No Charts in the banks....

[rols]

I don't have feelings, it is a luxury I cannot afford.

To succumb to feelings is a great error. No trader can afford the luxury of having feelings.

It has taken me a long time to master the idea and to be able to carry it out.

The question is something altogether different.

The question is that the truth is never appreciated......and.....on this site there is a culture which does not encourage generosity, nor intellectual challenge at the highest level.

There is a culture that encourages the opposite.....endless circular argument and persistent nonsense.....and....the threat of being temporarily banned for "derailing threads"....so it is best to either keep quiet or conform to mainstream, regrettably.

Why not do what Grey1 did and start a private members forum? That way the disruptive elements can be kept in check and those willing to listen and wanting to learn will do so unimpeded.

 

[SOCRATES]

You know what though Soc, I for one love those kind of articles so could you forward it privately to wasp and myself and others that may want to strive to be better traders? I am always looking for ways to improve me and my trading.

all the best

I wiped the written contribution. On this website, if you are subscribed to a thread you recieve emails of everybody elses' posts on the thread to which you are subscribed, but not your own. Therefore i myself do not have copies. Sorry.

 

[dbphoenix]

Those who are interested in tape reading and in trading chartless will benefit from Tape Reading and Market Tactics by Humphrey Neill, a classic written by a man who had the credentials. There is also the Wyckoff book which I posted to the Wyckoff thread.

 

[charliechan]

Depends on who, what, where, I would have thought....

On the equities sell-side I've never seen a trader (as in execution) without a chart/news/level II on his/her screen. Sales-traders on the other hand rarely use charts, except for comparative/spread type work. Most of their trade recommendations are based on models of some sort or another. Repo/SBL desks are really just trading spreads/margins so charts dont come into it.

The same could be probably be said of those trading structured equity products/derivatives since most of that is model based, i.e. no point in charts.

GJ has covered all this in the past... but FX is so huge that it's impossible to generalise. Group Treasury swap/mm desks are mostly working on a spread between bank/corporate and market. Corporate desks make their money on the margin between treasury and the corporate client on forward outrights/swaps/spot. Options guys are mostly trading volatility. Having said all that, I would be surprised if you found many spot desks where the traders don't have charts up.... what they do with them is a different matter.

Actually I believe IB's do very little pure 'speculation' these days compared to what they were doing in the 90's and certainly when compared with the funds... most of their income is derived from margins or spreads... high volume, high value, low risk type stuff. For the most part they are only the 'big money' by proxy.... as such, I don't believe it makes sense to apply the same or similar methods.... even if we could...

sure -

when i was at liffe, obviously we never had charts either - but we were just in for a tick or 2 - reading the faces aka poker style to do so - probably better than a chart as you can see the psychology much more clearly! i guess the same is true today for the short term scalpers of today - but the guys on these floors were much more long term orientated thus my questions.

however, gj and your post kind of puts perspective on my thinking - as an options trader i was trading volatility so didnt need a chart (despite the short time frame) . these guys are trading spreads/providing liquidity etc as pointed out by your good self & gj: guess im falling into the trap of thinking everyone else is playing the same Neanderthal game of outrights like i am - that just aint the case clearly! there are much more ways to skin the cat!

having said that, i read a nice story about a chick at citigroup who lost $20m trading metals recently! maybe a chart would have helped her avoid that loss? (or a newspaper!!)

 

[wasp]

interesting stuff.