Bro BSAM, thanks much for your kind words. You nailed it, the charts/patterns are a compass! They do predict for me which direction to trade But they do not predict where price will go. That part of it cannot never be predicted with certainty. An aspiring trader once asked me several times how I "knew" price was going to my profit target on a trade. It certainly looked rather ugly and improbable at the hard right edge when I called the trade. I kept saying that I didn't know price would go there. All I knew with certainty was that it was a pattern I decided I would trade whenever I saw it because more often than not price would go at least as far as my minimum acceptable target. In fact, these setups usually look ugly and improbable at the right edge and that's why those who haven't mastered PA/TA trading always say that we can only call trade setups after the fact, because they wouldn't touch these setups with a 10 foot pole in real time. But we would and we do and we can call them in advance (which many of us have on ET - cornixforex, geez, EONkid, me, to name a few). And we have NO IDEA what price will do after we're positioned. But that just isn't important.
Marketsurfer, Nodoji (Donna) is take some time to support your fumbling around to get to an answer for you. She is correct; you are not. Van Tharp is crap. What you think is compelling is from a guy who treats people who need help. His teatments do not solve their problems simply because he does not know what the problems are. think about getting out of tripple A ball while you are young enough. Read Dodd/Granville. Look at the context they worked in and how they solved the riddle you can't solve. Reread. Continuous functions and their statistical equivalents do NOT work. There is NO COIN FLIP, EVER. Read all of Donnna's posts. Hilite them and go slowloy forward. Read how acruary (sp) solved his problems.
Have you had to change your method at all over them 13 years? I hope people are wrong when they say that you need to keep finding new ways to beat the market. Is one expected to live off of fresh air and have no income whilst they develop their next edge? (assuming they do) I hope that a consistently profitiable method based on priceaction should continue to work and can't see why it'd suddenly stop
I filter people. I look for people who can think rationally and use the maths of the market. They can grow to understand the pieces and put the pieces together. I spent 5 hours with people today who could call every turn. they are all ages and they come from any walk of life. It was a ball. They all have a 5 or 6 page cheat sheet. They know how to use it bar by bar. Would you like me to post the sheets? No, you do not want to see or use them. Marketsurfer thinks a book might be written.........wow..... Do you think a book will be written> No, you would not use it. Do you think there was a quickie today? No, you do not do quickies. there is no risk in trading. you think there is. Cool. how could there ever be risk? answer: Traders do NOT know that they know. BUT some do know that they know all the time. They have to be filtered out or in. People self select to be in.
Thanks for the reply, Sister ND. Nothing guarantees where price will go because we can never know all the factors in any given market. But, like you indicate, we can have a very good idea, based on experience. Again, I appreciate your participation in this thread.
Please do Yes i would What are the 'quikies'? I`m in. Jack,if you dont answer my questions,i`ll have to complain that you are fooling around with people`s time and nerves,and cheat people.
When I first started out trying to figure out how to trade the market my intention was to try and figure out a consistent approach that didn't just involve taking advantage of some inefficiency that could be arbed away or that a structural change wouldn't eliminate. My premise about the mkts was that they present opportunities everyday and that it would present signals that would alert me to optimal situations. Only problem was.....I had no idea what to look for! I literally spent almost 2 years and 18 hrs a day working through charts, forming market relationships, tearing those relationships down and starting over, forming more, tearing more down etc etc etc. I did this enough and had enough screen time to where I figured out a structure by which the mkt operates by. Everyday is different but everyday is also the same with regards to the signals provided. I noticed that as long as I kept up with the action, I was able to find a trade or two a day that worked like clockwork. From there, my rule set grew. I haven't changed anything with regards to the premise or rule set. Only thing I've changed is sizing up and refining the subjective exits. More experience, better exits during midday grind or during summer slow months etc. So I guess to answer your question, I believe there are approaches out there that are meant to make money so long as an inefficiency or advantage exist (perhaps a prop firm has better routes to more liquidity). But if you approach learning how to read PA, I'm confident that if you do that well, you won't have to adapt to changing conditions. So long as humans are running the show (even the HFT programs), we should be ok. Artificial intelligence, well no idea about how that may change things.
no one who is using a complete system has to ever change it. systems do not come and go, ever. If your system is incomplete go to the site: Behavioral Finance. when there print: "BF or BS" Five simple tasks are described. they define "iterative refinement". you trade your system. You see it let you down. you review your notes on what happened. you make SMALL ADJUSTMENTS to IMPROVE your SYSTEM. Two things are going on. Completeness is absent. Priorities are not in balance. here is an example. You have two mutually exclusive subsets. this is two mutually exclusive sets of quantifiable criteria. All of a system is codable and it is used repeatedly. you find out, finally, that you need to reverse the order of application of these two sets. You see that the coding you did does not handle the Order of subsets of testing properly. you simply set up the assurance that your tests criteria in sepate not overlaping testing is done in the proper order. Here is a person who says I can not add another contract. I have 6 contracts running and I make 6K a month. reread "BF or BS". A fear is being expressed. the fear is a RISK fear. This FEAR says that a condition circumstance or situation can arise that can damage the capitalization. capitalization has to be preserved. BF says to iteratively refine. first step: always get out of the market when you do not know what is going on. can redneck tell donna this? No he can't. He has other fears that override so he cannot get to self testing his skills or knowledge. how do you get to the place where you can examine YOU? first you find out where and when you need to examine yourself. Look at marketsurfer refusing to examine himself. He puts me on ignore. Good he does not read what I say. He just get self tuanted subjunctively...over and over. he has no signal ...... good luck.