Trading Related Videos Have a New Home

I have moved the trading related videos to Essence of Trading from DaytradingBias.

This completed another part of the streamlining of the content within the daytradingbias website.

Although the videos are moved to Essence of Trading, the function to browse by the specific topics related to trading is not ready yet.

We will take care of that as soon as possible.

Have a nice weekend all!

Short Term Schedule Change

Due to unforeseen issues, I have to handle several things out town until end of next week.

I will try to post if the internet connection is functional at where I am heading.

I am quite sure I cannot trade during this trip but I will still post my pre-open thoughts in real-time commentary as long as I have internet access.

Must get packing now.

Have a good one!

Email Issue Resolved

We replaced my email server with a new computer over the weekend.

Data transfer was easy. Looks like there is no data loss so far.

Setting up the email server, however, took many hours as many tedious settings have to be done manually.

Anyhow, it is all done. Everything back up and running.

And a nice little surprise for me – I was told the old email server has been working 7/24 for 12+ years.

When things are working, we tend not to think too much about their importance.

Server Upgrade and Changes to Art of Chart Reading Online

As reported several days ago, my mail server broke down. I am working with a backup of the server setup on an older computer temporarily. We will setup the mail server properly over the weekend. If you intended to send email to us over the weekend, please note that it may be bounced. Just resend the message to us should get it to us.

Art of Chart Reading online will be taken off the site soon as I prepare to release the book bearing the same name. In short, many changes to the site daytradingbias.com in coming weeks as content will be rearranged. If you find the site suddenly looks different, no need to be alarmed.

Have a nice weekend all!

My Mail Server Is Down

Email problem with my server today. It is taking much longer than expected for the repair of the database so far. My guess is that I have to wait til tomorrow before I can check for my email let alone answering emails in the queue.

If you have not seen my reply of your email from last week, it will happen tomorrow.

Site Revision Progress

This week we have completed the move of one set of articles from DaytradingBias.com into a separate website, Essence of Trading. Obviously, the site is for the publishing of the article series bearing the same name. I expected to write more articles for the site whenever I find the right topic.

The original Essence of Trading articles are now redirected to the new site to avoid duplication. So don’t be alerted that you are redirected there. In the meantime, I have the tedious task of reviewing and editing the articles on the new site to make sure they have the correct formatting, etc.

In the future, I will invite other successful professional traders to pen articles for Essence of Trading. Many of my trader friends are not the type who enjoy the spotlight hence don’t hold me responsible when I come up empty handed on this pursuit.

More changes are coming to DaytradingBias.com as we are streamlining the design to prepare for the launch of the new real-time trading signals and trading models.

I will keep you all posted.

Have a nice weekend all!

NeoTicker Blog Site Recovery Near Completion and My Non-Scientific Survey of Trading Platforms

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If all goes well, we will get the NeoTicker blog site back up either this weekend or early next week. There are several things that has to be done first and it takes time to allow the internet to recognize the site. I will post the link to the site here once I can see it from my laptop.

Update: the site is now online, you can access it here

http://newsletter.neoticker.com

I put the question out to my premium members at DaytradingBias.com, asking them what platform do they use for trading. Interestingly, all these fancy rewards given to all these brand name brokerages do not reflect which platform being the most popular ones. It is not a surprise to me because I know all about the dirty secrets behind these magazines and financial media since the days I was purchasing advertisement for NeoTicker years ago.

The one that majority of my subscribers asking me to support is NinjaTrader. The other one mentioned a lot is TradeStation.

Both platforms have decent support with large communities of traders built around them. It is difficult for me at this point to say which one is better when it comes to deploying the trading tools and models I am porting from NeoTicker. I have already opened multiple trading accounts with various brokerages to test drive my trading models on them. A side-by-side comparison will tell us which one is really better in real trading.

One project done. Many more to go.

Have a nice weekend all!

Photo: A baby crab in Maldives. Magnified approx. 10x

Madness with Trading Platform Differences

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A week into testing various trading platforms on live data feed gave my team a nice little surprise. It turns out, the customization around the major retail trading platforms is a lot more work than we thought. This affects not only the indicators (minor issues) but also backtesting results (major issues).

For major retail trading platforms, I am referring to, well, the ones that majority of retail traders are using. So, that includes Tradestation, MultiChart, NinjaTrader, eSignal and MetaTrader. These platforms are the ones I get to open brokerage accounts to test them directly with live data from the brokerages. It turns out, even the minute bars on forex data are so different that we cannot even believe that we are looking at the same symbols in real-time. For other data like Emini S&P, the differences is minimal in terms of real-time streaming but the way how some of the bars are constructed definitely affect decision making from platform to platform.

I lived through such nightmare decades ago when I was switching my trading platform. I did not expect that the same issue still exist today. Maybe I am asking for too much?!

This is a very interesting experience for me but I cam imagine how frustrated many retail traders can be when they switch from one platform to another as they switch from one brokerage to another.

As we grind along the process, I learned that for even a simple indicator like the one for charting STOPD levels will have to be implemented in ways completely different from one platform to another. In long run, this will be nightmare scenario for maintenance of the more complicated indicators and trading systems across multiple platforms. A simple wish to provide cross platform toolsets is now turning into something a lot more complicated.

A challenge that deserves a place in my weekly rant, indeed.

Reviving NeoTicker Blog Site and Updates on Other Projects

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Within several weeks, I am optimistic that the NeoTicker blog site will be restored. The site was hacked through exploits in the older version of WordPress which led to massive email spamming coming off the site. I made an agreement with NeoTicker’s company to oversee the restoration project. So far things are progressing slowly but it will be done very soon. After all, many of the articles I wrote on trading are posted there. It is a valuable resource for not just NeoTicker users but the whole trading community.

After very long deliberation with my team working on the real time trading signals for Emini and Forex, a surprise decision is made. Against my personal prejudice, I will delivery the trading performance reports in Tradestation format. In other words, at least some of my trading models will be backtested and tracked with Tradestation. People who know me probably know why NeoTicker existed in the first place and it was not based on a good experience with using Tradestation.

This also implies that I will offer my indicators and trading code in Tradestation format, in addition to the other ones already supported.

For the ebook Art of Chart Reading, I am waiting for the edited version on the remaining chapters. From there I will have a lot of reading to do to finalize the project. This is going to make my busy schedule even more busy.

For many of you waiting for so long for my forex research and courses, they are progressing slowly. Unlike the web articles, this time they are done in a very different fashion. As I mentioned before, it is now time for me to produce the much more sophisticated materials.

The amount of time and effort necessary to produce a book length course on trading models is exponentially longer than having each chapter being independent article like the ones I wrote for daytradingbias. On this aspect, I totally underestimated the commitment necessary hence slowing everything down so much. Luckily, I am not those people who give up easily. I can see light at the end of the tunnel at this point.

Enough babbling. Back to work.

Belated Happy Easter!

Site Revision Progress and Good News About My Book

Very busy week trying to get many things done for daytradingbias.com

I have been testing various ways to report trading results that is maintenance free (i.e. no manual work) and so far much of the available options are not that satisfactory. Since I am going to introduce several sets of trading signals for various markets, this function is a must-have feature.

I really do not know how to do this right.

I guess keep grinding until I get through this is the only option.

On the other hand, my book Art of Chart Reading is finally go back on track for publishing. A number of revisions to daytradingbias.com relating to Art of Chart Reading will be done soon to match the release of my book. It is a project that is long overdue. I am very happy to see this completed finally.

I am working on several other things in parallel that are closely related to the website. One of them is whether I should make the high-end trading models and indicators available directly on several platforms like Tradestation, MultiCharts and NinjaTrader. I still have not decided on this yet. If any of you have suggestions about this please let me know.