This is going to be the focus of a lot of posting and suggestions in the new thread coming up for 2007. As a general comment that backs up what Spyder has said: as you improve and get trades working visa vis the FTT as a starting point, you will feel the necessity to have more tools to further improve your trading. We do gauge what people are feeling and what they ask for follows a litany that is fairly consistent and great. What comes of interacting is not going to be a large and pedantic list of mini rules. Instead the tools you have, will just enlarge your understanding of the moment by enabling you to have what what you need to look for. Like adding, a resource for you to see that is available always. Occassionally a tool will b added. Soon you will see more happened than what you posted. What is important for you now is to go with what you are seeing. You saw the price get close to the LTL and then..... After a while you saw volume...... and it was when circumstances changed. Now, you know, from the experience, to be aware of the interval as price and volume work together near limits of your annotations. As you debrief in your log, say in another color, you can make additional observations. What they are, is how you now can do your work of trading; the improvement of better seeing the moment. For doing the trading, the practical matter is this: You take an action and then you have the consequence of the action. You are performing and you are able to continue to take the steps necessary to continue to be in the market and to be in the right place (meaning on the right side). If you cannot see what is the right side at any moment (like you describe), then it is still okay and you will do alright. On any dominant traverse there are several happenings along the way. The one we like is price continually moving towards the LTL; the others are unsettling, perhaps. All of them go through given tick values more than once. As you connect your observations on volume with these tick excursions, you will come to understand that they fit into the realm of the expected minor fluctuations of things momentarily. Notice that in 10 minutes you donot remember, consciously these little tick excursions. We are growing into the comfort and understandings of what moves the market for making money and, also, on the other hand, what we go through as an ancillary momentary pertibation which is of lessor stature. Persuasive stuff and ancillary stuff. NOW looms as important. What else could be important? During NOW, as time passes you will be handling a lot more in NOW. But for (at) this time, consider looking just as carefully as you can at price and volume, particularly when you feel you need to "know" more. You will experience a repeating litany of sequences. Do be responsive using the routine. No matter how you respond, it will be an improving experience. The reason is that you are handling all the situations one after another and all in their good time. Hanging with the situation is more important than getting every situation right. Each time you go through the cycle of "operating", you gain a little more operational skill. You are able to both hear the market and hear what you youself are saying to yourself at the moment. Here in this post that you composed, you cite two situations. One is the forward proress of trending and the other is from another time, later. The price and volume in each situation are not the same. There was a change from the first to the second. I am not holding back on a comment to you to answer your question. It may seem that I am. I am asking you to discern that the two situations are different. You do make that distinction. This is the vector nature of what we do. The ability that we are building to see that from a relative viewpoint, there are differences in P and differences in V as each is examined as a before/after change. It may come to you that P changed and concurretly V changed. In concert they worked to ceate an effect. Draw a conclusioon, then, about the effect. Use the conclusion to make a decision. Act on the decision. Or you may bethinking first P, V is this an then you see P, V as that. This is not as infomative. And it is great to do as you did, BUT then you have to process the compound element(P, V) as each compares, second to first. Compound change happened. Acctually, you want to know what is about to happen and spyder has mentioned the phantom or virtual hypothesis. here you are near LTL so you have the hypothesis in the picture since it is forced into view. You do not go through a process, subsequently, to see if you were right or wrong. We are in a different business than the right/wrong business. We are in the business of making money by being on the right side of the market as price changes. Sometimes price lolly gags around and we have to be patient. Then at this time there is no money to be made so we can't. It will start making money soon enough and we continue our routine and do our part. It is worth reading this 5 times to get to the place where you see it is important to keep doing the routine and handling whatever comes as a consequence and then continuing to do the routine.
in my ignorance, i would like to ask a few questions. i have always heard it is best to trade with the trend and not against it. when i looked at Spyder's universe posted Dec 14, post 767, it looked to me that the majority of these stocks were reversing from a positive trend to a negative trend. i wonder if any of you went long any of these stocks and had positive results? it would seem best to me to trade stocks in a definite uptrend as Jack mentioned. he tries to catch good stocks making new and higher highs. i use TC2000 to scan stocks and use a 10 da. sma crossing a 35 da. sma that ferquently picks up a cup and handle type chart pattern. to see this, look at the symbol STEC. this shows a strong upward trend which should be better to go long than a trend which has become ''toppy'' or started to curl over to the negative. while volume may give a preview of stock activity, when dry up occurs, how are we to know that the next surge of volume will not be to the downside?
If you continue to trade equities, keep the indicators. If you have decided to move to Futures trading, remove the indicators for now (We will bring them back later). The DU ---> FRV --- Peak Paradigm uses absolute ranges of volume to determine which definition bests fits the current volume bar levels. This paradigm remains the focus of Journal One and is best used by beginner traders to learn to trade in an environment consisting of high probabilities of success. As such, a certain definition of each volume level indicates Buy, Hold or Sell actions. As you move to the FTT Paradigm in Equities you begin to learn how to trade between the FTT's as well as moving from long to short positions using equities as your trading vehicle. The Gaussian Channels play an ever increasing roll at this point as well. The background material linked at the beginning of Journal I, The Big Post I - X, and Jack's Jokari Window provide the answers you need to transition into this level of equities trading. STEC has moved beyond the 'rocket' phase and into the 'iceberg' phase. The intertwining of The Stochastic (14.1.3) Indicator marks the beginning of this phase. STEC has also surpassed Peak Volume levels. Good Journey to you. - Spydertrader
With all due respect, I have personally responded to these same questions many times through out the Journals. The stocks in the Final Universe find themselves there for a reason. They Cycle. This repeatability fosters an environment where one has an improved opportunity to profit. By reviewing many of Jack's USENET Posts (linked at the beginning of Journal One), you'll see why he recommends Beginners Start with cycling stocks. By definition, a stock which cycles, does not always go up. Technically, we look for stocks which are about to complete their non-dominant traverse (down trend) of the short term down channel, prior to, their break out and return to the dominant traverse back to the up side. The Oddiduro Thread (also linked from Journal One) provides a detailed account (from Jack) on how to obtain a list of stocks to trade. Use of the Gaussian Volume (in addition to channels and FTT's) as described by Jack allows the trader to anticipate both pace and direction of the next day. For this reason, we have named the methodology, Tomorrow's Newspaper, Today. I always recommend a trader, new to the methodology, set aside their preconceived notions prior to beginning their Journey. An open mind is more easily filled with knowledge. Good Journey to you. - Spydertrader
Thank you for your responses. I was hoping for black & white answers, but I can certainly appreciate shades of grey. After all, this is the market were writing about. I'm really looking forward to the new SCT thread in 2007.
As far as I am aware the "exact mechanics of the FTT" have not been defined. I am trying to use peaking volume to help identify FTTs but frequent incorrect FTT identification means that the majority of my days are a string of small losses/whipsaws. Extremely frustrating.
SPYDER, i'm not trying to cause problems, just trying to digest a great deal of new information which it seems is being refined as time goes by. it would be a great help if all of us were on the same page, using the same data sources and trading the same stocks and patterns. i think most of those critical of Jack's work do not trade specifically as he prescribes. it's tough to hit a moving target, and it's obvious that some confusion exists. as my reading of the journal progresses. i can see the maturation of the trading styles of those involved, even though two people trading the same stock may get different results. at some point, perhaps all this information could be assembled, sorted, brought up to date, written clearly and put into manual form. i would certainly pay for a volume of this type and it may obviate the tremendous investment of time and repetition you have to go through. it would also help greatly if the web site had a search capability so different concepts such as channels, compilation of universe, volume effects,etc could be accessed without having to bother you. i congratulate you upon your patience and willingness to share freely of your knowledge and experience.
I did not attribute your comments to the 'problem causing' group at all. My apologies if I gave you that impression. Rather, I simply wanted to impress upon you the value of starting at the beginning, and working your way through. I fully realize the vast array of topics, and numerous pages, which comprise both Journals. As you have already discovered, the methods have adapted and changed over time. The process, by which those involved provided input to improve results, we call 'iterative refinement.' Following the path of iterative refinement as one begins to learn the Hershey Methods remains an integral part of the success you see posted here nearly every day. The vast majority of successful traders (who use some iteration of Jack's Methods) arrived at their success after reading through both Journals (at least one time). Individuals who began their Journey without so much as the directions to Wall Street, now trade equities profitably. Others, many of whom have never posted to these threads, continue to profit on a near daily basis - generating results unheard of by most standards. While economic, gender, age, social and educational differences separate each individual within this group, they have one common trait. Each started at the beginning, spent the time, and worked their way through every post, link and attachment. My words in my previous post were simply designed as a very strong hint. Nothing more. While the choice remains solely yours as to how to proceed from here, whatever you decide, I wish you tremendous success on your Journey. - Spydertrader
Your just too lazy to write out a 200 page fully updated, picture step by step manual admit it !!!!!! To the previous poster, I just spent 6 hours last night and another 6 today reading Jacks 127 page Channel pdf. If he and spydie took the time to put all this stuff together piece by piece then we need to take the time to figure it out on our own. I will say this again, try and join us daily in the live ET chats were we share all kinds of good stuff.