Potential Neo Newbie

[lloydphilip]

I haven't bought NeoTicker yet, but I'm interested. I'm a current TS user looking to leave as many of my equity strategies are based on multi-time frames. It's very hard to trade multis on TS as there are far too many limitations and ass backward things you need to do. Also, when you need to scan 50 stocks in TS on dailies, 30s, 15 and 3 min...Radarscreen will not allow you to do that. Coding it and managing a new list on a daily basis seems far to cumbersome. It's seems that Neo is much more seamless in this aspect and also the overall scanning features seem far far more powerful.

So I have a few question before I ask TS to close my account?

1) Can you manage about 20 strategy trades at a time in Neo?

2) Is the order and execution process smooth?

3) Can you manage existing positions easily? (even if it is something from a prior day)

4) Can you display order lines in the charts like you can in TS or NinjaTrader?

I have been evaluating Ninja recently but their Market Analyzer is not capable of much. It seems to crash more often than it stays up.

So the way I see it is; Scanning & Strategies are the first priorities and then managing your position in the event you need to manual intervention is the second priority. Lastly would Neo completely replace TS as a platform without me needing to pair it with a NinjaTrader type platform. Oh I plan on moving to IB and using IQFeed as a provider.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[eudamonia]

lloyd,

I can't answer all your questions (although Michal probably can). What I can tell you is that the manual execution in NeoTicker is VERY cumbersome. I manually execute through NinjaTrader for this reason. I couldn't tell you how the automated end works (others here can). That's my 2 cents.

Edward

[lloydphilip]

Edward,

Thanks for the 2. However, what exactly do you Neo for then? I've read some of your other posts on Ninja and my friend says your comments were accurate. One thing I do know is that the Ninja's Market Analyzer is pure crap as of right now. You can't even easily insert and delete symbols easily in their instrument manager. It's pretty evident it was created for futures and FX traders. Also, automation is extremely important to me as my emotions always get the best of me and manual trading requires my psychological stability which is shaky at best after one or two losses. I've noticed that my automated rules returns far more on a basket of trades than my manual trading. However, thanks for the reply.

LP

[eudamonia]

LP,

I can't speak for other guys who use it, but I use it for its ability to simulate my setups over a much larger back period than NinjaTrader can do. For example I spend about 2 hours per day doing tick by tick simulation of past markets. Say the low volatility June or the high volatility September (in the index futures). This helps my discretionary trading immensely because I can easily correlate the nature of today's market with past markets and adapt my methods to fit the current mode of the market.

Edward

[lloydphilip]

Edward,

That's a pretty neat , actually brilliant idea. I have a tendency to not be able to adjust to a changing environment quickly and your methods could be a nice fix. For example, if the indicies dropped for 2 weeks in a row, even though I know the reversal is around the corner, I'm still thinking short on a big up day. Thanks for the idea.

Hey I also had another question for you based on your "10 reasons why aspiring traders fail". In it you recommend the BuyZone. This seems to be a nice simple idea but;

1) AAPL from last Friday 11/30/2007 would have led you to trade it many time before it worked. Once it worked it paid for all the losses and much much more. Is there a way to not overtrade or catch yourself from over trading. AAPL was choppy for the first 30 mins and you may have entered it like 10 times during the first 30 mins for 8 losses. Keep in mind I've just started looking at it, so I may not understand the rules as well. I plan on watching it during the first hour or so.

2) Also does Avery mak the charts off at .10 because he wants to limit his losses to a dime? Why not set the zone based on an ATR?

3) Do you wait for anytime to pass once the stock is open, or do start at exactly 930 to start trading these types of stocks.

4) Finally. Do you enter all these trade on Stop Limits. AAPL & RIMM can move 20 cents in a tick and thus potentially crossing the buyzone and the open in a couple of ticks.

Thanks for all you help and input.

LP

[eudamonia]

LP,

I can't make specific comments on AAPL since I only trade futures, but choppy market conditions are universal. There are several things you can do to limit involvement in choppy markets. 1) Take only the first setup per hour, 2) put time limit on your trades, 3) take smaller profits when conditions merit this approach.

Avery limits his losses because this is a scalping system. I do the same trading the Eur Futures (6e). I'm not married to the market! Also I don't need a fancy indicator to tell me what volatility is. I can see that pretty clearly and so can you!

I start trading the Euro at the stock market open 9:30 a.m. No wait is necessary.

Avery and I agree - limits are the only way to go. I personally always use a stop limit into my trade, and exit with a target limit, or stop limit. Limits are us! Don't give up even one tick to the market that you don't have to. Of course if you can't get in at your price after 10-15 seconds then adjust and go at market. But you can get a limit price 9 times out of 10. It ain't brain surgery.

You can check out how I trade the 6E Futures on my thread "How I Trade the BuyZone on the Euro Futures".

Edward

[lloydphilip]

Thanks for the hints and tips...I was watching RIMM today thru the BuyZone method and it would have been a sweet trade

[Annu]

LP,

if you are looking for a software package primarily for order-entry for discretionary trading, Neoticker probably isnt the ideal solution. Especially not for short-term traders. It has order-forms, but its all very barebone. Neoticker has execellent charting, and is a very good software for autotrading, mechanical system analysis and indicator-programming. It does alot of other things too (i.e. scanning), but its not good for manual, fast order-entry. It also doesnt support trading from charts.

I personally use Neoticker for charts and performance analysis of my trades, but use a separete order-entry software.

[lloydphilip]

Annu,

This seems to be a common theme. NeoTicker for one thing and something else for order entries etc. I swear I think TS is really dumb.

Anyway, I am not a discretionary trader however, I there is a need from time to time to exit a trade manually. Ideally it would be best for a strategy to automate the entire trade. I am far to emotional and would like to eliminate the need for discretionary trading right now.

However, system building, back testing and automation is very important.

Thanks for the reply.
LP

[eudamonia]

LP,

NinjaTrader might come closest to full fulling all of those needs. It can definitely do execution, system building, and automation. In my opinion it is a little weak on backtesting - particularly optimization over any decent period of time.

Edward