Jump to content

Welcome to the new Traders Laboratory! Please bear with us as we finish the migration over the next few days. If you find any issues, want to leave feedback, get in touch with us, or offer suggestions please post to the Support forum here.

DbPhoenix

Market Wizard
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    3789

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by DbPhoenix

  1. DbPhoenix
    Today provides an excellent example of how different the NQ and ES can be, not only in terms of profitability but of how quickly one gets there. Db
  2. DbPhoenix
    Many people spend years with indicators, so you're not alone. But this thread really isn't the place for that. As for examples, there are many times more examples available in various threads than would be possible in any book. If you're interested in the Wyckoff Forum, ask whatever questions you may have there in order to keep this thread on-topic. Db
  3. DbPhoenix
    Yes, you should trade in the direction of the trend. But there may be many trends depending on your timeframe. If your timeframe is several years or several months/weeks/days, then you'll be trading different trends. If you're daytrading, though, the trend is largely irrelevant until enough trades have taken place to create one. What are more important are the levels of support and resistance and the character of the buying and selling waves. See Sections 5 and 7 of Part 1 of the course and however much of Part 2 as is of interest to you. Db
  4. DbPhoenix
    You're welcome, but I wouldn't term it a "call" in the sense of prediction. As price accelerates to the upside and angle of ascent increases, sellers have more and more difficulty finding buyers. That's why at any given price point there are so few trades. At some level, the "supply" of buyers just runs out and there aren't any more, and price returns toward the bottom of the trend channel, maybe a little higher than the bottom, maybe a little lower. It's all a part of mean reversion, though it has nothing to do with indicators. Mean reversion is what it is because sellers run out of buyers and buyers run out of sellers, so everybody turns their attention to those zones where the bulk of trades are being or have been made, which is usually the mean. Db
  5. DbPhoenix
    Read the section on trend in the course. Overbought and oversold are determined by the trend channel. Db
  6. DbPhoenix
    I don't see any gaps, but the bottom of the channel is around 50, which is little higher than the point at which it took off on the 16th. Db
  7. DbPhoenix
    Because they're both so overbought re the trend channels. And it's time to revisit the bottoms of those channels. Doesn't mean it has to happen today. But the easier and faster profits are being found in the NQ. Db
  8. DbPhoenix
    Looking at 11 for S in the ES and 75 in the NQ. I wouldn't bet on their holding. Db
  9. DbPhoenix
    If you have little experience with message boards, you'll find that the threads have relatively short "expiration dates". This is why I stopped posting to the other thread. People, including me, had begun repeating themselves, so there was little value in going on, and, at this point, few will bother reading the thread before providing what they believe is a cogent analysis of you. In print. In public. Even to the extent of leveling accusations against you. One gets used to this after a while, but the insidious snarkiness prevents the forums from being what they otherwise could be. Now if you were asking advice on stochastic settings or Ichimoku clouds or how to stalk the "smart money" (other than just following a simple price chart), people would be lining up to provide the sort of advice that would extend your task into the far horizon but place you on the community treadmill. I suggest you get on with the work and let the other thread go on without you, which it will, at least until it's no longer billboarded on the homepage. While many of the forums and threads are populated by the quietly -- and not so quietly -- desperate, there are also forums that are civil and helpful. I hope the Wycoff Forum is one. The Market Profile Forum is another. Surely there are others. But the "successful trader" thread isn't going to be one of them. And now back to the topic of this thread:) Db
  10. DbPhoenix
    You might also be interested in IBM and CAT. They're both forming springboards at previous levels of resistance. Db
  11. DbPhoenix
    Speaking of which, what do you think about this?
  12. DbPhoenix
    I think W would approve. If anyone wants practice, there's always the other four of the big five: QCOM, GOOG, ORCL, and MSFT. But these have to be followed every day. Not necessarily charted and posted, but followed. There may not be anybody paying attention, so you'll have to do it for your own benefit. Db
  13. DbPhoenix
    When does the stock stop doing what the trader expected it to do? And what is the downside of exiting and re-entering? As for the hindsight, that's the result of nobody following it. I provided this simply as a matter of winding things up, and because this pattern repeats so often. Db
  14. DbPhoenix
    I realize that no one is particularly interested in Apple at this point, but I hate leaving things unfinished, though one could argue that stocks are never "finished". In our last program, we were discussing a short in Apple. I was pointing out that if following the "Wyckoff Way" one begins with a view of the market, then the sector or group, and finally the stock. I provided charts of all this and, lo and behold, Apple fell the next day. Unfortunately, the short should have been placed before the market close, but waddaya gonna do? In any event, I stated at the time that one should follow the progress of the rally carefully to see whether the more likely course was to be a resumption of the drop or the uptrend. The following charts are updates, the vertical lines representing the points at which the previous charts stopped (their "hard right edge"). First, the SPX. Here, what was a gradual rolling over into what might have been a sideways trading range made a slightly higher low, then a substantially higher high, resuming the uptrend. Again, one must go with what is in front of him, without bias, rather than hold onto an outdated map. Weakness had its chain yanked, and price decided instead to rise. The Technology sector and the Computer Hardware group had been trading sideways, like Apple, and the SPX looked to be joining in. They both dropped when Apple did, and recovered more or less the same way. Again the vertical lines are drawn at the point where the previous charts ended. And now Apple. As mentioned in the previous post, Apple had begun showing weakness the previous Thursday, and even greater weakness on Monday, a full day before the announcement. After that post, the bottom fell out. But, again, paying careful attention to the rally would tell the trader -- particularly the trader who hadn't shorted -- what to do next. Here Apple returned to the trading range it had been forming before the announcement. On Friday, it poked its head up through the top of the range (red arrow). The following Monday, it managed a genuine breakout, like the sector, the group, and even the general market (though the general market had a somewhat better showing the previous Friday). One could have traded this, but, if he didn't, he had an opportunity to trade the springboards which were formed on all the charts (the blue/white boxes). The trader then who does not become wedded to a particular scenario but does what the market tells him to do benefits from both the short side (if he took it before the market close) and the long. Db
  15. DbPhoenix
    The movements and "patterns" are the same, just faster. Prices regularly move in advance of information being made available to the great unwashed. One just has to watch the trading activity and the trading levels rather than wait around for the news. Db
  16. DbPhoenix
    And apropos of nothing, I find it interesting in light of 40d's last post that message board citizens will do everything they can do prevent a struggling trader from quitting but also go out of their way to discourage a fledgling trader from beginning (it's so hard, takes so long, few people succeed, etc, etc). Just an observation. Db
  17. DbPhoenix
    I agree, and one hopes that a trader who can tie his own shoes will realize shortly that his plan is the bunk. But it's not a perfect world:cool: Db
  18. DbPhoenix
    Given that this is probably straying too far into the off-topic, I won't go into any detail. But then, I probably don't have to. A trader without a trading/business plan is a gambler, and the same defect/gene/flaw that characterizes those with gambling addictions characterizes those traders you describe. So, few to none of these "failed individuals" know why they continue to struggle and fail. They instead blame the market, or the algos, or the HFTs, or their broker, or whoever is running their trading room, or whoever sold them their software/dvds/manuals/indicators. The market is "the enemy", even though the market has no idea who they are and couldn't care less. Or other traders are the enemy. But the loser's only enemy is himself, and this rarely changes. He simply goes broke and disappears. The gambler who can't push himself away from the table because he "feels" that he's going to filll an inside straight is no different from the "trader" who can't stop transmitting long orders because he "feels" that whatever it is is going to go up. As for the aversion to self-examination, that's a bit more complicated. In some ways, traders are nearly obsessed with self-examination. Hence the popularity of the "psychology of trading" aspect. This generally boils down to the emotions and controlling the emotions and/or using the emotions and/or seeking out that approach that "suits" them. But there's rarely examination of what the market demands and whether or not the trader has what it takes to meet that demand. The market, in other words, is going to do what it's going to do, and it couldn't care less whether the trader is comfortable with that or not. If the trader can't figure out how to deal with the market on its own terms, he's going to fail. Now if you want me to go into detail... Db
  19. DbPhoenix
    "Common" is right. According to behavioral economics studies, traders, with few exceptions, are far more confident than they have any right to be, they trade far too much, and they believe they're far smarter than they really are. Given that it takes so long for any of them to show a profit, if they ever do, this state of affairs leads to a cognitive dissonance that I find interesting, though not puzzling. What I also find interesting is the self-actualization cheerleading squads that one finds on trading forums, "traders" who aren't terribly successful, who discourage others from achieving success because it's all so hard (and if others were to find success, this would necessarily lead to a level of self-examination which is to be avoided at all costs) but yet encourage those who are having difficulties to continue (for if those others were to quit, then perhaps they themselves should consider quitting as well, which would be an inescapable admission of failure which, again, is to be avoided at all costs). They believe they're being supportive when they are actually enabling an addiction. The psychodynamics of this are fascinating to me, as is the fact that so many of these traders love the psychology forums and psychology articles. It's about emotions, you see. If it weren't for those pesky emotions, they'd be hugely successful. For the psychologists, this constitutes what is termed "low-hanging fruit". All of which may seem off-topic, but is just another means, like the efficient market hypothesis, of finding an excuse for failure that is outside oneself. Hard cheese, I know, but there it is. Db
  20. DbPhoenix
    I think it's time to go back to the OP: To which I replied: Since then, the respondents have divided themselves into two camps, more or less. There have been nearly 2700 views, yet only one person has shown any interest in the challenge posed -- perhaps unintentionally -- by the thread starter. There have been nearly 70 replies, and almost a quarter of them, I'm embarrassed to say, are mine. Those who believe that one can't possibly learn to trade in six months are welcome to continue believing that. Who, after all, cares? But those who believe that it can be done really ought to get on with it in whatever way they think is best. Db
  21. DbPhoenix
    By "resources" I was referring to what is available to the serious student, not all the scams that are out there to trap the naive and stupid and lazy. Online books, online newspapers and magazines, free charting programs, etc. You know, "resources". Of course, one could ignore all that and go to the library once a month for the S&P chart book and inbetweentimes seek advice from his full-commission broker. Db
  22. DbPhoenix
    For those new to trading, this is little more than a variation on the Darvas Box, like the thread I posted several years ago, which is free (my thread, that is). Db
  23. DbPhoenix
    Of course it requires discipline. That's why the Livermore example isn't necessarily pertinent. Whether 40draws can accomplish his objective or not isn't particularly important. What is more important is that he's set a time limit for himself, which beats those who are at this for 3 or 5 or 10 years and still can't do better than breakeven. After six months, 40d will know whether he has the necessary discipline or not. Db
  24. DbPhoenix
    FWIW, the ES was in a hinge until 20m ago, at which point it fell out of it. Looks to be testing the bottom of it at 12.5 Db Edit: This is also the midpoint of that range that began forming last nite.
  25. DbPhoenix
    Take care not to draw the wrong conclusions. Whether or not he was successful in the bucket shops, he did not learn how to make a living in six months. As for the multiple occasions when he lost what he made, those had to do with a lack of discipline more than a lack of knowledge or understanding. Remember also that Livermore had nothing to draw on other than his own experience. Today there are virtually unlimited resources, including data archives. One can also manipulate time through replay. Db
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.

  I accept