Thanks for the post, Jack. Here's what bothers me about only using RTH data. It seems that people pick and choose what data is important and what's not. If in the overnight session the ES makes a strong, swift move towards some level and hits the wall and can't for the life of it after several tries break through some resistance level, all the RTH-only guys are going to look at that level and use it as a strong resistance level the following session. Yet, if in the overnight session the price just sort of meanders up and down and doesn't establish some strong S/R level the RTH-guys are going to just brush it off as meaningless. That, to me, is ridiculous. Every contract has the same meaning, every contract is important regardless of when it's traded. I get why people like yourself and rainman want to only use RTH data but I don't get why you feel you're in a position to choose what data is important and what's not. If the ES hit a wall at 1098 overnight, that will surely make an impact in the following session and you're bound to be watching it very closely. Regarding fractals, apparently their definition is open to interpretation; who knew. I don't quite understand how you just begin collecting the data to build your fractals @ 9:30 and stop at 4 and anything that happens in between is just irrelevant. I mean, I guess you can do it, but I don't think you're ever going to explain to me why a certain data set is less important than another set of data. Regarding the method that you and rainman use, looking at that chart gives me a headache there's so much going on; it looks like an air traffic control screen! LOL! But, to each their own; I'm not here to try and tell you what to do...you're smart enough guys to figure that out on your own, same with me... Best of luck trading to you, both, using whatever data you feel is important.
Jack, I do not profess that I know or understand your method in its entirety but I do not have a problem comprehending why you embrace the charts during RTH. Until I developed constant volume/share bar charts, I felt the same way you do. The trades outside RTH were chaotic, erratic and unreadable. This was because the trade volume associated in that time frame was so light compared to RTH trading. Now using constant volume/share bar charting, the trades outside RTH have simply become a natural extension of true price flow. Gaps that are created by omitting the data outside of RTH are artificial and have no place in any accurate problem solving scenario in regards to systems trading. Anomalies, I agree, cannot exist in this environment. Your point that systems are created only from a standpoint of deductive reasoning is spot on. All trading decisions any trader makes comes from our ability to deduce from the information we have the potential of price moving in the direction of our trade long enough to extract profit from the action. My problem comes when a trader chooses to omit part of the information of the environment they are trading inside then logically they are limiting the success of the outcome of that action because they cannot make an accurate deduction of the elements of the problem with only âpartâ of the information. I agree Jack that Markets are not intellectually pure but we can damn sure make our charts as pure as humanly possible by using constant volume bar charts. I am an absolute believer that nesting charts is the best way for a trader to clearly see the interrelationships of incremental time frames to natural price movement. My problem comes in the strict definition of a âfractalâ. I believe that chart layout is better achieved through fractional layout and not calling it a fractal. Calling it a fractal give the person the false sense of âperfect self-similarityâ when what really occurs is the fact that each sequential fractional is inhabited by the same âpatternsâ in entirely unique combinations. Those combinations are unique to each individual fractional. The patterns âAREâ identical as they are created on each individual chart. I am a stickler for accuracy and this is something I have proven and have made this point to Mandelbrot himself. He has repeatedly danced around my findings and has refused to acknowledge that when it comes to charting . . . he was wrong. In a trading environment one can take the information for a slower fractional chart and see how it is a âbigger pictureâ of the faster fractional. What it is not is a âperfectâ or âexactâ replica of the pattern sequence of the slower chart. This makes each nested chart a unique trading environment. Maybe we are saying the same thing in this aspect. What you and I do are so closely associated, with a few exceptions, it is pretty cool. It just proves that new concepts arenât born in a vacuum. I look forward to discussing these exceptions with you in November.
I read my reply after posting and feel that I need to set the record straight... Regardless of whether I wholeheartedly agree with everything you believe in or not, I have a lot of respect and admiration for what you do, Jack, as well as ProfLogic and others on here who I think are the "forward" thinkers of the bunch; going left when the masses are going right. Trailblazers like ProfLogic and yourself clear the paths so that people like rainman and myself may try and follow in your footsetps and contribute to the preservation of that path and possibly even assist in furthering the ideas you're working on in whatever way we can. I guess I defend and fight for the methodologies I've been taught tooth and nail because my belief in them is absolute. I've seen them work but more importantly, I've challenged them and they have proven their effectiveness each and every time so that I no longer need to fight it or question it; I simply surrender myself to the methodology and have complete trust in where it takes me. And I believe that everyone here would agree that regardless of what methodology I believe in, that trust is the #1 ingredient for success. At the end of the day we're all on the same team here (regarding fractals, or whatever we want to call them) and while we may take different paths we ultimately end up at a shared destination. It's innovative ideas and challenging preconceived notions of what can and can't be done that excite me and make trading and becoming an explorer/scientist of market science so worth while bmills
Infinite custom fractal data sets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm Like I said, I'm no teacher but try to understand the correlation.
That is a beautiful example of a fractal but charts do not have just perfectly reoccurring patterns. The patterns they create have perfect oscillation patterns occurring uniquely on each chart independently.