When trading a volume spike what clues do you look for to determine if a pullback is temporary (retrace) or if it is the high of the move and it is time to exit or reverse? For example, on bar 7 today I was pushed in at 93.00 and carried to 94.25. I entered a stop that took me out at 93.25 on the pullback. Price immediately resumed up to 95.75. PRV has helped me get into vol spike trades, but I have not found it useful for making split second decisions to take profits or hold out for more. I glance as squ/str but its usefulness in this situation seems to just be confirmation, as it can reverse and resume just as quickly as ES. It seems the last places left to look for clues are either the DOM or T&S. I use the tradestation order matrix for entering orders, which has some DOM info. It has the number of contracts at each price but not the cumulative. I observe the number of contracts on one side of the inside price dissolving to nothing before price climbs a step on the ladder. But that is a tick at a time and most often it seems to tick back and forth before taking a real step forward. Would the cumulative number be useful in this situation, to determine how strong the retrace might be? Are there other clues I should be looking at?
There are two important considerations for you to take a look at. From what you say you have your screens set up and are doing channels well. Also i feel that you must have some projections into the right side of the screen. The portion of the time spent looking at the screens must be high for you. If you were logging and had a remarks column (the one in the middle of the log, you could actually look away and write your decisions after you think about the data set you have swept. Apparently you almost always go back for another looksee and that after view really distorts the importance of the routine sweep elemnts you saw to just get sufficient info for comparison against truths. I am encouraging you to do the four independant parts to involve yourself in these independant thought processes. What you will see happen is a general smoothing of your reasoning and you will begin to get to seeing the theme of the market in terms of its sequences of elements and events. Here in this thread you get a chance to observe several levels of trading. The contributions are like vertical slices of abilities to perform. Nearer the topmost you see that there is a continuity. Let me explain it like sheet music. The members of the orchestra have differing sheets. Were there a piano soloist, you would note his practising sheet music and see that it is annotated and not on stage for the peformance. you could also observe, say for the London Philharmonic that the conductor does not have a stand either. Most conductors do however. The written materials havae an encoding according to an international standard just as do engineering drawings and maths problem solving. Music representations, alone, though, contain the dynamic of the pieces they represent. The acquired picture of the music that a performer has is nearly the same as what you are getting to begin to experience. the musician lays what he know from practice. Since he knows he expresses more than music. The conductor is the refiner of the performance. He is the continuity expert. Notes and bars are one thing. Phrases and themes and movements give continuity. You are not practised in trading. Trading has continuity where the future passes through the present and all the notes, bars, themes and movements are there simultaneously and wafting into the past by virtue of their sustaining powers to impose themselves upon your memory. So you may begin to look at the screens to see the music and to groove with it. Part of the scene is written for you as the notes, then the bars (from which you get the beat), i ask you to see phrases that are composed of cause and effect among variables. further the channels are like movements. I will become so clear to you that any movement is not interruptable but serves as a bridge to another part of the composition. The overlap of channels is inevitable in the constitution of the markets. Anyconductor continues to keep occupied with a full variety of considerations to exact the potential of the composition. In trading you are not a listener of the music, however. You, in fact, are reading the music and enlivening it with you responsibility to play using trading instruments. NOW is where all music is produced; the memory affords us the ability to hear the compostion through comparisons made over time. In trading we build a basis for understanding the market's music. the truths of the markets provide the basis for making music as a sphere of rational consideration just like all musical instruments are designed to work together to impart intellectual, snesual and emotional experiences. Here I am asking you to step up to the plate and get involved using the four parts of the routine. Work at understanding the completeness of each part in sequence. You think in four different ways one after another. The monitoring is the sensory part with its attendant emotional component. You leave that with a data set; you compare with truths, You go to another place to decide; then you act in a timely maner. Musicians do not look at the music all the time. They do not play one note all the time. Physically, they are always doing three or more things. Try to begin to summon up the agility to have a workable routine that does not allow you to do what you want. Do what you need to do to groove with the market. Each day read what others who are making the effort are thinking and saying. Have aha's and eureka's as a consequence of putting things together in repeated routines where over time you see the market flowing on several periodicities that all weave together. Then you can play........ Its all there and it is very very reliable as your partner.
I really need some help. I got taken out and beaten with a rubber hose today. So, in order to rework my charts and figure out what went wrong (ha! what didn't...) I saved my 5 minute chart and then deleted all the studies. Unbeknownst to me, Ensign Windows apparently saves the chart objects separately from the charts. All my work -poof- gone. Anyway, I've attached my 60 min chart. Would someone please verify that I have the right 1,2,3? I have the opening bar for today as a FTT, but it's really close. Thanks in advance. Anthony
Jack, If you would, please take a look at this chart and point out where I made my mistake(s)? Note, this is the third time I've worked today's chart. (Once real time, twice after the fact.) I don't know why, but I'm having a tough time identifying the formations/channels from the blue circle on. (The blue circle is to draw attention to the fact that I am "lost" at this point - nothing else.) Only the last leg up seems to look somewhat normal, and even that bothers me because it rides the LTL so much. If anyone else has constructive comments, they are certainly welcome. Thanks much Anthony
Thanks Jack, It is very motivating to have you address these issues. I spend many hours most weekends reading through older threads and find it is very easy to get sidetracked on topics that likely won't be useful to me in the near future. I find these "nail the basics" and "stay on COURSE" messages from you, Icarus, and Easy extremely helpful to regain focus on the pieces that matter most. I have had difficulty with separating M/A/D/A into distinct sequential processes. As you suspected I am glued to my screen/mouse throughout the trading day and if in doubt I always allow time for another look and second guess. I will take your advice with the TD and work to get this sorted.
I compared our charts and they are fairly similar in the last half of the session. Our primary difference is I have a channel from bar 8 through your highlighted circle, touching high points at 11am and providing resistance around 1pm and 1:45pm.
Music of the markets? "Call the doctor, I think I'm gonna crash! The doctor say he comin', but you gotta pay in cash!"
Good try Hypotamus! You got the rhyme right. But if you wanna be a poet you have to work hard on metrical form. Seems like you haven´t even heard of the concept. If you knew swedish I could give you a lecture. I recommend you start out with Shakespeare or Homeros, since the rythm in there texts are very easy to detect for a beginner! /Stalker