Don't adjust your numbers! My numbers are not necessarily right or wrong. They are just the ones I'm using. The idea is, are your numbers telling you something? I re-set my number lines at the beginning of the month to keep them current. We had a plus 2 the first day of the month and a 0 yesterday and a zero today. So I'm just looking at the price action. I think I would ideally like to have a plus 5 on the month to confirm a monthly A up. That gives me two intra-day A ups and one successful test on a selloff.
Yeah, I know what you mean as you've made a good point about that in the past. It's more a simple matter of the trade-off between win rate and average win : average loss. If what I've got turns out to run me against failed levels often, but the trade-off is bigger winners, I'd prefer to ratchet up the win rate more than the payoff. Purely to maintain the rhythm in my psychology. That's all I'm saying, which is why I'm not adjusting for now. The levels I originally chose corresponded decently with my preferred swing trading method. While that method doesn't translate to commodities, if the A level constants maintain the same win rate for me in other instruments, I'm happy. The one critical tool I haven't been using is the number line. I just don't want to do it in excel. But it's going to be a real headache in eSignal.
Excel? I was using a notebook! Seriously, I just jot down the numbers everyday after the close. No need for e-signal or whatever to calculate the number line. I just go through all the charts and look at the price action. The number line is really important because on confirmed trades I want to see A ups being made on a regular basis. This is one of the things that don't show up in regular price charts.
I know it sucks, but I almost think you can't look at an automated option. I feel like the assessment of what a day should be assigned, (-4 to +4) is almost more interpretive than objective. I could be wrong here, but I go back to Louie on the recording posted earlier here saying that 100 traders will have 100 values on the number-line, and that's ok. I use excel, yep, it sucks, but making money is ok too.
Damn, a notebook? That's discipline there. I've spent years every night going through charts and that extra step of manual entry on multiple instruments would get to me after a while. I admit I'm pretty lazy though. But spending months on code for the marginal benefit of not being glued to the screen would be worth it for me. Down the road if I get around to implementing a number line efs, I'll pass you my three eSignal scripts gratis, just to say thanks for pimping a method I would never have given a second look to. Use em or toss em. If it can be done though. There's a lot of subjectivity in identifying failed and confirmed A levels that may be hard to do systematically.
Yeah I would not automate it. I don't want a black and white number output. I want to put some thought into each day. I tweak the numbers to give weight to how the market closed. So my numbers are not as strict as in Fisher's book. At the end of the day, it's all about price action right?
Yeah, at this stage I really think you're right. Plus how I see a confirmed/failed level would be different from others, and providing enough complexity in the parameters to adjust for individual preference would be a nightmare. I've gotten pretty good at translating my brain to code though, so I'm not ready to give up on it. I'm trying to get rid of eSignal in time though. They've pissed me off for years, and keep pissing me off.
I think where that code would come in handy is if you are trading stocks. Obviously I would not manually do this for 100's of stocks and it would be cool to just pull up a ticker that you don't normally trade and immediately get the number line. But I follow about 16 commodities so it only takes me about 5 to 10 minutes to do the work. And like I said, I feel more confident about the number since I'm tweaking it to represent my feeling of the price action. I see a lot of very weak plus 2 days and a lot of strong minus 2 days. Especially in a high volatility tape.
Yeah, see you've got that special sauce though where you have the confidence and the track record with this specific method, plus the internalized years of experience. So being discretionary in certain areas is a benefit, not a risk. I definitely want discretion for a big chunk of things, because I've gotten very good at recognizing impending volatility changes. But I also know that psychological trap we all experience, particularly early in learning a method. Information paralysis: too much fuzzy logic allows you to selectively focus on one piece of data that confirms your emotional fear/greed biases. Anytime I take on a new approach, I want discretion to arise from experience, rather than baked into the method. But yeah, I anticipate what both you and Quon are saying is the on the money when it comes to the number line. Flexible black and white ACD levels proved to be a snap at least.