Ghost of If You Can Draw A Straight Line

I love straight lines – use them all the time

Heck.., maybe we should compare EOD results using our straight lines

Hate to have anyone think yesterday a fluke – on my part

==============

Now.., unless any one wish to take me to task – I’m done


I do wish the one’s trying to get this – A Very Successful Journey

It is a hard journey…, but achievable

RN

 

This one confuses me - I've been staring at this for 10 minutes. I see that each of the first 3 levels is associated with a close and a swing high. The second level and third level seem to be the last close before the swing low was taken out.

The 1st level seems to just be a line across the first swing high after out decent. The last one seems to indicate the ledge that price formed before price broke lower. It's the last level where buyers showed up.

I might be missing it on this one.

 

This is NOT CWS. It need have nothing to do with entries and exits at all. It is rather an analysis of what did I miss that I should not have and why did I miss it? Was it the length of the bar, i.e., the length of the wave illustrated by the bar? An inabiity of price to get past a certain point? An inability of price to continue beyond a certain level? Anyone who does not yet understand should review kp's responses to my questions.

These are not bars; they are traders. They reveal their behavior just like anyone does in a group setting. What do they reveal about themselves by the way they move or don't move and where and how they do it? This is what should be done every day after the session. Otherwise, one just makes the same mistakes day after day after day.

If you have not yet become too familiar with the chart of today's activity, at least the first 90m, I suggest going over it in replay now, reviewing it in terms of whatever you may have learned from this.

 

is what I posted in my journal in the right direction to that process?

 

Buyers attempted to push price up through the range but sellers saw this a good price to get involved. Price moved lower until our first (1) break away bar which pushed through the previous swing low. Anyone looking for a reversal is disappointed on the next bar or two and price continues lower - although making less downward progress.

The (2) next red bad seems like sellers might run away with it but enough people buy to push price nearly back to the high of the bar. The next bar and the next red bar (3) both show sellers are willing to pay to get on board - the second bar exceeds the high of the revious 3 bars before closing lower the the previous bar. Two bars later (3) we have our next break away bear which pushes through the last swing low.

Two bars later we get what looks like another large down bar closing on its lows but the next bar exceeds the high of this bar and two bars latter we get a strong close. The next bar shows a little continuation but it isn't sustained. Two bars latter (5) buyer push price above the previous swing high and again are rejected soundly.

On the next swing down there isn't a clear break away bar but price continues lower. Bar (7) moves below the previous bar and closes almost on it's high. The next 7 bars coil inside this little range before pushing lower. In fact each push lower requires a few more bars to make he next push lower and the angle of descent is rounding under indicating that the trend is potentially tiring.

After the last break away bar (two before 10) we quickly get a rejection and price manages to exceed the last swing low.

 

Replaying and focusing on the right tick and where traders can and can't find trades was quite interesting.

Does the pace of the ticker imply a certain level of interest in terms of the traders? An example is the pace dying down and price making a lower high as an example of less interest for higher prices?

While watching the right tick should we be asking ourselves questions and how should if any, those questions be worded to keep it simple? Do we say ok traders are finding trades here, traders aren't finding trades higher than here, traders are find trades lower than here? Or do we try to work through our minds buyers and sellers? As in sellers can't find buyers at higher prices so they drop the price to where buyers become interested again and sellers than continue to find buyers at higher prices until buyers are no longer interested and sellers can't find buyers?

What would be a simple mindset to associate with regards to traders and the movement of the right tick?

 

Try to avoid getting smothered in CWS. This is not so much a matter of I should have taken trade X or I should not have taken trade Y, but WHY you should or shouldn't have taken them. What made trades X and Y different from all the other trades that seem to look exactly the same but didn't turn out the same way? What exactly makes one of the trades being examined a success and another a failure? There are recognizable and categorizable (?) characteristics that can be recognized again in real time. Find them. See if you can recognize them again in real time or via replay.

 

Awesome thanks. I tried using the journal post as well for guidance. I will add this as well.

 

Pace, extent, and duration are always factors.

Yes.

What are they trying to achieve? Where are they doing it? Why are they doing it? What's in their way? If the right tick is insufficient, switch to a 15s. Same thing.

 

When Trading Journals Don’t Work
(edited)​

Brett Steenbarger
18 Aug, 2005


The journal lacks specifics. Many times the journal becomes an outlet for the trader, a way of venting. While there is nothing wrong with venting per se, it is hard to see how *simply* venting in a journal can improve performance. A common entry might state, “I overtraded a slow market and broke all my rules. I know I have to take what the market gives me. Tomorrow I need to trade with more discipline”. All these things may be true, but the entry lacks specifics regarding *why* the trader overtraded; *how* the overtrading will be avoided in tomorrow’s trade; and *what steps* will be taken to return to the discipline. A journal entry that lacks specifics is a statement of good intentions; not a plan. If your journal entry does not include concrete steps that you can follow to address a problem situation, it is unlikely that it will serve as an action guide.

The journal emphasizes problems, not solutions. Traders love to keep journals when they’re losing and then fall off the journaling bandwagon when they’re making money. I would argue that, when you’re making money, that’s the *best* time to keep a journal. Your goal should be to replicate successful trading patterns, not simply analyze problematic ones. The ideal journals isolate what traders do when they’re trading their best, so that these solution patterns can be isolated and mentally rehearsed as part of a learning process.

The journal talks too much about the trader and not enough about the markets. Journals are a learning tool, and your ultimate goal is to learn how to trade. By focusing exclusively on your state of mind, what you did or didn’t do in the trade, etc., you lose the opportunity to identify and learn patterns that appear in the market. It’s extremely helpful to review a market day and examine what you could have noticed to alert you to a market move. By retrospectively identifying such trading patterns, you train your mind to look for them the next time they appear.

The journal is reactive, not proactive. This is part of the venting phenomenon: traders will make journal entries after the market day, but rarely use the journal to actively prepare for the coming day’s trade. An ideal journal captures what you’ll be looking for in the coming day in the markets (anticipated setups) and what you’ll be working on in your own trading. Learning from past performance is important, but if the learning is not reflected in future plans, it will not be reflected in actual trading outcomes.

The journal lacks metrics. I have found that traders can best assess their strengths and weaknesses by keeping detailed records of their trades and by evaluating themselves across a series of performance measures. I cannot tell you how many traders I’ve encountered who don’t have the faintest notion of their average profit per trade; their average win size and loss size; their average holding period per trade; etc. It’s not that the traders don’t care about performance; it’s that they have not drilled down to the trade-by-trade level to see what they’re actually doing in the markets. Many times, traders *think* they’re trading one way, only to find out when they look at the data that they’re not trading that way at all. It’s hard to see how a trader can identify if they’re having problems trading in the morning vs. afternoon; if they’re more often right on the long side than short; or if they are trading large size differently than smaller size if the statistics are not there to be analyzed.


So what’s a trader to do? The first step is to decide whether or not you really *want* to know what you’re doing and how well you’re doing it; whether you want to put in the time and effort to identify the patterns in each trading day—the market’s and your own. To paraphrase U.S. college basketball coach Bobby Knight, many traders want to trade and many want to win, but not many are willing to put in the work it takes to be a winner. This is the effort required of a winner, and each trader needs to know if he or she has the fire in their belly to sustain such work.

Ultimately, the effort to win is sustained by a desire to know. Excellent traders are always keeping score: they want to know what they’ve done right or wrong, and what’s making and losing them money. They are always working on themselves and their trading. I’ve met far too many “breakeven” traders who, upon inspection, have been losing money consistently. It’s not that they’re lying; they simply don’t want to know the truth. Thus, they avoid it. It is simply too painful to look at the money and opportunities lost. Keeping a journal *should* be painful at times, but it should also bring out the best in you. Without it, you’re likely to be a business without a plan.