DbPhoenix

Since we're playing Show-and-Tell, these were my trades for the morning. Resistance was expected to be around 77. Support was expected to be around 64. Though of course you never really know, which accounts for the false starts near the open (the black arrows, which are SOBEs). The red arrow is the short, the green arrow is the long, the blue arrows are the scaleouts. I try to quit by 11:00. Both sides were played as trends, which, at the time, they were.

You have not yet said what you're trading or how or in what interval: week, day, hour, minute. Therefore, it's difficult to get specific. If you're trading price action, then it's true that you're going to have to put in a lot of screen time due to the "action" part. One can learn principles from a book or article or series of posts, but that's all up there. At some point, you're going to have to bring all that down here, transforming theory into practice, the general into the specific. And that, again, means screen time. But screen time alone isn't going to do you much good unless you make some choices. Whatever profits you make are the result of a compromise between what you want from the market and what it's willing to give you. Do you want to make a point a day? Two? Five? Do you want to make the day's range? Twice that? Three times? Five? Or are you happy to make a few ticks here and there? Once you've made those choices, then you have to determine how probable it is that the market is going to give you what you want and, if the probability appears to be there, how to go about interpreting the messages it sends you. In other words, screen time per se is not enough. You must also know what to look for and know exactly what you're going to do with it if and when you see it. Most beginners have trouble reconciling what they want (making the most money possible in the least amount of time) with the likelihood that they're actually going to get it. They see all the money to be made in trading trends, but catching that turning point proves to be more difficult than it appeared to be. So they enter later, which necessitates a wider stop. And their stop gets hit. So they make it wider. And that gets hit as well. But then price takes off in the intended direction while they're sitting there with a loss. So the next time, they're determined to make their stop even wider. Or use no stop at all. And that's when the market reverses on them and they take an even bigger loss. Or they decide that "swing" trading is safer. Or scalping (how hard can it be?). But then they lose out on all that money they could have made if they were trading the trend. So they try that again. And they lose again because now they're fearful, and they cut short whatever profits they stumble in to. So they make the swing trading/scalping circuit again, not particularly successful, if successful at all, because they still haven't decided what they want, much less figured out how to go about getting it. They have not reconciled what is possible with what is practical. Nor have they addressed the greed and fear that are now a part of the landscape. So, what are your trading goals? And do you have any idea how to go about reaching them? If your goals are very general (make as much as possible) and your methodology is to do whatever "feels right", then you will likely continue to experience these difficulties.

The value lies in understanding that there is a purpose behind the movements within the range and not just an aimless drift. Therefore, one can expect the movement out of the range to be purposeful, and not just the result of bored traders looking for something to do. Atto suggested, above, that this might constitute a springboard, and anyone familiar with Wyckoff would be thinking the same thing. However, what seems obvious does not always turn out that way, and the Wyckoff trader would also be prepared -- as would Wyckoff -- for a sudden drop out of the consolidation, which would most certainly freak the longs and likely make for a nice short trade.

I should mention, however, that Ross leaves out quite a lot, and the trader who is less than successful with the approach should not blame himself. While the concepts behind Ross are largely sound, he presents them in terms of recipes, which are what the OP is having difficulty with in the first place.

gifropan, Whether the examples of trading wisdom which you've provided "work" or "don't work" depends entirely on how well the trader understands what it is that he's working with. To apply them as if they were laws is much the same as selecting a car based on its color and how many cupholders it has. If you haven't defined "trend", you're going to have difficulty going with it. If you haven't defined "low", you're going to have difficulty buying it. If you haven't defined "high", you're going to have difficulty selling it. And so on. It's up to you, then, at minimum, to determine how an auction market works, how the shifts and imbalances in supply and demand move price, how to determine when those imbalances are mostly likely to result in a profitable trade. If instead you elect to settle for applying a variety of indicators, drawing lots of lines, taking calls in chat/trading rooms, etc., then whatever success you happen to achieve, if any, will not likely meet your expectations. As for where you go from here, I suggest you look at the stickies for the Market Profile Forum beginning here and for the Wykoff Forum beginning here. If either of these resonate with you, then read the rest of the stickies, then explore the rest of the forum(s).

If you do decide to investigate the Wyckoff Forum, feel free to ask whatever questions occur to you. The subjects of buying and selling, supply and demand, volume and trend are regularly made far more difficult than they need to be, largely because the person seeking to understand is assumed to know more than he does. But if you've ever made a purchase that did not involve a take-it-or-leave-it price, the subject should not drive you batty.

You'll have to bring it down a couple of notches, zdo

While the Kumbaya route to trading success appeals to many, no amount of self-knowledge will substitute for a consistently profitable trading strategy. The trader who does not have a consistently profitable trading strategy will, obviously, inescapably, lose.

If you're referring to the very first chart, i.e., the "quoted" chart, then for that overall period, buyers and sellers were pushing and pulling price throughout with little progress toward one side or the other, ending in what amounts to a draw, or a state of "balance", or a state of "equilibrium". But that's not how trading works. Trading is not "here's a trade from this morning" or "here's a trade from yesterday". Trading is "it's 09:46; what do I do at 09:47?" or "price is at 146.25; what do I do if it hits 146.50?" All you have when you're ready to begin is what came before. One hopes that you know where support and resistance lie. Maybe you have a support or demand line that looks dependable. But the uppermost questions in your mind are (a) what now? and (b) what do I plan to do about it? Couldawouldashoulda has its place, but the step into trading the right edge (Here There Be Dragons) is a high and often insurmountable one. There are many trading opportunities here that are more easily seen if one backs up and focuses on the movement as it occurs rather than view an entire day or so as a lump. For example, let's back up a bit from my first chart, all the way back to the previous day's close: Here you have a shot of trading activity right at the close, propelling price all the way to 909. But then what? Most people are getting ready for Happy Hour. But others are continuing to trade, or are just getting ready to. What's available for them? Let's look first at the shaded area: Notice first that there seems to be no volume at all after the close. Everybody's locked up, turned off the lights and gone home. But if you hang around and get past the fireworks, you find this: Price has been in a one-point-wide consolidation for four hours, a long wait. But eventually it drops out of that for a test of demand. At 21:00, trading activity increases beyond the norm and preliminary support seems to be provided (price moves sideways for 15m as trading activity declines sharply, i.e., selling is withdrawn). Then price drops further and trading activity increases again. Here trading activity declines sharply again, and price moves sideways for another 15+m. Then trading activity increases again, not to the extent that it did 20m earlier, but price is propelled to 906.25. The behavior of price tells you that the increase in trading activity was an increase in demand, or buying pressure. Price drops back a bit, but it doesn't see 905 again. This is a shake-out and a buying opportunity. Price then works its way back to that consolidation zone from 907 to 908 and subsequently drops below its demand line, finding support at 907, the bottom of the range: When price tests this level again a little over an hour later and there's nothing urgent about the trading activity, you have another long opportunity. (Granted these point moves are not huge, but not everybody seeks huge point moves.) The point is that looking back from the opening bell or later on the 19th, it appears that there's nothing going on here, and there is actually quite a lot going on here. And those on the other side of the world who trade during these hours can profit from applying the very same principles as those who trade during New York hours. And if the bars begin to screw around with your head, plot your line chart again: And if you refer back to the charts I posted earlier, you'll see that price tested 907 yet again at 03:30, providing yet another long opportunity, this one good for up to 8pts (though realistically probably a point or two less than that). And where does price land when that 08:30 report is issued? Right back at that same consolidation zone. You then have a shake-out during that 09:50 dip below support, and price takes off for 914. And these are only a few of the trading opportunities that present themselves on both the long and short side. To look back and conclude that bulls and bears seem pretty evenly matched and that price is for the most part drifting sideways is to overlook these profit ops. In order to detect them, one must become at least acquainted with the principles, then back up and move forward, bar by bar. He will find that "right-edge" trading is a very different world. As for volume (or trading activity), I addressed this at length in another thread, but I'll quote part of it here for convenience: Until price reaches an area where a trading opportunity is most likely to occur, there's no reason to obsess over the minor ebbs and flows in volume. However, once trading opportunities are on the horizon, what might be considered directionless activity elsewhere suddenly becomes important. Here, for example, when price comes back to 1966 the second time, the fact of the test is interesting enough. That it cannot make a lower low even with all the volume is even more interesting. The bullish boost at 1329-30 becomes more important because of what has come before, as does the volume recession when price pulls back to 1975. When another bullish boost occurs, beginning at 1352, it is significant, again, because of what has come before. And when price makes an attempt at a higher high at 1401 and volume isn't there, that again becomes significant because of what has become before and provides the "classic" double-top price-volume divergence setup for the short. Without the context, none of this matters, and volume is little more than traders going about their business. With the context, it becomes a high-probability short trade. Hope all of this (a) makes sense and, if so, (b) is helpful.

Notice: There ought to be 10 charts in this post. If any of them disappear, please let me know. Given the lines you've drawn in an attempt to trace the "wave" movements and your comments regarding strength and weakness, you appear to be trying to apply the lessons taught in the first three stickies, and good for you: (1) assessing the continuing imbalances between supply and demand (or between buying and selling pressure, buying and selling power, buying and selling interest: whatever term you choose is immaterial), (2) judging the market by its own action (that is, its behavior, which is to say the behavior of those who are moving the price), (3) using the inherent wave structure to help you determine that strength and weakness. To begin at the beginning, then, and focus only on these three essential components of the Wyckoff Way, I suggest you get rid of all the clutter: the colors, the candles, even the bars, and look at the waveform itself. I've converted the time axis to New York time to put everybody on the same page. The particular line plotted in this chart is an average of the high to low in what had been each individual vertical bar. Therefore, the highs and lows of each individual bar are filtered out. One could show all those highs and lows by using a tick chart (that is, 1 tick) and avoiding the use of bars entirely, but that would mean a hell of a lot of charts, most of which would look like flies buzzing over poop rather than transactions to those who aren't used to following tick charts. But the point here is to illustrate an idea, not to provide a schematic. The "continuity of price" can be difficult -- sometimes overwhelmingly difficult -- for anyone who's learned to read charts via bars or candles, much less with indicators attached. But it is perhaps the most important element in applying the Wyckoff approach. This may be more easily understood if one remembers that all of Wyckoff is based on tape reading, that is, the continuous, uninterrupted flow of price movement. The vertical bar chart is used only to summarize each day's activity, and one must never forget that each individual bar represents many waves of buying and selling, each wave comprised of hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of transactions. To attach any particular meaning to any particular bar, then, is misdirected unless one has clearly in mind all that was done during the trading day to create the bar in the first place. Backing away from bars, then, and looking at the underlying sentiment which propels the formation of the bars, I hope you can more easily see the durations and extents and angles (or "strides") of the waves. If you were to try plotting them again, you may wind up with something like this: Perhaps you can more easily see now that each buying (or up) wave is longer than each preceding selling (or down) wave. This tells you who's got the ball. But note also that the durations of each wave are getting shorter and the strides are becoming more vertical. These aspects tell you that, while bulls are still in charge, you are rapidly approaching a level of buying exhaustion. Not parabolic perhaps, but at least a level where demand and supply will come into balance and price will move sideways for a bit before a reversal or continuation. Just looking at this will not provide a revelation, but a line is a handy tool to get one back in synch with the underlying wave movement if he finds himself getting too entangled with the trees that bars can represent and the alleged "meaning" that they have. Once one feels that he grasps the idea behind the continuous line and the continuous waves, he can always put the bars back: He can also put back the candles and the colors, but it's unlikely that he'll want to since they turn the focus back to the bar and away from the continuous wave underneath. The bar alone will likely be sufficient to tell him not only what's going on with the underlying waves but also, through the highs and lows of the bars, tell him how far buyers and sellers are pushing up and down before pulling back into the wave. Now about the volume, which you don't address, but which you've plotted, and which can provide some additional and useful information to you. You've begun with the overnight, and volume is of course not what it will be when reports start coming in or the market "opens". And in real time, or in replay, you will see a very different volume pattern than you will if you log on shortly before the open and review what's been going on before you woke up. Note here, for example, what the volume looks like before the reports start rolling in: Keep in mind that volume represents transactions and that linking a particular volume "bar" with a particular price "bar" works counter to an effort to stay in synch with what's going on with the continuous movement of price. Therefore, rather than focus on the length of any particular volume bar, much less attempt to determine how much of it is "buying" and how much of it is "selling", think of it only as an increase in trading activity and focus on how that increase affects price movement. Here, for example, there are several instances of noticeable increases in trading activity. Noting what happens to price in each of these instances will tell you all you need to know about who's got the ball. The other thing to be wary of with regard to volume is to get too far ahead of yourself when reviewing the market prior to the time you revved up your charting program and logged in. Here, for example, the volume on the 08:30 report is so high that it dwarfs everything that came before, giving the impression that nothing important was going on prior to 08:30. But this was not the case (as seen in the preceding chart). And when the market opens for the regular trading day, even the significance of the volumes prior to 09:30 can be missed: And back to that portion of the day which you originally charted: And the "wave" for it: And even though you are not yet looking at support and resistance, or at least you didn't in your chart, it will help as soon as you're ready to incorporate that aspect into your analysis so that you have a better idea of why price does what it does where it does it. Here, for example, note the dip that price made overnight after having consolidated for several hours and where price found support after the open: That alone, of course, is not enough. But when combined with a wave plot and an assessment of what the "volume bars" are telling you about trading activity, you will be better able to take advantage of the trading opportunity in real time, not the least of which reason will be that you'll know where to expect it, if and when it presents itself. And, yes, it also takes a lot of screen time. Edit: A couple of charts vanished into the ether and had to be reinserted. I hope this is the end of it.

As you know, I follow "up and down volume" as well (volume of advancers vs volume of decliners). However, I also separate them in order to determine if and when "something is up" (so to speak) in a sideways movement, particularly if it's a lengthy one. This splits the voume in a meaningful way which also doesn't involve any work. I'll use the Naz only, just to provide an example. Note here that as price drifts up past 1720 toward 1760, the volume of advancers trails off. When it tries to make a new high on the 7th, buyers withdraw and the volume of decliners is dramatically higher. However, selling pressure is immediately withdrawn. There's no follow-through. Only later is price allowed to drift downward, gently. Volume of advancers declines and volume of decliners increases, but both changes are gradual. There's no "panic" here. After price hits support on the 13th, buyers come back again, heavy, but as price works its way toward resistance, volume of advancers again declines, at which point the volume of decliners increases. And so on. This is classic. Price is pushed towards one end and whoever is pushing backs off in order to keep price within the range. There's no follow-through on either end. Detecting this using the ordinary measure of daily trading activity charted at the top (in green) is difficult because trading activity in general is heavy throughout in all the major averages, and coloring the bars often leads to exactly the wrong conclusion (and also interrupts "the wave" or the flow). Getting past the usual "volume bar", however, enables one to see who's doing what when. The only question now is whether this is re-accumulation or distribution.

Anyone who wants to weight them is welcome to do so. I used to, but I didn't see enough difference to make the effort worthwhile, partly because the point is to determine relative performance and partly because the composition can change fairly often. If the composite isn't doing what it's supposed to do (i.e., act as a canary), one will know pretty quickly. One can also just find the five leaders (or, in this case, four or six), follow their charts, and combine them in his head.

Leaders can be found in any market. If, for example, you were interested only in financials, you could trade the leaders in financials (though you'd have to determine the position of the general market in order to determine whether or not financials provided a trading opportunity at all). If you're looking at an entire index, the procedure for finding the leaders is the same as anywhere else. A more important concern might be liquidity, i.e., is there enough interest in the index to provide opportunities? In this particular case (the American market), one looks for those stocks which have moved farthest and fastest in the Dow (one could also use some other market average, but the Dow theoretically is a proxy for the market as a whole, and it's comprised of only 30 stocks, which makes the job easier). One can do this by looking at MAs, Slope, ROC, or by just eyeballing it (the eyeballing is generally the most accurate). Or one can let someone like StockCharts do the work. SC compares whatever you want to compare across whatever timeframe you want to make the comparison by means of its "Performance Charts" function. As for speculating in large swings, see the Groups thread to get started, then take a look at the Trading Off Daily Charts thread (there will likely be much in the latter thread that you can skip). I'm glad you're enjoying the forum

It's a Sierra Charts function, though I'm sure there are other charting programs that can do the same thing. First, determine the leaders. Then, once you've listed these with your data provider, just combine them in Sierra Charts. You can also do this with Excel (add the closing prices of, for example, the stocks, then divide by six to get an average price; you can do the same for the highs and lows if you want to track that info). Or you can just watch this space.

As indicated in the daily charts over the weekend, the Dow, S&P and Naz all found support at the anticipated levels. Today was therefore up. The sector canaries were a bit stronger (which is to be expected since they are after all the leaders), finding support a bit higher. Too late for a long, of course. The next potential trading opportunity will be if and when price reaches the other side of the range or if and when this upmove fails and it breaks below support.

Getting back to the OP, and before the thread gets too long and people stop reading it from the beginning, it is important not to mix up profitability, success, and making a living. The video addresses profitability, and this need not have anything to do with making a living, that is, making a living requires a much greater degree of financial inflow than just turning a profit. "Success" has an even wider range of definition. Success need not mean making $100k a week. Success, depending on circumstances, may mean being able to transmit the order. Success, depending on circumstances, may mean being able to break even, or to withstand the temptation to trade. Depending on the amount of damage inflicted by the market or by the wrong mentor, success may mean being able to address the trading environment with a clean slate, and that can take a very long time. But the amount of time has little or nothing to do with trading per se; it has rather to do with the self. When wondering, then, how long it will take for one to become "profitable", he must define just what he means by "profitable". He must then determine just how ready he is for the task.

No, I don't, but Wyckoff was enthusiastic about it, and, as I said in the P&F thread, anyone who wants to explore that aspect of it in that thread is welcome to do so. However, no one has shown any interest. Perhaps P&F is no longer stylish. I'm not a part of that community, so I can't say. There is much of the course that has a raise your own chickens for the eggs element to it and that I don't find particularly pertinent today, such as that having to do with drawing your own charts, especially P&F. But those who snort at it because some of it is old-fashioned and out of date (such as how to choose a broker and how to place an order) are missing out on a gold mine.

A. That I charge for my ebook appears to bother you something fierce. My question to you is why should I go to all the time and trouble of putting something like that together and then give it away? My time is, after all, worth something, and even if I were to compute it based on 10 cents an hour, the book would amount to considerably more than $30. If you believe that Connors trades, or Elder, or Raschke, or Nison, or anyone else who has compiled a book, ask them to send you a copy gratis. If you don't believe they trade, why bother to ask? Enough with the book. B. As for your trading, we went through all of this a year ago, but at the time you wanted to make what I believe you called "boatloads" of money and you wanted to make it fast. This did not sound promising to me, at least in terms of my time. Plus you got a mentor, and too many cooks, etc. But I'm afraid we do not see trading and the markets in the same way, though that is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think the market is fractal, either, but no one is required to agree with me. In any case, I don't see that you've followed the steps I suggested in the Trading Journal I referred to above. Not that that is necessarily important. As I said earlier, there's more than one road. I would not have brought it up had you not said that I didn't "prioritize" the information nor place downstage center what I thought was the most important. The most important element of a consistently profitable trading strategy is an edge, and I say so at the very beginning after which I get into the process of developing one. As for the present, whatever issues you have with your trading are really between you and your mentor. If you're satisfied with how things are going, then there's no problem. I do suggest, however, that you look over at least the last couple of days' or so entries and read everything as if it were someone else's journal. Are you really listening to the help that members are trying to provide? This has probably drifted into the realm of the off-topic by now, and I don't want to hijack the thread either. I do hope that those who are interested in the subject of this thread can get past the personalities and focus on the central issues that determine how long it takes to become a profitable trader. Contrary to some remarks that have been made, whom one listens to -- much less whether or not that someone is a successful trader -- is not a central issue. If one believes that everyone from Velez to Homma is a crook and has made it all up, he can learn most of what needs to be learned by getting a cheap or free charting program and data and sitting down in front of the screen with a stack of legal pads and a box of pencils and figuring it out himself, which is what the pioneers such as Dow and Wyckoff and Livermore and Gann had to do. Doing this takes at least a brief familiarity with the scientific method, but there's nothing especially difficult about that. However, since the schools may not be teaching it any more, below are the essential steps: The essential elements of the scientific method are traditionally described as follows: - Observe: Observe or read about a phenomenon. - Hypothesize: Wonder about your observations, and invent a hypothesis, (sometimes one's hypothesis is initially nothing more than a "guess"), which could explain the phenomenon or set of facts that you have observed. - Test a hypothesis - Predict: Use the logical consequences of your hypothesis to predict results (e.g., measurable experimental values) that must be found if the hypothesis is to be judged correct -- whether it is 'complete' or not. - Experiment: Perform experiments to test those predictions. (Note that great precision regarding a negative result might not be required to falsify a hypothesis.) - Conclude: Failure to see the predicted results from a well designed and implemented experiment is clear indication that the hypothesis is defective. Try again. Seeing the predicted results is an indication that the hypothesis is acceptable though not 'confirmation' or 'proof' of its correctness. - Evaluate: Search for other possible explanations of the result until you can propose no better account of your data. Formulate a new hypothesis which may better explain the experimental data and the original observation. - Repeat If one has trouble applying this to the markets, perhaps the following will be of help: 1. Study price movement. 2. Develop a set of preliminary hypotheses which take advantage of these movements and test them according to standard methodology. 3. Decide what strategy (breakout, retracement, reversal) will best take advantage of what you think you've found. 4. Decide what tactics you're going to employ to implement it. 5. Carefully define the setups which put these tactics in play. 6. Develop a trading plan around this strategy, these tactics, and these setups. 7. Evaluate the results. 8. Rinse and repeat. Note that there is nothing abstract, theoretical, philosophical, cosmic, or ethereal about any of this. It's just work. Lots of it. And no one can do it for you.

Only if they're making money. If they continue to lose it throughout the journey, they'll never reach the destination.

I don't think of trading price as a religion, but it does make sense to me. Sanctimony aside, however, once it becomes clear that a trader -- beginner or otherwise -- and I are not on the same wavelength, I don't pursue it. There are many ways to make money in the market, and if someone chooses another path, there's no need for me to argue the point. It is not, after all, my money. Therefore, when it became clear last summer that you and I had very different views on trading, I didn't pursue it (see the Edge vs Mentality thread). Nor have I posted to your journal. There's no point. Only your own success or failure will convince you as to whether you've been right or wrong. As for what's immediately necessary for becoming a profitable trader, you (as you say) are not yet a profitable trader. Perhaps if you'd followed the steps I suggested in the Trading Journal, you would be. Or maybe not. As I said, there is more than one path to profitability. But if I'm reading your posts correctly, you have not yet established an edge, you have not yet defined your setup in a way that can be tested, you don't like to do backtests, and you don't like to keep detailed records. And this is only a part of the process I've suggested. It may not be the path to profitability for you, but it has been for many. To say that I haven't "prioritized" anything or put "the most important stuff first" is inaccurate. Again, you may find that different steps are better for you, that the priorities are different, that something else may be "more important". The only way you have of knowing for sure is to do the work yourself and to examine the results you've achieved. You've been at this for around 18 months, and perhaps you are at the point where you can reexamine how close or how far away you are to achieving your goals and whether your views on trading and the markets have aided or impeded your progress. If you believe that you're on the right track and you're happy with your progress, then what I think is completely irrelevant. It's your money and your time. I go into this here because this thread is about how long it takes to become a profitable trader. And as I said in my first post, it "depends in large part on how many detours the wannabe takes, how many dead-ends he winds up in, how susceptible he is to the con. If he's blessed with common sense, a finely-tuned bullshit detector, and a basic understanding of what an auction is, shouldn't take more than a couple of months." The flip side of this, of course, is that if the beginner takes many detours, is easily conned, has little or no common sense, has no idea how an auction market works, and has "psychological issues" playing Monopoly, much less trading the markets, then he will very likely spend years trying to cobble something together, at least until he runs out of money. The trust that beginners place in what they read in books and online and hear in seminars and courses and on CDs and DVDs astonishes me. Without having the least idea whether Joe or Mary is a successful real-time trader or even can trade at all, the beginner will invest years of his time following these messiahs, and often invest thousands of his dollars as well. He can't or won't apply his own intelligence to the task and determine for himself whether what he's being fed is twaddle or not. He will, for example, believe with the fervency of the zealot that expectancy is critical and that entries don't matter, even though Van Tharp can't trade his way out of a paper bag. Brownsfan regularly and often fans the flame of his obsession over my failure to provide "proof" that I not only trade but that I am successful at it. But the fact is that neither has he provided any proof that he trades and that he is successful at it. Do I bring this up again and again? No. Why? Because I couldn't care less whether he trades or not, much less whether or not he is profitable. He may be a complete and utter failure, or he may be wildly successful, but what is that to me? It doesn't affect my bottom line in the least. The beginner cannot trust anyone, regardless of who that anyone is, how many posts he's got, how many thanks he's got, how many times he's been nominated for POTM, whether or not he's a moderator, how long he says he's been trading, what kind of or how much experience he claims he has, what he says his results are. That guru the beginner follows so devotedly could very well be a teen-aged girl posting messages with her parents' laptop. But the beginner doesn't have to trust anyone or anything but himself. What with replay, the beginner can test any idea he encounters and determine whether or not there's anything to it in no time at all. If he is intelligent and sensible, he may make that determination in even less time than that. It is ironic that those who want the most the fastest with the least amount of work wind up with the least and spend the longest time getting it, usually with more work than if they'd had a proper start to begin with. There is simply no getting around the fact that the beginner must have an edge. There is no amount of work or dedication or counseling or expenditure that will turn a losing strategy into a profitable one. Nor can the beginner assume that if he instead chooses to buy something that is purportedly successful for somebody else that it will be successful for him, even if he has indisputable evidence that that somebody else is in fact successful with whatever system or indicator or strategy it may be. So coming full circle, how long does it take to learn how to trade? Again, "it depends in large part on how many detours the wannabe takes, how many dead-ends he winds up in, how susceptible he is to the con. If he's blessed with common sense, a finely-tuned bullshit detector, and a basic understanding of what an auction is, shouldn't take more than a couple of months." If he isn't but rather prefers to take what appears to be the easiest and quickest and surest route, it could take five years, or ten, or twenty. Or more.

Please understand that there are no Hidden Secrets being withheld here. The "keys" are for the most part in what's already been posted, in W's own words. Most everything else is little more than examples. Hundreds of examples. If one does not "get" what's being postulated in the first three stickies (here, here, and here), then this is likely not for him (and given the number of posts related to coding and indicators and automated systems and so forth, there clearly are a great many people whose tastes lie elsewhere). This is not to say that there are not useful examples provided in the course that are not provided here. However, many of these charts are in deplorable condition and take a great deal of time to restore. Even then, there are some things that just can't be recovered, such as in some cases the "closes" on the bars on the vertical charts (even the volume bars are sometimes a guess). If you enjoy the process of getting into a long-dead trader's head through what he's written, then the course is well worth having. But I don't want you to be disappointed if you don't receive some sudden illumination. My primary caution is to focus what you think and believe and do on the work itself, not on an adaptation of it or an interpretation of it or on what some supposed Wyckoff guru has to say about it.

While I appreciate diablo's and thales' kind words, brownsfan has been so very interested in this for so very long. So here ya go, brownsfan: I like to be done by 1100. .

Rather than follow all the leaders in stocks and groups individually, one can consolidate the leaders in each into "the Wyckoff Wave", i.e., a crystal ball of sorts that peers into the inner workings -- strengths and weaknesses -- of the major market averages and helps to avoid surprises. If, for example, the market is strong but the leaders are weak, one has a leg up on the competition by detecting this weakness before most are aware of it. A hundred years ago, creating the WW was a laborious task. Nowadays, all one has to do is determine the leaders, as I have above, add them together, and plot the result as a single map. Weakness, however, cannot be taken at face value. In a grinding, range-bound market, one must be on the lookout for rotation, out of one set of one-time leaders and into a set of a new group of leaders. So far, this is not an issue.

Updates on the weekly charts (that is, the weekly update of the daily charts). Note that while all the demand lines were broken, none were broken decisively. In fact, one could characterize the action in the Dow and SPX as tests.

Any chance this could be made into a stickie in the MP Forum? It's now buried so far back that I'm afraid most people have forgotten about it or never knew it was there in the first place. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f6/markets-profile-detailed-book-review-3605.html