DbPhoenix

Didn't you get your check?

Almost, but not quite. There is much that those interested in VSA can learn from Wyckoff, but the use of "the bar" separates the two, as does the role of "professional money" (the word "smart" is found nowhere in the source material). Nonetheless, "Undeclared Secrets..." is almost simplicity itself, and it's far easier to understand than much of what is posted and published regarding price and volume and their relationship. Those who are lost might find an anchor in the original material. While I haven't posted to or followed the thread since May of last year, I'm sure there's someone on board who can act as guide through the original material.

Why not a "VSA For Beginners" thread? Pre "Master the Markets". Pre "Trade Guider". No indicators, no candles, no VWAP, no Taylor, no SMI, no anything that is not in the source material. Surely this would be of benefit to those who are daunted by a thread that is working toward 3600 posts. Purists would be delighted, and anyone who wants to start a thread combining VSA with something else is free to do so.

You can overlay the S&P, NYSE, Dow, Russell, or Nasdaq over any of them. Just click.

As I said, just a memory aid:

Depends on what you want from a chat room. I, for one, couldn't care less about other people's trades or about whether they win or lose. I'm interested instead on what they see in the chart. I don't call out every single trade I make. In fact, I rarely call any of them. I'm rather focused on what price is doing and where and what possbilities there may be. If somebody takes a trade and explains why, I may pay closer attention, but if no explanations are provided either in advance or at the time, their post doesn't even register with me. Perhaps you should consider not posting your trades for a while but limiting your posts to what you see in the landscape and to your reactions to what others see. The emphasis then shifts from being right or wrong to understanding what's happening in front of you. And if there's anyone who distracts you by calling out trade after trade without ever offering any explanation of the why, you can always put him or her on ignore for a while. Or all day, for that matter.

First, it's possible that those who comment do so because you appear to be unhappy with your results (I haven't been paying close attention, so I really can't say for sure). Or, otherwise, they see your losses and don't understand what you're doing and are trying to be helpful, even if they haven't been asked (this is an affliction among some people). Second, as for the simplicity, it comes from the preparation. That's the difference between Daisy Desire at the local community theatre and Meryl Streep. Even those who claim to be able to do no more than turn on their computers and trade whatever the day offers to them aren't being completely honest, unless they're (a) completely clueless and (b) generally incompetent. Put in enough screentime and eventually you learn how to pick your spots. Some people call everything outside this "noise". This is inaccurate. It's more like going to the carnival with the intention of riding the roller coaster and not being distracted by the midway. If you know what you want, wait for it. If you don't know what you want, then slow down. If you know what you want but can't wait for it, then talk to somebody.

I also mentioned once upon a time that I followed the construction index prior to the top in the market to provide a little confirmation. I still check it now and then. As of now, it's not exactly screaming "strength". Whether or not it will help to indicate a change in the market, I have no idea. But it's no trouble to follow. And who knows? Note that the index topped two frigging years before the market did. And in case anybody's interested, here's where we got the house ready for sale:

On a separate subject, the question was asked yesterday about trends on time charts v CVB charts. Here are one of each covering the same timeframe. As you can see, there are differences, but to me they are slight and not important enough to bother with. But that doesn't mean whatever differences there may be may not be important to somebody else.

It's all done ahead of time, if you're trading support and resistance (see the chart I just posted, and the charts illustraing tick divergence prior to that). Today, for example, I'm interested in 45 and 55. Anything else doesn't register. If you'd rather use a stochastic hook or an MA cross or whatever, that's up to you, but if you have no setup and you're going with little more than "feeling", you're putting the cart before the horse. Way before. Judging by the comments you receive in the room, perhaps you're so empathetic to the other side of the trade that you end up taking that instead of focusing on your own strategy. Or maybe not. I'm not familiar enough with your strategy to make more than a superficial observation. But managing a trade once in is vastly easier than trying to decide where to enter a trade, much less trying to decide whether or not one should be entering a trade at all.

Try this. Ten sectors and hundreds of groups and subgroups.

And here we are again:

I could be wrong, but I believe the point that Hakuna is trying to make is that if superior hindsight analysis cannot be translated into trading the hard right edge, then there is likely a disconnect somewhere.

1220-25 also represents the top of a pissant trading range, or value area, from the 31st. Therefore, we are now below the range we've been trading and above the next value area, narrow though it may be. If we can't get back thru 45, then we may just bounce back and forth between 25 and 45.

Some of what I'm looking at for today. I had thought we'd at least get to 1300, but we didn't. And even though the diagonal lines are "man-made", the line at 1250 is not, and the fact that we are below it again may perhaps be bad news. I haven't looked at the volume yet, but 1150 is always a possibility. Edit: There appears to be a big volume gap for 1/2 and we may be doing no more than filling that gap down to 1220. I don't know why this should matter given all the previous activity between 1200 and 1250 during December, but there it is.

It's a start. It at least may reflect what may be for you a different way of looking a price (as opposed to an indicator of some sort, for example). It's not just a matter of what price is doing and what the volume is and what sort of pattern one thinks price is forming but why traders are focusing on a certain level, or why they're speeding up or down through others. None of this just happens. People are making it happen. And it's helpful to think about why they're making it happen in just that way. For example, does what you're looking at relate to a congestion from yesterday or the day before or last week? Does it relate to yesterday's high, or last week's low? How many buyers are standing there with their pants down when price comes back to where they entered? At what level do traders keep trying, and keep failing? This isn't just Follow The Bouncing Ball. It's people and their hope and their doubt and their anxiety. And that may seem like a tall order, which may be why so many people turn into quants.

I said in chat that I'd provide an example of how to use a tick divergence (using in my case the TICKQ). There are a number of examples in the Dailies in my Blog, but today is fresh in the minds of those who were there. There are going to be many divergences between the tick and price throughout the day. But you want to pay attention only to those which occur at some important level, preferably S or R of some kind. Otherwise, you're just taking shots in the dark. This first chart provides the context and what to look for regarding R. Note that 55 provides potential S at 0815. It's then tested later from the downside. Then from the downside again after the open. Then price fails to breach that level from 0955 to 1000. This makes 55 a level to keep an eye on. Later, price hits this level again. And here is a blow-up of price action at this level. Note that all these charts address the same timeframe (a term that is commonly misused). Their difference lies in the bar interval, from 5s to 1m. Now even if one weren't paying any attention to the tick at all, much less any other instrument, the failure of buyers to get through R twice (actually four times on the 5s) would be enough justification to short. However, The tick shows a clear divergence, at R, between itself and price. In and of itself, it may not be enough. But as confirmation of what one already thinks should be done, it is at least useful.

Yes, Hakuna. (a) That would work. (b) Well, that's why I didn't take the earlier short. I try to avoid learning the same lesson too many times. As it turned out, it was worth only a few points, but what the hell. © Good question.

Tried to post this to the chat room, but the files tab wouldn't work:

I don't know exactly where to put this, but since understanding it is key to trading "the Wyckoff Way", here is as good a place as any. Looking at the markets of yesterday, today, and projecting that look into the future, it is evident that markets themselves do only three things after taking into account their basic buying and selling functions. Their products rise in price, they fall in price, or they move sideways in price. If these are the only three things that they do, then in a nutshell we have the answer to what to concentrate on in market analysis. We dissect and study every price, volume, and time action using whatever knowledge we have to analyze each price rise, each price decline, and each sideways movement. This gives us the most meaningful direction to follow in our analytical efforts and takes us to the highest levels (again a personal opinion) of Technical Analysis. We will also find that behind a great deal of classical writing is this same focus, analyzing physical aspect after aspect of every rise and every fall. When we take a close look at the classical period that began with William Hamilton's The Stock Market Barometer in 1922 and ended with William Dunnigan's One-Way Formula for Trading in Stocks and Commodities in 1957, there is one common thread that links just about every technical work produced in that period. That single thread was that their analytical methodology dealt directly with the reality of physical price, volume, and time. For better or for worse (and this writer says "for worse"), the emphasis on reality of past years has given rise to a great deal of emphasis on fantasy today. Price, volume, and time are physical realities to deal with directly; moving averages, oscillators, momentum indicators, and the like have no physical existence on the charts—they are mathematically formulated lines or fantasy lines that have no reality. We find that Divergent/Convergent lines have a basis and often work beautifully, but on the whole fantasy lines should be seen for what they are. That most fantasy lines of today were known to the great market masters and generally ignored by them speaks volumes. --Donald Mack

Regression lines are a great way to wean beginners away from an exclusive focus on trendlines or moving averages to show trend. It depresses me to see how many traders, after a certain point, are no longer able to tell whether the market is going up or down. Thier moving averages can become a nest of snakes, and their trendlines can wind up looking like Pik-Up-Stix. Regression lines can put them back on the straight and narrow, even if they don't choose the absolutely correct high and low for the line.

Given that this was posted last April, you may want to send him a PM.

Krueger may be a skilled and talented trader, and the concepts and applications presented in the article may be powerful. Therefore, there's really no need to invoke Wyckoff's name in order to lend an air of legitimacy to the proposition. To the contrary, there's absolutely nothing wrong with calling this Krueger Candle Volume Analysis. There's a great deal of Wyckoff wrote this and Wyckoff wrote that floating around the internet, much (most?) of which is not true. Wyckoff, for example, never used the term "smart money" in his course, much less equate it with the Composite Man or Composite Operator. In fact, he pointed out that there is no Composite Operator, but the effect of the combined operations of bankers, pools, large operators, floor traders and the public [bold mine] is, when boiled down on the tape, of the same effect as if it were produced by one man’s operations. It is important that you observe the market from this standpoint, and that your trading operations are based, not on what you formerly regarded as the market’s characteristics but on the fundamental law of supply and demand, which is at the bottom of every move that is made in every stock in the market at all time. This law is working and will continue to work always and forever. There can be no getting away from it. It does not matter whether the buying and the selling, or both, are genuine or artificial, that is, manipulative, designed for a purpose. Nor did he care much about the open, nor about bar-by-bar analysis, much less about pattern. Again, this is not to say that the concepts and applications presented in the article are not powerful and will not provide enormous clarity to those who are struggling with how to interpret price movement. But while Krueger may have been inspired by Wyckoff's work, this is Krueger (and more power to him), not Wyckoff. A final note: professional money is often but not necessarily "big" money. And big money is not necessarily "smart" money (evidence would suggest, in fact, that just the opposite is true). Big money is just big, and that, in terms of the footprint, is enough for both the retail trader and the professional trader who is himself looking for footprints. For the trader who is not "big", however else he might be characterized, to equate "big" with "smart" can lead to many trading errors, often expensive. "Big" is simply "big", and nothing more. One can either trade with that flow or trade against it. But he should never assume that "big" constitutes "smart". (Incidentally, Wall Street Ventures and Adventures through Forty Years was published in 1930, not 1909.)

Left off the other midpoint and can't edit the above post: