There's a free ebook going around which digs into volume/price relationships, it's written by Tom Williams, his study is called volume spread analysis, very interesting stuff, no indicators, just volume and price, some of the setups work very well.
The book you refer to is a doorstop, I am sorry to have to tell you. Tom Williams is engaged in marketing software. He is associated with the TradeGuider company which sells expensive software and trading courses. His protege, Sebastian Manby, "the chart reading machine" and "trading expert" knows zero. They run the occasional live seminar where they do not make any actual calls, and the software has a habit of introducing buy and sell signals on a chart after the event. The VSA concepts are limited and would serve to wrong foot the unwary aspirant. I do not wish to advertise this company but I link for those with a critical eye. http://www.tradeguider.com/symposium/bios.asp
you're not exposing anyone, no-one cares about jack's issues, no one cares about you, you're wasting your time, find something better to do, go watch spongebob or something. by the way your pm was hurtful, I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight
No, not referring to the VSA "systems" they're trying to sell, I said the BOOK was good, good price/volume relationship info, I said nothing about their software and am NOT recommending the software. I don't know much about it to recommend it, only software I use is esignal. The book was recently re-written to fit their VSA system they're trying to sell, the good book is the original, written in 1998 or 1999 which DOES NOT mention the software they're trying to sell, that book can be obtained for free on the web, just google it. Argue all you want about the setups in the book not working but I find 1 setup occasionally that does work and I trade successfully, I don't trade strictly using this person's method I use different setups, but there is good information there pertaining to volume/price behavior [which is the focus of the book], it does work, and it's free. Of course, as with any setup, money management and discipline are key. You and I can be trading the same setup at the same time and have different outcomes
Thank you for your post which responds to my suggestion. I agree with you that it is very important for you to see and understand the P, V relationship. It is foundational. I learned it by reading the first pages of the 4th Ed of Magee in 1957. You had inferred that you were having confusion with volume peaks, so that is why I reworked my conclusions on you and came up with the particular workaround. As an aside to practioners, I felt begining with formations that began with non dominance would have put the volume peak at the very beginning and subsequent near term relative lessor peaks would be taken out of the picture. The actual place he has difficulty trading is the point 3 to FTT and so I did not let the two drills, of two weeks each, deal with that territory at all. This was the sideline period for the first month. As the syllabus showed when it ran for that year, the work of building inference into a complete differentiated spectrum began well before the p,v relationship came to light. Critical thinking with simple drills came first. As an aside that focusses on this OP post, it would have been necessary to take a look at the display components to assure that the 7 criteria which make up the content (on two fractals) of the definition of the two formations. The OP has cleaned up his displays for an alternative purpose which is now at the top of the hit parade (PA trading). So he is sort of burying his conscious challenge whereby volume is the issue. I liked robert's mention and ranking of the Art of War. I often make it a habit as I prepar notes to use the right margin to note AOW precepts that are being acknowledged and reinforced. AOW is not only complete but it is totally consistent. It is a classic example of removing noise and anomalies from a body of knowledge and skills. It shows the process of building the mind by doing drills. Main event. The OP and I had a brief connection. It was good to take the laps we did. Doing work arounds to solve problems is a good exercise for anyone. I always keep a dozen on my plate as a way to see iterative refinement at play in a variety of contexts and contemporary markets. The nuance of the outcomes that might have occurred was manifold. The OP can program and he can keep logs and do daily prints of his trading. We could have seen him take 1 contract to 40 contracts in a period of time. Seeing a sharpe of 60 running is a cool experience that has not been had at ET so far with one exception. The back testing of formations would have made a record that disputes the CW too. That would have been fun since there are ways to use this as a building block to establish, in the same way, what the 10 common formations that Lo tried to test actually represent as tools for the technical trader. I felt that the OP's work in this vein would replace the prior academic fooling around. After the first two drills, a third drill for handling the worst problems of the OP would have ben put in play. (The trade from point 3 to FTT.) Three drills subtend this drill: acceleration on VE's; accordianing on sub cancels (OP's major major difficulty); and the diminishing of RTL slopes due to internals (lower volatility and lateral subs). Coincidentally, I thought dropping some AOW basics into the mentoring would have added a new flavor to ET. Summary Anyways, I felt it would have been a good investment to have a print record of going from beginner to advanced beginner and to get trading up to a 40 contract level following a critical problem solving path. It would have enabled the good pieces in the OP's mind to join with a newly built web of new inference to serve to block the current inappropriate bad first recourse stuff. I felt that since the OP could program, he would find that doing the programming would have been a good work around (as an intellectual constructive repetitive drill) instead of the experimenting approach he does in the context of the vacuum he is in. It is difficult to design good experiments and most have poor results and are cast aside. Most often a theme is created by doing experiments that are adjacent to each other. This generally leads to the series that leads to the exit. NIN has pointed out the serious progress in this direction so far. In the post above, the OP confirms NIN's viewpoint by inference, which we know comes from the organization of the OP 's built mind. So I'm sure this paragraph will warm TZ's heart since it confirms his views as well. Small note. The T666 results are really fucked up for many reasons. Their appearance again makes it possible for me to again reiterate my views. For those who fucked up posting pictures of houses, my studio was on the East side of town and in a different time period than suggested. Lots of humor on ET to be sure.
Let's see whose results are really f***ed up. I tested buying YOUR "0 to 7 turn" per page 8 of YOUR paper on the P,V relation on 1000 stocks from 2000 to 2005 -- a total of 5000 stock-years -- using spydertrader's code for the scoring and exiting 5 days later and got the equity curve below. Whose model is f***ed up? YOUR "methods" put YOU on the wrong side of NTES. Listen to Jack crow about this trade before it went bad (mp3 file at link): http://www.mediafire.com/?0ielxnmeiro Whose NTES trade was f***ed up? <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2023032> Let's look at YOUR famous Sep 1 2009 call. Does this look like the turning point of a lifetime? Who f***ed that up? <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2776348> Here's another one YOU got wrong. Who f***ed that up? <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2656562>
What I tell everyone is that if you can read a chart, you can trade. All I simply do is follow the 50sma and watch the closing price, just the turtle traders did back in the '80's when they were trained! Then once the closing price goes above the 50sma, I go long. If it goes below, I go short. I also trade options, as opposed to the actual security itself: this way I have a much smaller risk amount and can still enjoy the reward of the movement. But, then again, not everyone is open to my ides so, that's why I don't post as much. But trading futures is no different than trading anything else in the markets, except a lot more volatile!!
Easier said than done, what about gap ups and what happens when you enter and the thing turns against you, what is the risk tolerance for any particular entry, how do you manage your stops and what about a stock that suddenly decides to go sideways or takes your stop and continues going up, do you just get back on? What about market conditions and fed announcements? How do you pick the stocks? It would be great if it was just trend following we would all be super rich but sadly that stratergy fails if not backed up with all the above and more.