JBWTrader

Yeah I made the mistake once of jumping down a guy on here who I thought was selling something...it turned out he had a lot of experience and I made myself look like a fool... I am trying to learn from that experience !! lol.. I was too quick to judge...it can happen hey... All the Best John

Geez guys you have a way of piling on the new experienced guy...I have seen this on a couple of other occassions too. From my point of view RM686 has been upfront, personal and honest about what he wrote.. Lets cut him some slack and welcome him rather than jumping down his throat...okay ?! Best John

All good points Jonbig04 you raise some good points...eg consistency, profitability, Also its a struggle to define what is a real edge....too many people have different ideas on this... Certainly an edge linked to the outcome of consistent profits over time is very important... Oh and thanks for ya edge ! to tell you the truth I started out looking at horizontal S/R , confluence's etc....at reading price....I found that this was difficult for me to follow...perhaps I didnt believe in it...doesnt mean it doesnt work...but I struggled... I would say you have a lot more discipline than me though JohnBig04...! I have read your journal and I admire your sticking to the rules you have found... yeah thats right where is "where" exactly and does a defined edge help us answer that... All the Best John

Hi Rigel Just to comment on what you wrote ...I personally havnt seen a true edge on this site or any site for that matter....there's a lot of great wisdom and theory but as far as edges go there is not a lot here.. of course I could be wronggg... !! Edges are hard to define in my opinion and even rarer to come across in a consisent manner on anything public...if at all... And for someone sharing a strategy of true edge on here is very , very unlikely....but you never know hey ! All the Best John

Fascinating stuff mate... Not boring at all but very very interesting....thanks for sharing that.. Yes I agree with you re the programming...I take my hat off to you for going down that route... I really appreciate you taking the time to post this history and personal journey.....great stuff all the Best John

Hey RM686 thats a lot of experience....you dont meet many like you on such sites... If I dont mind me asking but what style of trading do you use and what changes have you seen over the years in the markets you trade...? All the Best John

Hi Chris thanks for the replies mate. I think it was I who missunderstood....you are actually all in at first. For some reason I thought you added...I missread your chart. Sorry mate. I know a low 7 figure profit trader p.a. who adds in small to start with and when proven right he adds a lot more in... I was starting to think this was a common pattern with successful traders... but it is not...as you have proven !! there are many ways to skin profits as long as it fits in the plan. Well done and thanks for sharing Chris, and to the others here of course !! All the Best John

Hi Bathrobe Mate they are some srious size contracts you are trading...if you dont mind me asking how long have you been trading for ? I found it interesting on the first set how you started with 1 contract and kept adding and then you seemed pretty sure of something and then went for it....I like that approach... well done all the Best John

It wasnt me was it mate ? !! lol.... Best John

Lets see Tams, Good Abstract question. i thought I'd give it a go.... Well I guess one could say a moving average is just a function with its input as price/time and its output has the same dimension ie price/time but the result only slightly related to the actual last price/time data transaction. One can even drop time from this sentence... The other ie the 5 min candle and is an accumualtion of price point displacements and hence the total displacement is captured over 5 mins.....Displacement I dont believe shows context very well....ie where price has been within that candle (this is important IMHO) I would say he is teaching a variant of true Price action.... Well price action for me is just data points over time of where the "market" came together at offer and acceptance of Price. How this data is then manipulated and then used is open to a lot of interpretation.. There are many ways to slice data and of course accumulate it...Candles are just one method to aggregate(smooth) data as are moving averages .... So conclusion is he is not teaching true price action but I guess he is teaching a method of smoothing/agregating the data and then applying some principle to this aggregated/smoothing data of price...to come to a conclusion about the future... I guess one of the purposes to your question was to define what is price action....thinking out loud this is not very easy for me... Price action is the last space/time Market transaction and it is also all the previous ones leaving a print ...can the previous ones help determine where the next one will be ? I will leave this for the smarter ones out there... So in my conclusion I would say That techinically he will not be able to show where the next transaction will be in the future using those "tools" unless he has found a method that shows where in the future price has its true highest probability of being next with them...maybe there is something he is not telling us.... Best John sorry I rambled a bit here..

Yes I understand that completely...in fact I would say thats the best attitude one can have towards more open learning... You will be surprised how quick you will pick it up...the people on here are very helpful and respectful towards those that want to learn...as you were on Forexfactory... All the Best Peter and good luck John

Hey Peter I have seen you over at Forexfactory a lot over the last three years. Welcome aboard mate as your contributions there have always been very helpful and respectful. All the Best John

For you and me John we may get close to 30-65% of getting the direction right. For the more sophisticated and well funded Algos/Bots it is a much higher %. I agree with you no one trader will get close to predicting the Price movement. What I am getting at is that there are well funded drivers of the market who dont need to know where price is going but have the power to do so...their traces are found in Volume and price and other data approximations. No one formulae can track these guys as they have access to many at any moment. Best John

I am a little ignorant on Volume, but I understand price movement pretty well. I actually believe that price movement and why it goes where it goes has very, very precise reasons. In fact the better funded algos/bot's know well ahead of time where price is going next and why.... the rate of change of this movement I do not understand except that price is tracking itself along several fractal ratios and hence when a certain fractal is lagging behind in time and or position , Price will accelerate to catch it up. Same in reverse when one or more fratal ratios are behind in time/position. Now given The majors know where Price is going it will use volume to get there ie to overcome obstacles, to acclerate Price or deaccelerate price even to within one tick of where they want to take it. Even though there are fractals of price in clear visual ratios it(not so clear when first looking as one has to find the common "pattern repeated across all frames of reference) makes to think that there must be these ratios also present in Volume (as Spydertrader alluded me to). Bear with me re this thinking..I am investigating this so it is raw... If Price knows where it is going next and hence why then it needs fuel to get there. The fuel is volume...the rate of change of Price is linked somewhat to Volume how much volume is needed per unit of Price seems to vary and not always in a linear way (and visa versa ie a unit of volume can vary with Price). Now as I understand it to using perhaps a poor analogy , when a car (Price) has a plan of where it wants to go from A to B it needs gas (Volume). There are times when the car (Algo driver (s)) need it to go faster and/or slower and this is a function of quite a few things eg Road conditon and obstacles, tyres and traction, and power all could be explained in terms of buying and selling pressure and the short to medium goals of Price ie intention. Hence Price is linked to Volume and volume to Price. At this stage in my learning I would say that it doesnt matter which leads which...its like another analogy...A gun with bullets...the gun is price and the bullets are volume...the gun has a person who knows where to aim Price and has only so many bullets to fire...on the other side of the fence is another person with a gun who is firing back. Who is going to win..? one could say the one with the most bullets...however one could argue that its not the number of bullets but the number of shooters/guns on either side that have the same intentions that will win the short term war...this I guess plays over and over again in the markets... Deriving Price volume relationships that are clear and can be used for trading I have only seen from Urmablume's work and Db's. I know they would argue that Volume and its marks are very important to study. One can make money from Price alone and from volume alone. I have personally found that the rate of price change to the rate of change of volume is defintely not linear and hence more complex types of relationships exist between the two. How much gas or bullets get used to achieve ones goal matters only to the bigger players IMHO. The smaller guys have to pick a side and hangon by wheelsucking the best we can... Again this was more an exploratory post. Nothing should be taken as concrete or valid. These are my thoughts thus far on Price and Volume... I guess I have said Price alone has an intention but can volume ? This is what I am thinking about now...I guess its the algos that have the intentions and volume and Price are the outcomes of these intentions....Ill keep thinking on this...Thanks for the discussion. All the Best John

ThalesTrader tell your Daughter well done !! and regardless what happens in the future she has a pretty big fan base building. Best John

Hi SpyderTrader Your last post I found very interesting...I can spot the Price fractals and estimate their ratios and have spotted the common repeatable pattern but given your statement that Volume leads price this would also mean those (maybe different in nature also) fractal patterns also exist in volume and actually proceed the price fractals. Very interesting indeed....I have been focussing soley on the price fractals.. Something else to look at so thanks very much for that. Best John

VTK go to the CME website to look at the emini contracts etc Then I reccommend doing Sim trading for as long as it takes. ie until you prove you have an edge...can you prove this with your setups ? if not you will flitter your money away fast... Best John

Well researched Blowfish. Best John

Yes its a tough and very frustrating situation to be in...what is frustrating is that you had a theory and it didnt pan out the way you thought....hence the "answer" of how price actually works comes into question...yet again... The chasing is an attempt not to miss out...ie we feel abandoned by the market and thus in turn we abandon ourselves by leaving our rational/system and hence chase price to recconnect ... The chasing of price is an attempt to stem the unpleasant feelings we experience when we recieve that narcissistic blow that we dont know why price moved against at that point in time. Its at this moment when we truly want something to happen and it doesnt that makes us all truly vunerable as these states are an old replay of what happened to us well before we ever thought of taking up trading. To break this pattern you have to start to feel the comulsive nature to it...the wanting to grab or push your idea onto the market. We all at some stage try to force the market to mirror our needs. When it doesnt we get very angry/frustrated. When you go down deeper about this you will see a form a mixed feelings...like a chaos...to stop ourselves from experiencing this type of state we sort of automatically grab for the first thing we think about or even the first thing we see...if you practice seeing this chaos more and more it starts to change and the automatic , comulsive side will start to abade...Hence the more conscious one is of this the better one is able to stick the ones rules and not identify with where the markets at. Instead one can stay centered and detached from it and play the game from ones own perspective. All the Best John

Welcome 1pipatatime ! then you are indeed a lucky man ! (I am assuming here ! lol...) In my Opinion this is this best site out there to connect to fellow traders in a respectable manner on a public forum. Use the search funtion to start looking around... What do you trade downunder ? Catch you later mate All the Best John

Thanks very much Blowfish and Micro. That helps and there is some good ideas there Blowfish so thanks again mate ! all the Best John

Actually Blowfish , JJF and Tams I was wondering myself how to search for highest volatility and biggest dollar bang per tick and hence which markets therefore to trade best with these two things in mind. I could imagine a volatility index ie VIX setup for a lot of different markets to show what is the most volatile at any time. Is there any other way to lock into the right market quickly to take advantage of its volatility and bang per tick ? Thanks guys All the Best John

Me too, 5 stars given, but you really dont deserve it Tams....lol...

Trading is something to do while we wait to die....

Its a good question. One I constantly ask myself.. I guess one answer is ..."As long as it takes.." The unknown is always painful... All the Best John