Tape Read (Time & Sales) Strategies

[numbertea]

To continue that ribbon of thought. My tape length is 5 minutes. I use the 5 minute cumulative bid versus ask percent for my buy/sell indicator. I then apply the level to the bars of the candlestick patterns I trade, indicating their validity. I wrote my own software, I'll post some pics of past days trading soon. I'm out on the mobile now.

I have found that there is even more to it than just buy on weak sell pressure and sell on weak buy pressure even though these are the main tenants. When applied to multi bar patterns it can get even more complicated... This is great because once the good combinations are identified, the false signals are routed out more often than not.

Cheers

I have been hard at work trying to figure out trading methods that might work for me for years but I am not an expert in any way, just a fellow student of the craft. That being said, I humbly suggest that maybe years are not required to read tape if the proper and user friendly tools are employed, I had to make my own. Here are some of my recent charts. The buy sell pressure indicator is based on bid versus ask volume over time length of each individual bar. My trading program takes many things into consideration which are too numerous for me to fully explain now. I trade the ES with 5 minute bars.

The purple yellow XO is my buy sell indicator, the red green XO is a 3,5 MA crossover buy sell indicator.

The buy sell indicator is rose and blue bar chart. The higher the rose bar, the greater the buy pressure.

Cheers

 

[Futex_Live_Analysis]

Tape reading/price action is all about the ladder, forget tick data and candlestick patterns its all about watching what is happening on the ladder in real time.

Depth on Bids/Offers, whose reloading...what volume is being done....clip size going through etc

 

[numbertea]

I started using tape reading as a tool for getting in and out when it seemed to me like extreme things were happening. "Seemed" never is a good trading method in my opinion. I was able to quantify my tape reading feelings with cumulative readings. Volume and volume per trade event are also used by myself but with the program reading the tape in various ways instead of myself I can take advantage of things I would otherwise have missed. Also, my eyes were really getting dry not being able to blink during a volatile morning's trading.

Cheers