistic about what losses would do to you as well. This is only my perspective but if you spent a long time in SIM and failed then you'll pay education of BBT/DAS or whatever and that'll be your cost. If you go live and fail then you'll pay BBT/DAS and market tuition. If you go live an succeed then you cover the costs but given the statistics against you then on average you'll increase your cost, why can't you for a period of time only take your setup in SIM (and just watch everything else or take mental entries and stops), you don't need live to see if your setup works you need live to see whether you have money psychology issues but for me that's the last step because I have my working strategy to fall back on so I know what I'm dealing with. If you can't wait for your setup in SIM then I'd question your psychological readiness to go live. If you can only treat SIM as a game then you'll treat immaterial amounts as a game, if you trade material amounts then money psychology issues will make life difficult (as I spoke about above) and imo that's asking for trouble on a "slightly" green strategy. Martin