Some posts back, several people talked about emotions. Yes YES, I'm a nwb so I understand. I literally took the plunge 2.5 weeks ago. I had only one losing day, the first entirely due to emotions. I debriefed myself right thru the night until I identified the problem and simplified where to look for things. I had one realization on how to catch a trend. Essentially, if I act timely, then I wind up finding myself in the trend and thus only 2 conditions need only apply, either things are changing or continuing. Profitability everyday ever since. On my charts I had to make a visual adjustment so that I could believe what I saw and quiet the chaos somewhat. Check my attachment for visual. I've been told to be a wordy person so I'll try and sum up how I regard finding the trends. Check out the attacment... All 3 tell the same amount of information, one just does it cleaner and all of the trendline rules apply, left, right diagonal, etc... I still haven't worked out congestion but when I'm there, I scratch (for very, very small loss) or wash out.... Check out the PV stuff on the cleanest, it's great.
I essentially identify change by looking at the MACD (5/13/6). It is a nearly exact replica of the price movement (ie, it paralles the price movement). If not, like a camera, I refocus the zoom (tick period) until the graph becomes as sharp as possible (scalpers tend to distort images so I limit there vantage to a single tick bar). Once they align, the indicators are synched to the data. The point of change is a derivative thingy. If there's a valley or peak on the macd(5/13/6) blue line, I'm in trend change mode. YES, everyone will probably say, I'm one bar too late. Who cares, there's several bars of profits up ahead. Look at the distance between the peaks and troughs, they are alot greater than the congestion periods. For continuation, I look at macd as it is continuing to head either towards a trough or valley. Throw this in wealthlab and you'll be stunned. Should the blue macd line stop heading towards a valley and change to head to a trough, I check Stoch to see if it's ok to change and if so, I follow allong with this clear change signal. Do this for a couple of days and you will see that your staying with the trend. Not an ace, but racking up the points when they're moving. The Stoch is the overruling item that says, "the asset is trending", stay with the trend until it breaks out of the extremes above/below 80/20. Right there, this will put you on a more rewarding perspective. Work in volume and you're ahead of the beat. It's mind blowing when you see this work for one day.... After 2 days, my emotions were all excitement even in momentary losing positions. Right now, I regard congestion as frequent troughs and valleys within a short period, because I'm new, I just get out of the way. I'm sure there's a way to handle thi$ profitably.
Hi makosgu. Could you please explain the difference between the "Cleanest" and "Cleaner" charts. They both appear to be 125 tick charts of the same security over the same period, yet there are slight differences. Are they due to different data providers (is this possible with QT)? Just curious. Thanks.
my publically posted record, since 2000, speaks for itself. your one day challenge means nothing in realworld trading.
No Problem. GLAD TO EXPLAIN.... Before I get flamed for these things, I want to say that I noted one thing about indicators. They operate (note I didn't say work) on the last tick of the bar. Truth of the matter is that no individual tick should be regarded so highly when the entire bar is constructed from a whole series of ticks from open to close. To me, I treat each bar like beginning and end of day effects, I want to be unbiased. Sure you can weight them one way or another but who cares when you're continually acting in a timely manner. Ride the trend, if you're trigger happy, ride the trend of a faster tick period (ie 25 ticks/bar). If you google for Heikin-Ashi, he had a neat approach to trick our trading apps to color both price and volume bars (red/green) so as to simplify the visual action. The cleanest chart is just showing the tick bars with the Heikin-Ashi open/close variant. A number of posters may possibly proclaim there's lag, what about scalps, etc... I chose this time frame because there are several huge block orders there that were not optimally executed. As often as I have seen these poorly executed blocks (trades greater than the size of the level 2 tier), it has not once altered the direction of the market. True, liquidity is a huge factor here but why be in something illiquid anyway. In any event, I truly hope this helps. If your on QT, just enable the Heikin-Ashi thigy under chart type, my data feed is IQFeed for all cases. My point is to ease ppl into some visual comfort since I'm certain visual distortion is hindering many to just hit trade. I'm somewhat of a quirky person and new how to remove this hindrance, it did take all night to locate, but I presume it was necessary.
Thanks makosgu. Nope, no flames from me Always willing to read/hear someone else views and learn something from their experiences. I wasn't looking at the indicators, I was looking purely at price action. Heikin Ashi on tick charts? Interesting, I am going to check this out, thanks for sharing. That would explain the difference between the 125tick charts. Cheers.