Trading bare bones price action is one of the hardest things to do in my opinion. Not something you can learn from a book, although you can learn the ideal setups from it. I wouldn't be able to SIM trade without my BB, MA's, RSI, MACD, floor pivots, market profile, S&R, volume and multiple timeframe time-based charts. I would want to help but but Ironfist's approach differs so much from mine there is no wisdom I am able to give.
S2Trader, The book is full of information that you can glean from other sources and, if you've been reading intensely on the topic, you have already read the same information. That is why I asked earlier if anyone else who had bought the book would like to summarize what they found in the book that was valuable information. Maybe, not unique information, but information that he or she found very useful.
Sorry, I was kidding. Same reasoning as before. I can't pay (with money or time and effort) without knowing I would definitely be able to learn from you. What if you're scamming me? What if I can't learn from you? Then I've wasted my money paying you (or time and effort) and I've gotten nothing useful as a result.
so typical of you people, you want everything for nothing. it's pathetic. you want a new life filled with riches, but you can't spend 500 hours of community service to get it? instead of wasting time on weekends and evenings, would it hurt to do a few hours here and there? keep chasing your own tail. wow it's amazing. if someone would have offered me something like this few years ago, I would have grabbed it. welcome to my ignore list.
IronFist go to this link http://www.futuresmag.com/cms/futures/website register for the Futures I-Trade show, watch the presentation by Al Brooks
I suggest that Iron fist look at the trend. If the trend is down then look at last swing low. Price will usually retrace back up above this then consolidate. Then place entry about 3 ticks below the last swing low and let price come to him. If price breaks the entry then he needs to manage the trade by placing a stop that he is comfortable with. Reverse this for an uptrend. If price does not come to you it has reversed so again, do the exact opposite in the other direction. To me exits are easy. Take profit when you feel like price has moved far enough. If you are going to try and trend trade you need to have the nuts to stay in. I don't have the nuts. 4 contracts and anywhere from $300 to $500 per trade. Dont be greedy. All trades don't go your way so be ready to take losses. If you an master the simple steps I just showed you above and not be greedy and do a 1:1 risk/reward then you can be accurate 75% to 80% of the time. Also, you can still be range bound and have trends so, don't think I am talking about going up all day or down all day. Look at the macro and micro price movements. Figure out which way you are currently going and trade w/it. Paul
You can pre-order his book for $47.25 at Amazon. Wiley wants $75 for it. Book doesn't come out until May though. Over 400 pages.
lol. ok. Again, I have no proof that you're actually a profitable trader. How do I know I won't do my 500 hours of community service (or wire you $2,000 like you asked for via PM) and then you end up being like Jack Hershey or Woodie or any of the other trading "gurus" who aren't profitable and whose systems don't actually work and/or can't teach me anything. Then I've wasted my time. I need to be sure of what I'm getting before I spend time or money on it. So you see, as I said in PM, I'm managing risk. Don't feel too special, tho; I would've said the same thing to anyone who asked for payment up front in order to teach me to trade; especially to some random person online. So before anyone else PMs me with the same offer, the only conditions under which I would pay someone to teach me to trade would work as follows: I pay you a percentage of profits for a period of time after my instruction is complete. This protects me in case your method doesn't work or in case I cannot learn from you. If your method is legit AND I am able to learn from you, AND I end up being profitable, you get paid. I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
I just gave you everything you need a couple of posts up. People make this so much harder than it is. It's not the trading. Its the discipline. I can give you a perfect strategy and if you don't follow it and have discipline it would be just as I have given you the worlds worst strategy.
Ironfist, I'm also a trainee PA trader, so I'd like to share some realizations I had recently that might be helpful. It should be a useful exercise for me as well... The basic idea is that price is always moving between support and resistance. You read major S/R levels off a long term (15/60min) chart, but the same principle applies even on very small timeframes. Keeping track of micro S/R both lets you know what the market is currently doing, and tells you in advance where you will enter your trades. I think the staple advice to watch for HH/HL or LH/LL is a bit misleading: what you actually want to see is support becoming resistance (for shorts), or resistance becoming support (for longs). I've drawn some additional lines on your YM chart from earlier. The chart is a bit unclear - I would be using OHLC or HL bars and probably a faster chart - but you get the general idea. Some of these (I can guess at least 7900, 7950, and 7990) should be on your trading chart already based on your review of the longer-term charts. The rest should be added as they become visible, like signposts. An uptrend occurs when price breaks resistance, and then turns that resistance into support. Reverse for a downtrend. When one of these things isn't happening it's a warning that the trend might be changing. Concerning your first trade, at around 11:12 price broke that line at ~7990, technically making a "higher high" but we didn't see it turning to support. It looks to me like this was a major pivot so some kind of retrace or consolidation is to be expected. Afterwards the line reverted to being resistance and price headed back to the bottom of the range. If you really wanted to go long here as a range play, or because you thought the uptrend was still good, the thing to do would be to wait until we get to that bottom line, see if price just blasts through or if it seems to stall, then place a limit order a tick or two above the line and let the market fill you. Sometimes you won't get filled, that's just life. If you wait until you see the fat green bar, 90% of the time you'll be far too late. Your risk on this trade would be tiny, with your stop placed a couple ticks below the previous low. For your exit, you had several options. Price gave you at least a couple bars' warning that the 7990 line was holding as R again, so you could take a scalp exit there for 20-30 points. Or you could hold for a higher target and accept that your small stop might be hit, if the resistance level didn't break. If you did hold (and didn't get taken out in the 3rd test of support) then the warning to exit would be when price tried yet again to break 7990, made another "higher high," yet again failed to make it support, and yet again found resistance there after the drop. No guarantees, but the long side is looking pretty sickly at this point. The above analysis would also keep you out of the second trade. Even though there was a "higher high" this is misleading, because what you really need to see is resistance becoming support. When a major pivot starts as resistance, is broken, but fails to become support and instead becomes resistance again, that's a bearish sign. The higher low is not actually a significant signal: because price is in a chop zone, all we're really concerned about is whether the top and bottom of the zone are holding or 'flipping.' Hopefully you'll find this useful...