Spydertrader's Jack Hershey Futures Trading Journal

My Qcharts spaces them every 1 point. If you know the location of the option to switch this to 2 points, I'd like to know! TIA.

 

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EXACTLY!

The objective is to become calibrated to a standard volatility so that you develop a sense of how the day is developing. Chart programs have a funny way of stretching the data across the whole screen so as to look like the software is worth the money it charges. The problem is that when we have a range of volatility that is less then standard, you want to be able to easily "see" it. Additionally, I scale the size so as to avoid being hyper. Trading a 5M chart shouldn't be hyper and thus the picture you are monitoring should be one that is calm. I keep my scale static through both high volatility and low volatility days so as to reinforce existing pictures that allow me to reinforce that "i have seen this before", "i know what to do". "AGAIN!"


Here is my realtime chart for today. I know it is diff then Spyder's but that's not important right now. I keep my channels very strict, PV that is. You should be able to explicitly "see" the PV cycling on this chart. The point is to stick to the drills and bank coin. An FTT is an FTT is an FTT! Do not go past GO if you cannot bank coin and collect $200...

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Regards,
MAK

 

AHA! I was so close.

 

Mak,

Could you post you YM chart for comparison too please.

 

After debriefing yesterday's session, I've noticed a few things I thought I would comment on for discussion.

First off, I'm working hard to indentify FTT's as soon as I can. Sometimes I spot them in the same 5 min bar they occur, sometimes a bar or so later. And of course, sometimes what the chart "tells me" quickly turns out to be a non-FTT. In the past, I used to delete the "non-FTT's" from my chart to keep my chart "clean". Yesterday, I decided to leave them in and simply change the text to "FTT!", my shorthand for "not FTT". [I'll probably change the "not" symbol to something that makes more sense but this was the first char that came to my mind in real-time ] Regardless of the symbol that I use, now when I debrief I can study the "what wasn't a FTT" sequences along with "what was a FTT" sequences. Obviously, this is clear in hindsight but I'm always thinking real-time.

My second observation is also clear in hindsight but a tough one (for me) in real-time. On your charts, go back and look where FTT's occur. Notice that on a lot of them, price changed color (B->R or R->B) intrabar. Also notice in a lot of cases, price pushed higher (or lower) before retracing and changing color. It's obvious that a shift has occurred and I can explain in laymen's terms ("more buyers came in", or "more sellers came in") but I'm not sure I can explain it using the PV relation. Maybe someone can help me see it. In other words, how do you use the PV relation to explain intrabar volume changes?

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Have a good weekend,

spooz

 

re: "price changed color (B->R or R->B) intrabar"

This got me wondering whether the picture would change with constant-volume or tick charts. Of course, those would be an arbitrary division of the day, too. But that would make price the only consideration ;-)

My bars are centered around a time, say 11:00 a.m.,
such that a 5-min bar covers 10:57:30 to 11:02:30, but other charts may begin a new bar/candle at 11:00 a.m.

 

Borrowing from one of Spyder's comments read somewhere earlier, may I suggest annotating your "not FTT" as a "WTF"

This can be especially appropos after entering short off a FTT, 15 secs prior to an upthrusting volatility expansion.

Thanks to all who replied to my 2 point ES scale question. I have never considered using grid lines on my charts, and the idea of "calibrating one's mind to mkt volatility" suddenly seems so apparent - heheh. I'm learning something new everyday ...

Cheers ...

 

spoo,

At this stage I pretty much only follow the PVR on the 2 min YM.

If it's meant to be our leading indicator it only makes sense to do this.

I think that the 5m PVR has another role as so far, I've only seen it be effective on breakouts.

but of course what do i know

 

Can somebody who is consistently successful at analyzing the PV relationship please post (preferably more than 1) example(s) of an exact use of the PV relationship when analyzing charts. I’ve literally been studying the PV relationship on and off for 4 years. I have yet to see any consistent way to use it. I understand the Jokari window and in principal it makes sense to me. Actually seeing it play out is still a mystery to me.

As best I can tell from many discussions, one way to implement use of the PV relationship is to compare adjacent 5min bars for increasing/decreasing volume for clues. Every time I have ever tried doing this, the results appear virtually random. That is, half the time PV seems to follow the Jokari window, half the time it doesn’t. This is not useful.

I have tried comparing the anticipated FTT bar with the prior bar, the FTT bar with the following bar, and tried to see it in terms of Gaussians.

Here is a typical type of study I have done: I have 3 days worth of 5min ES bars printed out. I counted up the total FTT’s I have annotated. I counted about 30 of them. Then I compared volume on the FTT bar to the following bar. 14 were higher on volume and 16 lower. I broke it down further and created a matrix of the 4 bar combos: green price bar followed by red price bar, green by green, red by green and red by red. I did this separately for uptrends and downtrends. Then I did the same analysis on the FTT bar compared to the bar before the FTT. No matter how I look at it, it still looks random to me.

Sometimes the volume on a bar that ends a trend is the highest volume bar of the run, sometimes it isn’t. I have my wife sit next to me during the market and I talk aloud to her what I am seeing in real time. I find that what I’m saying lacks objectivity when it comes to PV.

Also, as a related challenge, PRV can be a real fooler. Lets say a green bar just closed. Next bar opens and price is ticking upward and PRV at 30 sec’s makes it clear that volume will be much higher. Often as not, price turns around and drops on very high volume. Again, this seems like a 50/50 deal, so not terribly useful.

The conclusion I always come to is that it’s total intuition for those who make this work. I sincerely hope that I can be shown what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks and sorry for long post, it's hard to be succint and precise