I am in agreement with cdc on this particular quote, I'm afraid to say. It really says nothing to me that I don't already know. The important bit that the author should have concentrated on, IMHO, is the understanding of what the flows exactly are and why they're occurring at any given time. As to your analogy above, I am somewhat sympathetic except that there's waaaaay too many contemplative statements and observations out there to treat them all like mining sites. You've seen jack hershey's posts? Imagine if one were to treat every one of his "pearls of wisdom" like you suggest above and look for some deep significance hidden within his deranged drivel. In no time, one would become a "jack hershey"-like raving loon.
Sometimes I wonder why any trader would write a book about trading. Unless you are keen to give away the details of your trading methods, it will always be too superficial for some, and probably the most informed, readers. That is, unless you make it really anecdotal and entertaining, like "Reminiscences". One of the main problems, it seems to me, is that everyone knows "in general" how to succeed at trading. "Buy low, sell high", "Cut your losses and let your winners run", "Only take high-probability [or, "high expected value"] set-ups" and all that. The devil is in the details and "details" just can't be given away for the price of a book. In the case of that particular quote, the author may have built a model which provides an "understanding of what the flows exactly are and why they're occurring at any given time", but getting that info will cost you extra.
I think this is a discussion that we've had already on another thread. I expressed similar sentiment, but people were not very "receptive" to my way of thinking, to put it mildly. So you might be asking for trouble here...
"Trouble" is my middle name No, I can see what you mean by that when you say people aren't receptive to the idea. Also, there are some people who can read a book, take a high-level concept and then build their own implementation of it. I personally did that with a book I read which stated a concept in broad terms, which I then took and tested against a specific market and found that I could do better in that market by following my own implementation of the idea than the author was doing following his. So, it's not impossible to take a high-level statement in a book and work out a detailed method, it's just that you have to do the work, the author isn't going to do it for you and you run the risk of never being able to make it work. One of my favorite trading books is "The Logical Trader" by Mark Fisher. I'm not a follower of his and I have my own version of "logical trading", but it's probably the best book on trading out there in the public domain. It is over 200 pages long, fairly detailed and comprehensive and yet Mr. Fisher still held enough detail out to enable him to sell a subscription service for close to $2,000/year, which is about 40 times the cost of the book itself, if bought new. So, point is that he clearly thinks that what he left out of the book is 40 times as valuable (and that's for only 1 year) as what he put in. How anyone can deny that trading books are relatively worthless without the follow-on service subscription is beyond me. And if that's the case, even more worthless are quotes pulled out of trading books.
Wouldn't it be easier to just say that the less interrupted and farther a market moves in a given direction, the easier it is to see a break, and the larger the break or correction will likely be when it finally occurs? Perhaps I'm missing some "flow" nuance here, and while I don't think that's the precise point the fellow wishes to make, that's how it probably washes out in the end.
No, because not all strongly trending markets are susceptible to large breaks on a cessation of immediate inflows. There are situations where the fundamentals are experiencing a gradual rate of change that matches the trend, in which quiet periods may lead to flatline but not sharp decline.
Re, "what the author should have concentrated on" - well that's why the quote was worth thinking about in the first place, no? To ponder such possibilities for yourself? Well sure. You have to have a quality filter, and you also have to limit the amount of time spent on the act of contemplating in general. Too much of it is a bad thing, just like too much of virtually any good thing - protein, exercise, sleep, sex, confidence, information - becomes a bad thing. Back and forth that winds up pointing this stuff out, I should add, is not a bad thing or a waste of time (in my opinion) but a helpful value add, in terms of again underscoring the usefulness of important fundamentals. To speak generally, it increases wisdom. Or at least it can, for those receptive to such with the goal of such.
There are many different reasons why traders write, speak, share, or otherwise communicate rather than stay silent. The best reason, though, is to do it for yourself. (This is not a simple response. Think about it before taking the black and white interpretation of what that might mean.) Also, re, what everybody knows "in general"... does it not strike you as a rich irony, then, given how much everyone generally "knows," how "everyone" is generally shitty at trading? Perhaps "everyone" (meaning +90% of the trading population) are doing some very important things wrong, on a level that goes deeper than not following the right trading rule... and perhaps one of those things, in a "general" sense, is being content with superficial level understanding and not digging deeply enough... or even really understanding what going deeper might mean (because they haven't made the effort... or because they pursued holy grails instead of real understanding and wound up in Jack Hershey Hell...) And what is more valuable anyway? The insight that is spoon fed in the form of a complete answer, or the insight that makes you dig yourself and make your own "a-ha!' connections? Is it always better to be served your food on a plate, than to hunt and and kill and cook for yourself? 'The wise man thinks what is easy is hard." I don't know where that came from, but it's one of my favorites. Again probably because you really have to think about it... there's that word again