The chart I posted is is based in the fundamentals of trends but one must prove they exist to trade it successfully. That takes reading trend. I read this chart in realtime and you can't. That is an inseparable difference.
Absolutely viable but you first have to define the trend. One must understand that pullbacks must occur so the Trend can continue. A Bull Trend can not maintain itself without Support making Higher Lows and Bear Trends can't maintain unless Resistance making Lower Highs. One must read those oscillations in order to read Trend though.
I'm moving to MultiCharts because they offered to integrate my stuff under my guidelines. They find it makes sense because it is simple to program and its a strict rules based system. I like it because ti has all the benefits of Tradestation and Esign/Esignal but non of the problems of each. I require stability and accuracy of data.
1) I haven't voted. The answers are not exactly what I want to spend my valuable time with. I do have a well defined concept of trend though. 2) -> Charlie Dow I like some of your concepts, although they are far from unique, not even advanced. The value of volume bars is obvious in my opinion. But there is also predictive value in the multifractal oscillations of time. You seem to ignore that one, so I'm not sure if your edge is better than that of other posters here. The second thing, you seem to ignore ( while not really knowing you, I might be wrong) is that a market is an open system under the condition of stochastic variations of entropy. Since I'm not a genius, I haven't found a way to use that one, but I think it's an obvious fact with wide implications. And the third one is of course evolutionary memory with oscillations of learning and forgetting. I'm not a math geek, I couldn't model rigorously all that, what I think is all obvious and definitely not advanced. I stick to simple neuronal synthesis, but I think the level of mathematics or physics you need to actually get some use out of it in the financial markets is widely underestimated. It may well not exist yet. That said, good luck.
et al... LOL! Sometimes a picture is more damaging than we would like to admit. Kind of like being an astronaut in the 15th century to see the curvature of the earth. It would be delusional to step into space, make a full orbit, and then STILL conclude that the earth is just a flat dimensional surface (ie. circle as opposed to sphere). Problem is that, it is extremely difficult to take a step back outside of what we are very accustomed to. A type of ignorance we could say. However, when you do step out to do some observing. Your world turns upside down and you find out that your extremely local observation may in fact be overkill. So easy mentions how he is ready to go at the end of the pullback and fires away. For him that point is an always GO action, a failure of price to pullback furthur. He does it without hesitation because consistency over time has built him a belief that allows him to be comfortable in GOING. Then some other person mentions how their trendline is both the traverse and retrace. But what of the observer who is aware of both micro and the enveloping scenarios. To this observer, their trendline is as wide as the traverse and pullback combo. SO on DOW"s chart, let's just note his trendline. It's direction is LONG. It's width, for discussion purposes, is as wide as the minors he labels (between both bottom and top oscillations). The endpoints of hte extremely thick line will be both EXTREME and opposing. The consistencies that his observations are keyed into have nothing to do with prediction and EVERYTHING TO DO WITH CONTINUATION! As a result, things just simply reduce down to BEING ABLE TO READ indications/signs of CONTINUITY. The irregularity that eventual pops up will be definitively identifying the end of the trendline's CONTINUITY. This is his environment. The market does it's wiggling between the items that he has specifically chosen to read. He observes the wiggling, and NOTES specific OBJECTIVELY defined points. HINDSIGHT, FORSIGHT! Are they related??? If you are on a daily chart and you know that you want to buy today and hold your trend for the next several days, CONTINUITY will not be effected the point in time at where you got in today. An alternative illustration would be like driving a car. Assuming your car's alignment is not faulty, then we intuitively expect the car to continue in it's direction. Unless the steering wheel is adjusted, it is reasonable to expect this CONTINUATION in DIRECTION. The real Q is how do you know that the direction your are heading is continuing. For this, you have to READ the indications of continuation. String together and you have the context of CONTINUITY for the trend. His labeled points are like treadmarks. What happens between those points is the market doing it's business. Many problems from non-believers seam to stem from HOW TO CONSTRUCT a trendline and then READ the CONTINUATION of the trendline EXTENDING. For sure it is easier to just stay focused on CONTINUATION. As a result, you don't have to predict and wind up just monitoring to read the CONTINUITY. Naturally, profits then aggregate. Unless one repeatedly sees this, most are just likely to dismiss it's existence. Thank goodness the market is different than tossing a coin. A machine can toss a coin and make it land heads all the time. All that is needed are the exact inputs of the dynamics that began and progressed through the toin coss. The market is similar in some respects in that one can read all of these dynamics. PICTURE, 1000 words, 1000 frames. Admittedly, belief comes from watching the movie, frame by frame. Seeing the whole movie in one shot is why a bunch clame it is hindsight. SO what if they just went back and pulled all the shots that preceded the posted chart??? Alas you are right again. The lazy factor... MAK!
Identifying a trend already in place in your relevant time frame is comparatively easy. Nothing more than adequate eyesight (assuming that you are using a chart, although this may not be necessary) and reasonable cognitive skills are required to perform this task. The issue at hand is whether that perceived trend will continue. That's when it becomes a game.
It is only a game if you assume that trends do not CONTINUE! Well, this is where charts come in handy. Trends are all over the place no matter what chart period you jump on. So then, it is only a matter of identifying the constituents of a trend. The presumption put forth is that all trends have a beginning. Depending on how you have chosen to identify/define your trend, the definition can be chosen such that ALL beginnings exhibit a consistency and simultaneously, the confirmation upon which each trader's beliefs are built. The issue here is not the length of the trend since this is not predictable, but how it is defined. Then it is only a matter of READING the points of continuity. It is like a sentence. Much like a trend, it is never known how long a sentence is. Sentences as a whole have a wide degree of variation (ie. unlikely to have the same exact two sentences in an entire article). However, sentences, as do trends, can have definitive structure if one assigns them as such. Objectively, each sentence structure will always have the same components, subject, verb, object. It is easy to pick out the very beginning of a sentence since it always starts with a capital letter and ends with some sort of punctuation. Well, why is it assumed that trends are any different than sentences? Why is it not a game? Well, games imply uncertainty. However, depending on how you view trends, uncertainty may or may not be a component. In this particular instance, the uncertainty is in a trends length. However, if every point is a reconfirmation that a trend is continuing, then who cares when it ends as long as the endpoint is identifiable as it happens (ie. punctuation mark). In this manner, there is no game since all that is required is the ability to read correctly (no hooked on phonics). Eventually, with your reading ability, you immediately see that you have reached the end of the sentence. Your trend has ended and you start reading the next sentence. In this manner, your profit is equivalent to the length of the sentence. As a result, all of the above can be reduced finding the end of each sentence which is adjacent to the beginning of the next sentence. As long as each next word is not an ending punctuation mark, you haven't reached the end of the sentence... CONTINUE READing furthur! MAK!
When you put on a trade, you do so with some sort of expectation or directional bias based on your strategy. It does not matter how good the trend looks thus far, it may end the moment you put on your position. Hopefully, your strategy will put the "balance of probability" in your favor. However, you are nonetheless engaging in a game of uncertainty regardless of how good your assessment of the market is up until the moment that you place your trade. Therefore, it is always a game. Some play it better than others. Perhaps we just have a different interpretation of the word "game." My chosen interpretation comes from one of the definitions in Webster's Dictionary: a procedure or strategy for gaining an end.
If you read the Trend on your Chart correctly and you enter a trade on an opposing oscillation it is impossible for the Trend to reverse immediately after entry. Trends reverse on a series of oscillations not one or even a bar. Price will always oscillate toward Resistance after entering on Support or toward Support after entering on Resistance. The key is to enter at strong Support or Resistance levels based on the exsisting trend. If price fails to break through that opposing target you simple exit your trade and wait for another reason to enter. This is the case as long as you set a ridged environment to trade from.