This is so true. Watching this thread and seeing the calls is a real education in the art of being fluid (and hopefully in sync) with markets. It's about trading "What you see" as the old saying goes. NOD - Nice Tick Numbers - They have a nice $$ ring to them
I always find my self coming back to this sort of statement. NoDoji, are you concerned about the 'market changing', rendering your method uesless? Personally, I dont buy it as a concept, but I wonder what you think. I bet if you pull up an intraday chart of a liquid instrument from 15 years ago, you'll see all of the same patterns, entries, signals, etc that you see today. I dont think that price action ever really changes. I think the whole idea of a market changing to to the point where your methods stop working only really apply to longer term traders, especially those who are used to, for example, only ever going short as they only have experience of bear markets, etc. I think people who day trade and make lots of trades per day, both long and short, and have a year or so of consistenly making money week on week dont have anything to worry about, other than how their own trading/fills/emotions change due to an increase in their positions size and things like that. price just move up and down....how much can it really 'change'??
you may have a setup that works every time for 4 months straight and boom, it stops working because the market has erased the edge, happens all the time, markets are constantly changing especially with programers going over tape every day seeking to exploit edges.
But if that was the case, wouldn't there be no point in even attempting to learn to trade? If we know that our 'edge' will dissapear in 6 months and then we'll have to spend another year or so to find a new method that works, which will also stop working at some point, the whole concept of trading seems a bit silly. You'd spend 12 months studying, 6 months making money, 2 months losing money where you realise that your 'edge' has gone, and then start the cycle over again. Seems like you'd barely make any money.
you have a bag of 8-12 setups, and you are constantly studying, reading tape, refining, adapting, looking for new setups.......you drop the old antiquated ones, and replace them and keep up or you retire, or move on to different markets................some pit traders adapted to electronic trading some didn`t.......markets evolve like everything else..............constantly evolve or die!
well, price movement can really change when volume flow shifts. prime example now are emini index futures. days when volume is nil = no range, no oscillations... just v-turn spikes and slams. so that changes the historical patterns and structure to price. days when volume flows normal to high, everything goes right back to historical norm. imo crude oil futures are least likely of the electronic contracts to suffer an extended lull. oil is a cornerstone commodity for the entire world, and a quasi-currency market too. trading volume is more likely to increase than decrease as time goes on volume is the lifeblood of a market. stocks = index markets have been bled dry by consistent outflows and drain. CL volume steadily increases all the time... preservation of normal price action and flow
DX down, CL flat this gonna be a fun day!! I'm placing stop #2 at 82.425, still short the two of the 3 from 81.75. I'm looking at 82.95 to re-short and 81 to start scaling out.
This is my take on it, too. Any chart I've seen for any instrument in any time frame and from any time period, I read the same way. When people say to me I shouldn't discuss my strategies because it will dilute my edge, I really have to laugh, because there isn't anything I do that's special or unique. It's all trading 101stuff that you find in most trading books. My "edge" is in my trade management and that all comes down to one's ability to set and follow rules. I have different micro-tactics I use to adjust to the price action when it's not as clean as I like, or I often just don't trade when that happens.