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Think what is important here is consistency. I have been in countless live seminars and watched countless vidoes (also those of Gavin etc on VSA, you tube), the presenters normally gloat over those trades which were called right, but ignore those which did not pan out with justfication with lots of other hindsight factors. Unfortunately in a Seminar ambience, wannabie traders are all caught with that intense desire to get hold of that magic setup or indicator which will lead to fortune and subconsciously desiring that the call made by the presenter would pan out, and when it does, a general euphoria sets in. However in the privacy of their home and under realtime market conditions it all becomes a different ball game, speaking from solid experience:)))) Similarly on You Tube, there are selective videos of trades(besides VSA) which pan out. There is hardly ever mention of the probability factor which is at the heart of Wyckoff's teaching. BTW have a thorough understanding of Wyckoff's original course so no B.S here. From what I know there is nothing magical about VSA or anyother price/volume readings out there, it is all laid out with great clarity by Wyckoff, all that is required is effort and willingness to study independently instead of relying on seminars, clubs, and expensive software.(i.e fingerholding as Linda Raschke puts it) and IMO there is enough on the Wyckoff forum on this website to get anybody off the ground and on the right path. Even on major bull and bear turns, you observe that the major news channels would wheel out some guru who predicted that, what the public is not aware is that the same guru has been predicting a bear phase in a long bull run and another guru has been predicting a bull turn in a long bear phase., when they get it right, then they get into limelight and suck in followers for a while. IMHO

If you Study Chapter 4 on Pullbacks, especially as of p118, a significant trendline break is required prior to such trades, hence if a bull trendline was broken and then there was a pullback forming L1 and L2, that would be a good short, and more so if below EMA. This section also clarifies the confusion on H1, H2, H3, H4, L1, L2, L3,L4 . Think that is a typo error on page 120, "Likewise a Low1(L1) occcurs in an down or sideways market", think it should be "an up or sideways market" Up obviously means a retracement up after downbars which break a bull trend. Perhaps Al can clarify this.

When the move comes, it will be quite volatile, Dax does move, BTW do you get much slippage trading Dax on Ninja.

1st trade -tlb presumably trendine break, which trendline are we talking about what are tcl, bw, dt. lh - is that lower high.

Another great insight by him is anticipating after trendline breaks or after 2 legged break below a swing low or high, ie. reversal setups. This is extremely useful say after a sharp rally or sell off and then prices getting into a trading range. By drawing different sloping trendlines anchored from the start of the fall or rally to each new swing in the trading range, it is a lot easier to anticipate a reversal as happened yesterday and as it is unfolding today on Ftse and Dax. Al is strictly against using 1min charts, but does recommend 3min in the opening hours, so the entries look much better on 3min as you not only have L2 but also M2S shorts, check it out

It is modification of Vic Sperandeo 123, 2B reversal type setups and has more stringent conditions ie. Trendline break with a strong bull or bear reversal, followed by a 2 legged move culminating preferably in a wedge 3 pushes on the 2nd leg and then a H2or L2 with the entry bar a Bull or Bear respectively IMO.

Tick or two slippage on Dax would be 1pt ~25euro, thought you encountered much more slippage than that. Has the volume on the ladder improved, previously it was around 20-40 each side

Blowfish, Looks like you are getting the hang of Al Brooks style of trading, How is the volume on the ladder on the Dax, Do you enter on stop orders like Al. thought you had problems with slippage before on this market.

Blowfish, Having gone through the video and pdf articles, overall it appears there is some good material in Al Brooks work, regarding how to keep it all simple, ie. trade via a single chart and a single MA, with basic patterns, trendlines etc. But as he says price action on any chart appears same whether it is 2min or 5min or 30min or daily charts and even if they are 100yrs old, hence many of the patterns and setups are exactly the same but have been given different terms e.g Double tops, failed breakouts Holy grail setup of Linda Raschke, and she calls 3 Pushes as 3 little indians and a H1 or L1 trade as Short Skirt trade. The 2 legged pullback or retracement with H2 and L2 would be equivalent to Zig-Zag pattern of Carolyn Boroden Retracements to 20ema is a populer setup , there is a thread here in the candlestick forum I believe. Then the variation on H1,H2 etc are just inside bars. Use of trendlines, channels is beautifully explained by Wyckoff and ofcourse reading the same action but with the benefit of volume (Effort) is of much greater benefit IMO However having said that, the keeping it simple approach is great. Perhaps you can post some charts after you go through the book to keep this thread going. I have looked at Dax and Ftse, think you have to go down to 3min to work with those setups, on Eurostoxx 5min chart should be o.k

If you truly desire to understand price/volume relationships and desire to construct your own stategies/tactics rather than looking for of-the shelf patterns or setups with an indicator to tell you when to get in and get out, then undertake a prolonged study of Wyckoff. To whet your appetite get hold of "Techniques of Tape Reading" - Vadym Graifer. and go through all the threads in the Wyckoff forum. Dbphoenix has an excellent e-book, costs less than 1ESmini pt, but highly informative on the subject. Good luck

Well anybody who claims to have read Taylor's work in an hour will come away with an understanding commensurate with the effort. It took me more than a year to get my head around it. L. Raschke's version is a short cut , she may be just hot air, but she employs all kinds of indicators, pinball momentum etc. G. Angell, again short cut variation, completely remote from taylor's essence, have his book and tape, doubt if he traded at all this way, know he was embroiled in a court case

1. There is a failure here to grasp that this site was setup by Soultrader so that both experienced and inexperienced traders including neewbies can learn and exchange trading methods, ideas, individual style of trading etc. Inevitably this leads to clash of egos as has happened on VSA,Wyckoff and other threads. However here it appears that one person is brushing aside everybody else and IMO a very swift way of bringing the thread to a grinding halt. 2. I have studied Taylor in depth and like to think have sound grasp of the subject matter but like you Blowfish have refrained from entering into these non-productive and unnecessarily extended exchanges. 3. This thread is only about trading via Taylor's methodology, there is no "My method" or post " Your method" 4. The following is taken from POST 695: refer to Taylor's Book, Chapter 2, p15 "We are not concerned with how the book started on the first day, whether it was a Buy, Sell or Short Sale. The book is always kept in this order, never change the continuity and there are no lines left open for Sundays or Holidays, the market is considered as a series of continuous sessions without a break. WHICH PART OF THIS IS DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND 5) POST 700 We consider 3 days as a trading cycle—the 4th and 5th days are the (1st) and (2nd) days of a new cycle. We use the 1st day for buying and the 2nd and 3rd days for selling. Therefore the cycle does not change but only the way to trade it. In this post which is the essence of Taylor, it is clearly explained that yes in an uptrend or downtrend the swings will vary i.e number of updays and downdays, however once the book is made the sequence of Buy, sell and SS day does not change. To account for the extended trading range, there are specific rules in place to trade e.g Buy violation in a downtrend etc, in other words the way to trade a particular day changes although the day is still a buy day or sell day or ss day. If you shift or shuffle the day, then the rules have no meaning whatsoever. 6. The following is from POST 706 ... on a 3 day cycle... in an uptrend... there is one down day ..... and two up days... ... on a 3 day cycle in a down trend... there is one up day .... and two down days.... .... this is a very simple concept....????? Where does Taylor ever say that?? THIS HAS NOT BEEN ANSWERED 7. There are many who have modified the core method to adopt their own style of trading, Dogpile, Frank, Linda Rashcke, G. Angell, that is fine, however they don't insist that everybody else is wrong or have not read the book or are not traders etc Anyway from the way this is going, it is doubtful anybody would want to continue posting here to discuss and gain clarity on the method which to me is a comprehensive way of trading to catch the main trend of the day as per the rules and ignore the cross currents that occur whole day long. There are a number of contributors here who have made selfless attempts to explain and elaborate on the method and are not so called "Gurus" otherwise Eiger would be a VSA guru and Dbphoenix would be a Wyckoff guru and Brownsfan would be Candlestick charting Guru:)))

Presume you are referring to the congestion area of 13-18th May, Think came across the term "naked" or virgin on Nqoos website. Not quite sure what is r/r down though. Do you mean expect support and or a drive to that price level.

Same here, switched my focus to Eurostoxx when TF moved to ICE, but lately have started study of TF charts and have observed pretty decent moves of approx18-20pts, and volume as well. and the market is in sync with the big brother ES most of the time.

IMO it is worth trawling through the course, it is very well presented in almost a thesis form(cross referencing etc) and superb way of sentence construction, sadly lacking in recent publications on trading. And ofcourse the content and analysis is par excellence , the patterns, and price/vol interplay illustrations, unfold in today's markets as well day after day. Db, Do you employ figure charting in your trading, and do you consider it absolutely necessary to study those sections in the course ie. sections 11-13 and some others.

I think it has already been pointed out there is enough liquidity on Eurostoxx to trade between 7-9p.m GMT. There are some great runs in prices going into the close on the US markets and sometimes even larger than the morning sessions and Euro markets move in tandem, even Dax or Ftse can be traded at that time. Russell (TF) on ICE is another market available for trading with decent moves as well and being $100 a point would suit the ratio you are looking for. Dbphoenix on the wyckoff forum trades Nasdaq, perhaps you could pose the question to him.

gvoss Have you tried "Remove program via uninstall through the Control Panel and then defrag followed by fresh install. Even Tradeguider software was full of glitches, and some of them have now been rectified after nearly 6yrs.

Folks in London know the whole history of this circus going back over 10-15yrs, their first public presentation when Gavin took over the Co. was to the Institute of Technical Analysts here in London. Infact know traders who still have the old VSA 2 and 3 versions. There was not much success in U.K with that product. Once Todd Kruger from US entered the scene, Gavin used that opportunity to launch VSA in US as Tradeguider. As Manby was associated with Tom, he tagged along for a while and then dumped as he never got along with Gavin, Watch even the recent London symposium DVD. Once Todd and Gavin fell out, Gavin had to bring in Manby. As you say now there have advanced chart reading and all sorts of gimmicks and as monad pointed out none of this is required if you make a concerted effort to study Tom's book and its original source ie. Wyckoff . You are not going to get any more advanced than what is already presented in Wyckoff no matter which way it is sliced, diced and twisted with fancy charts and terms.

Great explanation Monad, Like bbj, I got an email from Gavin co. and watched the presentation, have seen a few before, same rattle, quite unnecessary complication of the display of charts with trend clusters ,diamonds, trend and other indicators. It was clear the onus is on getting people to buy the new program, seminar/bootcamp DVDs, and then hook them in to attend more seminars etc. Same garbage on professionals money, markets do not like upbars on high vol and markets do not like downbars on high vol. why not? depends on the timeframe and where you are in the trend. Coming out of an accumulation phase, the strong upbar and sideways correction represent absorption and actually points the trader in the right direction as to the intention of the market , that demand is of good quality. and vice versa. unfortunately these lot are creating followers engaged in analysis of every itty-witty bar and missing the context. as you say the 2 original material is quite sufficient to work with price/vol, afterall all of Tom's work comes out of Wyckoff.

Just stating facts for shortbleu, as he was debating between Dax and Eurostoxx. Am relative newcomer to the forum but not to trading;)

Even on Ftse the vol. on the bid/offer ladder is between 20-40 most of the time, same as dax. unlike Eurostoxx where it is 500-1000+

IMO, Why? and others are selflessly making considerable attempt to explain Taylor's method as per his book which is a difficult read and open to misinterpretation. So it is no point telling them to go away and join ET. I don't know what is ET or what happens there , guess we are not talking about the movie, but this thread on TL here is brilliant. Presume name calling on the thread and private messages is prevalent at ET as only somebody with experience at ET would be engage in this practice and then state , Do not turn TL into ET.

Interesting Shortbleu, When you say you traded Dax in the morning, presume it was after Cash open as Dax futures open 1hr before that and vol is pretty low during the 1st hour but jumps up significantly once Dax cash opens. Moreover was it on a simulation platform. If not did you not encounter any slippage. The volume on Dax is low in the evenings, however the future prices follow the US market bar by bar as is the case with Eurostoxx. e.g Dax dropped 40pts after 7p.m (GMT) in line with falls on ES, Ftse also 40pts Eurostoxx approx 20pts. and in all the 3 markets, the vol dwindles after 4.30-5pm GMT but still tradeable. When the bonds close in US 8p,m GMT there are some great runs into the close on ES and the European markets all follow that. so there is no reason why you cannot trade in the evening.

Agreed, these useless exchanges regarding whose method is right or wrong is not doing anybody any favours. If somebody wants to modify Taylors method, and is making profit from it, fine, Discuss in a matured way, no need to force the issue onto somebody else and tell them to go away or throw insults. This thread has been very instructive so far due to input from knowledgeable folks like WHY?, Richbois, Hakuna, Frank who have contributed without asking anything in return and I for one am indeed grateful to them. And there are many who are trying to learn the methodology as the book is pretty diffcult read and WHY? has gone to a great deal of trouble in countless posts to clarify and it would be a great shame if the thread came to a grinding halt. URGE SOULTRADER TO SAVE THIS THREAD FROM DISAPPEARING INTO OBLIVION

Very good info. on price action in your post. Am somewhat confused on the first para. 1) "Buyers aren't willing to pay what's being asked at the top (so sellers have to lower their prices)" - this is fine, easy to understand. 2) "sellers can't get the prices they want at the bottom (and so have to sell higher)" - Why would sellers seek prices at the bottom if they can sell it higher. Should this be " Sellers are not willing to sell at lower prices (hence buyers have to bid it higher)" May be I have got it wrong?