Just my $0.02, but to me it's all about where you think you are with regard to building a tape, traverse, and channel. If you're building the first tape of a traverse, thinking it'll go one round of a cycle and then end is not how the market seems to work as of late. It isn't unheard of, but it isn't the usual pattern.
Instead of trying to get an answer, or a suggestion that would always work, I suggest you take one of the charts I posted on the previous page, locate a point that you would've reversed and the market proved you wrong, erase everything at the right of the decision bar, then post it with the reasoning for your decision. Maybe that can stir a discussion that could prove useful to you.
So true, but actually knowing when it's ending in real time (vs more come) seems to be the real challenge. Even with proper annotation and nesting.
Great idea, but didn't I already do that for the annotated chart you found, which heroic said he completely agrees with? I explained my rationale and why, more than once, act's tried to start a discussion about it. Recently, vertex seconded my question in the same chart.
I am not sure why you keep emphasizing real time, life happens in real time. This method was never designed to be simple rule based trading system. The answers that you seek can be found in context. Trading is a game of probabilities, once you have a full sequence, FTT and SOC you take the trade, if you're wrong either reverse or take a small profit/loss and wait for your next edge to re-enter. The key is not to be discouraged from your misinterpretation and to keep trading your edges. All statistical indicator-based systems work on the same principles, whether it's an oscillator, moving average or whatever. No system is absolute. It seems you're struggling with trading psychology, their great books out there. Checkout books by Brett Steenbarger and Mark Douglas. Good luck PS - Spydertrader speaks openly of taking losses its not taboo.
Thanks. None of that is foreign to me. My questions are intended to address the idea some give, that they do have such answers with this method. Do they or don't they? If yes, it would be valuable. If you've been around a while, maybe you'd have an idea, and based on your comments I'd say those answers don't exist. So far that's the conclusion for many of us. If they don't, fair enough. I'm mainly getting at whether those who act as if they know those things, really do. Or is it just buzzwords. If they do, someone else would know it also. So your feedback is helpful, thanks. You're one of the few who will even comment on it and stay in the subject, thanks for that.
One thing I forgot to mention about that chart...it appears that person was not requiring "equal weight" BBTs, right? Because BBT1 has a vol cycle while BBT2 does not. Ok. But, all three BBTs, as the final annotation of that chart, are complex. So, that's all I can come up with...maybe that tape couldn't be compete at what is now Pt2 because to that point BBT3 was not "complex"? Although, requiring that aspect to be achieved doesn't make sense if we aren't requiring the BBTs to be equal in every way, since in this case they'd all need a full volume cycle. So that brings me back to the original question. Is there ANY way to know the tape might not be complete at what is now marked as Pt2? Any clues? Or is it as simple as wilddog commented in that no method covers every base (he's correct on that note), and that is a reversal we'd be compelled to take. No other angle to see it from, I suppose. Just have to manage the trade and in this case the WMCN simply didn't materialize.
If you believe YOU have everything YOU need on your fractal, YOU have to take the trade. The most common error is something called fractal jumping, everybody is guilty of it. Spydertrader has plasted all over this forum typical errors people make. 1.You have not actually completed the sequences 2.You think you have completed but you really have not. They sound very similar but are very different; the difference comes from differentiation. Both these errors lies with the operator and not with the market.
Every container that has a 1,2,3,FTT by definition has a full volume cycle on some fractal. Jack stressed this concept and traded at this fractal in the early days.
Sure, but we can't heed every fractal or we'd never be able to stay in a trade. Based on what you said, to exaggerate it...we could conceive that on some fractal every bar or two has a full volume cycle. We have to decide "which" fractal we're going to heed, and can't mix and match in real time. Thinking in terms of multiple levels faster is better at EOD than live for resolving things imo.