There is something crucial there I need to comment. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I'm not. I just do not have interest in knowing WHO is RIGHT or not for itself. But there is something important I feel I need to say about me so to speak. It echoes to the question that was asked to me before : "who are you as a trader ?". In our world, most of peolpe love to mythologize and fanatize WHO they are, whithout realizing they are in the cell our production mode put themselves into. And most of them describe themselves from their job, others from their membership to a religion, a group, a hobby, whatever. Personally, I do not describe myself like I see myself, or from my job. I have a biological and ontological definition given by nature and the power of love making surge life. I am a human being, not what I wanna be. I am pre-defined. Being a human being, I am under laws I cannot outerpass. If I stop breathing 2 months, I die, if I stop eating 2 years, I die, if I smoke 5g of weed every day, I'll probably end bad, if my mother hates me, it'll not contribute positively to my inner vibration. This is how it works. Human beings can BE if laws are respected. Let me give you an example : I have been part of the National Team of my country for the Worlds Championships Series of Tablesoccer, several times around the world, and won the European Championships League in Italy, 3 years ago. My best result at Worlds in Singles is 3rd. This may be, for most people in the world, enough to say I kind of "master" tablesoccer. In this hobby, maybe sport, there are different technics, strategies etc. There is just a few people who can perfectly shoot a shot, or execute a pass, or block an important goal at the right time. Those players are the best of the worlds. I've seen for 9 years now so many people asking to the stars how to execute this, how to shoot that, how to this how to that. BUT, you'll never see anyone working to execute it THE SAME as the star. Watch the star, put yourself on the table, and feel YOUR WAY to REPRODUCE what you saw. Everyone is so proud to have its own shots. Everybody say "you have to find your shots, your style, your way"...which is totally different. I felt when I began to play that this advice was not good. Why so ? Cause there are rules (I'm not talking about what is legal to do or not on a table) that are to be followed if one wanna play great and be a champion. Those rules that are to be followed, are those IMPOSED by the structure of the table, the rods, the ball, the field etc. After those rules followed, one has to learn how to defend, to pass and shot. To do so, you need a position of your hands on your handles. Depending on what you wanna do, there are recommended hand positions on the handle. Along time I noticed everybody always say "put your hands as you feel comfortable". I ask one thing -> what if the hand position recomended by the table to do a certain shot, does not make me feel comfortable ? Must I change the table ? Of course not, I'll be humble and change my position until I feel confortable with it. What makes me even more sure of what I say, is that if you take the world top 100 ranked players, you'll see like 95 players with their own style...loosing 99% of the time against the same 4-5 players....who have their hand position very similar when they do this or that. It is not chance, it is that they follow the best way of holding the handles IMPOSED by the table, not CHOOSEN by them. When one has the ball on his 3 rod, in front of the goal, he cannot decide which hole will open. He can only choose WHAT he does, WHEN and HOW. The way the goalie moves will tell the forward player WHERE to shot, WHEN and HOW. But those top players bend over the rules dictated by the table, and in fine, at the very very very end of the work, they do not even choose their style, they HAVE their style. They ARE on the table how it is recommended to become good, they DO what works, and they HAVE finally a style that gives results. BE, DO, HAVE. From the moment I realized everything I just said, which was some years ago, my level at tablesoccer increased insanely. I was not playing in the most comfortable way for me, but the WAY IT WORKED. What I try to say is that I am 100% sure that there are laws that rule the market as a human activity, and those laws have a power, which is way beyond the narcissistic one's of humans. This power makes that if one does not follow the rules, one looses its trade. I am sure that the amazing Jack understood conceptually at an incredible level those laws, followed them and did what was to be done. Therefore, being a human being, defined by an ontoligical and biological being, it takes me back to what HUMAN means. Etymologically, HUMAN comes from Humus, which means the EARTH. Yes, humans come from the earth. And HUMAN takes us to HUMBLENESS, which one more time etymologically means remembering where we come from. Cause when you know where you come from and where you are, you can make an anticipation of where you're going... That's why I do not have any other ambition than BEing how it is to be, DOing what is requiered to follow the rules of the markets, to then HAVing what is deserved. I do believe in Jack's work, I think he saw those rules, humbly followed them and made surge the granular method of SCT. I just want to follow his steps, and humbly follow his results. You're right, Thanks a lot ! It's a concept I've read and heard, but never gave it much time on study. My list is now : I feel horrible with - VTP (filling the VTP cells in the Log) - Bands - the context given by a Lateral price case - End Effects
You've got it! It's not about being narcissist, and I've previously also stated one of most important trader qualities may be humbleness, or honesty was it perhaps. If honest or humble enough, they, the good qualities, converge Honesty should make one humble and vica versa, and then you do not merely copy someone else, but make it work for you. Put another way: How would you teach someone else how to play tablesoccer to their best potential, and how could you put that in practice when regarding trading? Being a teacher of others remains as always best way to learn and deepen knowledge. Trading is very hard to define though, and hard to quantify how hard SCT is to put in practice. It very much depend solely on the trader. In CW, SCT is outrageous, and perhaps rightly so, until one mythically "sees the light" completely? On that path, it may make sense to make the trip as safely and steady as possible. The point is, the market is enough to learn from, but JH notes and teachings, even ramblings, can be food for putting the mind in the right directions. One just have to plan which foot to put where first a bit, so as not fall into the various rabbitholes.
I've done it many times. I've teached many things to many people on a table. They almost all have seen their level increasing a lot by following my recommendations. Some of them increased even more later, some others did not continue to apply and are not expressing their maximam potential. All resides always in do you wanna do what you have to do to get what you want, or do you wanna do what you wanna do to get what you want ? As for teaching what I know about SCT to someone, i've already done it from scratch to one friend 3 years ago, to my dad 1 time each 3 months, and to my girlfriend last year. The 5 first messages of this Thread we're on, was the last attempt in date to kind of "teach". I noticed to confirm what you say, that I was, yes, teaching to me a lot while doing this, even though it was not intentional. But it was not a surprise, as it happened a lot already in some areas I master. I have, humbly, experienced many successes in my life by applying this direct application of the Radical Theory (philoanalysis). I have been able to explain many mechanisms, solved many communication problems between humans, understood many concepts, and reached in my interest areas, nice levels. The hardest for me is that, even though I have developped a nice amount of kowledge in some areas (foreign languages, trading, tablesoccer), the only things that misses me to be able to LIVE other successes thanks to my comprehension of how things work (see Spirit's Phenomenology by Hegel) is money. It tears me apart as I feel like I already have many solutions in my poket, but for lack of money I cannot put myself in a context where I can use them. I'm like watching problems I could solve, with no right to interact... I don't have enough money to travel and speak the foreign languages I master, neither to keep on playing tablesoccer tournaments around the world etc. Any € I have is kind of directly used to reproduce every day my capacity to work on the SCT. I dedicated 4 years ago my entire life to the SCT cause it is the key towards my emancipation down here.. therefore, it cuts me from everything else. Lastly, I integrated sport, meditation, naps, friends and social support in my routine. It works WAY better. But until my AHA moment, I can only keep on working and putting the pieces all together...anyway we're almost all way better when we have no choice. As I sacrified everything for accomplishing the SCT, I have no choice left now.
Can you accept, that the final AHA might be lucky, caused by sheer luck, ie. hearing the right stuff, testing the right stuff, thinking in a certain way at just the right time, and otherwise never possible to attain? It's sort of like enlightenment, not possible to attain unless you're "lucky"? From what I'm reading, you're just trying too hard, and relying too much on something unreliable.. Imagine: Clenching fist full of sand, dripping away from fist the harder it squeezes.
Once I came to understand Jack's "ramblings", I really enjoyed them. I think that he would spin stories, knowing that the more outlandish they were, the more people would read them. That is why we are still talking about SCT in 2018.
A suggestion to you is to do all of the drills, in the order given. So you have done the price cases, you annotate and you log them. Then you have done the volume cases, you annotate and you log them. Then you take timely action. You log the emotions that you have. Then you debrief at the end of the trading day. If you find that you do not know that you know, sideline and get your definitions to a place where you do know that you know. Do you look at the market in the smallest granularity possible? Do you look at the market with two bar tapes and expand it out from there?
It seems everybody's willing to give you general recommendations (I disagree with some of them), keeping their more useful knowledge for themselves. It's understandable (but it also means that you can't know who knows what they're talking about, and who is just parroting what they read). The more you add to your plate, the further you are from your goal, excepting if you "luckily" step into a working solution, AND if you recognize it! (by the way: I don't believe that you can attain Enlightenment by "luck", nor by hard work; it has to be meant to be) Remember how Jack's posts, and spydertrader's posts changed over time. If Jack came with more and more ways of looking at the markets, spydertrader reduced and simplified the toolset he used, eventually, at traderslaboratory, pointing to only a small set of basic principles, and talking about learning how to learn. Maybe it's time to clean up your to do list, keeping only those basics, that both Jack and spydertrader said they're enough to trade profitably. And, I'll share a useful AHA: trends overlap! As a tool, use the (non-)stationary window!
@WchPl AHA moments come from meticulously following OOE's Quote from Jack Hershey: Visualize OOE's that are interlocking as market flows. Price cases GIVE PERMISSION to MEASURE volume using a VOLUME TEST PROCEDURE. You write result in LOG. You LOOK UP this status as an END EFFCT of a trend. I will give you a SET of end effect look up sheets (they are already posted in MANY places). If there IS an END EFFECT, then you determine the related TYPE OF TURN. (1 sheet for this called "Modrian table") To make money by taking trend profits you look at final MOVE REVERSAL SHEET. you find the solution by analysis of the PRESENCE, or NOT on the sheet AND by three arrows which stand for sentiment, turn direction and LEG 2 of the present bar. For every turn there are three choices: execute, hold thru or sideline. There it is, that's the whole thing. My mistake over the years was with M. Without M, ADA is flawed from the very start. I started taking logging seriously. I found that less mental space was needed to take timely action. Thoughts?
The four above fit together and there is a sequence to understand. To begin, start with three three-ringed binders. One is for the 11 eleven sheets that are located in the previous mentioned threads and place them in tabular organization. This is the thinnest binder. You can start with 6-steps, VTP, Failsafes, Volume Element Ranges, PP!'s, A-Band, B-K Band and Turns. On the front outside witin the clearslip insert the Modrian table and on the back the Move Reversal table. As a drill, start with the ten price cases and add the form possibilities of a third bar. Do this with increasing and decreasing volume for each form. You will generate a matrix that is a finite set of what three PV bars and all the permutations of volume can be. Organize this matrix. In this matrix are the PP!'s. Draw the forms of all the PP!'s put this in your binder in it's appropriate tab. Notecards , graph paper, HB pencils and ruby red erasers are your friend. There are more 3 bar combinations then there are PP!'s. Knowing what these are increases one's confidence of knowing that you know. Do the same with the A-Band definitions and H-K Band definitions. You want a catalog of bar forms that you can visually scan quickly. You are building from 1 bar legs to 2 bar price cases to 3 bar to 4 etc,.. These are trend segments. Trend segments are pieced together with the combination of the Modrian, Move Reversal Table, Turns and Trend types. To make this easier to assimilate and integrate put the Modrian, Move Reversal Table, and Trend Types to the side. The focus is logging bar-by-bar. By building your capacity to locate EE's then you build a foundational reference dataset by which to understand how the M,MR,T&TT fit and work together. There will be gaps in what you ID as EE's. There will be strings of BO,T1's and BM,rev's. When you debrief, look to see how these can be filtered out to form larger trend segments. For example in 4bars, there can be two BO,T1's presenting. When the pressure of RTH has subsided, one can see that on closer look, the 4bars create a single EE on the A-band. In the OOE there is a RTL. This RTL can continue to contain price or when XO'd change into it's opposite parallelogram to continue to contain price. FTT to FTT contains price. This form can be observed on a single bar and on every additional bar as one groups bars. When this is not true a VE has come into the present from the future. The RTL can be accelerated, touched or fanned. This RTL is part of the two Failsafes. When the RTL is XO'd then you KNOW that the container is changing and expanding in one of two directions. What come before this XO is an ftt/FTT. This event in the OOE is what you are building to discern in Realtime. Annotating your charts will support this discerning process, logging will progress it faster. The second Failsafe is a BM at the pt1 of price that also begins the RTL. This BM can be recycled through the progression of trend. It's like a trailing stop. If price reverses, place the opposite BM appropriately. The two work like two paddle boards that contain the inside spread of lateral price movement on non-Dom traverses. Binder two is where you place your annotated chart of the day and the 4 sheets of your log. Keep a copy of the full day's price action in the scale that you observe, this might require multiple sheets depending on volatility. This assists in calibration in perceiving volume pace changes and dependent price moves. Another printed chart that is scaled to include the whole day as a summary. Tab each month, segment by day. The more this is organized, the more efficient, streamline of assessing ID's will be. You'll start building a catalog of all the EE's. They have infinite variety within the form within a finite set of contextual states. It's pretty fascinating. Binder three is where you record your trades and your performance stats. To start a log, just start and fill in as much as you can. To begin, locate a P1. A P1 can occur on a peak or trough. It's contextual and based on the previous trend. One of the easier places to locate a P1, is to look to see where there was a XO of a RTL. The OOE then continues from this point. The next volume bar is then compared if it's measurable. It's either a wait, repeat or next in the OOE. Record the Event as True of False in your log under the appropriate column heading. The trend segment continues until it's interrupted. On the ES 5m this happens quite frequently. Trend segments are pieced together in D-D, D-nD, nD-D segments. These segments are based on EE's. EE's string together on the Modrian table. The Modrian table contains a subset of all the possible trend segment combinations. You use the 30m and Daily to pass or gate the signals from the 5m. It's easier to think about JHM as a descriptive language. It's similar to descriptive geometry. Post a chart and it's associated log for the RTH ES 5m. Fill in as much as you can (this goes for anybody following along). It's ok to stumble through it and by design is self-correcting by debriefing it iteratively. Your sticking point will change through time and accelerate by debriefing.