Waiting for the best opportunities to arise is exactly what you should be doing. The trick is to determine what the best opportunities are. The failure at 0930, for example, would seem to some to be a best opportunity. Others might view it as a trick, and would be afraid to short it lest whoever stage a quick reversal upward and leave them at a loss. If one can distinguish between what makes sense in re AMT and what is paranoia, he will be more likely to make the correct choice.
Ironic that Gringo and DB be the first two to answer my question, since they are the two most influential contributors that have helped me break through to successful trading. For that, I owe them thanks an order of magnitude far exceeding anything that I could type on a discussion forum (especially DB). In order to contribute something myself, I give everyone quotes from each that hit home with me to reiterate the simplicity and key points of this SLA-AMT approach. I've seen thousands (literally) of posts about people wondering off and not 'seeing the light', 'missing the forest for the trees', etc... so hopefully this will help refocus their thinking. First, from dbphoenix: "So how does one trade all this? First, you will have to monitor several intervals at the same time in order to (a) find out what interval you want to trade and (b) where price is within whatever range or ranges is/are in that interval. For example, if you’re most comfortable with a 5m interval, you’ll want to check a smaller interval or two to see what price is up to down there, but you’ll also want to look at larger intervals, such as the 15m or 60m or even the daily (I’m using time intervals here in order to keep this from becoming even longer than it will be, but the same approach applies whether you’re using range bars, volume bars, tick bars, candles, lines, etc). Second, locate the ranges. Box them or circle them or color them or in some other way highlight them. If you find a range that is wide enough for you to trade (that is, there are enough points from top to bottom to make a trade worthwhile), get “into” the range via a smaller interval in order to find a trend. Perhaps at some smaller interval, price is at the bottom of that range. That gives you a good possibility for a long (or it may be at the top of the range, giving you a good possibility for a short). At this point, you have three options: a reversal, a breakout, or a retracement. If, for example, price bounces off or launches itself off the bottom of the range (support), trade the reversal and go long. If instead it falls through support, short the breakout (or breakdown, if you prefer). If you don’t catch the breakout, or you prefer to wait in order to determine whether or not the breakout was “real”, prepare yourself to short whatever retracement there may be to what had been support and may now be resistance." Second, from Gringo: "This is essentially what we do when price reaches the top or bottom of TC or TR. When price reaches the top we look to sell on weakness and when it reaches the bottom we look to go buy on strength. SLA-AMT has encompassed all that theory into just one line: Wait for TC or TR top to short and TC or TR bottom to long."
And this is pretty much what I do still. Look at the weekly, the daily, the hourly, etc. Most, apparently, don't, since so many of the posts I read have to do with people trading the wrong side. I really don't get that. But then so many people do this for fun, and I really don't get that, either.
I am not used to so much praise. There's always this feeling of the rug being pulled from under my feet. To be fair I am only a part-time trader and my grasp of exotic theory has been getting weaker since the advent of SLA-AMT. For me the truth is in simplicity, and in simplicity our salvation. On a serious note people don't generally know I am the one who helped Db become better. It was my questioning his deepest held beliefs that prompted him to such greatness. In other words without me Db would only be rich and not so famous. Gringo
Still straddling the mean. That we didn't make it to the lower limit does not mean that we can't retrace our steps back to the upper one. We did so in October '13 and February '14. What is more important now is whether or not we can reach and exceed the last swing high a month ago. And for comparison purposes:
Ordinarily I update this stuff only on Fridays. However, given our inability to reach the last swing high on the daily on Friday, much less make a higher high, and given the behavior of price since, the LOLR appears to be down. If so, there are two hundred points between here and the lower limit of the long-term channel. Enjoy.
15pts in 3 minutes. (Does this count as a "call"?) Edit: And 21pts in 6m (50pts since I made the post above).
Interesting that one of the better short entries took place last night at exactly the same level as the one yesterday morning (4232). People overseas must be doing extremely well. At the moment, we're testing yesterday evening's swing low at 4200, which is exactly where yesterday's "opening" plunge was initiated. We'll see how many people are on the wrong side today, too. Incidentally, yesterday's trade was worth up to 60-90pts, depending on whether or not the trader entered when I made the first post just before 0800.