That seems like a cool movie. I don't know if I can handle more of Michael Lewis' work though. My rebuttal to would be, how many athletic programs have applied the use of statistics to come up with game-plans and failed? This is an example of confirmation bias. How do we not know if x amount of sports organization tried to use similar statistics from the 1970s and out of that group it only worked for Oakland many years later? To another point, baseball is a bad example because low paid rosters frequently do well in this game, unlike in say basketball. The best example is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays... what was their payroll against the Yankees? The Minnesota Twins had a great season once. Detroit and Kansas City also had streaks. Base
Just when I thought I had you down cold, I learn something new. So when determining average volume how many days do you use to extrapolate the average? My first instinct would be 20.
Most criticisms would be irrelevant if people read and comprehended the material. IE trading every bar and if Soros types trade this way. (Don't do it, and no, he doesn't.) But people don't want to wade through the strange and difficult writing. It's kind of silly to criticize the content of a book you haven't really read. All you can have an informed opinion on is the writing quality, and everyone already agrees on that.
Why would a computer need to read a "bar". Aren't you inherently mixing subjective with objective in an illogical and faulty manner? Something does not compute. Surf
Furthermore, as you correctly assume that the big players move the market ( they make bars) --- why study the bars ( your word) rather than starting with the major price driver of the big players? Studying price alone is irrational, counterproductive and actually backwards.
The book is a great work. It's one of few books that take the time with numerous examples to show price action. A BS book wouldn't go through detail by detail in example after example and instead be filled with anecdotal and retreaded filler which the book is not. Yes, it reads like a dry textbook. Brooks mentioned he wrote in one month in time for the publisher deadline. The new books will have better editing, spacing and better charts and illustrations. I found it a great value at $40+ instead of signing up for one those price action mentoring sites which can costs hundreds or thousands. I'm finally at page 305 and had reread a bunch of pages several times. The binding is getting worn. But then it got better as I got more familiar with his "patterns". Did you folks read the book before giving it away at garage sales and flea markets?
Big players include hedge funds, banks, mutual funds, etc. They do not care about scalping for 1-2 pts on the E-mini, they're only looking to fill orders for clients, etc. Based on their price action and patterns, the small retail trader can benefit from their buying and selling by reading the chart bar by bar and taking profitable setups.
they fill orders for clients and use the remaining client money to trade their own accts,same as a bank does with your savings,they support several types of trading,hft's for one,which focus on the most miniscule aspects of the market,large trades which include entering/exiting massive positions at tops and bottoms and everything in between,the small trades,the daytraders,fuel this ,they also extrapolate the daytraders max,medium and low long and short averages cumulatively thru electronic clearing balances and turn the market several times intraday within a trend or range and collect on the chop..this is just a simple overview,...give it to a few genius programmers and you can easily deduce why gs never loses..since one is not gs,one needs to pick a segment of the market actions and focus on it so as to learn how to profit...trading bars is one of the least expensive methods related to acct size.,making it the most popular..it's also one of the toughest because of the reasons mentioned above