While CW may not quite be an oxymoron I'm not sure anyone is likely to become wise through following convention. Personally things became much better for me when I sat down and wrote down what I thought where fundamental market 'truths'. Basing beliefs on fundamental truths seems to make more sense to me than relying on 'CW' or worse rhetoric that is often passed off as wisdom. Anyway some thought provoking stuff here. Cheers, Nick.
After a fair amount of trawling through old threads I could not find where you described how to set the 'centre line' and Break Out channel after CCC. The former seems straightforward (in the centre perhaps?) however the latter I guess requires a bit of finesse so to be clear of any residule noise and to avoid little prods and tests. Thanks, Nick.
Jack, I have studied your SCT related posts for several days and have some questions to ask you. I will greatly appreciate your help. Firstly I try to organize all information and flowchart your trading approach. So I don't understand one very important thing about sweeping. It is clear for me why and how to increase monitoring accuracy (coarse->medium->DOM). The question is about reverse operation, why and how trader moves from DOM to medium tune and from medium to coarse. Or may be I misunderstood your minds and sweeping is not reversable operation and one should use another way to decrease monitoring accuracy.
Since this is a daily occurance it is a good idea to get it done before the PM breakout occurs. I do set the centerline first and I'M sure it could be coded up as a reversion to the meand sort of line. The CCC begings and the volume falls into DU and, therefore, the signal to noise ratio is on the rise. Usually by the end of the convergence you can see whether or not the convergence contains any bias. That is one of the lines forming the envelope is demonstrating a "drift" to the other side of the congenstion which is a horizontal lateral channel. At the extreme this drift can form a centering pennant that is either a FTP or a FBP instead of the more normal symmetric pennant. I form the center line with all of this taken intl account. rom this point on I will comment on this during the day and in advance so that people can get a feel for the way I do it. So at this point you can see that there is either some discretion or a MLR type line is being drawn. No trades will happen on this line but as price passes it it is interesting to see the behavior of the indicators which are all over reacting to the lack of signal and the preponderance of noise. I offset the centerline by the same values on either side and I make sure that the offset is large enough to take care of noise. This puts us narrower than the congestion limits but not much. To further get a better fix on the value, I look at where congenstion goes to convergence and just how price begins to set the limit of extremes on convergence. I eliminate some values of extreme there simply because they did not occur to any extent (people's minds are looking at these values very much. I also think for a moment about not wanting to be taken in by an early surge of volume so I recall past days of volume surges and how they distorted the CCC if they did. I set the offset value at this point and regard what the two values are. then I add two ticks as a rule and say "I will give up soem profits for the sake of keeping risk down". with the two ticks added I make sure the prices are NOT on round numbers like even values. IF one or more is I simple go one more tick away from the center line.; in other words I loosen the bracket a little. now I look at the total width of the bracket and say "Darn that is a lot of money to leave on the table" After that, I go back to business with a vertical pink bar on bar 40 and the price of the bracket crossing the vertical line and extending into the future. as the future moves into the present I watch how this annotation relates to the lines drawn. If price forms unexpected patterns s a result of surges I accept these moves and they do not influence me. I have made peace with not getting the ticks inside the bracket. 240 ticks is common, meaning 60 points or 3000 dollars is just gone. This is a definite no mans land that I cannot trade across even though price could move across this path as it goes to BO of the brackets.
I apologize for the response you received from a person who is compelled to use the handle that can be confused easily with the handle I am using. Hpefully, it will go away soon. There are few things at play here that I will put on the table. Sweeps are done as one part of a four part routine. The routine is to: 1. monitor (do a sweep); 2. analyze, 3. make a decision and 4. act. Monitoring is the only one of the four parts involving emotions. monitoring involves the senses and the senses are paired with emotions. I sometimes suggest to a person to close their eyes after monitoring with a sweep and let go of the mouse and then turn their swivel chair away from the arc of 4 screens and then carry out steps 2, 3, and 4. Sometimes you have to swing back on 4 to press a key or use the mouse. One of the most common observable traits while I mentor is when the person is still doing a sub loop of the routine. It is usually the monitor ananysis; monitor analysis over and over. here the person is keeping their emotions trifggered at frequent intervals and is totally neglecting using their minds for decision making and taking action. by having four sepatae mental functions to deal with, it is very possible to kill the persistence of any one of the four processes. Killing the persistence is a great happening and really helps dissassociate the emotions of sensing from other parts of making money. what happens as the routine is followed is that the primary emotion of sweeping bcomes the feeling of "I have collected yet another complete and accurate data set" the emotion connected with this sensory process is a feeling of accomplishment or satistfaction or success. Feeling successful is a good way to start the rest of the routine. All of the biochemical production from emotions of success and doing a complete job is short lived and does not persist over several cycles of the routine. The most common action taken in trading is to "HOLD". It brings closure to the 4 step cycle of the routine. And it gives you permission to begin the routine yet once again. To get what I am suggesting across is very difficult as we all see. i tried to name sweeping omething that was directional by implication. I tried to buttress the sweeping idea by making subsections that were unilateral and sufficient (it takes three, at least). This is not enough to get points made, it turns out. By having nine separate facets to consider I felt it would be clear that data sets are required and that single elements were not a possibility for trading. One of the goals is to get to use the mind in a way that is EXTREMELY efficient and effective. Before anyone gets there they go through dealing with understanding the rationale of making a lot of money each day. There is a great incentive for making money from the markets. You get very rich in a short time. Most people never get to see the markets. They make that choice. You can actually read about all kinds of edges that have a foundation of not being able to see the market. how could a person sweep the screens if there is displayed nothing that enables the person to see the markets. i started trading in 1957. I only got to see the markets, at that time by filling in sheet after sheet of stock charts where I transferred data from a page of the WSJ to create each of my charts for position trading equities. Brokers had chalk and walls made of blackboards at that time. I was making 10% on my capital every 6 to 8 days at that time. Today it is different. And there is something to see and from that you make a lot of money everyday. You expect your waiter to decant the wine you chose on page 57. Books do not talk about doing sweeps and the order of zooming into focus on the important data to view for staying on the right side of the market and when it is time to collect profits as you change sides. Books do not even talk about staying on the right side of the market as a principle of making money. Books do not talk about being in the market all of the time to be making money by being on the right side of the market. Sweeping becomes a way to just do what is sufficient in data collection at any time to then be able to turn away from the market to carry out the thinking processes (3) that follow getting the data set in your mind. What is happening as a person gains understanding of all of this is that the conventioanl wisdom is being shit canned (this is a technical term for getting off the table the science and math which does not apply to making money) once and for all to begin to mmake the money being offered by the market. There are nine tables built into the sweeps chart and they are color coded to keep them mentally differentiated. What you are doing in each table has its own associated mental process. At some point you do not have to refer to it; it is part of you. then after than you probably notice that you glide about the screen knowing what to look at next. One thing about the sweeps it that is makes you set your screen up to look at the market and really see it. Books do not tell you how to set up your screen for some reasons. At some point the monitoring part o he routine becomes innate. then so does comparing your data set to known beliefs called conclusions. Here you see finite data sets being matched to a set of finite conclusions. this is anlysis and all that is required is to have the conclusion chosen and transfer it to your decision making parts of your mind. decions compellaction in 100 precent of cases and the most common action during the day is to hold as more and more money is being made. The culminating type of performance I refer to as using sports memory. It is not in any book so far. It is not written about in resourses used for making money. that is because sweeping is not used to get to a place where sports memory is a possibility. That is a possible goal for a person: to be able to do a routine that is unconscious and automatic and that is going on all the time as price moves during the day. Sports memory. After you have read this 10 times you will begin to consider its content. After that you may begin to set up your screens. After that you may get a look at the market as it operates. At some point you will begin to do what is required to get very rich.
Here are four posts that have some significant info regarding what our screens look like and how some recent day's annotations turned out. I do some news stuff occasionally and this will be where I will be posting preflight checks and "news". http://hersheyuniverse.blogspot.com/ We will be posting a complete 4th quarter ramp up to expert. We will use the P/ L thread that appears to be free of the Nitro type bullshit I encountered in the past. We will monitor the P/L discussion thread and put our responses here if any Q's come up there. The focus of this thread will continue to be to provide Q and A on the SCT process.
Attached please find a log sheet that is compatible with our prints that will be posted on the P/L thread. The logs get posted here and the prints go to the P/L thread.