Today's Es Chart Good to see more and more 'Aha!' moments occurring on a daily basis now. From the looks of things over the last week or so, it appears the delay in STR / SQU introduction has proven the correct course of action. For those of you still struggling to find your way, the next week (or so) should see a few items to help you along. For those of you who have seen confusion turn to clarity lately, kindly post your observations for those attempting to make it over the hill. I'm sure everyone will find your comments helpful. Enjoy the weekend everyone. - Spydertrader
Thanks. I guess I just plain blew off the green volatility expansion and, indeed, I didn't see the steep channel on the bars after yesterdays close. I will have to be more observant. LB
Mmm. Well if price crosses RTL by 2 or 3 ticks we should get out (if we didn't get out earlier already for example if we did spot the FTT). I prefer to actually set the stoploss automatically 2 or 3 ticks away from the trendline. Then I move it every 5 minutes depending on the slope of the trendline. It stops me from waiting and waiting longer to see if price will go back or to get out 1 tick better etc etc. (all these human things that usually get us in trouble..) Also Jack mentioned using the RTL for stoploss but I recall he calculates the average nr of ticks of the spikes of that day and then draw another trendline on the right (or left, depending if you're long or short) the number of average that you found away from RTL. Pls correct me if I am wrong. One Aha moment recently I had is that you HAVE to get out when RTL is broken because something is going on. The forest is not as anticipated and you have to avoid loss and wait and let the market tell you what's going on preferably from an objective position (= no position). regards, Ivo
IVO... Really awesome post. This is so exciting to see these type of posts of how folks are getting it! As for Jack and his spike offset, I understand why he does it. Part of it has to do with having some wiggle room in the trendline itself. The other is matter of possibility. Take for example, what if you saw that there's has never been a 5M bar with 15 points of volatility and you wanted to incorporate this fact. Well would you could do is that at the point of entry, you can set a stop that is 15 points away. By doing this, what you fully expect is that within the next 5M, you do not expect to get stopped out. So for Jack and a few others, it's an anti hyper thing but more importantly, it is a characteristic of the actual instrument you are trading. This is the whole point of letting the markets do the telling instead of traders doing the predicting. The spikes on a given chart are the extreme movements. On a psychological level, spikes can be very good at shaking people out of a trade that they may have just put on. Given this knowledge, if you don't want to be shaken out by spikes, then it makes sense to find the extreme spikes and place your stops outside of these extreme so that you don't get shaken out of what is usually a perfectly good trade... This the point of Jack's stop offsets. You are placing yourself to be in a position not to be shaken out of the assets naturally extreme spikes... If your offset got violated, then chances are as you have said, that something is definitely different...
i agree that getting out immediately when the RTL is broken is paramount... and the only time i deviate from this is when the price bar is breaking a down RTL side at the same time there is a very PANIC HIGH NYSE Tick reading or an up RTL exactly on a very LOW PANIC NYSE Tick reading... there is going to be a snap back as the low or high NYSE Tick reading snaps back reversing to the mean or 0 point and sometimes it whips the price directly back into the channel to stay and continue... this only happens 10% of the time... otherwise its bail out time as the right side of the vortice... the channel has lost its integrity... I think that if you look at a channel as a 3D structure (since our charting software only maps it as a 2D structure) it is vortex / vortice like... spinning up or down and holding its own shape thru rotational integrity in time and space (price)... but when a side gets broken out of - then the channel's / vortex's intergrity is broken (dissipated) so bailing is a very logical action... http://www.answers.com/topic/vortex anyway... interesting concept... cj...
Here's mine. My charts seem to end up looking reasonably like Spyder's, but I really feel like I'm still struggling while doing it. And I feel a lot of stress trying to identify FTT's in a timely fashion but without mistaking an ordinary price fluctuation for an FTT. Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated. (No annotations on the midday down channel because I was mostly busy elsewhere.)
Yeah. One thing is to limit your loss. The other thing is that something is going on that we don't know yet. If price continues in direction of BO we can look for pt 2 and then a pt 3 to get in. If price reverses and continues in it's original direction (FBO) and the current channel is just widened or a new channel is formed or whatever we'll also have a new opportunity to get in later for example on FTT. It doesn't matter. The advanced traders reverse on FBO but that really requires more experience because one moment it looks like BO and then FBO then BO etc. etc and before you know it you get killed even before you know if it's an FBO or BO. Eeeh well. Thanks for the explanation about vortex and panic high nyse etc but too complex for me at the moment and I first want to learn the basics very well regards, Ivo
Just a few remarks. Chart looks good I think. 1. Your first FTT cannot be an FTT and is actually a FBO because FTT's only happen on right to left traverses unless you mean an FTT of the green channel (but then you would have written the word FTT in green I suppose). The FTT was on the second bar but IMO it was more clear on YM. 2. Your 10:15 bar actually is an FTT in your steep channel. (I had the same one, on Spyder's chart it's not there as he did not draw that channel). You did not mark it as FTT. 3. It helps not only to think in FTT, BO, FBO etc but also in 1-2-3. Just draw in the 1,2 and 3's in your chart because doing is seeing is learning. I noticed I completely ignored this 1-2-3 stuff and just looked for FTT's all the time and that was all wrong. 1-2-3 happens after an FTT and BO. For example after a breakout to the upside you look for price to retrace (on not too big volume and not too fast --> when the retrace looks like the FTT you saw before but then in the opposite direction = wrong = get out IMO). Then you draw the tape down (first two bars). When the tape is broken and you see black volume that's the point 3. I guess you could also use a taped FTT and get in even sooner. BTW this is just my observation, I am not saying that you 100% certain always have your point 3 this way. It may take longer (or shorter) for it to be completed. After determining pt3 relax and wait for the new channel to be formed. Regards, Ivo
Yes it was a wise decision. I think I am reading volume a lot better now (I thought I had it down before but clearly I still have more work to do in real time). There is just no missing the context for me any more. My Nikkei experience one day this week forced me to really look at the volume bars to see why I was fooled - the trends within trends - and it was as clear as day what was dominant at all times (long all day; I kept trying to short off FTTs) and what I misidentified as the FTTs were all tree level flaws (declining red in the larger context). Looking at your ES chart you know by 11:30 that the long blue channel is likely just a retrace within the larger short context which continues until 14:30. Price increases again from 12:15 to 12:25 on apparently increasing black volume (on the trees level) but decreasing black (forest level - as compared to the 11:30 peak volume bar). So you know this is a retrace (up on decreasing volume, on the Forest level) and the inevitable FTT is likely to be a Pt 3 of a bigger short channel (not shown on your chart) and an excellent short trade. 12:30 gives you the pause for the R2R and break-out down (DU -> FRV again). 14:30 then becomes a much more important FTT in this short context and indeed price does continue up to break-out from the channel Spyder decided not to draw at around 15:30. (If my times are slightly off its because I'm just eyeballing Spyder's chart and enjoying my Saturday with a nice Australian). Good w/e all.