The concept of "herd" is overcooked...overstated..overused...overvalued..overpromoted. The herd is basically a few scraggly cows running around taking a dump every now and then. Todays markets are dominated by the institutions..HFT's ..etc. It is institutions trading against each other. At all times there are bullish institutions and bearish institutions in the market, at every price level. They all have their reasons. If you are one of the scraggly cows your job is to find the institution who is winning at the moment, latch onto it's tail, and be dragged along. Then let go quickly when the crap starts ejecting.
%% NO,the stock market is not like bitcon or tulip mania, even though looks like the short sellers when they may come into bitcon, + Enron there maybe some -patterns the same. LOL Stocks are part ownership of companies, not like a tulip mania @ all.
tulip mania was dutch. there is a saying about that: if you did business with a dutchman and you got not scammed, it is because the dutchman forgot to do it.
%% LOL Actually those [tulips] are what we call an art sector, Dutch or anyone.So some people pay up in an art auction market; @ least when some overpaid for tulips they had something good looking.PS Looking @ the 10 most common dutch names; never got ripped off by any of those names. Anyone ever noticed a bitcoin could be easy to counterfeit?? And i assume those Dutchman gave me their real names.LOL
Provided big traders can get it wrong then how come it would even be worthy to pay attention to the points at which the big orders are coming in? Or were you saying that it's not significant even though you have the potential to see these trades?
There is a spectrum of performance at any price level. Some got it right, some are promptly getting it right, some are waiting to get it right, others are hoping to get it right, some will never get it right. Get right with what's happening right in front of you. If you take the time to look at those levels of activity, they are around turns or prior to BO's. Whether it's a turn on a tape, traverse or channel, the larger timeframe players swing with larger orders. It helps to have one's display of the market calibrated to support perception. I keep my distractions to a minimum. My display goes from the past on the left (1w,1d,30m,5m charts) across to the right, to single tickcharts (ES/YM) at the hard right edge. On the right monitor is a A DOM ladder and two T&S streams (one atop each other), one to log all orders and the other window to log orders >50 contracts. These windows are in the center of my view. The tick charts are to the right and the 1d30m5m charts are to the left. Depending on where the PV relationship is in the developing trend will determine which window to focus upon to carve turns. Time is spent annotating the 5min and updating the 30m. The pace is in a goldilocks zone. The more logging the better the results. Trades are considered depending on the current price action and resulting opportunities. Generally when large orders are hitting the tape, it'll indicate which is the right side or not, each with certainty and the appropriate action to take. Sometimes it requires a bit of patience to see the resulting BO. The colored horizontal lines are volume pace bands. When the volume is in the red, orange and yellow zone it's a higher risk trade zone. One thing to notice is that What Came Before price started marking up or marking down. Since the start of new trends are always contained within the old, one always knows where they are. Anticipating the new turn becomes an exercise of price pre-selecting through possibilities until there is only one way price can go. This is the moment of What Must Come Next. If this moment is confirmed by the subsequent price action. Bingo, tallying the points. If not, then what we have is a What Wasn't That. Wash, rinse, repeat. Simple terms, useful and serves the purpose for the next trade is developing,... All market action can be defined - there comes a point where there is no noise. It's like burn nite out in the deep playa. The immense cacophony of thousands of sound systems transforms into sweet music. Hard to believe but one can perceive price action in the same way - discordant --> harmonious.
IMHO the most significant point is the price movement itself, and not who's buying/selling. And the point of my previous reply was simply that within the herd that buys at/near tops and sells at/near bottoms you can find GS just as well as somebody's Granny (no offense meant to any Grannies out there). Just as many are, perhaps you are overly concerned about big orders believing that big equals smart guys, and that as the smart guys have all available information at their fingertips, they must be right!! Well, I can't count the times I heard security analysts scream "The market's got it all wrong". Just buy/sell the trend, and you'll be with the smart guys, and a few smart Grannies too!!
%% Agree; with that- about 93-95%. The other 5-7%, can be important, with a top rated fund/mutual fund stocks buy, for example.Delayed data is still helpful, due to the time taken to build a position/track record.And trend nicknames like '' elephants'' are never used of stock analysts/analysts on CNBC or anywhere. Good points, trend/friend;Learner2007