Market Sonification is the use of audio to preceptualize market data, or in simpler terms Audible Markets. Listening to the markets is of great benefit to day traders as they can continuously monitor the flow of the market without having to scan computer screens with their laser beam style focus for hours on end. All aspects of market order flow can be interpreted using audio, allowing traders to be calmly focused to the ebb and flow of the market, with much more freedom. The result is reduced stress when monitoring markets, and thus better performance when acting on market conditions.
Wikipedia Definition of Sonification:
Sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. Auditory perception has advantages in temporal, amplitude, and frequency resolution that open possibilities as an alternative or complement to visualization techniques.
Watching the market with the order book, or on charts is essential, however it can be difficult to stay in the zone, and you can only take in so much information with your laser beam style focus, scanning across the screen throughout the trading session. That is where PriceSquawk comes in. PriceSquawk allows you to LISTEN to the price action to interpret the order flow. No longer do you have to be limited by where you are looking, you can now hear the market. PriceSquawk is a market sonification tool that plays the real-time price action as though each price is a note on a keyboard. The user can select from over one hundred musical instruments and a variety of scales to represent price changes in their market. Every single trade is represented by a musical note that can be configured to the ideal sound for your trading instrument. As well as providing the raw indication of price fluctuations, PriceSquawk contains these other useful features:
- Simply tick a box at any price level to have an alert play when trades occur at the selected price
- Trades at the bid can be played from the left speaker, offers from the right for instant interpretation
- Lifted Offers and Pulled Bids can be represented by unique sound effects
- Order flow sound volume control can be enabled for an audio representation of the accumulated size at each price level
- Size filtering can be enabled to play sounds only above or below a certain trade size threshold
- With Volume Control enabled it is like an audible Time & Sales
- Up to 15 markets can be monitored with PriceSquawk at any time
The benefits of being able to listen to the market will soon become apparent as you tune in to the PriceSquawk. It is a unique intuitive edge lost since the days of floor trading. Pauses in price action that often go unnoticed watching charts or the ladder are blatantly obvious to the market listener, and often represent important times to act. Past floor traders often discuss this phenomenon, when the silence on the floor alerted the astute trader that change is imminent.
Other reasons to use PriceSquawk:
- Passively listen to the market while not engaged with your trading visual interface, for cues to TUNE IN
- Listen for the offers to lift or bids to pull on correlated markets you aren’t watching closely
- Simply keep informed of the price action when not at your computer
- It is a very easy to use alert tool for notifying you when price reaches the selected levels
- Gain an intuitive EDGE learning the ebb and flow of your market from an audio perspective
This really is a unique tool for the trader that wants to stay completely zoned in to the price action and volume size trading in their market of choice. It is a completely versatile tool for finding a suitable sound for your listening comfort, and for your market’s behavior.
Why Listen To the Market.. Literally?
The core of successful day trading is mastering the art of processing market information and producing a useful response quick enough to take advantage of it. The trader needs to be able to do this in a unique way that gives them an edge, and be able to do it consistently so that overall risk and reward can be managed statistically. Proprietary trading firms require new traders to stare at market depth information for weeks and even months in order for them to produce an idea of how they can take advantage of market information. But the trader can only observe limited amounts of information at any one time. Imagine the traders line of site as a network cable, with a limited bandwidth for information to flow from the computer screen (the raw market information) to the brain (the decision maker). Of course periphery vision and subconscious processing assists with how much information is input to the traders decision making, but hopefully you get the point. Up until this point, other than audio alerts, visual information is the main source for all our trading decisions. A lot of people operate fine within this limitation as there is only so much useful trading information that really can be processed. However a lot of traders may not process visual stimuli as well as audible for instance.
- It difficult to FOCUS on the actual numbers flashing on the screen
- Frequent lapses in concentration during the trading session with only VISUAL stimuli
- CHANGES in numbers difficult to detect, or harder to process
- They are SLOW to respond to things they SEE on the screen
However until now, visual price information is all traders have to work with and most traders don’t know any different. Different people obviously process information differently. Musicians for instance might view the world more effectively from an audible perspective, than a Painter for instance who focuses more on the way the world looks. A Sculptor might feel differences in materials more effectively than say an Actor, who processes their environment more effectively from yet another perspective. Its definitely not as black and white in reality, but these are just examples to portray the subtle differences in subconscious processing that cause people to have a preference of one form of information over another. Why should the Art of trading be any different? Your goal as a trader is to process information in a unique and effective manner that gives you an edge against the competition.
You might find with market sonification that you notice the true ebb and flow of markets for the first time. You can hear patterns in market activity that you were blind to before such as pauses in behavior, price sweeps, orders refreshing, the speed of the market. PriceSquawk may make the real-time transactions and price action occurring in your market.. INTERESTING.
PriceSquawk is a highly customizable indicator, allowing you to tune the sound to your personal preference, whether it be the type of sound, the length each notes plays for or even the changes in pitch that you prefer for detecting price change.