BigKahuna

Snag attached...hopefully...

For what it is worth, I have thought of the spiraling of time and price a bit like the attached spot gold chart. Often, if we see things drawn on a chart a little differently once, we will begin to see it more on our own. Since I know someone will ask, there are two timing techniques on this chart. The lite blue line is a cycle of 14 five minute bars or seventy minutes. The white lines are a different cycle measure using a three point sequence of h-l-h or l-h-l. I am just too lazy to clean off my chart to illustrate my interpretation of spiraling through time and space... bigkahuna

I have not posted here at Trader's Lab in quite a long time, but had to comment on your Gann thoughts, Negotiator. I have studied everything regarding Gann I could get my hands on over a trading career that has spanned three decades. Some has been useful, most has not. Unfortunately, Gann techniques are all speculation. He did not leave detailed instructions on his trading techniques...it is all open to interpretation and speculation on students part. In the end, I could not come any closer to absolute time-price projections using interpretations of Gann than I could with techniques that where clear, scalable, and much easier to use. This is my personal experience, yours may be different.

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waveslider, The snag I posted is based on sqrt methodology. As for Gann "working." I tend to think that pure gann methodologies are extremely high probability at all times, our interpretations of the methodologies are faulty and prone to mistake. There is much conjecture as to what or how Gann really traded. In his time, he was considered very successful. He did sell courses that were as costly as the average home or more, but this is not a reflection of his trading accum. I remember a story of three traders in the pits in Chicago who received a flier for one of the courses that Gann was teaching. Because they were all struggling to make it, they pooled together the cash among the three of them, and sent one of them to the class with the understanding he would come back and show the others. When the pit trader came back from the course, he avoided the other two for a week or so. These two could not help but to notice how this guys trading had changed and they wanted to know why and how. After the second week, they cornered the guy. He paid them both back in full, but never revealed to them what he learned. He went on to become extremely successful being point on accurate trade and trade. The other two, languished. They never got to take Gann's course because he(Gann)died shortly after. The moral of the story, only those that met Gann got the whole thing put together for them and they ain't talking. His courses are bits and pieces meant to placate those who wanted to know his strategies. My guess, the "secrets" are buried with him in a Brooklyn cemetery. As for Dan Hall...I have read his book and studied his material. Some interesting and useful information. Is it the complete Gann story, no. But it is good and useful information. You can search to try and capture Gann's or anyone else's methods, but the best way to trade is by the methods you develop yourself. The idea of time-price trading is not isolated to those we know have done it, but you can develop your own methods that are just as accurate. It takes incredible work, but in the end, it is worth it. In my trader's tool box, I have probably two dozen methods to trade on the time-price continuum. Half of which I developed/discovered on my own. They are the ones I use every day without fail and the most accurate. It does not make them better than anyone else's, but they are mine and I know them inside out, how they work in every market condition.

Questions like the one firewalker has posed pop up now and then on forums. You will quickly find out where someone stands by how they answer it. Wasp's question is a good place to begin in unraveling the possibilities, "To what degree?" Is it fair to say you predicted the market if you are correct 70, 80,90,95 % of the time? Certainly being correct 50% would not qualify, but what does? When a trader ventures into the time-price study, he is actually beginning to use more fully the information on his charts. Most will spend their trading careers only looking at price, but charts have both an x and y axis, unfortunately, those who dare venture in this direction are often ridiculed. Either they are dismissed quickly as "liar," "lunatic," or worse. They say the proof is in the pudding(although the proof is in the details makes more sense). I have witnessed traders posting calls on markets that were within 2 hourly candles of being dead on the time mark and only a couple points off absolute high or low price, yet others accused them of chicanery, posting after the fact(even though time stamped), editing a post, or claiming it inaccurate. So to what degree? I a couple of points off, and an hourly candle or two off accurate or not. Considering we trade markets that are human driven and in which we have to rely on the devices of inaccurate man to provide pricing, to supply fear and greed to move markets, and to act upon such to make a prediction. The ability to predict must be distinguished from luck. So to what degree does one have to predict a market; time and price, before it may be considered prediction rather than luck? To what degree? The most profound of the questions that need to be answered before one can get to heart of the question of possibilities. fwiw, bk

I offer this chart up for study. It was drawn a coupla days ago just to illustrate how the above mentioned square root technique can be applied to a market. The es was specifically chosen because it was mentioned in this thread. I do not trade this market how ever. This grid was drawn using the range that is marked on the left had side of the chart and begun at its(ranges) conclusion. fwiw...

Sledge, How long have you really been trading? A year, maybe two? The price action you see is the norm. No one said you could not trade, but asked for discussion based on the implication you were having difficulties with this market. This action is not new and is not unusual. It may be new to you. If you do not want others to be honest with you, don't ask them questions. You want crap answers, go back to forexfactory that you like to quote so much, they don't like honesty either and are more concerned that someone gets their feelings hurt rather than hear the truth. If you can not handle this discussion without getting your feelings somehow hurt, you have much bigger problems than the current markets price action. Fear and greed move markets. Fear encompasses indecision, which we see a great deal, greed encompasses compulsion, which we also see. Humans move markets by their fear and greed, period.

waveslider, In answer to your question regarding levels I like better than others, with currencies, I tend to use the larger angles: 90,180,270,360 more than the others. As for being arbitrary, support and resistance derived from price action, fibonacci, gann, et al, are a guide(in many cases a very good guide) to frame the markets you trade. Are there times those who can move markets want to take it somewhere your calculated levels are not, absolutely. In the end, we are trying to define the behavior of the human mind. Will any method be 100% accurate in doing such? All you have to do to answer this is to try and figure out what your wife really wants for her birthday but won't tell you. Instead, leaves you to your own devices Now, where did I leave those chicken bones....

This may seem a bit confrontational, but have you ever considered there is nothing wrong with the currency markets. Perhaps it is the methodologies you are attempting. These markets are no different than they have been in the past....take a look at charts going back to the 70's, 80's and 90's, aside from the price, they are not much different then today.

waveslider, The only way you are going to get this crude little .xls of mine to work is to use the price cell. Instead of high or low price, input amount. OAC-interesting comment on Einstein. I have not delved into the study of the history of price to time ratios other than through my study of Gann. There seems to be some evidence that he was already using such methods at about this same time: 1900-1905. Thank you for enlightening us.

Sometimes I wish I were in paradise, but I am not. As for the calculations, excel makes it pretty easy, really. The attached xls is what I use in my day to day trading. It is not elaborate, but it is functional. If anyone is willing experiment some more with this, instead of using a high or low, use the range of the last wave. You may be surprised what you can see when you play with this a little. bigkahuna SQRT Calcs.xls

forsearch, No, the factors used are not unique to the ES, but can be used in all markets. They come from the study of Gann's square root calculator, commonly called the Square of 9.

The number of candles/bars is just the sqrt of the price used. In this case, 1440.22(sqrt is 37.95 rounded is 38) As for the charts, I trade only spot currencies and the best over all charting is Metatrader 4 for this market. They are available free from many different "brokers," or through the metaquotes web site (not sure url's are appropriate lest I be labeled a spammer).

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Here is a pretty simple way to find support and resistance using some gann related techniques. By way of example, I will use the ES. On the hourly chart I pulled up, 1440.22 was a significant high, so I will use it for illustrative purposes. 1. Take the square root of the significant number. sqrt of 1440.20=37.95xxx (I will round to the nearest cent) 2. subtract/add .25 from this square root to find the 45 degrees of support/resistance from 1440.22 37.95 -.25=37.70 37.95 +.25=38.20 3. square these numbers 37.70^2=1421.29 38.20^2=1459.24 This is the 45 degrees of support and resistance of the significant high at 1440.22. 4. To find other degrees of support and resistance use the following factors: 45 degrees .25 90 degrees .50 135 degrees .75 180 degrees 1.0 225 degrees 1.25 270 degrees 1.50 315 degrees 1.75 360 degrees 2.0 If you would like to experiment with this a little, use your sq rt number as the number of bars/candles to add a time element. For example, find the 45 degrees of price and time element, connect with a trend line diagonally(repeat each 45 degrees). You may just find it a nice framework to trade from.

While I am certainly not an expert on Wyckoff's methodologies, I have studied Gann, Andrews, and a number of others over a twenty something career as a trader. When trading spot forex, you need to use the US Marine mentality:improvise, adapt, overcome. I trade forex exclusively, now. And while some of the "masters of old" are still applicable to equities and futures with DOM, volume, et al, you have to take the time to study charts to sort out the workable strategies for forex. The cloak and dagger of over the counter markets makes it necessary for such work. Some may point you to the ecn type of brokers sometimes advertised as "no dealing desk," just know, this is not a true representation of the market at large, just that particular brokers clientèle. If you must use volume related methods, you can use the futures contracts as a reasonable representation, but pricing is different because of the interest swap. Good luck on our journey. BK BTW-dpPhoenix, always enjoyed reading your perspective in another place(forum) and time.

Alan's work as well as Pyrapoint by Dan Hall are good methodologies to study. Though they are calculated quite differently, the nuts and bolts of how to trade the price interaction is similar. Alan does a nice job of outlining those nuts and bolts with his explanation. Both are influence by Gann methodologies without the mind numbing quatrains.