I'm just trying to figure out how to display behavior so that we can discuss it. Imagine if you're asked to describe if you think this girl likes you and your guy friends ask you to tell them what she did. What are you going to do? Act out her body movements??? No... you could say she played with her hair... she licked her lips... she turned her body towards yours... etc. So I think that in some ways, these 5 sec charts show what is happening to price as it approaches a level. Perhaps I'm wrong, but nobody has told me so yet. They say to just watch the 5 minute bar. I guess I'm supposed to develop a feel for how the right tick bounces up and down, but somehow there is no way to display it so that it can be discussed.
I'm trying to do the work, not play the victim. Here is the best I can come up with to discuss behavior as its approaching the level and what we might see in real time and what we might want to do about it. Surely with less than 3 point stops you and 40D must be taking, and precise entries, these decisions are just as quick, and I'm just trying to illustrate them. But I shall bow out now so thanks for your time. Although I do find some of the things you show as incomplete and this frustrates me, you have always been civil and I thank you for that.
Ah, whew! Yes I agree a shorter timeframe illustrates the action better than making some kind of animated GIF, or something. I hadn't thought of that.
I tried to keep my questions in there and I asked you a question in it last week about my chart but I guess you didn't see it. Sorry I just posted my chart above.. I hadn't read this comment yet.
Actually it doesn't since it necessarily must be in hindsight. And watching price move in real time (or via replay) is far different from drawing a bunch of lines on an already-happened chart. Which is why I post the potential trading ops -- such as ranges -- before the open. It's up to the trader to decide what he wants to do, if anything, with any reversals off the tops or bottoms of, or breakouts through, these ranges. One hopes he has determined his criteria for entry ahead of time, but even if he has done so, he still has to take the trade.
DB, in terms of the ranges, a hypothesis would be: The narrower the range, the more trades and the more agreement or "equilibrium" have been found. And the more of that (trading at the end), the more "magnetic" this range (and their extremes) can get, if price is unable to get away from that?
Sounds good, but I have no idea. An answer would require a lot of research. But does it matter? The number of trades is reflected in the volume. All else being equal, a wider range ipso facto will have more trades than a narrow one. What may be more important to the trader -- at least it is to me -- is whether or not the range is wide enough to be traded. A scalper may think so. One who is looking to travel from one end of the range to the other will have different requirements. I suppose I ought to think about this stuff, but I don't. Thinking about it might give one some sort of expectation, but expectations put a stick in your spokes more often than not. I just focus on what's happening when price rejects one side or the other and enter the trade, after which I just let price take me where it will. I told gears that I called this a LITHA trade (leave it the hell alone), because if and when price exits the other side, one never knows just how far it will go.
Thanks DB, in terms of the narrow ranges I meant it more in terms of a bounce from the outside not a trade from the inside. The reason for my question I try to focus on the really important levels and can draw "conclusions" which have a meaning. So kind of that what you just mentioned a few posts ago... ...and I have to say that I still have a lot of ranges left to test...
As far as the bounces go, I couldn't tell you. It seems obvious that ranges have an expiration date, but then they surprise you. Where traders found value at some point in the past they may find value again. Whether or not that's coincidental is anybody's guess. Fortunately, it doesn't matter. If one sees price choking somewhere, as it did today, look to the left and see if there's perhaps a reason. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with managing the trade, but it does enable one to stop thinking about it and focus on something more immediately pertinent. As for the "important" part, that unfortunately is reflected in price behavior at the time price tests one side or the other of the range; you can't always predict whether price is going to treat it as important or not. One can get some sense of it in static charts, but there's nothing like live. Rejection, for example, is far more powerful in a kinetic chart than in a static one. And if one doesn't understand what rejection is all about, he is more likely to stand aside, as so many did this morning.