Interesting. So, the opinion of those people who supposedly employ this august method profitably, and who have supposedly done so for years, is without merit? Your starry-eyed reverence is duly noted.
Lurker, thanks for your thoughtful and well-composed post. I (usually) enjoy your posts, all the more because there are so few of them. Do I take it that you are not supporting SCT in any way?
If these are the requirements to do SCT, as you claim, then why are you concerned that someone would use a 1 minute chart and an alternative bar type?
My brain was so addled by reading Jack's posts that I forgot to add the following sub-objection to #3: events which are crystal clear in a one minute chart typically show up 12 minutes or so later in a 5 minute. I HATE to WAIT!
There is a tradition as you problably have figured out. As you become acquainted and are making trips to meet with others who trade, you get better acquainted with their effectiveness and effeciency and how far they have gotten into the optimization. As it turns out there are other aids that come into play as well. We use the web, chat rooms, skype, go to meeting, MSN, yahoo, and the voice systems that abound. As a matter of fact my last four digitis on my cell are 7654 which creates a laugh or smile, occassionally. Since things are changing for me these days, doing presentations, etc., is more what others will be doing rather than me. i don't even sound like me anymore lol... My job is to finish up with writing. Being a kiwi makes for seasonal differences and time zone changes. Were I you I would look over the list of people chatting or in the journal. A few interactions will probably get you to the place where most of what you want to know is easily found out. It happens to work and after much effort, it all seems to get very easy and routine after a while. And it is defintiely "unbelievable" and "astonishing" by the standards of those who have chosen to pass on PVT and SCT. I know you are participating in some Eastern exchanges and we certainly would like to stay in touch with you.
Hi Doaks, The purpose of my post was to simply show that Jack was not the first trader ever alive to think up methods for always being in the market and SCT is nothing new. (I know you are well read Joe...Ecclesiastes 1:9-14) I am Switzerland in this fight !! Always in has the benefit of (probably) not missing the important moves. My implementation had the drawback of the cost to maintain the position in the non-trending MODE, "chop", in the common vernacular. This drawback is well known and well discussed. Any ideas on differentiating "chop" from "trend" are well worth exploring. I use backtesting to explore ideas because it allows for quick prototyping of trade models. Gaussian volume formations and channels are tricky to code for backtesting, and I already trade with methods which suit me, hence the neutral stance.
Lurker, curse you for making me go to my wife's Bible. I am a Pentateuch and Gospels man, myself, so I didn't know the reference right off. Very apt! I have an objection re "always-in" which is lower down on my list. Perhaps if you can overcome your boredom and hang with us a while I'll have someone worthy to dialogue with. Before proceeding, I'm still waiting for a defense of five minutes, other than "Jack says so My first line of defense against chop is a simple crossover histogram, usually works like a hose. That and setting the volume scale so small that when I can't see volume, there's chop!
Items 1 through 7 do not work because of human limitations. The OP is saying that in his own words with every post one way or another. Look up some psychological stuff and then make a routine assessment of why these human failures are going on. You have to turn to an orientation of making money successfully at some point. For high velocity trading and doing coding for automating, there has to be a rcognition of what is and isn't posible for a human and, further, how a human interacts with what is in his environment. Start though coming to an understanding of the OP by just looking at the words capitalied as a starter. If you want to take a closer look at what I am talking about pick a person in ET who has gone through destroying himself vis a vis trading. I have made 3 ring binders of many people's posts who demonstrate how a newbie can become frozen by theLizard Syndrome. ET is a fantastic resource. Kirk was Julian Jaynes protogege at PU. We did five books together where she contributed as a psychologist. (UCSC). It is not possible for ET'ers to do literature searches so just share their collective disbelief as a starter. Read Shull to see the "treatment" for the conventional orthodoxy plagues. At some point you are going to have to begin to think. Don't rush it, however. Try to get to a place where you can differentiate this and that. If anyone like me makes a comment on something. It is backed by a lot of whatever. In trading there is an incessent theme of "inventing" to be able to compete. First, of all making money is not a competiion. It is simple extracting profits continually in soemthing that is so huge no individual can affect it. You do not know this or understand it. why could or would you? there are no reasons at all. Second, there is nothing new in the markets. Nothing. the chirpies here note that I am doing nothing new so what is the deal anyway? they are correct that there is nothing new. So why this trenchant search and quest for inventions? It is just the macho crap kicking in. Why do you think the "dummies" books sell so well. They are shortcuts and they only have to be taken to the cash register once to satisfy their authors. You are at: shortcut superficial newbie 90% of traders fail. The conventional orthodoxy is where about 100% of traders operate. This thread is a thread where the word "objection" comes from the box called conventional orthodoxy. SCT is not in the conventional orthodoxy box. You may be building a nest in the convnetional orthodoxy box. Go for it and reject SCT based on the conventional orthodoxy objections to SCT. A lot of people give a high priority to being "right". they get to be right. Others think. Some people think about being rich; others DO being rich. I am a person who is_________(fill in 20 negative assertions). Being right for me is a very low priority. Growing and improving is a BIG priority. PVT and SCT are the results of iterative refinement that gets "unbelievable" and "astonishing" results which are referred to as claims for those who find the results to be unbelievable and astonishing. The OP "knows" the results are being done. He knows that ES trading gets the results suggested. He knows because he has been told by several people what their results are. People calssify themselves by their vocabulary. results are claims, etc. lol Make up a list of key vocabulary words to classify posters.
Jack, just when I think you are a CFI, you go and mess up that impression by doing something like mentioning Julian Jaynes. FYI, I still have my bicamerality intact. Edit: I am so humiliated by your spot-on character assessment of me that I am just going to slink away.
Here's the thing that I cannot quite comprehend. As I understand it, it takes months of "study" and "work" to understand and employ the SCT, PVT or whatever Jack is dispensing. And, of course, without the ubiquitously referenced "paradigm shift," there can be no progress. I find the premise puzzling. I can understand the need for a fair amount of study and work to construct a profitable trading strategy and then use it effectively. Perhaps I am slower than average, because it has taken me years of effort, money and large dollops of humility when I least expected it. And I am nowhere near as profitable as some of Jack's students claim to be. Not yet, and probably not ever. However, to require all that time and effort merely to understand a trading method that is reportedly readily available to all who want it, boggles my mind. Here's the thing. Towards the end of the process (thus far), it has been one of simplification for me. Whereas I started years ago with a fairly simple idea, after having read more books on trading than perhaps I should have, I then began the process of complicating the method as a means of dealing with the losses that followed. What made me turn the corner from unprofitable to modestly profitable (by ET's lofty standards) was a reversion to simplicity. Perhaps not quite as simple (or should I say, not quite as simplistic) as what I had started out with, but nowhere near as complex as when I was at my most unprofitably befuddled. Essentially, after accumulating all of the nonsense that I had read about trading, the productive work was in the shedding. So, based singularly on my own experience, I find it puzzling that a complicated method that takes so much time and effort to learn can truly be as profitable as presented. However, and also based singularly on my own experience, I do not find it at all surprising that some people are irresistibly drawn and attracted to complexity, depending on their stage of development. But that is just my own take on the matter.