Don't you ever wonder why things are the way they are? P.S. The word you have so facetiously misspelled comes from Latin: manus ("hand") and turbare ("to disturb"), which is precisely how one would describe your comments.
Agreed, a good site. daCharts.com also has some articles worth looking over. http://www.dacharts.com/articles.php http://www.dacharts.com/articles/Buffy_on_price_action.php
IF Good to see you are still onboard the trading boat. By now you have read so much information/ guesswork/ BS etc that you have reached saturation point ... well that is good place to be. It helps you take stock. None of us at any time in our lives must allow the mere fact that we do not know what we are doing to dampen our enthusiasm in any way. This is what sorts out the eventual winners from the pack animals. Anyway, I am not going to add to your saturation, as this is your journey and you pursue it as you see fit as Osorico mentioned. I would like to mention a little about my twelve years of learning the noble art of trading. I did say art and not science, didn't I. I have learned more about what is NOT required and what should NOT be included than I can describe. Because my Wife and I travel a lot and because the current 'war against commonsense' has removed any joy from the actual travel component of our trips, I finally decided to ditch my second screen and carry only my 17" laptop. It really doesn't matter where you sit in the aircraft anymore, it is the on ground stupidity that ruins the day. Bear in mind if you will, that I do not mess around with multiple time frames or any other screens to support my ES trading. They all went out along with the rubbish some time ago. I only look at one screen .... chart + order entry. And so, before our last trip I ditched my T&S and my little home made bid-ask tracker. Admittedly, I could have converted the tracker into a HUD in the right hand margin, but in the end we addicts must face our demons head on. 'My name is f9 and I am addicted to an over supply of information.' Before leaving BA every piece of information, every button and tool bar was subject to the circular information test and if it failed it was dumped. At first, I went right back to one lot trading because I thought that a huge chunk of me was missing and I lost my relaxation. But things returned to normal rather quickly (nothing succeeds like success) The curious thing was, I knew I had too much information, but somehow I had become attached to it and it hurt to let it go. In my RH margin I can still tell you at any time how many tics to RTH open, session High /Lo, pivot points etc because I deem them essential. But essentially, I just watch the current bar form and where it lies in relation to previous ones. Every now and then HUD informs of any approaching thingy and that has a bearing upon whether I feel that breakout is better than fade. Outside of price, one name has continually returned to me and that is Hurst. ES price, as far as Hurst and I am concerned wobbles from band to band inside channels that are inside channels, that are ........ I read Hurst years and years ago and it has only taken me this long to apply his thoughts in their purity. regards f9
Excellent point thank you dc. I didn't write that comment with as much clarity as perhaps I should. I should have said "multi screen" analysis. regards f9
couple of things: 1. during a pullback or popup, you will know it's over when you strength/weakness. eg. during a popup(chart u posted) when you see a red bar CLOSE below the previous bar low, thats 1 sign of weakness and time to enter with stop placed 1 tick above the popup high. This results in small stops and potentially nice winners. 2. draw trendlines only for significant waves and pullbacks. This will: a. keep you out of chop. I will post a chart today. Believe me, when you draw these lines and stay out of chop, you have covered half of trading mysteries because now you will not be losing money from useless trades to begin with. b. Say in an uptrend market you see a LH. Connect the HH and LH, that I promise more times than often will be a significant trendline and short only when that line is touched. same goes for uptrend, just opposite. c. drawing trendlines and seeing it get respected for the 3rd time(the time you should be taking a trade) just gives you a confirmation that the trend is still valid. Like I said, in a downtrend, wait till you weakness when the trendline is touched for the third time and place stop above the high. Look at the waves, forget everything else. See how once price trends after a pullback or popup. Use volume charts. I use 3000. I only take trades when the trendline is touched the 3rd time and more. If it gets pierced and then gets respected 30 minutes later, I dont pay attention to it. You drew way too many trendlines in that RT chart. You should end up with somewhere between 5-maybe 12 lines and same for the trades, 5-15. Using this method I have never taken more than 18 trades on a given day. Let me know if you would like a better explanation, i would be glad to. This is a very simple method and remember, it will cause you to miss trades because the trendlines are not always touched. NO matter juicy it looks, i dont take it because I am only interested in high probability trades than making that 10 pointer in 1 minute. This requires a lot of patience because sometimes you could go half day without any trades, but you need to have confidence. Its easy to lose confidence and say trendlines dont work. Just try it for a week, you will either break even or make money because IT WILL keep you out of chop. if you cant get it, ask me, i will show you. Again, this is a probability game, so you haveto take every signal(trendline touch) you get. you will win. You also have to let the winner run, but obviously depending upon price action. Stops are usually 1-3 points. Larger than 3 i tend to shy away. infact, i dont take trades that require stops larger than 3 points. You have to have patience. very important. just stay calm.
Great post. This is price action 101 and if I were you IronFist for now I would focus on this and only this when watching a chart.