The huge majority of the time a move ends on less volume than a previous bar. This is one of the best indicators out there, imho.
This is a general post to cover several items. How the journal is going is really terrific. These are just notes on current conversation; don't assign any value to the order. The PV relation can be best exemplified by lookig at patterns within channels and the commn patterns that mark the ends of trends. Do the three pennants first and see how they and the BO shows the P, V relation. Next go to dominant and non-dominant traverse of channels of trends. Notice how lateral channels are traversed symmetrically. I will write all of this up in the E & E book. The "calibrating" of the mind of the trader is very important and in many ways. I think we can use "NB's for this in the future. (Nota Bene). as you shift the scale by dragging up and down you have two choices for gettin the final setting You can come from 5 point intervals or 1 point intervals. I go from 5 to 2 and keep it so it is on the verge of going back to 5. Same for YM. 20 to 10 and on the verge of 20. The width and separation of bars is equally important. Start tight and ease back until your anxiety disappears. Not really but keep the bars sort of thick and bold and have some space between them so life is not so sudden and all clumped together. Annotating is easier too. The great advantage of long posts that are clear and crisp is that they show interrelationships of things. They als prevent people from collecting quips that somehow turn into "rules" (they aren't rules.) One thing that is definitely happening and is getting across is that "conclusions" are what we get from looking at data sets. The attached charts show many conclusions in contexts and as they are viewed it appears people are looking at the data sets that comprise the conclusion of the moment. There is some humor in another thread about the finite conclusion set. I did it; I admit it. Eually dry was the Excel commentary on the data set listing of combos and perms. The deal is that these are found as pairs in the mind because they come from your subconscious as you do reps. If a person sits and maks an excel list of datasets, then he is doing someting that is extremely important as a consequence of doing "organization". Doing organization is a drill for sure. If you do logs. You begin to connect the conscious to the unconscious and the unconscious learns to deliver what you need when you need it during RMH. If you do the P, V above, you will "wake up", literally and also one morning in the future you will wake up and find that you have completed some "organizing". You never get "disorganized" you get "capacity" instead. Lets consider the process of maximizing your iterative refinement. It is clear and apparent that the people in this forum who contribute support "have the goods". It is a good idea to ramp up to where they are in a critical path method. Make your effort continuously and thoroughly. This gives a lot of AHA's and they are frequent. Make use of everything to "keep the silver polished". Look at the day. Prep and keep the sheet handy. Log and annotate. Skip making corrections just log the correction. Leave the mess on the chart. Use colors and widths to make it clear. On the log try for entries every five minutes and/or three enteries between trade actions. Use 4 pages of a log you constructed to start with. Post the logs as frequently as you post charts. Partial charts and partial logs are great too. You can cover up the right side for example where the number of contracts are. Lets not freak out the general public and make the news. This puts the thread at a place where there is a lot of transference by example. Now consider he relationsip of the parts: the prep; the log; the annotated charts all "calibrted"; and the debriefing. You make more money debriefing than at any other time. Take the tick improvemnts; take the 2 tick improvements, take the point improvements; take the channel trend improvements. Say you learn something debriefing. An aha. That applies for every day for the rest of your life. I am not talking about BS quips. I am talking about how debriefing is a non pressure time where you "connect the dots" I am the site liaison for a school building a 300 person atomic bomb shelter in Greenwich. I notice that they are not vibrating the concrete pours on day one truck one. There is no equipment on site to do it. It is in the specs. This aha then corrects all pours from that point on. As you debrief you mark everyting up with a clored pen and collect stuff in your journal. Collect every right conclusion that goes wth a data set and put it in an organized place. you are putting it, for sure in your conscious and unconscious for later useage. Writing it down and noting it where it occurred makes mental pictures too. Cardboard boxes were invented for the storing of three ring binders from last year or 6 months ago. If you get a bright idea and go back and look up something, it is happening because your mind is coming together and you go find the material source to reinforce things. Write on the source. My botanical books are bent, spindled, and mutilated. But if I see something in a place I write that down on the exhibit in the book. The photo trains I keep on plants are annotated too. I note on the backs of watercolors where I did them and what photo may have backed up the composition. You debrief and find what is there to see and understand. This becomes part of your knowledge and it is skill related and connected because it is i the context of skill utilization. Trading is not inventing and backtesting. That is the world of gimmicks and plastic toys. Trading is building. A ew posts back I quoted five items that coul have been written in a debriefing. They would have extended a trade for more than 20 minutes at a moderate paced period of high sentimant. tis is not a 1 tick or 2 tick matter. This is a multi point matter over a period of about 30 minutes. Use this conclusion, this set of several conclusions when possible. The fact is that they are all usable as a group sequence every day 240 days a year. Watching the chart, doing the routine, annotating the chart making the chart say something; logging what the monitoring says and then debriefing and having the notes on the day's work product and doing journalling is the process that IS the learning process and the results are IN YOUR MIND and availble for the rest of your life. Some people who are reading this have seen it all before and repeatedly. They are saying that reading it is a good use of their time. You will become one of these people and you will notice that you are anwsering questions for yourself all of the time. You will turn to be at inquery. So share. Be sue to print the journal here once in a while and annotate the print. Bind it and upate it. This makes you mind assimilate more effectively At some point person comes to the place where he realizes that he can really groove. He does come to understand that the critical path for making money involves being top notch and really "on it" Lets look at that place of knowledge, skills and experience. It deal with performance that is related to effectiveness and efficiency with regard to optimizing what is offered by the markets. It is comfortable and excitiing and a lot of fun. And it is not a series of "Oh ,I could have done that better". That is because of the high contrast when compared to the beginnings. And there is only the standard of taking what is offered. The extraction is always nearly the best and it is not a consideration of this flakey thing or that flakey thing. You are trading with a given contract level that can change during the may simply because of market capacity. The throttle is working all the time. You act with precision because three steps have preceded actions. your data sets are SUFFICIENT and not one ounce over or under the prescription for the moment. the sets are "just right in composition and amount of elements". the frequency of your passes are tuned to the demand for performing the job at that time. There is no guessing or need to be anxious about anything whatsoever. There is no need to "control". There is no need to "respond". You are an operator of your capital and it works for you all the time as it is possible to get the job done. So you have a lot of money. That is just inevitable becaue of how huge the resource is and that yu can have all that is offered. It is not like anyother business in the world. You are operating a no cost business that just gives you money all the time. The objective ofthis journal is to close the gap between your present performance and the potential that is there for everyone. Spyder explained this situation succinctly. You make the choices to work to get the knowledge, skills and experience. Use the time wisely, he says.
Just curious, Bb - have you happened to do any statistical studies on this idea, such as like the type which bundlemaker mentioned. I definitely am not here to refute anything, but simply to learn. But in my own limited experiences, since trying to focus on the PV relationship (somewhat before discovering all the Hershey materials) I had begun to key in on the maximum volume bars as possible turning points. In my mind, I likened them to "blow-off" tops and bottoms, or climactic buying and selling activity - relative, of course, to the fractal in view at the time. And they appear to be even more dependable if the forming bar turns into a reversal bar. These are just my observations, and I stand ready to be severely reprimanded for their utterance But I'm glad this question has been presented, because it's been quckly moving up my list. Hopefully some forthcoming discussions will provide further insight to all interested parties. And if anyone happens to have a nice list of links that point to this topic, so much the better (searches can become so time consuming have a great weekend - kickoff time here ...
I have not done any studies other than observation. For a long time I have noticed that the lowest bar in a trend has less volume than a previous bar a huge amount of the time. I am talking about 5 min. charts as that is all I trade. Not sure about larger or smaller timeframes. I am so confident of this that I will stay in a trade until I see this happen.
Attached, please find a chart (ES 5 min, Thursday, 01-04-2006, Final Bars of the Day) snippet showing one of the best examples of the PV Relationship. As the Pace (contracts traded per Bar) of Volume increases, so too, does (the pace of) Price Bar change increase. As the Pace (contracts traded per Bar) of Volume decreases, so too, does (the pace of) Price Bar change decrease. To put it in conventional terms, black volume (and price) represent the dominant traverse of the uptrend. The decreasing volume (and price) represents the non-dominant traverse (or retrace - highlighted yellow). When Volume returns to increasing (red) Volume we have our confirmed reversal - highlighted green. - Spydertrader <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1316994>
Thank you Spyder. At first your post just frustrated me more, but I just sat there for a long time and studied it. I began to see R2B, R2R, etc; at a little more subtle level than I had before. This is certainly helpful, and begs the following question; which is more along the lines of what I should have asked in the first place: how does this assist in the timely identification of FTT's? In your example chart the confirmation bar you point out is 15 min's after the FTT is hypothesized. My current belief system tells me that's not terribly useful. If I'm getting ahead of the curricullum here I'm happy to leave this alone and just observe the gaussians at a deeper level. The student will follow the masters instructions
I found the following excerpt of a post by Mak regarding PV and Gaussians to be a real gem: "For a while I didn't understand the concept until I realized PV and also had to relax a bit as far as observing is concerned. So with channels, you see that the channel is the geometric context for where price is operating. The Volume is the gas pedal so to speak of price operating within the container. In a channel you will see price bounce from one side to the other until it stops. When you look at volume you will see that in one particular direction of the bounce from one side of the channel to the opposite side, each consecutive volume bar will be more or less larger than the previous bar. On the bounce back, the volume bars will have a general decreasing progression. You will have to look somewhat loosely because as you will notice, the migration from one side to the other is riddled with stalled/inside bars. They are easy to pick off because you will see that the volume does not follow the progression and additionally the price bar will not extend beyond either side of the previous price bar. The framework of the gaussians is that every channel has the dominant where the progression of sequentially increasing volume bars denote the dominant direction of the channel. The sequentially decreasing volume bars are the retrace. Thus a R2B means INCREASING RED VOLUME bars followed by DECREASING BLACK VOLUME BARS. A B2R is INCREASING BLACK VOLUME bars followed by DECREASING RED VOLUME bars. A LONG channel is a repeating sequential series of B2Rs whereas a SHORT channel is a repeating sequential series of R2Bs. The transition between a SHORT and LONG channel is immediately picked off by B2B where you have DECREASING BLACK VOLUME bars followed by INCREASING BLACK VOLUME bars or an R2R where you have DECREASING RED VOLUME bars followed by INCREASING RED VOLUME bars..." I hope others find it useful and apologize if it has been previously posted.