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DbPhoenix

Market Wizard
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Everything posted by DbPhoenix

  1. DbPhoenix
    No, just beat them about the head and shoulders (pun intended). But to clarify, perhaps, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a common language. If nothing else, communication requires it. And shortcuts are inevitable. Thus we eventually begin to believe that everybody knows what "float" means, and of course they don't necessarily. But there is a danger in arriving at the point where the word becomes separated from its referent, and everybody forgets just why the word was coined in the first place. Whoever then tries to back up is in the position of holding Helen's hand under the water pump and spelling "water" into her hand, trying to get her to make the connection between the symbol and the thing that the symbol represents. Picturing a Boy Scout scampering over the ice floes has as little to do with breaking through resistance as a train entering a tunnel has to do with sex.
  2. DbPhoenix
    I'm going to be merciful here, largely because this is all so off-topic, and provide a short answer that is also a long answer. Go to my blog (below) and open up the PVSR pdf in the Price/Volume Q&A thread. Flip through to p 50 and read from there to the end. Any questions can be posted to the blog.
  3. DbPhoenix
    Sounds like there's an interesting story in the wings here:)
  4. DbPhoenix
    And if you need that structure, then stick with it for as long as you need it. But just for grins, plot a line-on-close using this same timeframe.
  5. DbPhoenix
    Unfortunately, static charts are not dynamic, yet these are the kinds of charts that practically everybody works with, especially when they're trying to explain something to somebody, whether in an article or a post or a book, so one is in the position of explaining the nature and character of movement using something that doesn't move. Hence the fallback position: patterns. Then the subsequent focus on and reliance on the pattern, forgetting about the dynamic that created the pattern in the first place, leading to an occasional and sometimes frequent misreading of the "pattern" (e.g., the "head and shoulders"). "No Demand", for example, is an important concept, but it has nothing to do with bars since bars don't exist in the continuous flow of transactions. "No Demand" is more accurately a "state of being" for the relationship between buyers and sellers at that time. It's a portion of that continuous flow that is led up to and fallen away from. On the other hand, "No Demand" as jargon has everything to do with bars, but for me is far less useful when it finds its way to that particular box.
  6. DbPhoenix
    That's pretty much what my blog is for (see below). As for derailing, I'm pretty much done on that score, or at least I hope so. If someone finds value in all the jargon, it's arrogant of me to tell him he doesn't. But I've made my point that the jargon is purely extraneous and there's no reason to keep hammering away at it.
  7. DbPhoenix
    What I mean is, who says so? And why? Does this person have any evidence to support his contention? Try to get past the "bar". Find an interval that enables you to see the waves, even if you have to go sub-minute. Granted you may not see the relevance of this to EOD, but keep in mind that all of this is going on, even if you can't see it in the bar interval you've chosen. But just like termites in your walls, you'd better be aware of the nature of this activity or you'll sink into the madness of such like "candlestick patterns".
  8. DbPhoenix
    I hope not brutal. But I do find that people commonly get all wrapped up in the literal after a while and forget the fundamental principles of whatever it is they're so desperately adhering to. And this is as much the case with religion as with approaches to trading. I don't want to piss off the VSA people nor the MP people (the SMI people I don't care so much), but come on. When it gets to counting bars, much less measuring them, it's time to go sit down in a darkened and quiet place and think long and hard about where it all went wrong. At the risk of repeating myself, it's not about bars and indicators and jargon and schematics and software and academic erudition. It's about buying pressure being more insistent than selling pressure, or vice versa. That's where it begins. If one is not attuned to that dynamic, then all the jargon in the world is not going to enlignten him.
  9. DbPhoenix
    And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you've planned it all out in advance along with your other contingencies and you're trading according to that plan. Otherwise, you're trading scared, i.e., gambling. As for scalping via EOD charts, this is not something I'd recommend. Because it wasn't such a strong reversal signal.
  10. DbPhoenix
    And that may account for the difference between us. I couldn't care less about the reasons for price's movement. When I see selling drying up at support, I go long. When I see buying dry up at resistance, I short. If price is drifting aimlessly, I do nothing. No jargon. No software. No colored arrows. No indicators (bar or otherwise). The whole manipulation thing may be nonsense or it may not. Either way it has no effect on my trading. What to me is nonsense is unnecessary complication.
  11. DbPhoenix
    You make good points, Tasuki, though whether or not one finds the two approaches to be incompatible depends on how much attention he pays to signal and how much to noise. Both VSA and MP have their roots in the same place, but the farther out one goes on the individual branches, the more differences one finds in jargon and schematics. But do any of those differences matter to one's trading? Is it even necessary to pay any attention to them? If one works his way back to the roots, he can employ both with no trouble at all. As far as the "smart money" business goes, I prefer to think of it as "big", since it rarely behaves in any fashion that I'd call "smart". And while price can make substantial moves with little or no professional involvement whatsoever, it just doesn't pay to stand in front of the stampede when that money does enter the market. Personally, I couldn't care less who's buying or selling. I'm only interested in what's going on with price. Makes life and the decision-making process much easier.
  12. DbPhoenix
    Don't misunderstand me. It's not a matter of knowing more but of being sensitive to bull****, and I've always been unusually sensitive in that respect. And though VSA does tend to lay on the jargon a bit heavy, it's simplicity itself compared to what SMI has done. Price, volume, support, resistance, demand (or buying pressure), supply (or selling pressure), trend. Simple. Basic.
  13. DbPhoenix
    I'm not ignoring you. I have a very difficult time dealing with all the layers and layers of overcomplication and nonsense jargon that have been laid over what are essentially basic and really very simple concepts. Wyckoff founded the SMI in Phoenix? Wyckoff died in 1934. But to refute all of the inaccuracies would take dozens of posts, if not hundreds, and would accomplish nothing in the end. I prefer to stick to the basics because that's the quickest route to understanding price action (does it really help to call support "ice"?). And the basics are, to me, Wyckoff's work, not what's said about it. So, put in the simplest way I know how, you are at what is for the moment the end of a nearly three-month downtrend, ending at where price was more or less a year ago. This is not a stock. This is not a commodity. Is it more probable that price will rise from this consolidation or that it will suddenly plunge to a new 52-week low? Given the repeated tests of 1.94 and the sharp rally off that level on the 21st, I'd be more likely to go long at a break through resistance. If I were to short this instead, I'd be prepared to SAR at the first sign of such a break. But I don't trade this, and what I would or wouldn't do is not particularly relevant. But I do urge those who want to internalize all of this stuff to get past the bars and past all the jargon and past all the diagrams. It's all about imbalances between buying pressure and selling pressure. Understand that and you'll have it.
  14. DbPhoenix
    Yes, that's what I meant. I'm more concerned with why Sledge did what he did than with what I would have done, at least partly because I don't follow forex. Assuming that there was good reason to short, and I'm not saying that there was or wasn't (as I said, I don't follow forex), and assuming that the short had something to do with hitting what appears to be -- though may not be -- resistance, and assuming that the "target" was support (which is the whole point of trading S/R), then there would be no reason to exit unless (a) support was reached or (b) the trade was invalidated by a breakout through R. However, Sledge may also have imposed a contingency which he didn't mention, i.e., that if price did not move immediately in the expected direction with no retracement of any kind, then he'd exit the trade. If this contingency were not determined in advance, then more likely he just freaked and got spooked out of the trade. All of which is a lot of assumptions and I don't mean to talk about Sledge as if he weren't here. But even now, I see no reason to exit this trade, though I wouldn't necessarily have taken it in the first place. I hesitate even to bring up S/R since the behavioral dynamic driving price here may not even lend itself to trading ranges, or at least not the pretty kind one finds in futures.
  15. DbPhoenix
    So why did you exit the trade? What was your plan for the trade?
  16. DbPhoenix
    If you consider the waves of buying and sellling pressure within the bar interval you've chosen rather than focus on the bars themselves, you'll see that a wave that attempts to make a higher high is of greater importance to buyers and sellers than one which is tucked inside a previous bar. Plus it's more likely that the second ND situation in your chart will be noticed by more traders since the intermediating bars may not be visible with a longer bar interval but the swing points will. What is more important in all of this is the lower high at R (assuming that the R is legitimate). As for volume and WRBs, the two need have nothing to do with each other, i.e., one can have a WRB resulting from a lot of buying pressure and very little selling pressure, or vice-versa, which graphically would show as a WRB with "low volume".
  17. DbPhoenix
    I'm not into MP per se, but I do trade support and resistance and pay close attention to the "midpoints" of the ranges as defined by volume. All this predates MP by many, many years, though (Wyckoff, to be exact). As such, I do find the extremeties to be worth noting as the trips back to the midpoint (what MP calls the "POC") are more reliable with regard to entry points and management than are the trips away from the midpoint to support or resistance. For example, the midpoint in the NQ has been 1780 for weeks now. Trading the support and resistance extremes from this back to 1780+/- has been not only simple but easy. This will all end when we break out of this hinge, but, in the meantime, it's been a pleasure. Db
  18. DbPhoenix
    You can pick up cheap copies on Amazon. But you may be disappointed. I'm a Magee fan and was expecting more, but it wasn't all that different from Jiler. You may want to get a copy of Schabacker's book, now that it's available again: Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits. Or, if you're patient, you can pick up a first edition on eBay for as little as $30. Schabacker, in case you don't know, is responsible for the bulk of the later Edwards and Magee book. Edwards was Schabacker's brother-in-law, and put the finishing touches to the latter's work after Schabacker's death. Ironically, Edwards gets all the credit, though he specifically acknowledges Schabacker (though perhaps not as strongly as he might have). Db
  19. DbPhoenix
    I'm glad it's been helpful.
  20. DbPhoenix
    Your commission check is in the mail . . .
  21. DbPhoenix
    Beginning at the end of the day on the 21st, then tested twice on the 25th. It didn't seem to be more than minor support for pre-planning, but price didn't think of it as minor when it was reached for the second time that day. That entire zone from 1760 to 1770 established on the 19th and 20th offered potential support, of course, but 1765 became a kind of fine-tuning. Db
  22. DbPhoenix
    It's been four years now since I did those threads and I wish I could get ET to delete them. So much of that has been revised, and while I don't expect anyone to plop down $30 to get the latest and greatest from my book (see post 13, above), please understand that my understanding of all this has evolved, and certain things have become clearer, like cream rising to the top. I've been posting supplements to the book in my blog here and will continue to do so as the need arises. This enables me to stay current and to address questions and quandaries and problems that arise in what I learn from message board posts. I believe that anyone with a passing knowledge of VSA and MP will understand the blog threads as they are to me pretty basic stuff. But then the basic stuff is pretty much all you need. As a sidenote, I rarely mention VSA at all but rather Wyckoff, but I assume that it's generally known that VSA is based on Wyckoff. So anyone searching for the corporate version of "VSA" material should not be surprised when they don't find any. Db
  23. DbPhoenix
    Something similar happened today, Unicorn, again due to news. This time, however, you wouldn't have got much out of it unless you'd done your pre-market homework re support and resistance. Note that the selling climax does not exactly jump out at you. If you didn't have support drawn at 1765, you might not even notice it. But there or nearby is the place to enter, if you're going to enter at all. .
  24. DbPhoenix
    Sierra Charts has it. I suspect it's considerably less expensive than the others. Db
  25. DbPhoenix
    Technically, I don't provide a VSA analysis of this, but I do show how to play it via Wyckoff in my Blog. Check out the end of the "Springboard" thread there. Db
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