djohnsonhot

Hi, no I am not part of that group. Is it working for you? I have found that many oscillators are lagging the market. DJ

l looked at your Obsidan PDF and the buy and sell area seem to be reversed??? Am I reading that incorrectly?

Did not want to brag though, but that comment made me LOL! No one does that! But, the other points were well taken. I was trying to say that WITHOUT getting rid of the extra material things, the things that many Typical Americans (and Europeans, for that Matter, as we have lived there as well)....love, the Cool Cars, and Bikes - - in the end, once one wakes up - - - are just extra's. I was lucky to have found a partner in life, My wife of over 30 years, that was also not materialistic much anyway, but has made the same discovery: the extra's were extra work and a money sink. Down the drain we were going keeping batteries alive in a Ducati, or KTM or other under-utilized item....much of the time, I was running the bikes to circulate oil, even though I absolutely loved the freedom, and air flow, the power, etc. I have been bike-free since 2009. Wow. And, the house, nice but modest and had good curb appeal, was just simply work work work. Painting, gutters, water pump failures, septic tank failures, driveway work, and the bills to cover it all: what a freaking waste. This section will cause some folks to wonder, how can we get along without the castle??? Well, we have no kids. We love to travel and we can stop for long periods and stay with others on their land. We have loads of friends who want us to house sit. But, we love it doing this....we are in Cannon Beach, Or right now. I trade options in the mornings and we walk to town every single day and ride our bikes on other days. The freedoms from home ownership allow us to live very frugally...the Diesel Pusher is older and paid for...car is older and paid for. It is such a release. You young guys and ladies here: the sooner you realize that debt and ownership are a TRAP, the better you will feel and the release from all that stuff is incredible. It sounds trite, I know, but it is real and I cannot express how much better we are doing being out of the house and walking and biking and enjoying the lack of pressure to get a newer house, or cooler Mercedes or Infinity or Lexus or Audi.....it is unreal, and I hope I can reach at least a couple of young minds to convince you that this American Dream thing became a nightmare. We still have many folks ask, "how can you do it?!!!" Easy as cake.

OK, everyone, I am older likely than the rest of you and I have to reply. First, when I was in college in the last Century, driving a '62 Chevy with a bad starter, etc and paying my way thru College AND barely surviving, I was MISERABLE. In the meantime, I worked in the Silicon Valley, and sold my home and moved to the Mountains. Ran a couple of businesses...had 4 motorcycles, a Tractor, acreage, mountain lakes, Whole house generator, luxury cars and SUV's....you name it. My conclusion: once we woke up and SOLD THE STUFF STUFF STUFF, with now even more money in the bank, I cannot be happier. I have a bond portfolio paying our bills, we live in an RV full time and travel continuously. I could not be happier to have a enough money, and way more than most (no brag, just fact) AND no debt! So, the happier I am is directly connected to LOW or NO DEBT, NO EXTRA's (vehicles, bikes, snowmobiles, junk), and CASH. It cannot get better. The ONLY thing in my way: HEALTH.

I actually really enjoyed this post. It shows that the author is DEALING WITH THE PSYCHOLOGY of trading - - -which, from my experiences - - - is the most difficult to master. I think of his word, "meditation" and apply the one I use: "ZEN-LIKE" or as "robotic" and distant from my view of a particular MOVE in the market that might be offering me my specific set-up (range failures is my specific set-up, based on several very hard rules). I do something that is very helpful for me personally: I try my best to pull back from a setup, and give myself another candle to decide if a very fast-moving bar appears....those are often lures that grab a sucker's attention and cause an emotional mouse finger to tap on in! Instead, I TRY to toss out that feeling, "MAN, I am MISSING a trade" whilst reminding myself that there will always be another tell or another trade that will appear. Pulling back from the small picture (say a 5min chart or a tick chart) and reminding myself where we are in the context of a move is KEY to finding range highs, lows or pauses in trend. Big picture analysis is a key to some of my most successful trades. Finally, the less that you require to make a move, the better. I am sure many if not most of us who have been in the Futures or Equity markets for over 20 years can attest to the fact that many oscillators are backward looking and latent in their usefulness. Toss out unneeded SMA/EMA's, Volume Profile, MACD's, STOCK and work to find PRICE action setups instead. In the end, my analysis and experience tells me that price tells all and understanding candlestick formations is a true fundamental foundation to making progress. Thanks for the post.

Actually, the OPEN of a bar is far more important to me as a "gap trader." No, of course not, I do not trade gaps exclusively but I use GAP opens, meaning a tick or more opens beyond the previous bar's close (5 or 15min charts) and IF I am inclined to trade in the direction of that gap, it is a strong indication of a continuation pattern. I trade on a 5 min chart primarily and look for "hinges" in price action - - - where one sees a key pivot level broken (not a pivot point, but rather a change in direction, or a turning point leading to a new exhaustion area (a top or bottom of a good range run). I will WAIT for a hinge to BREAK AND HOLD, not just break and that means I will definitely wait for the hold to occur and enter my trade based on my primary entry rules.

You guys will laugh (and Ladies); I have finally talked my wife into trading options..I will train her. She is very smart and unemotional.

Tim, Same with TF....I have been trading it in the summer as it trades easier than the ES, and generally better anyway.

There are people who do watch charts for Price Action but use extremes in the $tick (NYSE Breadth) for entries: high ticks, sell, and vice-versa during the Session only trades.

Forget about it! Penny stocks trade for a reason at a penny or nickels: they are worth no more and are heavily manipulated and is the last place a newbie would want to start out. Better to buy 100 shares of a great company, that is liquid and has a history (Blue Chips, paying a dividend) than to buy a penny stock that is nearly worthless and usually for good reasons.

There is a fella named Michael Jardine, at his website, Enthios Economics | Real world markets, live commentary by Michael Jardine, and he posts his Market Profile high and low value areas almost daily (he travels and works, and thus for days he may not get on the computer and do his work). You can see for yourselves how well this works. My observations of his trades is that he is stopped out quite a bit and his winners are in ticks, and not points. And, he wrote a book on the subject. Now, if his trades are limited to ticks, then I am guessing his scale is quite large compared to most retail traders

Hi, Dude....actually I was trying to say that Vol Profile can be taken into account more like a support or resistance area - - esp. if those levels coincide with Pivots, or your normal support and resistance areas...not by themselves....I have watched them for years and at times, I see no price action alone and watch the action pass right through those profile areas.

Would you all consider a point here for discussion about Volume profile? It seems rather obvious to say that MP (or VP) cannot stand alone as an entry tool. The reason I am saying this is because I tracked a "professional" trade VP exclusively, using Keltner tools to enter and exit) and he is at less than 50% in his winners. What I am pointing to is that one must use a tool bag to trade: a) Let's say we know the key POC, VAH and VAL's. We market them on our charts with horizontal lines. b) We are away of the Pivot Points for the day. c) We know where the key levels are from the previous day's price action, and weekly mid-points, etc. Those are our key RES and SUPPORT price levels. Those are marked. d) We observe where the consolidations happened in the previous day sessions and where we might be in the stages of the market (Market Stage theory). AND FINALLY: e) we have pure Price Action: candlestick formations, higher highs and lows and lower lows, etc - - depending on the OVERALL and DAILY trends. Are we getting the picture. Well, traders or wannabe's. It has taken me years to determine the various chart techniques to watch for BUT I STILL FIND MYSELF on the WRONG side of many trades, and then either use proper Money Management skills or I do not and let a loser run which puts me in a hole early in the day - - my worst days - - which I then chase with more contracts or rather stupid entries...you name it. The point: it is really difficult to remember to look for MOST of those chart indicators for entries and knowing when a trade is broken. I have recently started a whole new approach: Ambush trades or what one would consider Half-Way Back trades on longer term and short term micro-moves and I will be back here to report whether it works. I am trying to simplify. I am really working at this. Weekends, nights, as this is my chosen profession and I am still under water after over a two-year period of great trades at times and lousy throw-it-all back to the professionals types of trades. It has been painful.

The word Elitism stills makes me pause today, after reading "The Irony of Democracy" in college over 40 years ago. It is a "club" of Elites, making a nice warm wonderful bed and we are heading towards a Meritocracy which leads to a total break-down for the middle class, and the jobs that are a result of the opposite actions of this elitist regime. Good luck, America. Bernanke is a puppet of the Class.

Steve46, I would be interested in that article and any other input for this trader. I am getting chopped around lately and would like to read and learn. Yours, DJ, djohnsonhot@yahoo.com