Since I can not see any attachments on this thread before page 27, I am basing the entire naming of the bars based on TiddlyWinks code posted on page 2. If anyone could chime in and let me know if I am on the right track I would appreciate it. Ignore the volume on the bottom, I am trying to take this one step at a time. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to respond.
The bars you marked with arrows are not the only bars you need to review. Please use this template: http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?attachments/clean-sheet-jpg.137243/
TickingAway, Without the attachments you may have some difficulty working through this thread. You could try sending a private message to Baron asking him to restore the missing attachments. -river
Thanks for the new template. I have a few questions. Again I apologize if this has been answered. It is really difficult to follow the previous pages with no context (pics). I have sent a request that Baron restore the missing content, we'll see I suppose. 1) Are you only considering the closes on bar formations? If this is the case DISREGARD all the next questions because I need to redo everything on the attached pic. 2) How exact are you with the bar formations? For example I see a lot of formations changed because it simply goes one tick above the previous bar and you end up with XB-XR-XB-XR. I am not sure if this is normal or if you are using logical reasoning on the formations. 3) Can a Lateral formation be a large number of bars (others call this a 'tight range'). For example in the attached pic around 12:30 there are 14 bars in a row in about a 2.25 point range. Would I be labeling this XR-XB-LAT-OBR-etc etc etc or is the whole thing just a Lateral. Most of these really aren't completely in the shadow of the previous bar but almost all of the closes are. 4) Is it still a lateral formation even if there are matching tops or bottoms? For example the first highlighted box the first blue bar has a matching bottom and the second blue bar has a matching top. 5) I noticed on the 'clean sheet' that you provided in the previous post it is labeled "Common Tape Annotations for Adjacent Bars (Not Exhaustive) . Are you guys considering wicks (exhaustive) different than the body? So are the formations only relative to bar bodies or are you using wicks differently. 6) The trendlines on the template sheet are kind of like 'bar flags' Are these drawn on all bars? Let me know if you need clarification on any of the above questions.
I'm not an expert. I hope Jack, river, Heroic, xoxoxo, etc. will help you further. First switch from Candlesticks to Bar charts. Then focus on the highs and lows first. We don't care about wicks or bodies, just the whole bar. A one tick difference is a one tick difference therefore it is not the same. A one tick difference in the high of the second bar will transform a FTP into an XR. Be exact. A lateral can be "long". But at least 3 bars. Bars two and three have to be in the "shadows" of bar one. Which means their highs and lows can be equal to bar one but not exceed it. Actually you draw two trend lines. A right trend line (RTL) and cloned/duplicated left trend line (LTL). You can do this as soon as you have two bars. Search for Jack's "Channels for Building Wealth" document here on ET.
If you have bar two, then at that moment in time you don't have a lateral, yet. And you don't know yet if bar three will create a lateral or something else. So you do what the volume test procedure tells you to do. Which is...?
Btw TickingAway...after you switched to bar charts and are able to identify the cases correctly based on highs and lows, then move to the next step and read (search for "degap" or "degaping") what Jack says about intra bar gaps and redo your bar assignments. This is where you focus also on the open and close of bars.
Switched to bar charts, case identification redone according to today (10/30/2014), with a RTH session of 0900-4:15pm EST template. Looking into de-gapping now.
From what I have understood, again this is basically without any visual aid due to ET upgrades, he is referring to degaping in this way: We have two bars, the transition between the bars constitutes a gap, so let's say the first bar closes at 1975.25 and the second bar opens at 1975.50, you are in essence 'moving' the entire second bar down so the open is at 1975.25 with relation to labeling and classifying each bar. Is this correct?