start the day by finding the normal offset. I make a vertical cahart with several columns. On left are ten point values of the cash In next column I write a price at a moment in time. In third column I note the offest In fourth column I note points of Squeese if any. This is value of normal offset minus the current offset if current offset is smaller than normal. This is a signal to go long. The reason is this: smart money in the index front runs the cash values. You and I think in the opposite manner. You think that the cash moves before the index. I think the index moves before the cash. It is just a difference of opinion. One of us is correct and one of us is wrong. About the same ratio of winners to losers exists for my view compareded to your view. Another ratio that is the same is those who think I am wrong compared to those who agree with me usually. Your view is with the vaste majority. In trading a lot of people would rather be right than be rich. About 4 out of 5, it seems. In the fifth column I note points of stretch, if any. This is value of normal offset minus the current offset if current offset is smaller than normal. This is a signal to go long. The reason is this: smart money in the index front runs the cash values. After a short while I change color of ball point. What my chart tells me is how much squeese is necessary for a long trend to begin and conversely what kind of stretch is necessary for a short trend to begin. It carries over from day to day. when I mentor aftr awhile it turn this over to theperson learning withh the proviso that he say "squeese" or "stretch" the millisecond that he sees it. Soon he is able to hit T on the index he is trading that LAGS the smart money on YM and DJ. This kind of trading is referred to front running same-side traders. What you are doing is very neat and important. You miraculously sort of are cogently discovering a detail of the market that is known to almost no one until it is explained to them. This is a volume measure in the final analysis (monitoring and analysis). But that is OT here. The minor problem that you are having with your insightful dicovery of squeese and strech is that because you have come to believe another set of truthhs than the real ones, you use your new found knowledge to dig a deeper more conscious hole in the world of market myths. Too bad. Obviously I am a messenger. The tradition in ET is to shoot the messenger. If you made ten charts over ten days, you would find that when you wake up in the morning after a chart each day, more and more doubts would arise. If you journalled those doubts as doubts and beagan to show yourself why you feel funny, then you might reread or debrief yourself on the topic that came up. gradually you will begin to counter the present myths you believe with the real truths. Both will stay in your mind and the one you have known the longest keeps an advantage for quite a while. It never goes away. You can see that getting of on the feet you chose is going to be with you always. as it turns out either the tangle or the journalling to rid yourself of doubts will prevail. Another recently told me he meant to post the right thing but just did it backwards by mistake. It was respect to how the bid/ask works for determining market direction. I assume he made a typing error because he said he did. But I do know from other postings, he has a lot of myths to deal with since he agrees with others who share the same myths. He may be in denial type place or a suppression condition to eliminate the tangle that is building up for him. Funny story eh??... 10 sheets is the cure because you yourself can figure out what the answer is.
Thank you very much Grob! I´m gonna dig deeper into this. Not being used to futures I have studied YM for two months now almost daily without trading, just trying to get a grip on how the market behaves. I feel that this is more important than playing around with indicators as many people seem to do. I´ve changed my view about whats happening about a hundred times so far, so I can change opinion again. ..
Recap of trade: got long at 10442 after the low of 10435 was made. I worked the order and was filled when the market dropped back down to me. I was looking for a spurt to around 10470. The price stalled around 10460 and I got out at 10457. The Elite trader clock seems to be slow by about 1 1/2 minutes. Bob