LOL sunseeker - You're pessimistic - But you might be surprised! You wouldn't believe the unoriginality of edge traders on the index futures and the opportunity that comes with it! sunseeker, what would you say if I told you that the very largest majority of ES and NQ traders trade 1m, 3m, 5m and 15m bars? It should in fact be well over 90% of them. Not only that for discretionary traders, but particularly the extremely inefficient mechanical traders. Almost every mechanical system on the futs, from intraday to swing, uses 3m, 5m or 15m bars! If you don't believe it - Get your head around bar countdown. Get into your head at what times bars on each TF close (you can learn that in about 10 minutes), then monitor the actual time and watch what happens within the last 15-30s of a particular TF bar closing!!! You will be amazed. What you will find is that large orders from professionals will roll through before the closure of the bar, in order to "hype" dummy trades by mechanical and edge traders who are just waiting for a bar to close. Well, the pro's don't wait for a bar to close - LOL. And you're the dummy. It's not a secret, but most people never even figure this out. However, this is the reason why "edge" traders will never, I repeat never be able to perform nearly as well as discretionary traders who realize all these things are actually going on during the day. Eventually, as markets become more mechanically efficient, edgers will die completely (so my bold but confident prognosis). Pro's simply know all this and chuckle at themselves from 9:30 to 16:00, grazing all the green off the thousands of edgers, using 1,000+ car positions - All day long. Don't be a victim. Make sure you understand all this. Only then can you be a successful, seriously outperforming trader. If you think you can make money doing what everybody else does - think again. Isn't it contradictive? Exactly! Don't take the word for anything I said here. Instead, go and watch the market by yourself tomorrow - watch the bars before and after the close, what happens and how the the traders of the different TF bars, particularly mechanical close-bar traders affect the market! You will be (un)pleasantly surprised. Scientist.
ok at this point I have to thank you scientist.. your commentary is excellent. I have not paid attention to the orders before the close of the bar. Good idea.. will put some attention to this today.
These are some very powerful comments. Few words as brilliant as these have yet been spoken on ET concerning the importance of the P/V relationship and how it affects price charts being drawn in the most inefficient way imaginable(!), being literally the gigantic footsteps of narrow-minded edgers, which are in turn having their nuts scalped off (or surgically removed for that matter) by superior traders who anticipate their behaviour long before they even know what they're doing themselves. Anybody who wants to get into seamless continuous trading needs to start right here - With the basics on P/V. It is such an irony, when you think about it. There are now millions of traders out there who trade the closes or opens of 3m, 5m, 15m - bars, thinking they're doing something smart. The reality is that they've turned into nothing but a gigantic pack of Pawlow's dogs, who start salivating free cash as soon as the much more powerful SCT-traders "ring the bell", by infusing up to several thousands of contracts before and after these events, in order to extract this very edger money. SCT is nothing particularly revolutionary, either - Large traders, institutions etc have been using it for a long time. "Market makers" use a very similar approach on almost any issue. The basic ground principle is about having positions open in several time fractals synchronously, in order to maximize profit potential in each given fractal trend. Many large players do just that - They use moving fractal envelopes that encapsulate various fractals. As each fractal's individual trend keeps moving, money is being extracted along crucial waypoints on one end of the fractal, while new money is being infused on the other. Eventually, the trend will finish completely (flaws become frequent as faders are having a go at the trend), at which point the respective trades in the envelope will wash (go completely flat). After the wash, we stay either flat in that fractal until a new trend is defined as arising, or we simply reverse the envelope position(s) straight away, which is the ideal approach. I am currently myself learning to do that, and while it's demanding to become really good at, it can boost your profit-potential by several hundred % in comparison to trading just one timeframe. In fact, if you trade one timeframe only, even given SCT standards of staying in a trend until flaws occur, you will still give up over 80% of your daily profit potential - and this can be mathematically proven. Well yeah - that's the point, isn't it. Matter of course. No point in trying to surf a wave that's already barrelling and crashing. LOL Grob, you're right here. I am still too focused on my scalping, and I'm really trying to implement more synchronous larger timeframe-trades, since I realize I'm massively giving up profit potential here. I think it's a psychological problem, too - I like to take profits early, rather than letting them run for very long. I'm working on it, though. Sounds very interesting indeed, but I'm not sure if I'm getting all of this. 7 times a day this occurs? I wasn't even aware of this occurance! I'll need to breed over this and discuss it with somebody. That's probably an understatement. Your posts are by the now the only ones I still bother reading on ET. I have now been feeling for quite a while like ET just isn't "on the level" anymore. I don't understand how you can do this here, Grob, since most people won't even grasp what you're talking about. But it's the stuff of excellence - The only stuff that really is still interesting and challenging after having looked at everything else already. Mediocrity bores me so much. Thanks, Grob. The pleasure is all mine. At least somebody who gets my points and can help explain them, rather than me being here holding hands all along, having to answer and nurse everybody through basics of effective trading. I really want to spend less time on ET soon. Already have. If people went into Jack Hershey's MSN group, they could get most of this stuff on archive there for everybody to use. Even all the documents on the SCT matrix etc. And it's FREE:http://groups.msn.com/JackHersheysStrategies/messages.msnw So everybody, stop PM-ing me, go there instead, have fun with real insiders and stop bothering me here with mundane stuff. Peace. LOL you must be kidding me! I had 31 trades on Friday!!! And yes, I had losing trades as well. Particularly morning to noon, I had 10 trades, of which 6 were in fact losers. Average loss being 1-3 ticks (all ES, I didn't touch NQ on Friday). I hadn't seen anything like this for a long time. It was so choppy, I thought I was gonna lose my dinner. But one trade (short 11:12 am - bounce of UVOLQ off 56EMA) was a larger fractal I really sat through, so I was still just over BE by around 12:50. I thought gee what a f***ed day. From then on, 12:50 onwards, I did another 21 trades all afternoon, with only 1 loser, seizing +9.45pts at end-of-day wash total. One helluva bad day had turned into a reasonably handsome day and I learnt one thing : Never scold the day before the evening! Grob, I don't know how you had 5 trades in the range of 2-3 points - My 2 largest trades on Friday were 8T (2pts), the rest were half that or less. It's clear that I'm impatient / inefficient and still have a lot to learn. Congrats to your 12.3pt total! Next time I won't do all the stupid things and beat you to it! Best Regards, Scientist.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Friday, I used the APA 8 times in 32 trades. I had different but some what overlappping loosing trades as well: 8 of one or two ticks (washes in my parlance; they were losses never the less). In making a net of 12.3 points, I had only 5 trades in the range of 2 to 3 points. The H/L of the day was 8.0 points. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LOL you must be kidding me! I had 31 trades on Friday!!! And yes, I had losing trades as well. Particularly morning to noon, I had 10 trades, of which 6 were in fact losers. Average loss being 1-3 ticks (all ES, I didn't touch NQ on Friday). I hadn't seen anything like this for a long time. It was so choppy, I thought I was gonna lose my dinner. But one trade (short 11:12 am - bounce of UVOLQ off 56EMA) was a larger fractal I really sat through, so I was still just over BE by around 12:50. I thought gee what a f***ed day. From then on, 12:50 onwards, I did another 21 trades all afternoon, with only 1 loser, seizing +9.45pts at end-of-day wash total. One helluva bad day had turned into a reasonably handsome day and I learnt one thing : Never scold the day before the evening! Grob, I don't know how you had 5 trades in the range of 2-3 points - My 2 largest trades on Friday were 8T (2pts), the rest were half that or less. It's clear that I'm impatient / inefficient and still have a lot to learn. Congrats to your 12.3pt total! Next time I won't do all the stupid things and beat you to it! Here is a log. There are 81 bars in a day. I'll post the bar/time chart next. You can see the 3 levels and how the APA (Additional protection action) is a simple wash/reverse element that does keep you on the "right" side of the trade. It was only an 8 point H/L so that result does get a lot of the potential. You can see that this runs well on multiple contracts and there are ample scaling opportunities. Most of the time I fill out parts of it a head of time. There is a rythm on SCT that is like any graceful activity in the arts or sports. Like music or sports plays that are working on a floor or playing field.
today's chart. I put in the pink and offset. And i keep annotaing when time. The low volume i just kept extending until PM BO on volume of 10K. I will scan notes (two sheets) and attach next.