I haven't been nearly as active on this blog as I would like to be in the past few years, and so please consider this post more a framework so some of you can better understand my own interpretations of volume profile, as I receive a decent number of questions about it. This is less of a “how to” post and more of an interpretive one. I would expect anyone looking for details to come back to this as a reference as opposed to reading it once as a 1-2-3 and done, type of thing. It's not expected that everyone would understand it in one shot, particularly those who know very little on the subject ..read more

It was roughly ten years ago when I saw this “pay to prop trade” business model for the first time. Since then, many, many copycats have popped up and it's easy to see why: this is not the most challenging business to get going, and the money (seems to be) pretty good. It really depends on how it is executed, which you will read about below. I still take a lot of calls with traders, retail and otherwise, and it seems I can't go a couple of weeks without being asked about these platforms. Here's the gist, as many of you already know: 1. Trader pays a fee to XYZ 2. XYZ gives them a demo account ..read more

It was my 10th grade English teacher who introduced me to a slew of famous social experiments, most of which are centric on obedience, authority, and conformity. Stanley Milgrim, Asch, the Stanford Prison Experiment, etc., are all extremely well-known but seem to have done nothing to change actual behavior of the masses because, well, you simply cannot change what is hard coded into our DNA. Over time, they have become much more akin to a diagnosis of what has already occurred. There is a reason why, as we get older, more of us tend to say things like “the world is going to hell”. We are progr ..read more

While  it's obvious I have lost most of the blogging bug over time, I still enjoy getting things up here every rare once and a while. And while there are innumerable topics to discuss in this business, the more compelling ones tend to stem from a broader understanding of what we're interacting with in the first place. Interpretations of any market are often nothing more than an extension of the past experiences (or lack of) of the observer himself. And while we want look at any market through lenses which allow us to view them in the most complex of forms, they are, at the end of the day ..read more

I rarely do any kind of recent market commentary these days because I would never be able to keep up with it. I've been in this business for a good amount of time now. I was active during the last recession and I'll be blunt: that is the last time I have seen trading like this (or at least my mind wants me to believe). It's the headline cascade. One bad thing after another hits the wires, and price shoots down another percent, or two, or four. My intent here is not to say we are back in 2008 economically, because we are most certainly not. I'm talking about the price action in relation to how ..read more

I feel as though I can never take in enough when it comes to execution. Had I known years ago what I know now, I would have made this a much higher priority in my early days. There is a bit of a problem with this, however, as most of what we know nowadays was barely existent even 20 years ago. Our general approach to the execution problem has evolved from dialogue sounding like a stereotyped motivational speaker to more scientific / pragmatic. One of the largest issues any trader will ever face boils down to getting things done when they need to be done. After all, prep work is largely in vain ..read more

I have known the founder of FinancialJuice.com for many years now and just a couple months ago, he contacted me seeking feedback for a squawk service he launched a while back. Even with people have known for a long time (you too, FJ ), I evaluate everything that hits this site anymore. I have been listening to the feed for some time now…..it is professional, no nonsense news, live, and at zero cost. FinancialJuice's text feed itself features content from FinancialJuice itself and ForexLive. Markets covered are all you can imagine, with a seeming emphasis on major events / macro, FX and equiti ..read more

I realized it had been almost an entire year since I made a public video so I recorded the following in regards to a fundamental principle using volume profile. This is almost always overlooked by novices yet crucial when it comes to gauging both environment and timing for new exposure, using any number of different types of strategies. This video covers various basic principles of volume profile and is intended for those unfamiliar with the subject or those looking for an alternative view. The post Determining Broad Volatility / Environment Using Previously Executed Volume appeared first o ..read more