firewalker

Drinking, women,... :rofl:

Enjoy the holidays Dinos! Before you go, how long does it take you to go "get make in the zone" when trading? Don't you feel the least bit tempted to look at the markets while away? Even if I take a break only for a couple of days, I often find myself thinking about what happened in the markets. Must be some sort of addiction :shocked: Anyway... enjoy the good life, there's more to it than sitting in front of the screen eh

Thanks for your contribution Eiger. I don't agree that looking for S/R makes you "part of the Herd", because I doubt the majority of the herd looks at S/R, but anyhow... And as for your supplyline, I draw these lines in realtime, so I have to go on on what I see at that time. Your line can only be drawn across that swing point 4 days later (on the 10th), by which a reversal might have taken place long before that line is breached. You said you wanted to see "high volume, a large rally, then a test". Interestingly enough, yesterday we had all of those three elements - depending on your definitions of "high" volume and how "large" a rally needs to be. The action in the last hour on the e-minis yesterday looked like a selling climax to me, and I attribute more importance to this since it didn't just occur in the middle of nowhere, but on support from a while back. Let me show you some charts of the ES, as I think that's the market you trade most. Not that it matters, because the NQ showed a similar pattern. First we go back and try to find where important buying took place in the past. Important enough to reverse price. This happened from 11-15 April, about two months ago. The middle of this zone is 1331. Next, we look at the ES action of yesterday (4 hour chart): Now, let's assume we didn't have support drawn there and we go back to Wednesday. Unless you had your eye on support, a trader would be looking for longs from 1340 I think. Now let's have a look at yesterday, this is a close-up, albeit a 5-minute chart instead of a 1-minute. Do we have "high volume, a large rally, then a test" and is this alone enough to take a long, or not? Or do you wait for the supplyline to be broken before taking a long? Perhaps, instead of doing some hindsight analysis - mea culpa - it might be interesting to know what you - or anybody else - would be looking for next. What elements would signal an "end of the trend"? Are we going to wait for a rally back to resistance, before a test at support? Is this an end of a trend of just a temporary change in momentum?

That's interesting, I'm just typing up a post about potential selling climax in the US late last night. That KOSPI chart is more or less the action you would expect to see after that...

So give us the top three and we'll vote

There's an important difference between HP consumer laptops (Pavilion series) and business laptops (usually still labeled HP Compaq models)... The latter are obviously more expensive, but more has put considerably more time in using high quality components to ensure a longer lifetime. This is not to say the consumer-series is bad - definitely not - but it's aimed at a different segment. The batteries you'll find in a Pavilion usually last 90 minutes to 2 hours tops, while some business models have 3 to 6 hours autonomy.

Poll is closed... almost 2 out of 3 members replied that they don't pay any attention to fundamentals. My next question is, does it matter which market you trade? Are the principles you use to trade market-specific or not? Do you think your system/strategy/method would work as well on any other market or not? To sum it up: a chart is a chart, regardless of the timeframe or whether it's a stock, commodity or futures chart? Agree or disagree? And if so, why or why not?

Even one of my first primitive trading strategies would've still worked today... long at the previous day low (depending there is a signal, which today there was), or short from the previous day high... If he's still anywhere out there, lurkerlurker should be pleased

The reason I think it's important is that since 10 April we haven't traded around that price level. I was also thinking along the lines of human psychology, instead of pure technical formations. The fact that price bounced off there means that a whole lot of people were basically looking at the same thing, not?

Some people would argue that support/resistance from so long ago loses it's importance...

Chart of the ES. Had my eye on this today, and it's exactly where we just bounced off. I'm still at this point where are all of this is fascinating to me, it's not boring at all... but who knows what I'll say in 5 or 10 years from now. Since this is a congestion from almost two months ago, I find it all the more remarkable.

I try to get my excitement from something else than trading What does help - at least for me - is having a clue about why price turns or moves in certain ways around certain levels. I'm not sure how 'mechanical' wasp or my own trading is, but I doubt it could be fully automated for that matter. To be honest, although I know nothing about forex, all the charts wasp posted seem pretty straightforward to me. Whether or not an index is composed out of 30 or 100 stocks doesn't really matter to me. A chart is a chart, so to speak. Some charts didn't have labels attached to them, but the same principles present themselves over different markets and different timeperiods imo. I struggled in the past trading European markets, but that was in great part because the volume and volatility before versus after US open could be of a whole different kind. I'm not saying there aren't 'specifics' to each market. Soultrader has described some elements of the KOSPI which seem different from other markets. But in general, whether it's silver, gold, grains, oil, stocks, futures, I don't think you need to know what it is you're trading, to make a profit of it... All these elements might help in understanding sector rotation and why some markets lead others, but I don't see how that's very relevant to intraday trading. Just my 2c.

No, it was the old one (hence the unusual low volume). Switching over today... but looks like we have a 10 point offset from the September to June contract, so guess we'll need to adjust all of our S/R levels appropriately...

been a while since we had these formations:

Respect! :yes sir:

Are those statistics you came up with yourself or is there a site someplace where you can find these things? (would be nice to have for indices for example)

All I did was post a chart, one interesting discussion going on I'm not totally clear on how you define discretionary... Although I can't speak for wasp, I'll admit that most of the time I'll act on the plan, and I would only "outsmart" myself if I had some very good reasons to do so. Trusting on 'gut feeling' helped me in some occasions... but following that kind of instinct is probably more a result of something you might have experienced in the past but don't recall very consciously at that moment, but it's still in your head someplace. It seems to me like you are "overriding" some signals, because you probably have a good idea of what the market is going to do, something which might come with the years and experience? As for the principles laid out there, I applied them on the NQ chart, but I didn't actually exit according to those rules yesterday (doesn't matter a whole lot). I do remember us having a discussion about a YM trade, where I stayed in the short, although you said at the time I had stopped listening to the market because there was -technically or mechanically- a trend reversal... Edit: just to make sure I'm clear on this, IF the higher low on lower volume (after potential SC) happened on support, would that have been enough reason to exit and reverse?

and out last part at 35 for another +20

out another 1/3rd at 12215 for +40. stop 35.

out 1/3rd for +25 at 12230. stop Be

DOW short 12255

damn, missed that trade textbook short really, spike into and above 12200... makes me even more convinced about premarket trading now...

One final question about these 'odds'. Is that based on personal experience or something other than the chart? Or is it based on a belief that important reversals only take place from important enough levels?

Wonderful post bootstrap. Thanks for sharing it with us. :thumbs up: I hope more people take notice of it.

If you trade every little swing correct, I think you can - theoretically - make much more than the daily range. However, theory and practice are two totally different matters in that aspect! If you can manage 1x the daily range of any instrument, you're already doing a fantastic job imo.