A successful trader know his/her trading instrument...high volatility time durations, low volatility time durations, exchange hours, margins, news events that impacts the trading instrument and many other things that impacts the price action. Removing the name of the trading instrument (making it faceless) as you mention at trade2win forum...those that showed up to reply I wouldn't consider to be gurus. Probably just newbies that don't realize there's more to successful trading than just trade entry signals. I just never heard of anyone being profitable let alone wasting time trying to predict in trading about something they really didn't know anything about what they were looking at... Its a faceless chart...like putting on a blindfold and touching someone's face to determine if they're going to be good in bed or not without any other info. That's sarcasm, obviously there's more to it than just looking at someone's face.
If you read through my first post in this thread, you should know the answer "I haven't seen any "guru" ever show this (e.g. how to know chop or trend in REAL time) with any high accuracy (more like 50%/50% the best ), even those supposed to be the "famous" or legend one."
And you won't unless and until you find a trading room in which 1. you can see the moderating trader’s charts in real time. 2. you can see the trades entered in real time either through the moderator’s order dom or chart trader or some method where it is apparent that the trade was entered, filled, and managed. The "real time" nonsense with which ET is obsessed is just that: nonsense.
This is precisely what happen in real trading. Any experience trader know they should trade as "Bollinger" style in chop market, and "break out/two side strategy" in trending market. This is not secret although some scum guru try to sell this as "thousand dollars guarantee No Loss system" The million dollar question is how you know it will be the trend or chop market in future (e.g, the next 5 min or 30min or whatever time frame you are using), looking back at the previous data in the chart is not good enough nor the solution - the chance to get it right is not different from tossing a coin. Any system with 50% chance aka tossing coin will loss in long term when you include the commission and slippage. Don't feel discourage as even the biggest institutions are not able to make this prediction right by looking at chart. They need much more "info" for the decision to make a high probability trade.
In my early day I actually join a trading room from a legend guru in PA, my understanding is some "successful" trader in ET (at least this is what they self claimed) are claimed to learn from his approach or been tough by him. I don't want to put his name here as this is not the purpose of this thread. The outcome is quite disappointed, his prediction is not any better than tossing a coin.
Not surprised. However, by seeing his trades in what actually was real time, if in fact you could see his charts and his trades, you saw in real time whether or not he could do it. This is the ONLY way of determining whether or not the guru can trade. Anyone who's been online since the 90s knows how to fake "real-time" calls, though anyone who hasn't been online for that long but is reasonably intelligent can figure out how to do it.
I struggled with this issue for well 10 years, it's a trick SOB i can assure you, my solution after all this time was simple but took ages to perfect. Smaller trades of smaller moves basically, so small even chop has trend within it, so odds are if it chops then it profits or trends the right way you profit. Really small micro managing is also key both the SL and the profit taking side. Confused you will be
This is really what your question is about...predicting the future because anyone can tell you in real-time (right now) if its a trend or chop with high accuracy. They just can't tell you if such will be the same 5 minutes from now, tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. Yet, in reality, you don't need to try to predict the future if the trend will continue or if the chop will continue...you just need to figure out a way to exploit whatever does happen after your real-time analysis and have a plan B (trading plan) when something different happens. In contrast, use hindsight analysis (yesterday's charts or videos) as a learning tool unless you're a trader that doesn't use charts. If the latter, you still need access to replay data for Bid/Ask or Time/Sales info in DOM as a learning tool. Its extremely tough to learn without any historical information.
Nearly 2 years ago I posted a list of the initial price action patterns that signal potential chop/range conditions are quite likely: http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/help-ive-been-chopped.277421/page-2 This is real time chop/range prediction, not after the fact.