Hi Anek, Great thread.Appreciate your willingness to share.Have one question for now regarding entries on a 50% retracement of the prior swing. Do you differentiate between Fib entrys in an up market which is making higher highs and higher lows vs an upmarket where the last high did not not take out the previous high??Would you still look to enter on a 50% retacement of the last swing even though the last high was lower thn the one preceeding it?? Would you wait to see if the next low was a higher low?? Thanks in advance Tao
Thanks for you assistance, Anek. Now that I removed the yellow crime tape wrapped around my head I am reviewing my trade journal for the day. I trade equities, via a prop firm...this might be a lame question, but do you think I can apply the AHG method successfully to the SPY? I generally scalp XOM during the day, pretty successfully by targeting 6, 8 10 cents at a time. Catching larger intraday trends I find much more difficult, almost unnerving; I think my average hold time is in the 11 seconds on winners, and yes 2 hours on losers as I pray for divine assistance! I used a low near Fridays close, combined with the lower low in the first 15 minutes today, reading your prior response leads me to believe I should not have counted Fridays action in determining the trend today. Jesse Livermore use to say he made most of his money when he was 'sitting on his hands'...waiting for the trade to present itself. That is a tough one for me with the buypower burning a hole in my pocket and my monitors twinkling away with green and red.
Tao, That's a great question. In order for me to see the continuation of an uptrend, I need to see higher highs and eventhough price can and will retrace at some point that retracement will tell you a lot about price action. What if the retracement makes a double bottom ? Goes as low as previous support and bounces back and makes a new high ? Is that still an uptrend, technically, no! Because an uptrend requires higher lows, not higher highs and same lows. Now, double bottoms are powerful little fellas, so much discretion around this area. During an uptrend, you need to examine price with all your attention and when you see those candles WITHIN that retracement making higher lows and higher high then you say....ok this could be my entry. That, is price action. Time and sales help in this, where is the pressure ? In the buying ? In the selling ? Lot of tips here and there that can be used. Hope that helps a bit, great question. Anek
Oh man... I used to do this for so long, it will kill you. You need to change this concept 180 degrees. It's all wrong brother you need to shift this drastically in every sense of the word. Sounds like you are trading with fear and can't handle losses. You ride the winners as much as you can, let price, lows and highs guide you, and you must cut your losses short! **When trading becomes praying you know you made a mistake! **'ll say it again, it's not about being right, it's about making money! Anek PS: ** denotes importance
I'm curious as to why you would want to use different chart settings. The whole purpose of using constant volume is too take out the variables, not add them back. Any sound reasoning for your decision? Just asking! On another matter directed at no one in particular, if I may add, is to use one chart set for each instrument traded. I see people saying they use a longer term chart for trend, and then use another time frame for entries, and so on. As sound as this may be for long-term buy and holds, if you are closing your trades out each night, the longer term for trend has no meaning and will only confuse you. Think about this. The longer term chart could be showing a strong trend up, but TODAYS market internals are 5 to 1 to the downside on high volume. Are you only going to scalp longs because the long term chart is trending up? I should hope not. When you trade short time frames intraday, you should only be concentrating on the here and now; the precise time you enter and the precise time you exit. All else is noise. Chart settings, regardless of type, should be obtained based on length of time your trading plan calls for holding your positions. And for the purpose of this thread, trading from one chart, one chart setting, is paramount. In my opinion, of course! st
Anec and Stealth, I usually start off the day with a bad trade. Do you have certain criteria you look for each day, perhaps not to trade before a certain time, or to wait for an initial high and low to form? Again thanks, Don
A few questions: 1) I understood from the beginning of the thread, that your defintion of a change in trend from UP to DOWN is (2) LL's and (2) LH's. Is this correct? 2) Are you using any price undulations that are not drawn automatically as a pivot by the software, as a LL or LH ? 3) I'm asking the above, because on that first Short (loss), I only see one LH (according to pivots placed by the software) before you took the Short trade. Please explain. I think the subjectivity of this methodology lies in the undulations of price and what actually constitutes a HH, HL, LL, & LH. Please tell me if I'm wrong.
Determining the swings is the least subjective aspect imo. Subjectivity comes in on the entries and exits which cannot be helped because they are always a compromise.