They are volatility levels. Price does test them...the way you asked your question you were referring to yesterdays A levels for today's action. The intraday levels reset everyday. Yesterdays A levels(intraday) have NO bearing on todays action!
Again, couldn't disagree with you more. I am not saying they are buy and sell levels, but they are places to determine to get long, get short, etc based on how price behaves around them. Look at the chart I posted a page or so back ... the 97.00 level is yesterdays daily level ... I understand and use todays A levels as well, but just because the clock struck midnight does not mean those levels are to be thrown away. Price rose to yesterdays level, bobbed and weaved as expected, and for the moment, is acting like support. We can call it a volatility level or whatever we want, but that level is now a good area to have a stop if you are looking to go long. It may nose dive back into the weekly level but the goal is where do I provide myself the best opportunity to get long / short with a stop that has shown some backbone.
Yes I would, and I would be happy to show that in a chart as well. It happens over and over again. This chart of crude (staying on topic) shows what has happened the last two days where previous daily levels were revisited. One time met with defeat, the next overcoming the level. (As of the time of this post).
Obviously those are based on my levels and I am not sure how they would work for others with different levels. I don't want to hijack this thread so I will leave it at that for now. I love a good debate, and nobody in trading has all the answers, that I know for sure.
throw enough lines on a chart and you'll get some that stick imo. I don't want to hijack either. However, ACD is based off of time cycles. Intraday the cycle resets everyday and if you are true to that basic principle you wouldn't be using it in the manner that you are.
Frank, let me add my two cents here. And I'll be the 3rd guy that states he does not want to hijack this thread. Hell, the three of us togethor make up a terrorist group. LOL. OK, as far as levels getting revised, here is my take on that. ACD levels are hidden from the rest of the community until they print. I say hidden because they are not on anyone else's charts. Once an A level becomes realized, meaning the market trades there and fails, that level is no longer hidden. It becomes visible to the whole world, the cloak comes off if you will. Once that level is visible to everyone, others can now trade off of it. It becomes a swing high or low so to speak. In my humble opinion, that level loses a lot of it's luster once it becomes shown to all. What I mean by this is, it will start attracting stops and get messy. I don't like that. So as Shan said, i don't like to re-use old levels. Especially if they worked!!!! I would be more inclined to re-use the level if they didn't work because that would mean others are not aware of it yet! Hope that makes sense. The aspect of time is also very important in ACD. The longer you go in a cycle, the usefulness of any A level wears off. I tend to ignore intra-day A levels late in the day, weekly levels late in the week and monthly levels late in the month. The whole idea behind ACD is seeing things other people are not seeing. It's like being able to wear night goggles at night. Everyone else sees darkness, you see light. Being able to recognize things that are NOT obvious is what trading is all about. Things that are not obvious are cheap, things that are obvious are expensive. That should make intuitive sense to you. Think of placing a bet. Any bet that had close to a 100% chance of winning is only going to pay out a very little amount. A long shot bet that no one thinks will win will pay out huge. Trading works the same way. Certainly there is no right or wrong way to use ACD. But I've put about 10k hours into this over the last 5 years and these are the things I have noticed. They are just observations. I would not re-use old levels. In fact, if there is an A level around another key level, I disregard it. That also sounds counter-intuitive. For example, say the weekly A down in CL is also the 100 day moving avg. That level is now useless to me. Why? Because everyone is already watching that level. My level is now visible to everyone and will create noise as a result. Noise is hard to trade and even harder to read the price action. Anyway, I'll leave it at that.
If throwing enough lines on a chart is what you see then I dont know what to say to you. Each level or line as you call it is a tell. It lets me know if I am right or wrong holding my long / short position. I showed you what I look at every day on that chart. You are free to look at it and evaluate if it has any merit. And looking at today, price touched three of those lines in approximately 6 hours. If that is too many lines or level to process then I dont know what to tell you. That equates to a decision needing to be made every 2 hours ... not to taxing. As for sticking to the basic ACD principles, I am true to what works for me. I will post examples of the weekly and monthly later this evening. You will see the same patterns happening there as well.
Hey Maverick, I appreciate your input and for all you have shared on ET. I certainly am not claiming I have the answer, and I am always willing to question what I do. I was just pointing out something I see happening over and over again. What I see quite often is that a failed a down / a up is often a headfake, and the previous day (or days) level is the gotcha leaning the wrong way point. That is why I always keep those on my radar. While I type this, crude stopped to the tick of a daily level 3 days ago and provided roughly 40 ticks on that play. Maybe the problem is that I am not truly playing by the exact ACD rules, so I guess I should not use A levels etc when I post. Again, always willing to debate and question what I do. Love your work ... keep it up
I saw you posted this the other day. I've been looking into this for the past couple of weeks and I think it is valid. But the caveats are IMO your levels must be adaptable to market volatility and you must also be able to do intermarket analysis or other type of analysis for CONTEXT. Just because price is at a certain level does not mean go short/long. (though I wish it could be so easy, there is no 'easy button' in trading lol). I know experienced traders know this but just saying. I still have a lot more work to do as I think backtesting of this can only be done manually, day by day. I don't think it can be hard coded into an "if A, then B, else C" system to run on a computer. If there's an easier way I wish I could find it.