The A values are not proprietary. The ACD system is all about price action. There are no secret numbers or secret values. The important thing is that you understand the ins and outs of the system and why you are choosing the values you are. ACD is volatility based, not price based. It's all about volatility and price action. That is why it's so effective. Some general advice though. Regarding the opening range, you will want to set that time based on your trading style. If you are more a counter trend trader, you will want to use a wider opening range. If you are more a breakout trader or momentum trader, use a narrower opening range. Good luck!
By all accounts he's an approachable guy. Drop him a line. His addresses are on the Web, mark--at--mbfcc.com or info--at--mbfcc.com
Thanks. On page 12 of the book, Mark states as follows " Based on this opening range, the A point to enter a long or short position is plotted above or below the opening range, based on set of variables. These variables are based on our own proprietary research, the process of which i wont share with you"
Osho, look, he said primarily because they change their A values constantly. The book was written like 9 years ago. Whatever A value he could have put in the book, he would have changed them 100 times since then. Markets change and your values have to reflect that. I think he used a poor choice of words there and he admitted to me so much in person. It was never to imply it was a secret number.
He calculates the values based on a % of the ATR, so it does constantly change, just not by much usually.. You can get a free 30 day trial to his material through his website, you can start by using that to get a feel for how its calculated. I have been using this method for both stocks (I wrote a spreadsheet to calcuate teh values automatically by getting the historical open, high, low, close), and emini's. Seems to work pretty well, but like Mav said there has to be volatility. Also you still have to trade it correctly, you can't just pay the offer at the Aup or hit the bids at the Adown, its just your trading bias as long as it spends TIME above, below those values.
I found this quote on their web page. " A good approximation of the current "A" value for any stock, would be to take 30 day average range (h-l) and use 20-25% of this value. This is quite confusing to me .Can you help me please- where can I find h-l values for 30 days ? This much appreciated. Thanks
Just create an excel spreadsheet. Osho, again, please don't put so much value on absolute levels, trading does not work like that unfortunately or we would all be billionaires. There is a lot of software out there that will calculate ATR's for you. In fact it is standard on just about every retail platform.
Agreed, you can just create and excel spreadsheet that will grab the data from the historical page off of Yahoo finance. FWIW I have had to change the % from time to time, because of my trading timeframe. Also personally I play inplay stocks, and the risk that he would give is much more then the risk I give. If a stock makes an A up and I get in at a good price, I won't give it to B as he suggests (because the OR is usually larger then normal if the stock has news, earnings ect..), again its just my bias for a trend at that point. The trades I find most effective are the rubberband trades, Lateday Pivot C trades, Pivot first hour high/low. I also try to pay attention to where I might catch people leaning the wrong way (Mav has posted some good videos with Mark where he explains that), thats mainly in my emini's though. Again its just a bias though for a trend. (Mav you know way more then I do about ACD, so please correct me if I'm wrong)