Alright, price can really only do 6 things: - HH - HL - LL - LH - DT - DB Now a bottom is always going to be a low, and by definition it's not going to be a higher low, so that means a bottom is always going to be a LL or a DB. So you see people say things like a W is a bottom formation. Well, a W is either going to be a DB or sometimes I've seen people label a W when the second bottom is a bit lower than the first (making it a LL). Of course a bottom might be a W! IHS is another bottom pattern. IHS is LL, LL, HL (so price is already on its way back up). You've got a 2t which is really just a high and a higher high. Of course it's a top; it's a higher high. Hopefully if you go short it doesn't form another higher high.
I get you, and agree, but not sure where you going with this ? Are you implying one should buy LLs ? Considering buying a HL offers no guarantees, it's certainly a consideration. Like buy below last support, and when it retries to re-take the previous support again, adjust the stop, all with risk management in case the monster becomes a falling knife.
I really am trying to understand "price action." I've read the AHG thread (although I'm told that Anek doesn't trade that way anymore), I've read IronFist's thread where he tried to learn price action (it was a good thread before it got full of nonsense), I've read jjrvat's day trading 2.0 for small traders which was basically just a really long intro to identifying highs and lows with a lot of unrelated spam from one of ET's well-known spammers, and I've read through the daily PA thread. What none of those threads mentioned is how you know in real time what is happening. I can annotate a chart at the end of the day and tell you exactly what happened and why but that doesn't do me any good during the day. There's also my DOM and time and sales thread which died out either because no one knows how to use the DOM, or the people who do don't want their secrets being shared. And that thread, too, also got filled up with a bunch of super long posts that don't say anything. I'm sure there are some people somewhere who can predict price, and I'd like to be one of them, but I'm stuck at the point where you have to predict price in real time.
You don't need to predict price, just trade good odds. You don't know if last low is a W or not, so just buy the last low and take a small stop, say 10 pip. on the ones you're not stopped let it run. Your winners are 5 or 10 times the loser, good odds!
There used to be a good DOM related thread years ago. I just did a search though and couldn't find it.