Please leave your ego at home. Here`s one of the many definitions of a pattern from the Merriam Webster dictionary: "A reliable sample of traits, acts, tendencies, or other observable characteristics of a person, group, or institution." Those who criticize patterns misinterpret what a pattern really is. Every successful and consistent trader uses some kind of pattern recognition. It may be as simple as how price behaves around support or resistance. Extending it beyond chart reading, those who trade on quantitative analysis also trades patterns. So, unless you`re flipping a coin...... PS: The ORB breakout as taught by BigHog would have been a very profitable pattern on this fine trend day
Actually, I just learned this very same thing from Volente. I`ve only used cash charts for my day trading charts and have been looking at Globex only for swing highs and lows. I have now started to use ETH charts and keep looking for those head and shoulder patterns
Laissez Faire, I only used the Head & Shoulders as an example because it's one of the many chart examples of price action I've seen posted here at EliteTrader.com by a few of those that trade Emini ES futures. Thus, the same observation that volente_00 was discussing with you holds true for any other price action pattern. For example, you've posted a few charts in this thread about double tops/bottom. Thus, if that first part of the formation occurred in the price action prior to 0930am est on the all session chart and you were using ONLY the regular session chart of the Emini ES futures...you won't see a double top/bottom because you'll be missing the data that occurred on the all session chart prior to 0930am est. Further, the key is that it doesn't matter what the price action pattern is called...if it produces a key change in supply/demand via producing a swing point or strong continuation price action...it represents the big boys (key market participants) opening or closing positions. Therefore, its a key price area that we must pay attention too if/when the price action returns to that area where key market participants had made trade decisions. Anyways, just basic supply/demand analysis and there's many threads at ET about supply/demand posted by others over the years. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/search.php?s= Mark
Pattern Marketing: Marketing potentially negates the need for sales. Some sales authors and consultants contend that an expertly planned and executed marketing strategy may negate the need for outside sales entirely. They suggest that by effectively bringing more customers "through the door" and enticing them into contact, sales organizations can dramatically improve their results, efficiency, profitability, and allow salespeople to provide a drastically higher level of customer service and satisfaction, instead of spending the majority of their working hours searching for someone to sell to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales#Marketing_potentially_negates_the_need_for_sales
To say that patterns are truly useless is to say you can feel totally comfortable clicking "buy" or "sell" without looking at a chart at all. Otherwise, you are basing it off of chart patterns, even if you haven't drawn all over the chart. I'm working on a report concerning 2 option expiration trades, I'll let you know some details when I'm near finished to make sure that this is definitely a pattern. However, still the nay-sayers will argue that patterns don't exist.
This gets into that old debate about using charts or not to use charts. It's simply, anyone that uses any information on a chart to make trade decision...they are doing such via recognizing a price action they think is repeatable (e.g. double top/bottom) or recognizing a situation outside the charts (e.g. crisis in the Middle East increase Oil prices) that has a repeatable impact on prices seen in the charts. Just the same, there are those that only using bid/ask and times & sales info only to make trade decisions without any charts. They too are doing the same thing via looking for something that's repeatable that either involves the price action on their screen or is impacted by a situation outside the price quotes that has a repeatable impact on those price quotes. Nothing more and nothing less. Mark
I believe I successfully identified an inverted head and shoulder pattern today. It looks slightly compressed, but good enough I think. The fact that some of these patterns have silly names is probably what makes many people suspicious of them, but in my opinion they simply represent a certain type of behaviour that tends to repeat itself and are based on sound principles. I have traded this price action in the past without necessarily identifiying it as a IHS. The IHS is simply a triple bottom. The skeptical part of me says to not rely too heavily on the projection part of the pattern, especially since the drawing of the neckline is a little subjective. It often tends to be a good approximation though. Btw, do you seasoned traders agree with the drawing of the neck line? Thanks, LF
This is the pattern I remember the most from this week and it occurred on Friday. To me, this pattern reflects directionless volatility that contracts before price breaks out and find a direction. I really like this pattern, but I have not traded many of them. Perhaps I have not been looking good enough in the past.