jasont

Thanks for bringing my attention to this thread Firewalker. Jocelyn said "Don't you find though that folks have a tendancy to embrace & overemphasize bad news more than they do good news?" The people that know I trade the markets often only ask me how my trading is going when we are declining and often only ask what to do when we are declining. Of course I never have the answers for them but they still seem to gain an irrational thought process when faced with the possible idea of loss. These are all mum and dad investors who would never short a market mind you. I don't necessarily think people assume the market drops quicker than it rises but more so see that it does. I haven't done a full scale investigation to what I am about to say but the following is something I have loosely picked up on. When we turn down after a move up, we usually take maybe 2 or 3, 5 minute bars on the ES to change direction. However when we turn up after a move down, we often see 3-5 5 minute bars on the ES to change direction. As I said this is not a fact based analysis but just something I have broadly noticed. It is probably also why I am better at long trades than short. In fact my statistics on winning long trades are twice as good as my short trades. It is a bit of a psychological reason, due to seeing the market drop quicker than it rises, I often get in too early because I am afraid of missing out on the move. However I believe the long moves take more time so I wait for more confirmation. If you were to draw the markets as waves, the tops of the waves would have shaper turns than the bottoms which would be more broad based. I agree that this thread should have more attention. It is an interesting phenomenon.

Hi Soultrader, I tried uploading a 4.6mb and a 12.1mb pdf. Both didn't work. Regards, Jay

Hi Soultrader, It would appear the uploading of PDF's via the attachment feature is still not working for me. I attempted to upload one today and received a coded message saying why. I can post the message if you wish but didn't want to here because it would ruin the nice look of this forum. :P Regards, Jay

Thanks for the great advice Db. I can see what you mean about avoiding the chop and only trade the decent sized moves.

Db that section in the pdf you provided is great. Thank you very much for offering that as reference. In this section he mentions "after a sale at a certain price, you enter the next sale in the same column if there is blank space...". Does that mean Wyckoff combined orders at the same price or did he track individual orders? The least amount of shares traded in a transaction was 100, did that mean he didn't bother with smaller transactions or that less than 100 in a single trade wasn't done? The reason I ask is that he seemed to look for the big money and where it was headed and tag along. In my opinion that is the ideal way for a smaller trader to trade. When I mentioned tracking the orders I meant ones that had been actually traded which were shown in the T&S. I have an image below from Monday 26th May. It turns out to be a good example because typically the big traders won't waste their time on a half day of trading especially when the stocks are not trading. The T&S on the right only shows the transactions that have a volume of 100 or more. You can see the smaller traders get left out of the equation making the big players the ones to keep an eye on for possible weakness at wave tops or strength at wave bottoms. I think this is on the right path as to what Wyckoff was talking about in tracking the volume on the tape but I have only a minor experience with it so far. Please let me know if this is not in the right direction or getting too far away from the thread topic. Regards, Jay

Thanks Db, I read the post you mentioned. From what I understood in your post, do you believe it is more beneficial/easier to read the volume in chart form rather than a T&S display? I have been looking at possibly using the T&S to help see the distribution flow during the wave peaks and troughs. My concern about the volume now as opposed to early 1900 is that there seems to be a lot of orders. The T&S might show 100 orders change hands but only one might be of substantial volume say 150 contracts. The rest might be 1 to 10 contracts at a time. My possible idea for this was to use a platform filter that only shows orders that are say 100 contracts or more. The rest are ignored so I can focus on the big traders at important times. Is this a logical approach or am I missing an important element? Regards, Jay

Hey Db, Thanks for your great work in the Wyckoff forum. I am currently in the middle of "The Day Traders Bible" and am curious about the use of the Tape in todays market. Obviously the volume is much higher than it was in the early 1900's, so how could one effectively apply the volume of the tape? Is it a matter of finding out the size the major players tend to trade and filter out the smaller volume with the platform we use? I notice just in the ES alone there is a massive number of trades that are below 10 contracts at a time. I commonly see the turn of the market coming but my timing is off which often results in numerous attempts at the same move. I think the tape might give some clues to help avoid early entries but not sure how to apply it in todays high volume markets. Any advice from yourself in its application today?

I can never deny a good trend. Saw the people with the most valuable things to say move over here so I took the plunge. Still jasont like at T2W.

Great thread DB. I haven't read it yet but Zen and the Art of Poker is next on the must read list. Thanks for the great posts and rules. Regards, Jay