Good point! But do you think i’s worth glancing at broker specific tick data?
What value could it possibly have, Trevor, when every broker has a completely different figure?
If you want to see volume or tick-counts, you need to look at the CME volume/tick figures: that’s objective, quantifiable and helpful to many traders (the volume figure, anyway).
1 Like
Do you use volume in your day to day strategy ?
Only slightly. It’s there and I look at it and take significant changes in volume into account, but not all that much.
In my previous (first) job I traded almost entirely from volume bars. They’re not timed bars: they’re bars where the closing of one bar and the opening of the next is determined by volumes transacted. In my current (second) job, I had to switch to trading range bars. Again, they’re not timed bars: they’re bars where the closing of one bar and the opening of the next is determined by the range of ticks/pips over which the price has moved.
In my experience and opinion, timed bars are the least helpful and the most difficult to use. I think all my colleagues would agree with this.
But there’s no right or wrong answer as to whether range bars are better than volume bars. That’s opinion and preference.
People trading from tick counts, including Robert Volman, who has written a couple of good, helpful and approachable books suitable for forex traders, are using tick charts as an attempted approximation of volume bars. But it’s an attempt that can’t work for trading CFD/spot forex, for exactly the reasons explained above. I’m sure many of them think of tick charts as a substitute for timed charts, not realising that they’re actually just an approximation - and not always a good one - of volume bars.
I hope I’ve answered your question, somewhere in there! 
5 Likes
I know nothing but I heard this also from another reliable pro trader.
So, I am very new and only just starting. My question now is if I should use volume bars or range bars (I do not ask which!) instead of time bars?
IMHO, yes. Range bars, if you’re trading forex CFD’s, or whichever you find you prefer, if you’re trading forex futures.
Very few beginners do this. And very few beginners become successful.
Forex futures have very many advantages, of course, but also one disadvantage: you can’t trade a smaller position-size than 1 lot, and the smallest pip value is $1.25 (that‘s for “M6E” - micro Euro futures, like EUR/USD). Even if you’re doing fast trades with a stop-loss as small as 10 pips, that’s still a $12.50 risk, and even if you wanted that risk to be as much as 2% of your account, you’d still need $625 to get started. (But that logic obviously doesn’t apply to practicing on demo, or to prop-firm evauations!).
3 Likes
Totally! CME figures are reliable. You use it for all your trades?
1 Like
Yes - and anyone can, whether they’re trading on CME or not. Many people find it useful for trading CFDs.
It costs only a few dollars per month to subscribe as a non-professional to a CME data-feed.
You just have to self-certify that you’re not trading other people’s assets.
1 Like
hey thank you very much
i exactly know what are you talking about like range bars and tick volume when price moves 8 15 or any amount of ticks it create new bar
actually i studied volume trading couple of times using vwap, T and S and foot print and delta information.
i’m just curious have you backtested a certain strategy and can you share the stats like your win rate and typical RRR because i like to get other else people’s view points
by the way can’t you analyze price on a volume based platform and then trade cfd?
1 Like
You can. Some people do. They say it helps them.
The problem I see with it is that you’re effectively charting one instrument and trading another (if you can really call your “broker’s” own prices for its own product an “instrument” at all?!).
Why not just trade the futures instead, and at the same time get all the extra benefits from doing so? No broker problems. No regulatory problems. No spreads. No counterparty marketmaking. A broker who’s on your side and has prices identical to those of every other broker. And plenty of leverage, too. Who could ask for more?
So sorry, but I can’t ever share anything like that, given my employment: I had to “negotiate” quite a lot to be allowed to post in a trading forum at all (not normally allowed, in principle).
But in any case, I couldn’t say anything helpful about backtesting, through lack of experience: at my first job, they employed a group of people whose job it was, and at this one, there’s one person whose part-time job it is (not me!).
It’s not giving away anything at all to mention (as others have also done, in this forum and in others) that among institutional, semi-institutional, professional and successful day traders - not “investors”! - a typical reward-to-risk is around 0.4 to 0.9. Almost always LESS than 1.0.
It’s among people posting in retail trading forums that one finds - almost universally - the advice to trade with a take-profit target of 2-to-3 times the size of the stop loss. It’s shockingly, appallingly bad advice that prevents huge numbers of people from ever becoming profitable.
I’ve noticed here that people who point this out sometimes get shot down in flames. But really, people advocating an ‘R’ of 2.0 or more are here to do marketing of some kind, or at least self-promotion: they’re certainly not making their money by trading profitably!
It’s not just a Babypips problem. It’s the same in all retail traders’ forums. There was an awful post giving this advice, here, only yesterday. It included “Ensure the TP is at least 2-3 times further than the SL for a favorable risk/reward ratio.”. Horrible advice. That was a “first post” from someone whose promotional agenda here is yet to be revealed, but it will eventually be revealed. Guaranteed! 
5 Likes
Actually no! I noticed that member has already had a couple posts removed by the Mods. So you were certainly right to be suspicious. 
1 Like