Time & Sales are still a mistery for me. In an uptrend is it ok to wait for a strong bar after a pullback for entry? Or should I use the Stochas for entry instead? What would be the lesser evil? I still keep T&S on my desktop for study but for now it's useless for me.
I've had stochastics up for some time now and will tell you you'll have to be careful. It is a good overbought/oversold indicator, but it likes to swim above 80 and below 20 in strong moves. Makes it very hard to use for good reads. ~Cx
Time and sales required screen time. A lot of screen time. It is essential for day trading in my opinion. Its a fastest tool you can use in trading. To start using it I would suggest to concentrate your full attention at the critical areas - for example breakouts. Look for how many contracts exchanged hands, how fast tape is running. Over time patterns on a tape will be easily recognizable. Here is one sample - lets say market at a new high / just new swing high / and there are lot of green on a tape - active buying, but the price is not going higher for some time. I think recording real time tape and plain price action and then review would be the best way to learn. At least it worked for me and for few other traders.
Anekdoten, Thank you, that is the only way I can commence this post. This is the best thread about daytrading not only in the ET forums but on the net, books included. The stuff you teach I do not see in those 69.99 books I buy in Barnes and Nobles. I never thought this could be possible but I´m finally getting it and getting it good. Big time excited about my trading and sometimes a deep breath is necessary because I get the feeling I a living a dream but afraid of waking up. Passionately, I´ve been following your journal for several months now on paper, trading ideas, using simulators and today marks my consecutive fourth week of trading live with cash. Done very well, only three losing days, small too, and the rest has been nothing but winners in all kinds of ranges. My family and I keep a hard copy of your posts so we know exactly what your suggestion would be unless we have a new question. I now feel I´m ready to bump the number of contracts from two to three. We started with two so we could scale out at resistance and support or scale in on strong trends. You keep saying time after time that identifying the chop correctly is the key to successfull trading with AHG. Aside from believing in it and yourself I cannot agree more. To those still struggling you need to believe in yourself and in the system. Once this is acccomplished it becomes a reality. At night I examine the multiple day charts to determine the significant areas of support and resistance. The next day I watch how price reacts between all these important points and if a trend is developed. I then patiently wait for retracements and whenever I see an opportunity I strike like an eagle. Using trendlines and bar price action all the time is extremely and powerful in determing strength or weakness, fakes too. Price likes to fly swiftly from key area to the next, this is priceless for riding the good trades but some homework must be done at night so you have a clear understanding of the chart radius. The combo of price action with some of the basic patterns you teach us takes trading to a whole new level. Hopefully you will not get tired of this journal for at least a very long time. Fingers crossed. Okay, this post is getting way too long when the intention was only to express my sincere gratitute. Your kindness will never be forgotten and if you ever come to the San Francisco area I would love to treat you for dinner and share a bottle of wine in appreciation of your timeless dedication in helping traders like myself. You changed my trading aroud, THANK YOU! Daniel S.
Mediacam by netu2 has a nice screen capture program that I use...http://www.netu2.com/ Record the tape around support and resistance levels and watch how the market acts around those levels...keep in mind..the market can ONLY go up or down on market orders....
Good tape suggestion by RN. One thing I can add to this is that when momentum is ready time and sales has a peculiarity of becoming "nervous". It's hard to explain but think of a kid with too much sugar, the jumpy action is a sign of momentum to come. Anek