I would have set buy orders on all of these set-ups, A-E. My buy orders go in when a consistent uptrend is well established. They're placed above the high of the third consecutive (or nearly consecutive) HL bar with a lower high and lower low. The stop-loss is below the low of the same bar. If the order is not triggered and a new bar prints with another lower high and lower low, I just drag the order down so that it's now above the high of the 4th bar, the stop-loss goes just below the low of the same.
. Logical. My approach very similar, including entering with buy stop order above the high and stop loss order below the low using specific rules for the distances above and below.
I would say it's about context and market understanding. Certain individual candles or patterns can both be bullish or bearish. A simple example would be topping and bottom tails. If market is bearish probability(however we want to define that this is just an example) than any bottom tails are generally a bad sign for longer term longs. We often go back and fill those in, just like topping tails in a bullish market could signal aggressive selling and under proper context it often gets punished. So you would actually look for a long setup to fill back in at least a partial of that topping tail (partial if market is slightly bullish, full if its determined strong bullish). Of course you have to have the understanding of when and how to properly use this, but that goes with almost anything in trading. A candle pattern at it's basis is just an entry vehicle to enter and manage risk. There's not necessarily an inherent edge to it without context. To me a more important pattern recognition skill is what pattern is the market currently in for the week, day or etc. Like are we falling short of targets we normally hit on a consistent basis? Are we busting through relative highs consistently or are we failing them? Being able to recognize that and apply logic is far more effective at least in my opinion than just memorizing an entry vehicle. Market context, logic and reasoning is king.
Pseudo bars, not time, are the enemy of price. RTY today L-H 41 bars, H-H 41 bars, H-L 43 bars, L-L 46 bars, and L-H 49 bars. It broke down a little after that but there was 1 last swing in last hour of H-L 42 bars.
I do think time is the enemy to a lot of intra-day traders. It can be difficult to ignore the chop and time. I've gotten a lot better at it now that I realize they generally still complete the setup and it's essentially just to create whats needed to complete the setup. Like if you take a step back or go to backtesting you'll find that it normally doesn't invalidate your setup. Well, just speaking for myself that's what I found.
Aloha SunTeader! Thank you for sharing the chart. Would it be possible for you to elaborate a bit on how you view the periodicity of HHs, HLs, LHs and LLs, please? Timing of peaks/valleys is something I’ve read into but not in the same way you look to be using it mahalo -Mark
This is similar to one of my major ahas in trading: Almost all trends start with 3 bars that have HLs (up trend) or 3 bars with LHs (down trend). In a strong trend, those 3 bars also have HHs and LLs, respectively. For anyone who trades around fractals / multiple timeframes: plot the number of bars with HLs and with LHs. It helps me with seeing the overall picture of their alignment Will post a chart when back in computer this weekend.
Trying to capture and trade cycles, the traditional way, has been referred to as trying to capture smoke. Its right there, then it isn't. I subscribe to the belief cycles repeat only so much, so best to look short term approx past 30 bars and not expect it to continue beyond the next 30 bars approx.