As a trader what are you trying to do?

this may seem like a stupid or obvious or rhetorical question but i have found that the way, many traders behave and talk here, in this forum, they do not have a CLEAR goal or purpose.

'i am a trader and i have to make money' that is what most traders say.

markets move in both directions and to make money, a trader has to get into a move. any move up or down.

it only has to be strong enough to move some more.



what is a move? it is what a traders defines it to be.

or what a trader understands it to be.

having a standardized definition for a move is useful, to be consistent and so she has to decide the size of the move.

this can be decided by no of ticks -price movement-

or by no of minutes-time movement.

so a trader has to trade move by move.

or bar by bar .

the bar may be number of ticks or minutes.

once a bar is printed a trader has to decide whether a move will continue or not. Is it strong enough to continue.
that is all he has to do.

and everything a trader does has to be decided in that context

 

now a trader may define a move as a leg or a swing and as long as she is consistent in that thinking it makes it logical within the context of what she is trying to do.

so she can ask is the leg or swing going to continue or is there going to be one more swing or leg ?

 

So to say that a move will be two legs and it will reverse after two legs, is dependent on whether a leg is strong enough to move another leg or not.

if the second leg is weaker than the first then it is LIKELY that it may not continue and there will not be another leg.but it is not definite.
For a move to not continue, you must have a move in the other direction. if this move is strong then another move in the same direction can be expected. This move may be called a pull back-if it is weaker that the move in the opposite direction- or it may be called a reversal -if it is stronger.

now if the two legs, seen as one, is strong then another move can be expected.whether it will be one leg or two , depends on the strength of the move.

when can two legs be counted as one leg?

if both the legs are equally strong. When are they equally strong? when there is no strong counter move between the moves.

When is the counter move strong? when the counter move breaks a trendline, it may be said to be strong.

SO IF THERE ARE WHAT LOOKS LIKE A TWO LEGS BUT THERE IS NO COUNTER LEG WHICH BREAKS A TREND LINE then the two legs are both strong and may be regarded as one.

this is what Brooks says.

AND YES IT IS OBVIOUS.

but it is not obviously, obvious enough that traders understand it and do not make idiotic trades such as the type I have been making for 20 years.

 

Bars are for idiots and hacks ever heard of stochastic processes or at least time series analysis?

 

Brooks loses me. I've never seen him present a chart of his results or statistics about his performance. He's only said he's put daughters through college with his ideas.

What a trader needs to do is find a way to be in the market, full time, either long or short, and be profitable. Any market, all markets, any time frame. The profit factor doesn't have to be much but the results need to be fairly consistent, at least more consistent than buy and hold.

Then, by data mining, you might be able to isolate some conditions that offer a better profit factor with even more consistency, with a more reliable max drawdown for example. There, trade size could be increased.

Following a moving average is tempting, but one thing I got from Brooks is you should not need any of those kinds of oscillators. A trader should be able to do this just with OHLC colored candlesticks. No volume. No level 2.

So this is obviously a following method, trying to go the same direction as price. Notice I didn't say trend following. If you just follow, then 30% of your attempts will have followed a trend, or better described as a time when your average wins are significantly larger than your average loss . This way, you can expect to overcome losses that may happen as much as 70% of attempts.

If you can get consistent, then you can just trade your own equity curve, or your own stats, instead of the markets. So to answer the question what trying to accomplish? Trying to be in one market, any market, all the time, long or short for a profit factor of, say, 1.3. Won't get rich fast with that, but you can build on it.

Only then, when you have a profitable following method, would a fading method make any sense. A fade is only a fade when you know what the general direction actually is, per your statistics.

 

I try to spot price rotation because after price rotation there is 100% chance for a move. I don't care about the side of the move, I'm waiting in both sides.

 

My trade entries are premature until analysis
gives me "why" and "when" of a price move.
(without which I'd just be gambling)

 

I talked about swings and legs.

i do not need indicators to tell me A MOVE IS STRONG.

AND BARS ARE FOR SCALPERS AND YOU ARE VERY Arrogant or ignorant to say it it is for idiots

 

those are additional details that you need or use......the basic is that one move has to move more than another

 

i do not need that

what he says makes sense to me