zdo

after they said dropping me on my head and leaving me to lick up my own after b didn't seem to affect me... well That explains EVERYTHING The traders did not grow up to be the social traders that flock together. They distanced themselves from the herd and become isolated and posted alot. :rofl:

re EW in general Like macD, I also went through an Elliott phase and also had some amazing, windfall ‘Elliott’ trades at the beginning, then… Over the years my favorite author on the subject is definitely Glenn Neely. However, your education will not be complete without some deep study of some of the other greats – Zoran Gayer and Dominick Mazza, to name a couple (of, unfortunately for us, dead guys). Some of my more cynical thoughts on the subject can be found at Trading Chaos by Bill Williams - Page 2 | Trade2Win Forums with particular emphasis on ‘response # 144’ …response # 377 was fun too… Then one day it hit me – there is not one Elliott Wave pattern (and how it unfolds for real instead of the way it’s ‘supposed’ to) that can not be fully comprehended via the Summation of Cycles principle…

:rofl: stay out of my psychosis ! dude, your bff Trend is a ‘two faced’ (if not a completely multiple headed split personality) deviant. While I have had issues with fighting Trend at some points, as I discussed above, my bigger issue is with Trends’ hypocrisies … :helloooo: Maybe Trend lies less to you than he does to me... Bottom line though – only any given chart, my friend Cycle presents me with many more opportunities than does my friend Trend.

Using Stochastics, Cycles & R.S.I: …to the moment of decision … by George C. Lane is the first practical material on the subject I read... at about the same time I was being exposed to all the articles about how linear cycles don't exist/ work btw. (and it's true - linear cycles are much more reliable for both volatility and volume than they are for price) . This remains the simplest ( just using your eyeballs / no fancy math) book I have on the subject. But first would be JM Hurst’s The Profit Magic of …. book Finally, maybe study Glenn Suprenard’s work at Cycles?? What Cycles? Glenn is an active daytrader who has pulled out the essence and filtered the Hurst techniques down into the shorter time frames (nominal 5 day, whole day, hourly, cycles. etc) I do have all of John Ehlers books but haven’t personally derived much value from them, maybe because I only skimmed them and haven’t really read them ?? These are the only 'large body' cycles publications I have studied…(and be aware GC Lane's book is anything but large) Most of my trading is off my own theories ... these theories don't conflict with the works above, rather they complicate them beyond what is comfortable for most…have also spent time researching and coding various cycle id methods (like Hilbert, etc) have spent most time in research, testing, nn, etc the particular conditions conducive to using 'cycles' ….hth

macD, Haven’t read Future Trends from Past Cycles by Brian Millard, but from looking at the TOC, it looks like an amplification / expansion of JMHurst’s published work. Keeping this on topic... even Hurst blved that trend had more percentage weight on pricing that did cycles

... we have cat that was from day one raised front half by humans (bottle feeding, etc) and back half by dogs (all that licking, etc)... not quite a normal cat, some 'species' issues, and she didn't grow as large a most cats... her name is Harlow

Before we get all painted into corners here, some clarification. While Trend has not been my most trustworthy, faithful friend – it has been a growing friendship. Over the years, we have become closer. Where the bottom line is concerned, my side of the friendship is just as responsible for our results as is Trend’s. Haven't been in fights with Trend across the years as often as I've fallen into that 'don't stay' bias some of us seem to be more susceptible to than others. I've done a lot of work on that... and I’m still working on our overall relationship… btw, Trend will never be a best friend. My bff is Cycle…

I have tried both ypes in the morning and neither are right for me AM. I suspect there are some TCM type reasons... The best time I have found so far is circa 6 PM by an hour or + or -. For me, later than that and the risk of not being able to fall immediately asleep starts to rise. hth

Rande, That sounds genetic, karmic, transpersonal, morphic – all at once! No wonder I’m ‘whelmed. First impulse - find some other content to attend to / flee. / with eye patches not shades I got in touch with an early childhood deprivation memory. I had been in touch with the memory before, particularly of how I reacted to that event as a 4 year old… but this time I got a feel for all the ‘preparation‘ work done before that event that made triggering my subjective response what it was instead of all the alternatives that were actually available but not consciously available to me at the time… Is that the kind of stuff you’re talking about ???

I agree with BigKahuna about all we have are adherent’s later projections on Gann and not much real Gann material. I, too, studied all the published and unpublished Gann material I could get my hands on and after all that study I only occasionally glance at some of his angle stuff with the ags mostly just to see if “by coincidence” … ages and stages ago - my own big 'projection' on what differentiated Gann was that he was an ace at knowing just when to exit. The benefit of that came not from Gann, but from finding my own strengths that were 'hidden' in the projections... Yes you can systematically (with confirmations or not) trade Gann’s various ‘timing’ and time price triggers from his techniques… but you could also do the same just as successfully with something like Sloman's Delta method or etc, etc. And you can take triggers ~x degrees before astrological aspects, etc – something he never mentioned. Why not? I bet he never noticed it. ….Anyways the only valuable Gann work I’ve ever really learned and profited from was from ‘students’ who used his concepts to develop systems and (more telling) his terminology to describe their own systems. For me, an old example of that is Gerald Marisch’s book The W.D. Gann Method of Trading – basic, not so precision oriented, trading techniques with a heavy Gann oriented overlay… The most profitable Gann stuff I have ever used is the Gann Clusters feature on G.E.T.… again Tom Joseph’s idea for this was only inspired by ‘Gann’. He didn’t really use Gann’s angles, etc.

re: "the trend is your friend" ... with friends like that, who needs enemies ? /// ... and which is a better friend for you* ? The trend of your own 'timeframe' or the trend of 1 (or more) 'timeframe(s)' up? * and I say "for you" because it really is system dependent

fxgirl re Big picture... Ideally I would >be impeccably trustworthy. >want the child to feel believed in. >teach by asking questions only - mostly about strengths >address what Rande calls the 'money narrative' > ... Comments The 'neg' of the first two = my blfs would have to be based in truth. If I doubted 'talent' and/or stopped believing in her, the 'course' would be over period...'we're fired' Re" the 'money narrative' At this point I seriously don't have clarity how that would be dealt with. With my own kids, the one who was seemingly most contrary and resistant to the values I was trying to instill has now turned out the one most aligned to the attitudes I was trying to 'teach'. Leaves me confused. Maybe Rande or others have suggestions. Now that I think about it, I don't for sure know what 'money narrative' is. My feel for it is that I've been through 3 or 4 of them so far in life, but none of them have been explicit. Maybe I could just google 'money narrative' and find out what the heck he's talking about... Hey I gave it a shot fxgirl And, to be real, that was all ideally. In real life, I must admit I would likely often go old school and dish up a pile of judging and fussing...:doh:

Nature. Less than 20 of the thousands of applicants were hired. “Dennis’s hiring process … given the nature of the interview and questions asked it was clear certain characteristics were required of potential turtles.” He was looking for specific talents and inclinations. Had the experiment been with a statistically significant sample of randomly chosen, non biased subjects – then we could do some heavy leaning to the nurture side… Also, I would say Dennis did not train / ‘nurture’ real traders. He enrolled wetware agents to leverage his own activities – activities that can also be handled by software agents as you mentioned. While he won the short term bet, in the long term the experiment really wasn’t that successful. Only a small handful of the Turtles really made it. A pretty large percentage of the originals subsequently failed /blew up. Most of them moved on - it was a job they didn't really like - because the method wasn’t true to their nature. Put 10,000 traders out on a field and only a very small group of them will be true trend followers in their very nature. I personally know one of the ‘Turtles’. He was with Dennis from 84 to 88 and then left to go on his own. He did very well – but only because true trend trading is in his very nature. I’ve asked him about this several times and in several ways. He understands that things came together for him and didn't for so many others because the method really matched his nature. btw... the real answer is Both . Have a great weekend all.

Here is my ‘SafeHaven.com’* article of the week I love to see the EUD soar! Gives a chance to short that trash again… Thoughts? (*poking fun at myself not SafeHaven.com)

re "3. The worst thing you can do is get in right near a swing high or low and play for continuation. In a move with more momentum, that type of play will pay you. In chop, you'll face plant nine times out of ten." Yes! I failed to mention on congestion trades I get out quickly - most of the time before price makes it even half way back across the envelope. Also, I take a max of 6 trades (basically scalps) per congestion and usually only 3 or 4 - with (as I mentioned above) decreasing size on each one... Since the mkts congest so often and consistently and the hit rate is so high, trading congestions bumps the bottom line up by over 20%... An aside re nature vs nurture: TN if you read this, these "genius" techniques were concieived and developed in the 30yr US intraday market of March 1987 - by necessity. A "strong fast focused resilient" player would not have needed to make such adaptations...

re: and Yes, the way I classed them is kind of counter-intuitive – like saying Einstein was not a talented genius . But if you observe those who do consistent high level performance work across a long time period and compare that to the sporadically blessed with breakthrough (, and usually tortured,) geniuses… See Gladwell’s Outliers book … although I think he doesn’t quite get the importance of the ‘nature’ components… Mixing in creativity veers us off a little bit. Have been trying to stay relatively close to the original topic of consistent high level performance. Quality of creativity is involved with that. But quanity or degree of creativity like it is with those in 'creative or adaptive tensions' not so much Talent is one aspect of performance. Inclination is another. To me, “determination and mindset” are factors of inclination…For example, I'm blessed with quite a chunk of musical talent, but little inclination. And instead of not being able to, the feral girl simply may have not been inclined to make all these stupid noises. I’m with you on the Luck factor. For me, the Luck is a ‘spiritual’ component of the whole deal. PS TN I got a thing for feral girls… it’s been dormant for a long time now… you just had to bring it up ... now I'm obsessed again... lord have mercy on me.

TN, re; "Taking small stop outs is a good one although somewhat subjective. If you lose focus on your system and start changing your targets..." If you inferred that from my post, then I need to work on my 'communication' skills far more than did the feral child ...

Negotiator, great thoughts. And, yes it could have bearing in many areas besides just ‘speech’. Reminds me of some of the Malcolm Gladwell, etc work on what you’re calling “role developmental phase” In development, there are multiple junctures and multiple pathways along the way. That plasticity of development results in a myriad of permutations whether triggered by nurture or by trauma. I hypothesize that if we had a sample of 1000 feral kids a large percentage of them would pick up speech quite quickly. (for example, - Tarzan had learned proper king’s English within months razz – but then again he was hot for Jane…motivated ) I think the particular way her neurons got networked in that one case was more of an exception – compared to normal socialization. I wouldn’t be surprised if the researchers ignored some exceptional other sensation and perceptual ‘talent’s she had developed using the parts of the brain that are typically ‘dedicated’ to speech recog and production… Back on topic Talent is overrated – where singular breakthroughs/ exceptions are concerned. Talent is not overrated – where day in and day out consistent performance at a skill is concerned. So re “Would these children develop far more than an adult who decided to become a trader then practise these skills? ” As a group they would develop more, but not far more. The ones that would develop far more are the ones who had the initial talents and then were nurtured. At the essence - it's nature AND nurture. So re: “Is the role developmental phase a valid additional component to be a great trader? ” Yes, No getting around the ~10000 hours part – even for the exceptions like Tom Baldwin, etc who take much less linear time to do it. And the list I provided above – strength, speed, focus, resilience etc was certainly not complete. You later mentioned Adaptability as important. However, in most cases the weaker hands are the ones being forced to attempt more adaptations, make breakthrough exceptions, etc. than are the truly strong performers. It’s harder to discuss, and iIt doesn’t follow developmental lines in the same way - but Character is another area involved ie there are definitely additional elements

Hedge back on. Filled on hedging shorts this am at 37.61 avg price Just following the plan... don't have much subjective confidence this will be one of those great momentous trades

1. How do you identify a slow, choppy market? This might seem too obvious, but I'm interested to see your thought process. I don't discuss my MarketTyping techniques for identifying and classifying congestion, but in my 'thought process' it has always been of extreme importance to id it early. Published material on the topic is limited. If you haven't read the works of Joe Ross on the topic, The Law of Charts 'book' (if I remember correctly) is a good starting place for objective price pattern measures of "slow, choppy market" on any timeframe. There is also some follow-up material at The law of ledges, congestion, and trading ranges | Trade2Win Forums etc If I remember correctly Ross made some contributions to the thread. TL has a few other threads on the topic...search. ... and the TS forum has some good / different / insightful material... Long ago and before I got all 'complicated' with it, I used a Jurik MA (with inputs of (h+l+c+c+c)*.2, for price and a length of 4 periods) on a 4 minute chart on most instruments (big S&P, US, etc.) for an objective measure. When it went flat instead of rolling on over... very accurate going into and out of congestion with very little lag... 2. How do you trade them? Do you simply avoid them and wait for volatility to pick back up? Early detection is the key. Ultimately, for me at least, including more than one type of congestion is important too (low interest vs tense types, etc). I use envelopes to trade them selling the top and buying the bottom with very small stops. Because of MarketTyping and from developing techniques for leading identification of when a congestion is likely to end, accuracy is almost 90% W/L (as it must be for such systems, btw) The envelopes started out as Keltners, but the code has evolved so much over the years that there is nothing keltner about them inside (even though most of the time they still look like Keltners . .. it's now those times when they don't look like Keltners that differentiates them). re: "Do you simply avoid them ...? " Most traders I know study them and conclude "Too much trouble... and limited rewards" It's system dependent really. Many systems need to avoid them like the plague... 3. Do you raise your size? What is your money management like? I raise size for the systems that are designed for congestion and cut size significantly for those that are designed for other MarketTypes. For some subtypes of congestion, I do just barely reduce overall size. I also decrement size after each trade (and increment size for breakout/ acceleration systems in some conditions) hth stim some innovations for you.

The rule that has saved me the most money = take small losses. (ie the rule that has cost me the most accounts = don’t take small losses) Breaking the phrase up: The ‘take’ part means getting to a place where taking any loss (in all but a few cases) does not move any of my biometric or subjective (SUD) measures at all. When individual losses do finally become truly da nada / meaningless – whole new opportunity horizons open up in the game. The most obvious application of the ‘small losses’ part in most systems is never hanging on for a loser to come back. Set a dropdead out point. If it passes that point, eat it gratefully and gracefully. Generally the best, but certainly not easy, way to apply this rule is researching and testing the very best type of loss levels to take for each individual system. For each system there is a best near or far, dynamic or fixed, single or arrayed, etc or etc. stop that needs to obliterate any and all ‘comfort level’ urges, impulses, tendencies, whatnot! Further developing the concept (in some systems) means getting enough experience to be able to call a loser by its activity instead of its price level and exit before stop is hit. In one of my edges, since the profits take care of themselves, getting out and cancelling the stops before they are hit is actually the main focus of each trade in that system…

Yes. The player bringing the best combination of stronger, faster, more mentally focused and resiliance will win in any performance type of work/play - period. Yes. Again. In any performance type of work/play such as trading, when the stronger, faster, more mentally focused and resiliant player goes up against other stronger, faster, more mentally focused and resiliant players - the edge becomes "unimaginable amount of hard work and experience". - period. No. Highest level performance does not require being taught by "the best". Highest level coaching relationships are more a matter of a spectrum of compatibilties between the two than they are a factor of the consensus reputation of the quality of the coach. "The best" teachers/coaches have a broad general understanding of what to bring a player's focus to - but a 'compatible' teacher/coach will be able to bring the player's focus to the very specific things the player needs to focus on better than a "the best" coach can...

carlton,re "but can you help me or no?" I can only try . Basically, I'm encouraging you to delve a little bit more deeply into mm and sizing Let me rephrase my suggestions and see if that helps. But first a question - do you understand the difference between variable sizing and fixed sizing and how in the quote below you are switching from variable to fixed? Your previous method will not transfer directly. The only thing that can transfer is the preferred amount at risk per trade approach ( which I argue against below). So, with one contract, by whatever method the amount is derived - if you are using a dollar amt. stop, then simply divide that $ amt at risk by 5 and that's how many ticks away from your entry to place your stop. Now to rephrase Suggestion 1 was a more general trading suggestion to base placing your stops in the neighborhood of what has tested out to be the best stop method for your particular trading system instead of placing your stops on how much you are comfortable losing (ie syschological reasons). If you transfer the "Now if I wanted to risk say $100 " way of setting risk over to one contract YM trading, you might get lucky enough to put your stops close to where they actually should be and survive - but I doubt very seriously that approach would thrive. Suggestion 2 was simply pushing you to delve a little bit more deeply into mm and sizing on your own All the best, zdo

and just for snicks Scientists Afflict Computers with Schizophrenia to Better Understand the Human Brain | The University of Texas at Austin

re “how relate the above risk management to futures, mini-sized DOW?” As you have described it, you are switching from variable sizing with stocks to fixed sizing with YM. So, you will have to change the way you determine your “risk” The ‘guidance’ I would offer you 1. also switch from ‘how much I willing to lose/risk on a trade” to “the tested optimal amount to lose per trade specific to the system I am trading” 2. one contract trading is a tough game to win at. Consider, if you have the capital, re-introducing sizing calculations ie multiple contracts, into the mix… hth zdo