First, if one has his own charting program, he needn't confine himself to 1 or 5m bars. He can create whatever he likes: 2m, 3m 7m, 12m, etc. Second, those who have trouble determining swing points and distinguishing among them should switch to a larger bar interval as soon as the trade has achieved liftoff. Switching to a smaller interval to detect swing points is nuts. If one switches to a larger interval, the trivial swing points will simply vanish. At the very least, this enables the trader to focus on business instead of each little meaningless twist and turn. BTW, you'll save a lot of typing by just calling me "Db".
Yes, I do. If one is going to daytrade successfully, the trading must have his complete concentration, even if that's possible for only 90-120m. If he can't make that commitment, he needs to trade a larger bar interval. That's the way it is. Once the trade is on autopilot, one can read and post and fuck around for a few minutes, but daytrading requires focus and attention. Which is why performance nearly always suffers when participating in chat rooms.
Wow, thanks a lot for this whole post 40D... That is absolutely something that seems to be able to release the handbrake. But as you mentioned later this has to be done in combination with the observation of the range. Doing especially this over the last few weeks brought me to another level. And one can get a feeling for the price that is not "meaningless". How the participants are acting at a certain level gives you an idea. And if you see that it there is no real rejection from a potential resistance level, but price falls back, the next time the contrary party might not have the power to throw it back again... Absolutly fantastic, thanks.
I like that trends are easier to identify on the daily, but because it requires more capital, it's an "after a year or two of growth" project for me. My money management is very conservative and I'd be lucky to grow my modest account by 50%/year under those conditions. Down a notch, the hourly is very interesting, but I had a knack for getting slapped around by overnight gaps in stock positions, and Forex moves at inopportune hours for me, so I backed off the hourly for now. Finally intra-day, being flat at the close, has the benefit of not stressing me about gaps at night, while providing a faster pace of feedback through the learning experience and providing some possibility of faster growth (say 100-200% a year while I'm small, assuming I continue to stay away from prop firms). That was stocks only while here we talk mostly about the NQ/ES futures, but I thought it was still relevant to share why I'm settling on 5-minute intervals similarly to 40D, despite the steeper learning curve.
New and Improved SLA/AMT Well, not exactly new. I've revised the SLA/AMT to include a chart example of a range in the AMT section, added an appendix on fear (Appendix F), and added an Afterword to emphasize a few things that appear to have been overlooked by casual readers. I've also uploaded a separate pdf of "The Mind Game". This is something I wrote sixteen years ago or so and I've always liked it, which sounds odd, but there it is. It is so very applicable to the new Appendix F in particular but also the SLA/AMT in general that I've posted it along with the SLA/AMT pdf in the stickies at TL. I hope both will be of benefit.