wpicotte

Greetings - I'm newly relocated to the Bend area. In these COVD times, hard to meet new traders, but would be glad to meet some who are more local. Hit me up anytime! Wesley

I joined BBT in Jan 2017 with no prior trading experience, and no prior trading education other than Andrew's book. As you'd expect, it was a bewildering experience to see the live fire of the trading environment. Andrew and the BBT mods eased that entry tremendously through their chatroom commentary, on the forum, in email, and the YT recaps. Since that time, additions of the pre-market show, ADog's epically-detailed trade reviews, and everything else that comes with a BBT membership only serve to increase learning opportunities offered by this community. The BBT style never fit my personality, and even early on when I was overwhelmed by "unknown unknowns", this was intuitively evident. I therefore began to explore the universe of potential approaches to trading, in search of something more matched to my strengths. My single desire for the community, then and now, is a greater diversity of discrete trading styles / systems, led by experienced traders. I know from conversations held with other members, as well as comments in chat, that not everyone is so lucky to begin their trading journey with with BBT. This truly is a place geared towards community and education. I have not found BBT's level of camaraderie anywhere else, and regardless of where your trading journey takes you, there is absolutely no better place to begin than right here. If the style suits your strengths, it has all that you need to become a great trader.

Trying to configure a hotkey script that will set a trigger price for a stop limit order a set amount above / below the limit price. The limit price can be entered by double-clicking a chart. I've seen many scripts that send a stop price relative to average order. Anyone know how to accomplish the above?

Traders, making this post to see if we can get a Portland / Vancouver meetup organized. I'm happy to run point on this. I have travel the first half of Feb, so latter half of the month into early March would be great. Let's start with interest, and go from there to establish timing and locale. Vancouver BC is a puddle jump away, so maybe we get Andrew down here for this, as well.

Set up these hotkey scripts on my Stream Deck - love! Have tried them in Sim and everything seems to work as expected. One issue I encountered is with the 'Update Stop Order' hotkey. I have this configured and, following the instructions, double-click the stop market order in the orders window and then hit the hotkey. Nothing happens, however -- and I'm not exactly sure what should. Can you advise? Thanks -- and thanks for putting these scripts together. Awesomeness.

Any Philly folks up for a meetup? I'm from Philly but live in Portland, OR. I'll be visiting Feb 15-18 and it would be awesome to meet fellow traders from my hometown. Let me know if you're game and available during those dates and we'll figure it out.

Trying to chart the US Dollar Index in Das but no data exists for the DXY, USDX, DX. Any idea how this can be accomplished in Das? Thanks

In today's recap, Andrew noted how a couple stocks sold off in pre-market and consequently opened below VWAP. I swear that in past discussions about VWAP, the consensus I gathered from others is to not include pre / post market activity in VWAP (which is a configurable option in DAS). Obviously, Andrew is doing so (a la today's recap). I am curious what others do. I have not been including pre / post activity in the VWAP calc and doing so really changes the value. What do you do?

Duane, Steve, I'm in PDX, as well, and would be down with meeting fellow BB traders. Not sure I can make Sunday or if the time still works for you, but hopefully a meetup gets re-upped on a future date. Cheers, Wesley

OK -- so basically the only way to ensure that the correct account is selected when initiating a trade is visually. I've set the account associated to each market in the global trade template to blank -- i.e. there is no 'default account' for a Montage to revert to when I select a symbol in a Market Viewer.

As a safeguard for my live account, I've saved all Montages on my DAS desktops to 'locked', with my trading account displayed in the account dropdown. The idea here is that I would need to manually unlock the Montage and change it to my trading account. However, I'm still able to change the account in the dropdown while the Montage is locked. I assume, therefore, that the "lock" is only for trade buttons, not the dropdown?

What function for the following snippet within the hotkey commands above perform: Price=Round2

I have an MBP, so that's my context for the constraint I mentioned. Nothing to do with Windows or Parallels, but it would be worth researching the latter if you're ultimate goal is to max out your video card(s) capacity. Good deal that you run can so many monitors on the Mac Pro -- seems that most 'pro' trading stations incorporate 4+ monitors.

I've run DAS on my mid-2012 MBP with two external monitors for ~ 3 months. I experienced issues early on, but these occurred while I was running a trial version of Parallels, and prior to purchasing a copy of Windows. Since purchasing Parallels and Windows, I've had few DAS-related issues. A couple of crashes, but now having been in the chat for a bit, I've 'seen' DAS crash on PCs, too, and cannot correlate mine to Parallels specifically. So, DAS on Parallels seems solid, particularly with a machine that has decent horsepower. Another consideration for Mac users is the inability to run more than three monitors - at least on machines of this era. Based on my experience so far, this isn't an unworkable constraint, but if / when I go full time on trading, it would be with the objective of building a dedicated PC / multiple-monitor trading station. For now, I'm content with the native display on my MBP, in addition to a 32" 1440p and 24" 1440p external monitor.

AdventureDogLA I've had the same thing happen. Drives me crazy and wish DAS would treat this as an issue.

A recent read, and one I recommend for BBTers even though it's not specifically about trading, is The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. Josh is a world-champ chess and Tai Chi Chuan player, and the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. The core of the book covers his "system" for becoming a top performer. Whether or not you ascribe to the idea of top performers, Waitzkin learned to win within two highly competitive arenas and the book lays out personal experiences that led to his contemplations about how to win (or lose), including important mechanical and psychological aspects that readily translate to daytrading, and ultimately details the approach to winning that he developed and refined. The book is an easy read and unlike others of its genre. Calling what it presents a system is too heavy-handed -- it's closer to philosophy, and one I relate to easily as both a former athlete and someone still seeking my full potential as a human. In this latter regard I have a long way to go, but definitely gained some ground by learning about Waitzkin's paradigm.

Carlos, thanks for the reply and sorry to be so slow to respond! I basically came to a similar conclusion about the value of the subscription in the short term. I'm still in a Sim account and likely will extend this past the three-month window before taking the big step of going live. In the here and now, there are so many higher-priority things to worry about but in the long term the independence of my own subscription may be the right move. Cheers, Wesley

As you may have heard, the monthly cost on Trade Ideas goes up on Feb 15 by something like 20%. Meanwhile, I'm one month into simulated trading and get the majority of my watchlist from the chat room. Nonetheless, I still contemplate subscribing to TI while the monthly cost is sub-$100. The benefit for doing so is long-term, and that's only a theoretical benefit at this point, but in the short-term it would be nice to have access to my own scans. I don't see building a pre-market watchlist from it, per se, in place of what we get in chat, but scans that apply to late morning and on could be valid. I don't need to do my trading early -- I'm at my desk all day anyway, working from a home office, and have been practicing the act of monitoring stocks throughout the day. Thoughts? Dumb idea? Give it to me.

Thought I'd chime in here regarding my standup desk from UpDesk. It's l-shaped with a mechanical lift that has three programable positions (or just manual positioning). I'm new to trading so do not have a bank of monitors, but run a 15" MBPro with two 24" monitors (one of which is about to be swapped out for a 32" curved screen). The desk is awesome, solid, and has functioned without issue for 2+ years. I could easily support more monitors with a VESA-style mount. For some reason, cannot load a photo of the desk, but you can check out the website. Not cheap but super solid.

OK, thanks. Very helpful to know how others address this.

New-to-trading questions on this: This + / - value essentially provides flexibility on the exact price for a buy or sell order, since the odds of an order with only an exact price getting filled are low, correct? On orders filled at the limit of the setting (in my case, +/- .10), this means that between the time the order is sent and filled, price moves so much that only the far end of the bid / ask range is still valid? Or is there a more accurate explanation? I'm using a DAS sim account and it has been my experience that orders are often filled at the extent of the +/- range. Thanks for any insights. Wesley

I'm currently using the bid / ask rules that Andrew provides, whereby buys are made at limit Ask +.10 and sells are made at Limit Bid -.10. I notices today that executions on some of my orders were made at the extent of this .10 range, and I'm unclear as to why. I've also seen others in the chat mention that their limits are .05 as opposed to the .10. Could someone please clarify on this. I'm confused about the implication on the setting.

Wanted to circle back on this regarding the comment about VWAP. This isn't the same on charts of different timeframes within the same time period. Assume two timeframes, 5-min and 1-min. Also assume the same number of shares traded each minute of the a single 5-min timespan. If price descends $.20 each minute, starting at $2 and ending at $1, the VWAP on the 5-min chart will be the mean of this change, while the VWAP on any given 1-min candlestick will be above the mean, or at the mean, or below the mean. Hence, when comparing between the two in real time, VWAP values are different. None of this contradicts the underlying feedback that levels / indicators used by a trader are an individual choice, but since I haven't been doing this long enough to have personal preference, it's worth clarifying -- for me, at least.

No, that helps. I understand the calculations behind the indicators (though the clarification on VWAP is helpful, too). My question (which you addressed) is really about risk management -- guidance from Andrew and others emphasizes use of levels, hence the initial question. Understood that the timeframe in use is trader-specific -- totally makes sense. I'm curious to know how others feel regarding use of MAs as levels for entry / exit guidance as it pertains (if at all) to timeframe when making these decisions.

Question about indicators such as MAs and VWAP on charts of different time frames. The context here is using these as points of entry / exit while monitoring (specifically) 5-min and 1-min charts. The numeric values of identical indicators differ on each timeframe slightly, which I'm finding confusing when timing trade entries. Is this difference something others try to mitigate through settings? Is it standard and just a matter of knowing they differ? Is the method really to focus on resistance / support applied to one timeframe (i.e. 5-min) and focusing on this? Thanks for your insights. Wesley