Speaking of "second entry" and "trap", you can also extrapolate these same principles to continuation and failure of a given trend. If you think about it, all REVERSALS are merely a failure of the existing or continuing trend (it also ties in with HL and LH that I've mentioned earlier). Now, whether you take the first or the second entry largely depends on the rate of failure.
Whoever tells you that is able to identify a trend with a 5 min chart is full of shit. You struggle to identify a trend because it is almost impossible to identify it. TA will never be able to identify a trend in advance. It will tell you that a trend happened, in the past, while you are no longer able to trade it. Use those HL and LH and you will be following the day trader misery.
Anyone who can't recognize a trend on a 5 minute chart or any other time frame doesn't know what he is doing. Everyone starts in the dark, some emerge and some don't.
There is no a-ha moment, only the simple fact that the financial markets are a wealthy persons game, the world discusses trading actively, it is designed to fail unless you sit under the benchmark, that used to be 15-20%, today it’s 7-10% otherwise you are providing a service never mentioning nor understanding this fact. The only way to make real money in the markets is to passively trade and invest, how do you do that, when you come from a wealthy background, worked in wealthy environments, learnt to protect capital across generations you might understand, but probably not and there are very few people to teach it, those are rare skills to possess which everyone discounts to zero because they truly believe its not required. Above trend active trading and investing has been arbitraged out, I knew this a long time ago but it takes a lot of effort to remove the active elements from life, after all, that’s how the world makes its buck and are not going to give up without a fight, hence wars starting to erupt over the world creating “activity” and “volatility”, fine if you can harness its energy, not so good if you can’t.
What was your "a-ha!" moment? When I was able to trust my indicators… At the time of writing , the S&P was trading at 4355.0 My real-time analysis is…. Day Trade ---------- 0.999914 / 0.0002296 = 4,355.0 Swing Trade---------- 50.59 / 0.011616 = 4,355.1 Position Trade ------ 0.444375041 / 0.000102038 = 4,354.9 Price Stress Tested --- 0.775174556 / 0.000177996 = 4,355.0 The Technical Analysis is out of the box..... The charts are mind blowing....
I don't think that's a fair assessment. If you were careful in observing the charts that I've posted above (in response to the same poster you're replying to), you would see that I've accurately predicted a reversal just before it (actually they) happened. So the poster specifically stated... And these are the charts I've posted in response... And the reversal happened soon afterward as you can see Then another reversal
Another example of a good use of TA. Explain the past, but never the future. If you know what is going to happen you can make up your point beautifully. Pretty much like every TA acolyte does. Now pick current data and post your analysis live, open a post on the journal section and apply these HL, LH as it is now, and tell everyone what is going to happen in a few hours. Pick, for example, the NQ futures market. Post your trades live as they are in the moment. Would you do that? You can bring your mate Speedo to do the analysis. Let's see how accurate you are. Actually I can do better, I can open the post myself, set a challenge and see who is able to pass it. Let's see those predictions as a running trade.
LMAO. There has been NOBODY on this forum who has posted more live trades than me. And I ain't making this up. Seriously, have you never visited the ES Journal section? I've been posting real time trades since 2007. Here's my most recent trade with a comment on what I predict for tomorrow: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/es-journal-2023-2024.371508/page-574#post-5879113 Would I do that? Could I do that? Can I do that? You bet your ass I can. (Dude, you're shameless.)
BTW those charts you see above isn't about the PAST. It described what would happen, namely, it would reverse shortly. And that's what exactly happened.