Value Areas - dValueArea

[Eternum]

I've been trading futures only a couple of years and am interested in learning how to use market profile in trading. Can you direct a newbie to a link or two that teaches how to use MP? Thanks. The indicator looks interesting, can't wait to try it.

http://www.futurestrader71.com/

[Double D]

Learning value area trading

I've been trading futures only a couple of years and am interested in learning how to use market profile in trading. Can you direct a newbie to a link or two that teaches how to use MP? Thanks. The indicator looks interesting, can't wait to try it.

[NinjaTrader_VinceB]

Hi,

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I have DeanV's last post here in response to 'meyer99':

'meyer, That's a different application, so won't be doing that here.
Feel free to take this code and modify it for what you want.'

[meyer99]

weekly dvalue

Dean,
Thank you. Whenever you tweak the code again, would it be possible to add the H, L and C of the prior week only (no evolving). But C should be Friday at 4:15 for equities, and if you are really ambitious 2:30 for crude. Thanks again.

[DeanV]

Dean,
Thank you for this great indicator.
In the indicator parameters only open hour is listed, no closing. Does this mean that if I am running a 24 hours chart (12 am to 12 am), the indicator will measure 9 am to 9 am (if 9 is the open hour selected)?
And it will measure Monday to Friday prior week only, for both evolving VA and VA?

Short answer: Yes.

The start time and day is where the "week" starts. It then continues for the number of days specified (5 default, would end at the start time on the 6th day). To adjust for Open Hours, you need to set the chart up to display only the open hours. The Pre-Session stuff is only useful to see how the previous week worked out on the week-ends or something (perhaps not that useful for this appllicaiton, since the evolving stull will show that).

The Evolving stuff is always the current (not completed till the next week gets a few bars), so could change with every new bar (till the week complete on Sat. or whatever). The normal plot lines (POC, etc.) always will be showing the previous weeks results.

Hope that helps.
Dean.

[meyer99]

weekly dvalues

Dean,
Thank you for this great indicator.
In the indicator parameters only open hour is listed, no closing. Does this mean that if I am running a 24 hours chart (12 am to 12 am), the indicator will measure 9 am to 9 am (if 9 is the open hour selected)?
And it will measure Monday to Friday prior week only, for both evolving VA and VA?

[cclsys]

Here's a (quickly developed) Weekly version if dValueArea. I've only done basic function testing with it, so make sure you've saved your environment (incase if locks up and you have to crash out).

Calling this "dValueAreaWkly". Use it on intraday charts.

Thanks, nice!

[DeanV]

dValueAreaWkly - quick test version.

Here's a (quickly developed) Weekly version if dValueArea. I've only done basic function testing with it, so make sure you've saved your environment (incase if locks up and you have to crash out).

Calling this "dValueAreaWkly". Use it on intraday charts.

[cclsys]

re dialup: 20 years ago that's all there was and it was fine.
Then I had broadband.
Now where I live satellites don't work well so dialup is it since the privatized phone company (Aliant) won't connect the fiber optic cable that we the taxpayers paid to have laid down over 10 years ago. 50 yards from the house!

Dialup is faster than broadband but it can only handle so much info/bandwidth at a time. I can't follow the ES on dialup, although 2 years ago I could.

As to the speed: the latency on a dedicated phone line or even a poor rural line like I have with 26 kps (!!!) is about 200 ms. Broadband is about 3-500 ms (or so I have been told). Satellite is usually 400-1000 ms which is quite slow (up to one second each way).

But of course with dialup you can only track one market at a time and handling complex code with tick charts makes it a little hard, but the latter - assuming you are only following one market - has more to do with Ninja working on the NET framework as anything else.

[cclsys]

Hi cclsys,
Thanks for the info and good chart. I had a similar setting but failed to extend the number of days in the Data series. I realized my mistake when I saw your chart. Thank you.

I did try jStats, and even though its a great piece of software, I could not justify its presence on my chart. As what it provides is essentially the same info you get from the DOM, albeit more colorful. Not meaning to downplay its usefulness, for one it is more informative than the standard NT DOM because it provides ladder info that is twice the depth of the DOM!

I only trade two instruments, and thats enough. With the exception of dValue, I run no other indicators. I find it better with less. I may try out your RPM over the weekend.

Happy trading in gold. Never thought that thing moved beyond a few points! Out of interest, how long you been trading with a dial up? I never thought it possible to trade using a dial up connection. I have issues with my broadband!

Cheers,
SA

Glad that picture helped. It's the sort of information that years ago they would charge you $400 a month to have. I suspect many professional systems still use MP more than price bars for position calculation, especially since those boys are scaling in and out all the time. At one point yesterday for fun I just placed a bunch of orders all over the place at nice looking spots with 2-1 RR ratio and many of them worked and those that didn't were covered by the ratio of profit to loss. I changed them a little as the MP changed, but not much.

I find the extra value of Jstats to the DOM is that intuitively the histograph on the chart relates better with the dValue histograph. That's all. Sometimes you see clear zones where they are 'lined up' and other times not, both being meaningful.

The RPM is a very small but practical utility when using non-time bars, but it also works with them. I don't use it for signals/entries/exits etc. but you can see on a chart that a very high percentage of the time that the speed picks up, a move is either starting or climaxing so in terms of increasing chances of having a quick win (or loss) it is handy. When you have the prices displayed on, the number in the bottom right shows the ticks-per-minute rate so when it is really down there, like 1-3 TPM, it is not very good time to enter if you are scalping.

Good luck with it all!

[superarrow]

Hi cclsys,
Thanks for the info and good chart. I had a similar setting but failed to extend the number of days in the Data series. I realized my mistake when I saw your chart. Thank you.

I did try jStats, and even though its a great piece of software, I could not justify its presence on my chart. As what it provides is essentially the same info you get from the DOM, albeit more colorful. Not meaning to downplay its usefulness, for one it is more informative than the standard NT DOM because it provides ladder info that is twice the depth of the DOM!

I only trade two instruments, and thats enough. With the exception of dValue, I run no other indicators. I find it better with less. I may try out your RPM over the weekend.

Happy trading in gold. Never thought that thing moved beyond a few points! Out of interest, how long you been trading with a dial up? I never thought it possible to trade using a dial up connection. I have issues with my broadband!

Cheers,
SA

[cclsys]

LT Dval-RPM

Superarrow: probably I am misunderstanding so attach pic showing what I meant. If you are talking about something different, well, never mind!

I attach my little RPM indicator. The Paintbar option actually paints back color. I just didn't change the word. I usually put it in with my Volume indicator to reduce screen clutter.

RPM has an alert built in whose sound file you might not have.
It also knows with tick and volume bars only not to sound an alert too early on in the bar. If it sounds too often but you like having it, might want to change it to Calc on Bar Close.

System Resources: I had an interesting experience today with Jstat etc. Because I was running less than usual elsewhere and on the chart, I had no problem keeping up at all though often I do.

I follow thin markets because I am on rather poor rural dialup but I had almost no lag today with Gold which was busy, nor the last hour of TF. It is possible that Jstat is too much if you have too many other things going tick by tick as well. But also, I suspect it is because I was using minute bars for the Dval versus my usual tick bars since I had decided not to look at bars as an experiment. Probably calculating time bars is much less intensive - certainly they load much faster. My point here is that although Jstats definitely does process a lot of stuff, it might also be that there are many other things being processed as well that with Jstat makes it unworkable. Not that I am pushing Jstat per se, but the main reason I have rarely used it even though I liked it was the same as you: everything seemed to get bogged down.

But not today. I was surprised.

[superarrow]

superarrow: did you try loading, say, a 30 minute chart going back 21 days and seeing how it looks? You get the daily profiles that way,

Hi cclsys,
Thanks for the reply. I have tried all profile variations afforded by deanV's work. However, what you pointed out is a composite profile of the total number of days in the 'lookback' parameter. I use this for the big picture.

What I am interested in is the intraday profile, so have 'intraday = true' but instead of showing just today's action, I would like it to illustrate the past few days for the cash sessions only. This way I can work out the areas of battle. Currently, I print out the intraday action of each day to use in my day's trading. Still, the big picture, like you have described it is useful.

Interesting how you apply 'jStats' in your trading. I tried it when it first came out but found it to be resource hungry - on top of NT's demands, that was too much to have. I only use the volume profile and S/R lines in my trading. Gauging the speed of the prints is also useful, but have no indicator for that per say. DOM is good. Again, preservation of resources lest Vista crashes. Not that Vista needs any excuse to crash .

Cheers,
SA

[cclsys]

Hi DeanV,
Thanks for the profile. Is there a way to show the intraday profile for the past few days, and not just today's?

Cheers,
SA

superarrow: did you try loading, say, a 30 minute chart going back 21 days and seeing how it looks? You get the daily profiles that way, although they are not as accurate as when you use shorter time-frame bars. Perhaps you meant something else. I didn't try it, but probably you can load with 1-5 min bars, then make them invisible and squash the charts to the max leaving only the profiles on the screen.

I have been using this one more and more. Today I practiced using only the Dvalue and the 'JStats' volume indicator. I did not show the price bars on the chart and found it much easier to see support and resistance. It was quite interesting.

The strange thing too is that I was following Gold which made large moves up (usual of late) but made twice as much profits on the short side as the long side, probably because the way I was reading the profiles was good for scalping in consolidation areas, and I was/am not yet good enough at using it for breakouts into large moves. But I found it very relaxing following the market without price bars, something I have never done before, nor even considered. Am seriously considering trading this way for real. Today was just a test to see if it would improve my understanding/feel of using profile. I had no idea I would find it so easy to keep picking trades with tight stops and quick wins.

By 2 pm was up over 10 full pts in Gold ($1000) trading single lots with occasional doubles scaled in and out. And about $800 from the short side on this big up day. Then another $500 in one hour trading single lots in TF. I think there is something to this approach even though it is always easy to make money in SIM and not so easy when live!

Re Picture: the MFT indicator shows a multiple of the main chart timeframe so that way I did have some reference to price in there. The little triangles are volume patterns formed by the BetterVolume2 indicator which I coded yesterday and some of which are quite good. No indicators involved (moving averages, oscillators etc.), just volume and range information in certain combinations.

RPM show the speed in Range per Minute (in ticks), so when things speed up it sounds an alert and paints the volume panel with a backcolour. Simple and handy.

[superarrow]

intraday profile

Hi DeanV,
Thanks for the profile. Is there a way to show the intraday profile for the past few days, and not just today's?

EDIT:
Ignore the above. Realized I could change the number of days! Thanks clcsys.

Cheers,
SA