Finviz

If you trade stocks there is a website worth looking at. The only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't include Candian stocks. Take a look at this video tutorial of the site. I'll be using it to find sectors and groups that are leading the charge for the next bull. Conglomerates have had a great run over the past few weeks on this strong surge of buying. Lets see if the pull back is lighter compared to the other sectors and groups. Once I find the sector or group I'll look in the same place on the Canadian market. This is for the RRSP (retirement fund in Canada), a long term approach. I'm in one bank stock and one enrgey stock right now with a bunch of cash, sitting and waiting.

On to the video, if it asks for a password -> finviz

Another short tutorial about BigCharts.

Other blogs worthy of mention

I find it takes so much time to read and digest information available on the net to find the sites that are actually worth while to visit on a regular basis. Here are some sites that I visit that offer more than just hype.

MACD High Probability Trades - I noticed that MACD High Probability Trades has taken to forex. He has switched his trading from stocks to forex, stating that forex is the new thing. I look forward to reading his blog posts related to forex.

DailyFX - FXCM's news, analysis and signals web site. Pretty good but I prefer the forexfactory calendar for news releases. It's on the sidebar of the blog.

ForexProject - Not sure what happened to Rich. Last word he got a new job. I think he should spend less time making websites and more time trading. His web sites are great though!

Alphatrends - Eben though this is related to forex, I watch his daily videos and I've read his book. Price action is all you need. Watch a (single) tick chart when price is near support/resistance and you'll see what I mean.

TradeTheMarkets - The free videos are helpfull. Although I have never paid these guys anything, there site is worth a mention. I signed up for the free videos. Here is a nice one - the them is - when daytraing, only take trades in the direction of the trend (60 min trend in this case).

Ryan has been helpful - If you cant daytrade forex, then swing trade it. Read this guys blogs to figure it out. He has two blogs, his own and one on fxstreet

USDCAD Poll

Previously I have posted my thoughts on USDCAD forex pair.

First USDCAD Post
Second USDCAD Post

Shown below is the recent chart. Using all your skills, vote on which level you think will be breached first, the 1.3000 zone or the 1.1800 zone.

Vote on the poll - it's located at the top right side of the blog. Also, feel free to say your piece on the pair, commenting on this post.

Breakthrough

It's been a while since I posted. Here's what I've been doing, and not doing....

I haven't been working a whole lot on the updated version of Tipster Trendlines but it is close. I sent the code to a reader (David) who is testing it. David had some good ideas to improve the flexibility of the code. For example, the ability to submit a bracket order, or just a buy/sell order, or a buy/sell with a stop. Also, the menu's have changed with everything on a single pane.

Since the beginning of the year I thought I'd concentrate more on actually trading than coding trading systems reading/writing blog posts, and actually gain more experience trading every day.

Also over the past few months my frustration with IB's data feed has grown so I decided to try another broker for forex trading while still not closing the IB account. My issue here is that you cant get tick data. If I use another feed to Amibroker and IB to trade forex the two may not jive enough to scalp and/or place my stops. So I think we are kind of stuck with IB's crappy data feed.

I've opened a new account with MFGlobalFX to trade forex. I think they are an affiliate of FXCM since I can log onto the dailyFX website for news and signals (more on that later).

Their simple little platform is really all I need, I found to my surprise. I plot a few MA's and display a daily, H4, H1, M1, and tick chart to trade. Once I figured out what I wanted to see and what indy's I wanted to on my screen, trading was more simplistic. I only use price, MA's, slow Stochastic, and a table of ATR values. The platform is FXTradingStation by CandleWorks, does anyone else use this? The indicators are written in a language called LUA. I'm not about to dive into another language to port some indicators. So back it is to Amibroker. How do I get this new brokers data into Amibroker? ... more on that later....

Using this little platform made me think a little after I has some successful trades. Amibroker allows us to over complicate things. This simplistic approach helped me get my head around the trading plan that I needed to simplify. My plan was more than 10 pages and I really wanted a 2 pager, something I would memorise without even knowing it, something short. Also during that time I listened to a TraderInterview. This particular trader made up a simple "table", I call it a matrix, of his set-ups. He would detail the set-up for the applicable time frame and how to initiate a trade and possible profit targets. It is well known that a trader needs a few set-ups to draw from in order to flatten the equity curve, and this is a good visual tool to do that. This trader also scored the set-ups for each trade, promoting good set-ups and "firing" the under performers. Promoting just refers to increasing position size for the set-up. So this was my road map to simply my trade plan and my charts.

Back to the new forex account.... After I opened the account, I tried trading on the demo to figure out the platform. Easy stuff. Trade right from the charts. Then I went back to IB's TraderWorkstation and tried demo trading from the chart trader. Again, this was easy but the charts are not as nice but I can see through that by adjusting the colours. The worst part of IB chart trader is the lack of a tick chart. I have found scalping and setting trailing stops as my position moves to be so much easier with a tick chart.

Today I fired up the DDE link to FSXM with Amibroker and the data is now streaming. So at least I can set up some alerts to email me when price is getting close. If you are using FSXM and the FXTradingStation application let me know what you think of it. I was also wondering about sharing templates for that app, haven't found anywhere that does this.

This is the breakthrough. I ready to dump back tests and auto pilot systems for now. I've got risk management under control and I know my limits. A have some set-ups that I'm comfortable using. I have two issues left to solve and one is data availability / easy charting package, the other is to get comfortable with larger stops. The second will come , I think, with a larger account size, its all about percentage on the irsk side. The frst issue, charts, should be completed by Sunday night once the streaming quotes start to come in. I'll probably use Ami to look at tick data and some home grown indy's and use FXTradingStation for all other time frames and to place the trades. Tracking trades on FXTradingStation is also easy. I'd post chart shots bu the app wont open on the weekends when the servers are offline.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else uses a combination of Ami and FXTradingStation or Ami and FXCM to trade forex. What has your experience been?