Doug Green

Ugh ... I just realized I'm too late with this, because our local paper publishes on Wednesday and Friday, and the election is this Tuesday ... but here's ab op-ed piece I was about to send to my local paper.

Disclaimer: I used to be a Republican. Today I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat, a rare breed in North Florida. I'll vote for *almost* any Democrat over any Republican.

It's Friday on my first week of trade blogging. It's been a very light volume week with little to no pro activity. We're at year-end highs and I'm speculating that people are nervous and unwilling to take risk. I expect more of the same today, and even less of it because it's Friday. For the mid-term I think we'll continue to meander higher. I've read somewhere 1160 as a target for the ES, with a potential strong reversal there.

One trade pre-market for a 5 tick loss. One trade after market open for a 2 tick loss. Down 9 ticks for the week.

I'll add charts later today or this weekend.

Day 3 of daily trade blogging, no trades in the morning although I attempted one late afternoon for break-even. Very slow morning, zero pre-market volume and almost nothing in early morning either.

Today is my second daily trading blog. See yesterday for the introductions. One trade today for -3 ticks, and one undocumented trade in the afternoon for +1 tick, so -2 for the day.

I'm starting the new year with the idea to blog each trading day. First, a little about myself. I'm a software developer and have been day trading for about a year. I've co-developed a trading package called ZoneTrader, which runs on NinjaTrader, and is available from TraderUSA.net. I'm not a trading expert. I've learned from some pretty good traders. And I hope I'm becoming a good trader myself.

Each day I hope to comment on what I see as bias and direction. I'll document the trades I actually take. And I'll post some charts.

1. make myself a better trader by documenting my trading day
2. show others how to use (one-way of using) ZoneTrader indicators
3. increase interest and sales in ZoneTrader product

No trades today, slowly crept higher all day, breaking macd divergence with each high and each low pivot. No good ABC trades. I need to figure out how to trade macd divergence and the trending A trade.

This 2 hour Presentation of ZoneTrader from 11/16/2009 is a fairly deep look at the features and options (see also outline and announcement). ZoneTrader is available from TraderUSA.

This event has already happened --- Video and Outline available here

Come see what I've been working on in all my spare cycles over the last year! I'm excited to show it off!

On Wednesday 11/16/09 I'll be presenting in HotComm TTROOM at 4:30pm EDT, password is "trading". HotComm is the preferred chat client for traders. Get the HotComm free trial if you don't already have it.

I just received a viral email from a friend. In my analysis, the email is a political ploy to spread misinformation. While the email is titled "regardless of political affiliation," it has everything to do with political affiliation. More below the fold...

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) production launched technical changes last week (10/5/2009) that affect traders using tick-charts.

I currently trade the E-mini ES and use three charts, a short term tick chart, a medium term tick chart (four times the short term), and a volume chart that is roughly equal to the medium term tick chart. I use the medium term charts for direction, and sometimes get better setups on the volume chart. When the medium term tick and volume charts get too far out of sync, it's worrisome.

On Wedneday, after the CME unbundling change, I was having a hard time determining direction. The medium term tick and volume charts were way-out-of-sync, which gave me pause. I now understand what happened. After the CME unbundling change, my tick chart became too fast and got out-of-sync with the volume chart.

The conventional wisdom is that you should multiply your tick charts by 2 or 2.5. The number to use partially depends on what days and times you trade. I've concluded for my style of trading that the multiplier for me is between 1.8 and 2.

Below the fold, ... how I came to that conclusion: