DbPhoenix

Why Crompton Greaves? Whatever happened to ICICIBANK?

I'm afraid you're missing the point. See post #31.

Resistance was at 2000. Price failed in its attempt to hold above that level and made a lower high at 2000 after breaking the demand line. If long, there's no reason to remain so.

If you're defining S/R as defined here, what matters are the levels and zones. These may shift vertically after rollover, but they themselves won't change. Price in and of itself is relevant on insofar as it relates to these levels and zones.

My most recent post was last May. What chart are you referring to?

It's debatable. Depends in part on whether you consider the upmove at the end of November to be a swing, or whether -- because of the sideways movement at the beginning of December -- you consider the entire move from late November to mid-December to be one move. Either way, the trendline has clearly been broken, and given the angle and extent of the downmove, a pause is not unreasonable. But, as you know, a change in trend is not a reversal.

In a certain sense, reading charts is like reading music, in which you endeavor to interpret correctly the composer's ideas and the expression of his art. Just so a chart of the averages, or of a single stock, reflects the ideas, hopes, ambitions and purposes of the mass mind operating in the market, or of a manipulator handling a single stock. The study of charts is not as some people claim, the mere identification of certain labeled patterns made by the actions of stocks. That sort of thing borders on the mechanical and does little to aid in the development of one's judgment. But when a student undertakes to read from his charts the purposes and objective of those who are responsible for a stock's action in the market, he is beginning to see, in a true light, the meaning of scientific stock speculation. RDW

The market always tells you what to do. It tells you: Get in. Get out. Move your stop. Close out. Stay neutral. Wait for a better chance. All these things the market is continually impressing upon you, and you must get into the frame of mind where you are in reality taking your orders from the action of the market itself — from the tape. Your judgment will become poorer from the very time when you decide that you know more about the market than the market is telling you. From that moment your results will be unsatisfactory, for in this trading business the tape is the boss. You must learn to obey its orders, doing exactly what it tells you. When you can accomplish this, you are on the high road to success in your stock trading. RDW

It was a group effort

Daily Vertical Charts are made to record the daily movements and volume of the averages, or groups or individual stocks. By the use of these charts, we are better able to discern accumulation, distribution and other phases of manipulative (controlled) or uncontrolled moves in the market. By condensing them into weekly and monthly vertical charts we are able to visualize the long time trend and to keep our perspective of the long range moves. However, the daily chart is most generally used because of its greater sensitivity and immediate historical value. In other words, weekly and monthly vertical charts aid us to judge the markets present position in relation to the general trend, that is, the major bull and bear cycles; but daily charts are more effective for timing commitments advantageously and for recognizing turning points. Figure Charts are equally valuable, but it is best to use these in combination with vertical charts, so that all obtainable deductions may be made therefrom. Figure charts take no account of fractions, nor do they take account of time or volume. They represent the movement of a stock from one full figure to the next full figure above or below, such as from 35 to 36 or 34. They are of great value in estimating the probable extent of supply and demand and the points of resistance and support. RDW

Depends on the contents of the course and of the book. Mark Douglas, for example, isn't selling a system in Trading In The Zone. He instead focuses on helping the trader to develop his own. And books are usually available at the library. For free. The trader who's looking for someone to tell him what to do for a price will have no trouble finding those who are eager to do so. All he has to do is stand still and they'll be all over him. But it's his money, and if he's dumb enough to waste it, it's his business.

How are we to know in advance why and to what extent someone else is prompted to buy or sell? We cannot know; it is impossible for us to foretell what actuates all of those whose orders are poured into the vast intake of the Stock Exchange machinery during the day's session. But if we study the action of prices; the responses; the speed of the ticker, indicating urgency or the contrary; the intensity of the buying or selling, as indicated by the volumes; and the intervals when the volume is heavy or light -- all these in relation to each other -- then we gain insight or the design and the purposes of those who are dominant in the market situation for the time being. All the varying phases of stock market technique may thus be studied and interpreted from the buying and selling waves as they appear on the tape. From these we form a conclusion as to the balance of the probabilities. On this we base our commitments. RDW

No, atto, it's not a joke. This is serious stuff.

Wyckoff used PnF extensively in both intraday and interday trading. Have you looked through the Daytrader's Bible posted to the Introduction stickie, or the pdfs attached to the first post of this thread? Those are a good place to start.

I have way too much time on my hands.....

Additionally, those who'd rather not go through 130 posts in order to get an overview of what the thread is all about can go here for a 13-post quickie.

That's pretty much the same thing you said six months ago, and my reply is pretty much the same as well, except that the trading ranges are different. If this makes no sense to you, perhaps Market Profile would strike a chord.

Given the time of year, it's more likely that it will go up, but it's good that you're prepared for either eventuality.

And yet another chart of interest. I don't know what MP has to say about this, but I tripped over it while playing and thought it interesting that the midpoints of each of these ranges is exactly the same.

Another chart of interest:

A chart of interest

Supreme Court Overturns Bush v. Gore December 9, 2008 | Issue 44•50 WASHINGTON—In an unexpected judicial turnaround, the Supreme Court this week reversed its 2000 ruling in the landmark case of Bush v. Gore, stripping George W. Bush of his earlier political victory, and declaring Albert Arnold Gore the 43rd president of the United States of America. President Gore, retroactively determined by the Supreme Court to be the winner of the 2000 election, is sworn in for his six-week term. The court, which called its original decision to halt manual recounts in Florida "a ruling made in haste," voted unanimously on Wednesday in favor of the 2000 Democratic nominee. Gore will serve as commander in chief from Dec. 10 to Jan. 20. "Allowing this flaw in judgment to stand would set an unworkable precedent for future elections and cause irreparable harm to the impartiality of this court," said Chief Justice John G. Roberts in his majority opinion. "Furthermore, let me be the first to personally congratulate President Gore on his remarkable come-from-behind victory. May he guide us wisely into this new millennium." Former Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush gets some much-needed rest Monday after his 2000 presidential campaign loss to rival Al Gore. Added Roberts, "The system works." Moments after the court's noontime announcement, Gore was flown to Washington, D.C. aboard Air Force One, sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and immediately escorted to a brief victory rally at the National Mall. By 4:30 p.m., his 15 cabinet appointees had been vetted, contacted, and brought to Washington, where they were all simultaneously approved by a majority vote in the Senate. Gore then delivered the first of seven consecutive State of the Union addresses. Shortly after being notified of the court's historic decision, a gracious George W. Bush appeared at a press conference with four hastily packed suitcases to congratulate his 2000 opponent on the decisive victory. "Al Gore has fought a strong and patient campaign, and he has prevailed," said the former Republican candidate and Texas governor. "I wish him nothing but the best, and hope that his leadership will help see this nation through a catastrophic recession, an unending war in Iraq, and the single largest housing crisis in history. Congratulations, Mr. President." In his first and last 42 days as president, Gore will reportedly visit U.S. troops overseas, meet with dignitaries from France, Great Britain, China, Azerbaijan, Japan, and Eastern Europe, formalize a plan to bail out the struggling airline and automotive industries, sign the Kyoto Protocol, take a photo of himself and wife Tipper in front of the White House Christmas tree, and ensure a smooth transition between his own administration to that of incoming president-elect Barack Obama. "Great humility, honor, I'm President," Gore said to a crowd of tourists hastily shuffled into a White House corridor to hear the president deliver his acceptance speech. "Thanks, bye." According to political analysts, the road ahead for President Gore is not an easy one. During his first conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, NATO, OPEC, and the United Nations, Gore admitted that making good on his campaign promises in the next six to eight weeks might be difficult. The president noted his pledge to provide affordable health care to every single child in the U.S. by 2004 as "specifically in need of possible amending." Gore also withdrew his intentions to pay off the national debt by 2012. Although the president has already instituted a number of impressive environmental initiatives, he has drawn criticism from Republicans who claim that he is completely unprepared to deal with the current national climate. "Throughout the entirety of his 2000 campaign, never once did Gore mention the tragedy of 9/11, or our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) said. "Does he not care about our national security? Does Al Gore plan to ignore the needs of our brave men and women on the ground? What kind of world does Al Gore think we still live in?" President Gore will not be the only new arrival in the White House to face criticism, however. Joseph Lieberman—the former independent senator from Connecticut who in just two months has gone from the short list of possible Republican running mates to nearly being ousted from the Democratic Caucus to becoming the first Jewish Vice President—will also have much to answer for. "Uhh," Lieberman said in his first official address Wednesday. "Umm…yeah."

The action of the whole market tells you when the selling is better than the buying and vice versa. You do not care why insiders are buying or selling, but you should care a lot about the action of their stock on the tape, for that is what tells you the truth. RDW

Where We Are So Far: All of this hindsight chatter about oil serves as an example of the "Wyckoff way" of trading, that is, a different kind of thinking that focuses on price movement as a result of imbalances between buying pressure and selling pressure, particularly against levels or zones of support and resistance, all of which is in turn a manifestation of trader behavior. Understand the behavior and you understand the illustration, whether on a chart or on the tape or on or in some other form. Understand the behavior and its illustration and you are set up to profit from it (one can also profit from this via indicators, chart patterns, "event trading", and so on, but none of this is pertinent to the Wyckoff approach. Participants have demonstrated this kind of thinking in their analyses of the price movement as it wends its way up and down through a continuing series of crests and troughs. These waves are a language, narrating the behavior of buyers and sellers. And whether participants' every opinion has been correct or not, they have worked toward understanding the story that's being told by price movement and its accompanying volume (transactions) and toward gauging and interpreting the continuous changes in buying and selling pressures with the intent of finding the line of least resistance. By doing so, I hope that they have demonstrated that everything one needs to know in order to make a trading decision is in the price movement, again whether illustrated by chart or tape. While there are undoubtedly many traders -- retail and professional -- left holding the bag at tops and bottoms, the Wyckoff trader will not be one of them. He does not allow himself to be distracted by extraneous information of whatever sort. Price behaves a certain way (that is, traders telegraph their intentions by their transactions), and he's out or in, as the case may be. He can wait for moving averages to cross each other or for some other indicator or news or a particular kind of bar or candle or pattern to signal or confirm an action, but he doesn't need to, except for personal reasons. None of this is therefore part of the approach. This has the effect of keeping everything very simple and relatively easy to understand IF one can focus on the approach at its most elemental until he thoroughly understands it. At that point, he can play with it as much as he likes, if he chooses to do so. But while those modifications may alter the approach as he implements it, they do not alter the nature of the original . In order to save flipping back and forth, the following chart was posted at the beginning in order to provide the macro view. It's a typical and ordinary bar chart. But the waves of buying and selling can be illustrated quite clearly without bars. In fact, for many Wyckoff traders, they are easier to see with a line. The tests are the same, the trend is the same, the signals that the trend is over are the same (see, for example, the inset). A chief difference, however, is that one needn't get entangled in quandaries over what individual bars "mean" (if anything). One can in fact convert trading activity (or volume) into a line, depending on his software. Some Wyckoff traders find it even easier to detect the "pulse" of the market in this way. As for jargon, nothing special: climaxes, technical rallies, reactions, springboards -- that's about it. The goal is clarity and simplicity, not obfuscation and complexity. As I've said elsewhere, price doesn't care about you or about how you care to view it or illustrate it. It exists independently of your charts and your indicators and your bars. It couldn't care less if you use candles or bars or plot this or that line or select a 5m bar interval or 8 or 23 or weekly or monthly or even use charts at all. Therefore, trading by price, or at least doing it well, requires getting past all that and perceiving price movement and the balance between buying pressure and selling pressure independently of the medium used to manifest or illlustrate or reveal the activity. For most people, this requires a perceptual and conceptual shift. Some find this shift relatively easy to make. Others find it impossibly difficult. If you fall into the latter category, keep in mind that there are many ways of making money in the market. This particular approach is only one of them.

Good work, though I may have been intimidating by overstating the position that "no one would actually make these trades". Reading the chart from left to right, there are trades that seem perfectly legitimate. But what matters is not so much that one reads the signals incorrectly, or even that he reads them correctly and life does a 180, but that he is willing and able to get out when things don't go his way. One could actually make money off some of these shorts, but only if he was willing to listen to those signals which tell him that the upmove has further to go, and he'd better not be too stubborn. I know how difficult it is for one to state with any certainty what he would do at some point in the past when knowing full well what was to come. But it's a skill that must be practiced if one is to get the most out of hindsight charts. And now the last, which may at this point seem like falling off a log, but the practice at analysis is always worth doing.