BoyBrutus, Ya I read the WTF journal and liked the way he was annotating his charts so borrowed some of the aesthetics and introduced some of my own. His price action analysis though is quite different, he is mostly looking for failed double bottoms and failed double tops on proven support or resistance. Seems to work for him but the risk is far too wide for me to handle, I come from the Anek school, small stops and let PA take you out. My entry method I borrowed from the great Stealth Trader, commonly known as 3 bar reversal. As far as your question, I missed it in real time, the PA just did not register, when it did, I found an opportunity to enter so I did. I'm sure you agree that PA analysis after the fact and in real time are two different entities. My brain just does not work as fast, or perhaps is the pressure or distraction from the past bars. Rest assured, I'm constantly working on this to improve on a daily basis. Thank you I will also be looking forward to your input and charts. Susana
Good luck with your trading and the journal. It may prove to be beneficial to others; besides being a good read for once.....
Oh, you suffer from that as well On that 14:54 pullback you notice that the ES just breaks that low 1253.75 by a tick, I see that often, then you see the big buy volume (prints on the ask come in) which is a good confirmation at S/R. *yellow is prints above ask
Here's an issue i'm running into this afternoon as I do a bunch of replays: My trading plan (as close to ahg1 as i can get it) is to follow the trend on the anchor (10kv for NQ). On two days that I've replayed today, the anchor is in a super strong uptrend - with no pullbacks. My plan requires a good-sized pullback on the anchor in order for me to enter (on the reversal on the entry chart [1kv on NQ]). What do you do when anchor doesn't pullback? Do you start buying pullbacks on the entry? The risk here is that whenever you see the entry chart pulling back, you're expecting the pullback to be large (representing the long-awaited pullback on the anchor). So I can't start buying pullbacks on the entry. What's the score?
No volume usage, except for whatever you can gather from the volume based bars, too discretional and I've proven to myself I don't need it in my trading. For the record, I use two things, price and horizontal lines, I don't even use trendlines. Susana
shortorlong, I only use one chart for trading, the 10,000 volume, if I need to see which areas are extremely significant, I adjust a few weeks back, sometimes a few months back, but that is all that I require. In fact, I start the trading day with the most important areas of support and resistance marked via horizontals, recent and not so recent in case we decide to test them. All my trading is done with one big LCD the rest is for recreation and order placement and for that I use a laptop. The quintessential key here is never to predict only to react to these important levels but for that we must do our own homework before the trading day commences and to be fully aware of where these areas of support and resistance are located so we can concentrate on price without letting the past disturb our concentration. At least in my case. As a last comment, you have absolutely no bias, it's all about how price decides to behave when it faces those significant points. We have the power to buy, short or do nothing, that's a great power to have and no preference should be taken except for when price tells us it is time to do one of the three. Hope I did not babble too much, just expanding a bit of what I look for. Susana
Hi All, Thank you Susana for starting this thread. I'll throw out a chart of the NQ last Friday AM. Any and all comments welcome. 3 short trades, 2 winners 1 breakeven. The breakeven trade is the second one; as price almost hit the target, stop was lowered to the entry and consequently hit. Initial target is 3 points and stop is -2.5 points. Entries are stop limit orders placed 1 tick below the low of the last bar. Trades based on price action and resistance (support) at obvious price levels. Question: How do you determine the trend? And, thank you to anyone who is willing to put in some thoughts. ET is a great resource for all of us wanting to learn more. Shel
Shel, I'm not so much a trader of highs and lows, although they definitely play a huge role in my analysis. My main definition of the trend, if any, is who's winning the flipping game. You might ask yourself, what is the flipping game, well it's simple. Are resistances becoming supports, or are supports becoming resistances ? The answer will give you the trend, sometimes, regardless of highs and lows because as you well know, a consolidation or chop can give you false swings and confuse you. Susana