there are decent books on tape reading. The principle is very simple, it's action and reaction. then it's a matter of putting in the screen time and develop the skill. tape reading can be a broad concept beyond T&S. market is fractal, the same principle can be applied to weekly and daily charts as well as intraday. just pull up an s&p chart for the past 10 years........... in a uptrend, observe the action and reaction.. in a down trend, observe the same. there are people putting out vids on youtube about this topic as well.
Hi ethan, I will post two pics for you. The first one shows a tape reading cluster in modern times. I had the ggod luck to start trading in 1957, so the ticker tape was the best thing going then. It is like streaming data today and Tape reading was just something that turns out to be easy to do for people whose minds are developed. Today, there is a lot of data and to trade to make high velocity money, it becomes especially easy. The panels that make it quite simple are shown by name in this post. In the next post, you will be seeing a snapshot of a screen that shows the eye movement to catch a turn more or less perfectly. Note Well: people who are not able to trade in a refined way like tape reading are stuck with pivot points and Support and Resistance and fibs and envelopes, etc.... they have simply screwed up their minds inductively and are permanently SOL...
trading off the tape? sorry brah, you're 2-3 years too late you can read this for fun if you want http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56373
Hi Jack, Thank you so much for your post of great value. I feel so lucky that I have the opportunity to get to know your thoughts on tape reading. My manager who's trading is based on tech analysis once recommended tape reading and relevant skills. Like you said it is the refined way. I am just happy learning right now.
as you said it's interesting, but it is of little value. go long or short that stock depends on particular circumstances. that's why I am seeking tape reading techniques. for example, if the bid size is rapidly declines, I would place short at bid when there's 1or2 k left, then, watch. if the price goes up and the bid moves up I would go long at offer. considering the bid be cancelled and context of the tape it's really complicated. and I don't understand what other equal factors mean. they can not be equal at all.
those were the tape reading techniques. it's a very good thread, probably the best on tape reading on this forum. pay attention to what maverick says but have fun searching i guess....
Here is an axtual snapshot. There is a numberd list. follow the numbers to see how a person's eyes keep track of the tape. Here you see that the trade (shown in pink) as a vertical line. It is easy to see that the snapshot was taken just after the person being mentored pulled the trigger on the date and time shown. The snap shot was annotated in paint as part of the debriefing. Step one is a panel that shows the premium. It shows the smart money trading ahead of the herd. What you see is a stetch which for the offset of the premium in those days was the smart money going long. You see two T&S panels and the DOM panel and two OTR charts. the top OTR chart leads the bottom OTR chart. You watch the leading chart and trade the lagging chart. Today tape reading has a lot of signals and it is very relaxed and precision. Here you see in something like slow motion a chain of events that always occurs. The events are: 1. the smart money stretches the premium (this panel is available in script under my name as stretch/squeese in a few places). 2. the DOM has a script attached to it that shows stalactites and the limiting value down is called a "WALL" that cannot be breached before the market eats up the other side of the bid/ask. the minority always controls and the large wall of orders never gets filled as the market comes to the wall and walks away form it. 3. Four games are played that show on the DOM and the two T&S columns. the key players have "tells" as well. It is fun to watch them and log the game at hand as you trade. By seeing the games, you then glance at the OTR charts where YM leads ES. 4. On the YM OTR, you see a bottom composes of 6 swings on two pair. The ES followed with an oddharmonic lagging turn. Hitting T is easy on platforms these days since you have the market reversal order or partial market orders line up to bag the T for each. you never show your hand ahead and you are what eats the guys facing you to the vanishing point and the price moves with your new position. 5 and 6 confirm you hit the turn. the trend is stair stepping and B2B means the non dominant tape has turned into a dominant tape long. On the next post you see the S/S panel and there are many "tells" across the panel which is the fastest moving panel of the display. For a three points range on ES over a while (over an hour, say), you can do reversal trades to pull over 11 poiints in that time. This is not chicken scalping trading. In tape reading by experts, you are in the market all of the time.