easy - when this happens and something is holding you back from making the trade -- mark the market entry with a horizontal line on your chart colored red or green. That way you get a record of these events that you can review later objectively.
stalker, Just stay focused on the pages of comments coming in here. We are having a terrific breakthrough here is cogent participation and cooperation. Luckily we have differing days and by seeing the routines done by others and comparing them to yours, you widen and deepen your experience. which leads to additional knowledge and then skills. Someone said "you are writing the book" well you are. This is all being cut and pasted into segments of information. We have the illustrations too and they are annotated. New considerations are broadening the main trust of the trading. Thanks everyone for the SCT ommentary that is being posted. It is right on and so thoughtful and responsive to others. As far as acting. It is a separate four step in a process. If in step 3 you make a decision, that decision is made. when the decision is to act. you leave the decision process, close down the decision process, and walk way over to the place where you have your action controls, namely the trading platform. There you do not see data, etc. You see the tools to implement taking an action. you do your action at that platform and then resume your monitoring, analysis and so on. Keeping you four parts of the routine in their places and going from one to another carrying only what you need with you keeps the four separate places neat and tidy. The is no way you can compare an after thought or incidental influence with the deliberative methodical routine of achieving a rythm with the market. as was said annotating sticky places for later debriefing is a terrific back up for reflective improvements. the result o this reflection and debriefing will simply lead you to the conclusion of doing what you decided. Do what you decide to do.
As it turned out it didnt make much difference in this case. Might have picked up a few more ticks but probably not. edit: I might add that there was a hellacious divergence on the 5.13.6 macd on the 5min ES at this point but I never trade off those alone.
Easy, I dare say another main consideration for me on the reversal woulda been that 30min channel LTL I posted a couple pages back that was "clearly" coming into view. That's the issue I hoped to get some clarity on. I saw and felt it too. Just wanted to get some feedback from the others to see if I was really in the groove or it was one of my imaginary channels again.
I appreciate you posting your 30 min chart. I agree that having the seven fractals scoped and bounded is the ultimate goal. I think this will solve the operating point dilemma and most other problems since then we have the basic foundation to build on. I had a few more questions in addendum to your questions. I am trying to bound the ST within the IT within the LT. So what timeframes does one use to draw channels for the IT and LT. It seems that the 5 min is the standard for ST. I am trying to use the 30 min to draw the IT and the Daily to draw the LT. Would you consider the channels you drew on the 30 min to be the IT or ST? Thanks Mak for your charts with the longer timeframes. They are very helpful. Keep up the great work.
You know youre getting your channels right when you find yourself saying"How in the heck can it keep doing that?"
TB, I did a little digging and found a post by BA_Trader referencing the ST and IT which appears that (please don't quote me) ST=30min(?) and IT=60min(?) so maybe he can chime in to clear this up for both of us. I was right there with the rest and Nwbprop back when but this obviously went over my head then. I understood the terms in concept but obviously not in practice and now I see I'm playing major catch up here. I see now that I invented my own ST by connecting 3-5min channels (not traverses) and bounding them as the short term. I must have then taken 3 "short terms" and bounded them as IT. Apparently, I should have been looking at 30, 60, etc as the ST, IT, and LT. And to think I've been lost in LaLa land regarding this since about this time last year. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35915&perpage=6&pagenumber=22