I've heard a lot of people that swear by MP but I've also heard a lot of people swear by a lot of stuff in the markets that's relatively useless. That's the funny thing about trading it attracts the same types of people that horse racing does and few are honest with themselves, never mind anyone else. So my question is simple and please only answer it if you are being completely HONEST with yourself. I'm considering educating myself on MP and specifically with James Dalton's material but before I do I wanted hear from some existing successful traders (longer then 2 years) who are using it and perhaps some guidelines on the best ways to start. Thank You, very much.
Vespian, There are a couple concepts of MP that I use in my trading (POC and HV/LV). I have adapted them to fit my needs. IMHO, MP has a lot of discretionary & unclear concepts to be used as a stand alone method. Datlon's book is OK. You will find some useful information in there. I would suggest you download the CBOT manual they have on MP. I believe that will be a greater resource for you than Dalton's book if you are wanting to learn things from the ground up. I'm sure there are people out there that are successful with the full implementation of MP and as a standalone. Hopefully they will share their experience with you/us. I use the 2 concepts above (not as a stand alone) to trade successfully week in and week out and I never commit $$ to something that I dont' fully understand. I've been using them for about 3 years. Good luck in your search, S
MP makes sense to me from a fundamental perspective. How you use the data is up to you. Its not a trading system, its just a way to organize market data. Nothing really magical about it but I like it because it makes sense.
Thanks, there is a lot of info out there so I will start with these books and see where it takes me. Congrats on your success.
1) Attempt to locate Pete Steidlemayer's and Kevin Koy's books from a library. 2) Ultimately, after all of the reading you can expect to do, focus on identifying "initiating range extension" and categorizing the daily extremes as a way of determining trend direction and actually using the profile data.
I use my own programmed variation of MP that works really well. It's the only thing I have ever founds that works consistently. However MP is like learning to play the guitar. It's not until you can play it intuitively that it becomes really practical. Runningbear
VA (Value Area) of where 68% of the trading took part is a fallacy. It only applies for a normal symmetric distribution. Very rear event. Thus VA high and VA low are bogus. TPO on 30 or 15 min intervals are inferior to using running Volume at Price profile. The original MP was developed when the computer power and Volume data was lacking. There are however many good points that you can learn from the MP books. Points that will teach you how to think about the market structure. BUT.... you need to find your own way. It takes years. Do not expect to read few (I know of 3) books about MP and become profitable.
I agree with all you have said. The frequent study of MP has helped me a great deal. However, I use line tick charts with time on the horizontal, price on the vertical, and volume underneath on the horizontal. I then apply MP reasoning and thinking to evaluate what the charts are revealing.