SRspider

$ , Thank you for the positive remarks. Market Scientist, Yes with all that information it is difficult. But what you must do is, take that information when the market is CLOSED and then do your work then. Choose your setups, develop your plan, really detail out the information. Example. The setups need specific criteria for entering and also exiting. Also you need to determine how much size you are going to trade. What markets are you going trade. These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed BEFORE you trade, not DURING. Once you have that you must, must, follow your plan and just take the setups, don't worry about winning or losing. Just focus on taking those setups you defined. Now the result of what happens you must constantly monitor, what setups you took and how they worked out. Can you change the setup to make it better or should you just throw it away and look for others. You do need to give them sometime. 1 week is not enough, you might have to observe the results over 4-6 weeks to really know. Start with only 2 or 3 , whatever you feel comfortable with. Treat them like they work for you, if they do something wrong try and work with them to make them better , if they are not performing and there is no hope for improvement, you must let them go. I hope this makes sense. SRspider

I trade oil, gold, the euro,and sometimes but not much the es. I have 15 setups, but mostly I concentrate on maybe 4-5 key ones that setup usually everyday. The others don't form all that often. Thanks for the reply. SRspider

I used to blame myself for losers. That would cause a chain reaction of emotions that would lead to some real bad behavior, such as revenge trading, breaking rules, and deviating from the plan. Until I decided and realized that the losers weren't my fault at all, then things started to change. Here is what happened. I realized that as long as I had a plan and the trade I took was part of the setups in my plan then, if I won or lost, it really didn't matter. I had already won, since I followed my plan. Once I figured this out and really believed it, I sat down and really wrote out a plan with some real specific entry rules and setups and how I was going to manage my trades. I did this from the 7 years of experience day trading and the many books , cd's courses, etc that I had purchased over the years. I took a handful of setups and I decided that win or lose I was going to follow the plan and stick with it for at least one month and then evaluate the results after that. After one month of trading I looked at my results and had a net loss for the month. But I felt like a winner because I stuck to it, and never blamed myself for a single loss. The next step. Where to put the blame? I put the blame on the setups I was using. Some were resulting in some real nice trades and others were not. I kept the good ones. The bad ones , I analyzed and thought to myself how can i make these better. So I tweaked the ones that I could and discarded the rest that I didn't like. After another month of trading i was net positive for the month and went through the whole process again. Now after a few months of this routine I have a about 15 setups that i really like and the results have been amazing. Once I stopped blaming myself I stopped creating all those negative emotions and actions that were leading to the path of destruction. I became creative , positive and everything turned around. I took a long hard look at any setup that was under performing and tried to improve it or discard it. The reason I am posting this is because I know that there are a lot of traders out there that are going to some serious emotional roller coasters while trading and I think that what I have discovered will really help people get one step closer to achieving their goals. But there is more, because , it was not easy to stick to the plan for a month. I used some knowledge I gained about myself to do this. I will post that in a later post. I would like to see what others think about what I have written. SRspider

Kiwi, I totally get what you are saying. But when you say "First, learn to execute mechanically while you wait for your emotions to decline and learn to trust the right things. Until you do the noise of your emotions will overpower any valid intuition. Then, and only then, you may intuit with some reason to hope it will improve your results." This is sort of what I am saying, but I mean that by executing mechanically you will not necessarily be profitable. Learning to execute mechanically will teach you to recognize your setup. However you must get to the point where your emotions decline like you say and learn to trust the right things. At that point are you executing ALL your setups?

I think you should have a plan with well defined setups and areas where you are looking to take action. But ultimately it comes down to how you read the market. If you could trade like a machine and take every single setup, then machines could be programmed to make money and I have not seen any that do. Also regarding winging it. If you only take trades that meet your setup criteria or trigger and skip on a few because of what experience has taught you, then you are not really winging it, since your are NOT taking trades which do not meet your criteria. Just my opinion.

I really liked that post. Its why you can take the same exact setups and give them to two traders and one will be profitable and the other wont. Because the profitable one will know when not take the setup, when to cut the trade early, and when to stay in the trade longer. The profitable trader has learned to read the market. I thought it was excellent.

Hi Sanchez, Great thread. Your style of trading is very similar to the way I approach the markets. And the information you are providing is excellent. Can you be a bit more specific on what type of price action you look for at the support/resistance areas that would cause you to take a trade. I understand that you look for a low volume move into a resistance area, or a high volume spike on the 1 minute chart into a resistance area to initiate a short trade. Is there any other type of price action that would tell you to take a trade. If you could post charts showing your entry and why you took it , it would be of great help.

My view on this is like Lurker's in that i would see it as accumulation. With all that volume and no price movement it seems that the selling was absorbed. It would also depend on what level this was happening and what happens next as well. I wouldn't just jump in unless there is other evidence of strength.

I use fibonacci in addition to other methods for finding support and resistance, like moving averages or congestion areas. The more things come together at one spot I think the better the zone.

Just my opinion here. I am not recommending anyone or anything. There is a site in which a one month statement is shown in a video. I traded with them a for a little while and it did not work for me, but that does not mean that it does not work for others. That site is efuturevision you can check it out and due your own due diligence. In my opinion, the best way to learn is by educating yourself on several principle about the market. Learn to spot support and resistance levels, then learn some triggers to get you into a trade. Pick your spots and take your triggers, try to keep your losers small and milk the profitable ones as much as you can. Also learn whether you want to take pullbacks in a trend, or whether you want to take reversals at tops and bottoms. There are also break out traders but I don't recommend that as many times break outs are fake outs. Again just my opinion.

Still new to the volume stuff. Any comments are welcomed. From what I have read a good setup would be to wait for a an upthrust bar after a buying climax to short for a short trade or to wait for a shakeout bar to form after a selling climax. I beleive that is what we had today in the es which gave to tradeabl events. I marked up a chart. Any comments are welcomed.

Thanks atto, I am new to this stuff and I was a bit confused as to where things or terms came from. I have the SMI course and at first thought it was the Wyckoff course. Are the principles the same? It seems that from the Wyckoff course came the SMI course and then from that came the VSA stuff.

Question on a number 1 spring and a breaking of the ICE. What are the clues that the break down through support is either a number 1 spring or a braking of the ICE? Sorry if this is in the wrong thread. Thanks

My Analysis for this morning on the a possible selling climax.

Here is another chart I tried to analyze with some VSA principles. Please disregard the MACD indicator, it was not used in the analysis. Any comments are welcome. SRspider

Thank you for a well thought out explanation. It was very educational.

Well the VSA summary pretty much gives you a link to find the definition and chart examples of almost everything described, so i guess it would not be necessary to put up the definitions.

Hello, Being a new comer I think new people would benefit from some definitions. I got these terms from another post which is not quoted. I'll start with what I have read and please feel free to add or change anything I may have made a mistake on: 1. tests- 2. shakeouts- 3. no demand-a norrow range bar with volume less than the previous 2 bars that closes up from previous bar. 4. stopping volume 5. pushing through supply 6. upthrust 7. selling/buying climax 8. climactic action 9. support/weakness coming in 10. trap up/down move 11. no result after strong effort 12. selling/buying pressure 13. bottom reversal 14. end of a rising market 15. squat-volume greater than the previous bar with range less than the previous bar. 16. WRB-Body greater than the previous 3 bars 17. Narrow Range-

Hello, I am new to this thread and have found it very beneficial thus far. Have only been reading for a week and still have a lot of catching up to do. However Its seems very logical and since then I have been watching the market with this analysis in mind. Here is a chart of what i saw on friday with a question on one of the concepts I have read about. Any comments would be appreciate it. thanks to all who have contributed to this great thread.

Hi Guys, Thanks for posting your guesses. The answer that mostly corresponds to what I had in mind was an edge. Or what I consider the holy grail of trading. What I mean is that take two traders and give them the same setups and the one who know when its best to pass on the setup and when its best to take it,will come out ahead. And of course the only way to know when to pass is to have the screen time and experience watching that setup. Once you got that for even just one setup, I think you've crossed over to consistency.

Hello Everyone, First post on here. I wanted to post a riddle which pertains to trading. Here are the clues. You Can't buy it. You Can't see it. You Can't touch it. You Can't smell it. Sometimes you can feel it. Once you got it, its difficult to lose it. Take a guess.