will1709

What you say about memorising is true, for most courses you're tested on ability to retain knowledge rather than lateral thinking. Thus, at the end of the day a pass or failure comes down to not what you learn in class but how you approach your studies outside of class. I think everyone finds it tough - succeeding in college or university is all about revision technique. The obvious aside, here are my suggestions based on how I learn: - Learn to speed read and stop sub-vocalising (assuming you do). I read at 800-1000wpm or 1-3 lines a second and this helps me no end in covering information quickly. - Don't try to understand everything the first time, instead read through everything quickly. Even if you miss words, or some understanding of a specific sentence carry on until you've read all of the relevant text. - Once you have a generalised context for what you're reading it becomes much easier to apply associations. On the subject of associations learn about memory techniques - memory pathways or rooms, mnemonics etc. - I find time between reading more important than written repetition. I know people who can spend months writing, reading and rewriting essays hundreds of times only to fail in the exams. For me I read things approx 3 times and after this I can tell you what page number, slide and line something appears on but only if I leave it at least 2-3 days in between reading. So my advice would be start early, but don't get stressed if you don't remember it the first time. Try to absorb the information passively the first 2 times you read it and focus on specifics at the third attempt. By reading large amounts of text 3 times as default, with various subjects, this obviously requires large amounts of time hence the advantage of learning to read faster. -Lectures normally involve writing/listening. I find this combination dull, I would personally try to get the lecture texts off a student in prior year so you can focus on what's being said instead of trying to quickly transcribe. Again with reading everything once perhaps try, over the weekend prior, to read the material for the upcoming lectures- Not trying to memorise but instead allowing you to build up the background for stronger associations when lecture comes about.. I dunno what else to suggest. Personally, I have the worst attendance in my year for my degree(pharmacy), I spend about 20% of the revision time of other people and I normally get some of the highest marks for my year. The second key, apart from time, is study past exam papers. You can be asked to study a plethora of books but only some of this information may be pertinent for assessment so study past exam papers at the start of the year, not just exam time so you know where to focus learning and what lectures to pay particular attention to. (sorry if this is just sucky generalised advice, but honestly I think that the difference between success and failure it down to mentality. Revision techniques can be learnt. It's just about having the desire to strife for more, never consider dropping out as an option) Will

The data feed is free, it includes T&S. $tick & $trin aren't included as far as I know, you would need a separate paid for feed for these.

Mirus and AMP futures offer free futures data via ninja trader if you sign up for the demo. It's time-limited but following expiration you can re-register interest and get a new demo account. Quality of feed is good.

I was only demo trading today but I thought this was a good setup offering a number of entires, and scope for analysis. Breakout from the short-term bull trend in a bull descending channel. Almost textbook breakout pullback with the bear high touching the base of ascending trend and kissing the 34EMA (light blue line). Price corrected/trading range, pullback to the 34EMA. After failure of trend reversal the bear action increased in momentum, as expressed by the kissing of the 21EMA. Price did not initially break the lower channel with the pullback near the edge. Given its proximity to the edge I considered this a valid entry after the kiss of the 21EMA, but more importantly because of prior action with rejection of bull trend line, the correction, lower high and resultant momentum. Maybe this was more aggressive, the point was just to demonstrate the 21/34ema. I use both because they give me a little better idea of the strength of momentum. I don't have a reason (fib/institutional mid) for selecting these magic number, my reasoning is from reading forums and speaking to experienced traders, as well as reading books in which these numbers were frequently commented upon. I've tried out many moving averages but found the larger ones impractical with infrequent pullbacks, in practice the kisses of these dynamic areas of support and resistance seem like very nice visual gauges of momentum so my reasoning is more practice based than infallible logic.

Ohhh, sorry. Al brooks: Reading price charts bar by bar. Chapter 9 'Minor Reversals: Failures'. Page 222-225 (it's the first subtopic). Hope that helps. Will

I completed the chapter on the one tick failed breakouts earlier today. Just an observation from the first post in the thread. For the chart for USD/CHF 5min 09-28-08 where the short arrow is this is an almost perfect example from this chapter. Those that entered long on the strong bull candle, predicting a reversal, would've had a stop below its low, hence the increased momentum on failed breakout above the 20ema. It's pretty neat seeing these things which I wouldn't ordinarily have noticed before apart from the obvious rejection, just adding greater bearish sentiment. Random post but it's just nice to see my perspective changing everyday =)

Most of the majors and concentrating on the volatile crosses at the moment e.g. gbp/jpy, only when clearly trending or ranging though, avoid all chop. I trade the london opening breakout and then till the early evening. I generally scalp in between waiting for long term entries. I trade other markets- ES, various commodities but I don't trade these on such small time frames because they have pretty lame spreads with IGIndex, I just trade these on daily/hourly charts. How about yourself? News trading is something that I've generally avoided, how do you personally trade the news?

I'm of the opinion he was merely demonstrating, as is obvious with legs, that both highs and lows exist in an uptrend but these were not necessarily to used as entries. With regard to your final comment, I believe that one cannot overstate the importance of this book. It's fair to say it's not written in the best way and perhaps this labeling of H1 L1 etc is a little ambiguous at time but for me the crux of the matter is that price action is a highly subjective subject and one must be able to express themselves as they see it to properly convey the situation (to be true to themselves). Secondly, I'm yet to complete the book but, I feel that the effort is more than worth the reward. There are such small nuances,and subtleties to price action trading that if you can look past the books short comings you will find some genuinely invaluable information. The book definitely gets better the more you read. I already notice a small polarization of perspective in the way I trade Forex in all time frames so something must be working. So, keep at it

Nice annotations in the third post. I aggressively trade a five min chart with price action so it's nice to see someone who trades in a similar way =)

I take a multivitamin +Q10, fish oil caps(check correct EPA/DHA ratio), ginkgo (increases cerebral bloodflow) & siberian ginseng (adaptogen- i.e. increases the body's ability to deal with stress, perhaps helpful for a trader) everyday.

I didn't notice this mentioned earlier in the thread, one of my favourite things about the 21EMA is that it's pretty easy to spot overbought or oversold areas(easier than RSI for example) without the need for an additional indicator. One can easily spot these areas, as well as what would be double tops on the RSI, and to an extent divergence over time. It might not give you a market top but it'll definitely give you a nice swing down.

Just my opinion but I probably would not have shorted this bar unless for a very quick scalp, for a couple of reasons: 1) From the given chart, the market is trending within a defined range, hence your defined S&R box region; bottom level has been established as a support area. 2) There is a fairly small range between the swing high and its nearest swing low (1.4871-1.4860). 3) Prior couple of bars show a breach of this support level, however I would consider this a bullish rejection of the breakout. In the short term this could've appeared a retracement following breakout,however ideally price should've pullbacked to the old support level now acting as resistance. At best, a conservative entry would've waited for break of prior swing low or the pin bar occurring with the wick at prior support, now resistance. 4) Mostly importantly for me most people will only qualify a pin bar as useful if it appears itself with the upper wick in a prior area identified to be support or resistance. There is one bear bar earlier one with a longish wick which could've suggested resistance but I wouldn't consider it strong enough. Just a side note, you could've drawn a trendline from the two swing lows of left shoulder and head then copied this trendline from the head to the right shoulder. I did it by eye so I maybe wrong, but this would've given an almost perfect entry with acceptable distances between high and swing low (assuming the breakout didn't work) Will