lol. I have no idea about DB and this isn't about him as I haven't really kept up with his stuff and so haven't been able to form an opinion, but There's a couple of guys on trade2win who love doing this! One is 'dentist' who is a very longtime member so he doesn't get too much stick for it. He posts his charts with a few levels on, and then no matter what price does around those levels (either bounce off of them are blast right through) he'll be back at the end of the day to claim winning trades without any losers from the levels, lol. The other is forexmospherian who posts these ridiculously nebulous calls with levels and 'potential scalp buys' all over teh place. If price goes to his potential buy zone, chops around/goes up a little, and then carries on going down, he'll stay quiet. If it goes down to his potential buy zone and rallies, he'll be on to brag about teh 'call' later on! When he is pulled up on the vagueness of his calls and questioned as to why he can't just announce when he is in a position like everyone else, he says ''I'm not an alert service. I Don't want others getting rich from my calls'' (but yet he still want to claim that they ARE calls when he feels like bragging. Wants to have his cake AND eat it! :0))
Nicely done with the link! I'm not blaming you, I'm simply asking you for more detail. Its your choice to not give it, and this is fine. You make the assumption that I'm not doing the work. Have you considered that perhaps its not that easy to see what you think should just appear once you have looked at this long enough? When you and 40D wonder how it could be that so many people fail at this and lose money when all they have to do is observe and test, I have to wonder how, with you guys being so smart, that you cannot see that perhaps this isn't so easy. Imagine if I said that I just don't understand how people go hungry in this world because the grocery store has so much food... just go buy some!!! (as if most people in this world have the money or even a well stocked grocery store) As my final comment to you Db, I do respect you and I'm not criticizing you or your method. I was just asking for help because so much of this trading business isn't automatic and decisions have to be made on the fly. Even with regards to SLA, which is almost automatic, you have said before that a person would need to test if entering so late into a move (lets say 20 points higher), even if its the first RET, would be wise. Sometimes you discuss these things, sometimes you don't. So much of what you write makes it sound like traders are making decisions, but your replies to me are always that it should be tested for, with the assumption being I guess that the question never needs to be asked because I can always pull out my handy dandy spreadsheet that tells me what to do. Oh well... such is life.
I'll just take this opportunity to pile on and say that while I'm still in my mostly passive phase of observing and formulating my view of price action, and thus I don't say much here, dbphoenix's here thread is proving useful to me too, even without entries/exits. (I'm hoping that my current 500-page Wyckoff read will address that bit.) If nothing else, it at least made me reconsider the NQ, which I had tossed from my list of prospective instruments to specialize in last year. I usually ignore such comments, but I do want to point out that perhaps unlike some others, I personally didn't expect this thread to be pin-pointing real-time calls for guru-following drones, but rather to help those who are learning to understand price movement on their own. To me, trading long-term is the skill of thinking for myself, so I'm collecting information and building my own way of making sense of the markets, which will assuredly not be a carbon copy of SLA-AMT in the end anyway. For the record, I've done the whole day trading chatroom thing years ago (whoa, 2003 seems so far away now!) and unsurprisingly, it didn't lead anywhere productive: I hadn't learned too much after 6 months into it. Of course I hadn't: what good is a subscriber who becomes autonomous and leaves? I have since wisened up to more or less discount any trading "education" that's for sale (books, videos, etc.) as cases of "teach it if you can't actually do it". The freebies however, I pay some attention to, because at least I know the information wasn't written for direct revenue, so there may be some useful gem in there. Lastly: yes lagging indicators are cheap and automatable, and indeed require little work. You get what you pay for though. Leading indicators require manual work, obviously, because they're just helping one clarify his own understanding of the right edge of the chart. I see them as optional; it's just more obvious and precise with a few judicious lines added than without, but it's not a solution in itself. (Edit: typo)
Actually you've been blaming me and 40D and Donna quite a lot, and I suspect they're just as tired of it as I am. Did you collect and analyze those 100 ranges as I suggested? No. Did you do the statistical analysis of MAEs and MFEs that Donna suggested? I'll have to guess no. Have you followed through on any of the suggestions made to you by some of ETs best traders? No. Even if you haven't studied ranges at all, they've been presented to you complete and gift-wrapped, before the open. If you don't know how to enter a trade off the reversal at the bottom or top of a range, then don't. I spent hours in chat showing entries but you wouldn't take any of them because you were afraid to do so. You're still afraid to do so. Even if I took time away from my own trading to send you an alert to enter here, you wouldn't because you're afraid to take the trade. Those who don't know how to or are afraid to enter a trade off the bottom or top of a range can plot a simple MACD and trade off the defaults. Doing so is miles better than trying to "feel" one's way through the day.
When I was in chat, starting a few days into February 2014, there was no discussion about entries, in fact, posts were made that entries were not to be discussed. (at this point, I wouldn't have been taking them anyway as I was brand spanking new) I'm not scared of entries, and many of my charts I've posted with horrible losing days show far too many entries (this is of course my fault as I know both you and 40D aim to trade only at the extremes, not in the middle where I was often bouncing around). What scares me is when price turns on me instantly. I'm not sure where you enter, but the few entries 40D has shown has meant a stop of 3 points or less was sufficient and price had barely ever gone against him more than a few ticks. I have tried to come up with ways to enter around these important levels that makes me enter with a bit of confirmation, but also allows for a stop of less than 3 points and I just haven't been able to find anything yet. Here is a 5 sec chart from yesterday, and as you can see, the R line at 4212 provides some messy price action, in addition to the overnight high level of 4220, although that one is a little more clean. Now I know that 40D might say he only needs to look at a 5 min chart and somehow knowing what to do appears, but since I'm trying to learn and to discuss this, I know of no other way other than plotting it on a 5 sec chart so we can zoom into those 1 minute bars and see what's going on. Given what you and 40D write, its as if you skipped this whole part, and only took the long from 4202 at 1100 and went straight up 30 points as pictured in this second chart. But without knowing what rules you guys have to enter (not that you have to tell me mind you), I would assume that there should be some trades here around this R level at 4212, either longs or shorts. But neither of you ever point out where you have scratches.... where you go wrong. So when I'm looking at this, when I'm trying to find a way to enter, when I'm observing and trying to find rules, when I'm doing my homework, I'm left to think that none of this is good enough because no matter what I come up with, it leads to too many trades, too many scratches, with nothing left in the "gas tank" to finally take the nice and clean REJ off 4202 which happens 90 mins after the open.
Kp, if and when you ever decide to stop playing victim and do the work, you might become a successful trader. Might. Until then, I suggest you cozy up to stochastics and the MACD and get to know them well.
Slightly off-topic, but... You must have some insane ninja reflexes for trading on a 5-second chart with good execution! :eek: I'm still not sure I'll ever drop (back) down below 5-minute bars, personally. In fact, I wish days were long enough to allow me decent intraday swings on 15 or 30 minute bars.
Even though I just posted this Saturday, I'm reposting it to point out that we're poking into some very interesting territory. The ES poked out of its range at the end of last week and retraced only slightly. If it pokes out again, we may be on our way again to who knows where.