chrisp

Hello DB I'm interested in your work and wonder if you could tell me: would I find in your book at least as much as I would find in the forums? I would much rather read your book than trawl through the forums, but not at the price of missing valuable information. Thanks, Chris

Hi are you still looking? I bought the course & have made complete notes so I cld sell. Not sure how the sale works tho' because I simply have a coded access to the site: I suppose I sell you my access code? Chris

Thanks for your post Rigel. I suddenly realised when I made my post that this was New Year's Eve & that if I was looking at ES charts this must be my new idea of having a good time. A little weird I thought, so I was glad to see someone else looking at the posts. Anyway, yes, I agree price can go up or down on low volume, no problem there for me or VSA. I think in the TG video I mentioned GH does answer the question about weakness on up bars, & how it can manifest in both low volume & high volume. I wanted to do the same kind of thing for down bars, pausing on the way to talk about context & what I think is the fundamental behind all the VSA principals: the supply/demand relation. I'm just across the water from you in Toulouse Season's Greetings Chris

First thanks very much to Eiger for his wonderful thread. Second, as a beginner I thought it might be useful to say a little about certain VSA notions. It's not always easy to follow these because, depending on context (& Eiger points this out constantly), you can have what seem to be contradictory propositions. Gavin Homes refers to this, with some amusement, in one of the TG videos, & asks Tom Williams how can it be that weakness appears on high volume up bars AND low volume up bars. So here goes, old hands are welcome to correct me & I hope this will help others who are still not sure. I'll talk here about volume on down bars and the VSA classic: “When strength appears it appears on down bars.” This is a very valuable insight because it is counter-intuitive & invites us to look carefully at price action. “A big angry red bar with volume shooting up & I should be thinking of longs?” Well yes, BUT not just yet. We must look at the before and the after. Although we may look at individual bars we want see the market, and more precisely, the supply/demand relation, as a whole. Personally, as I look at each bar I also try to see it flowing from the previous bar and into the next. One of the VSA signs of strength is the Bottom Reversal: a 2 bar signal. Bar 1 is down, preferably making a lower low than the previous 4 bars, with increased volume and at least average range or spread. Bar 2 is an up bar, closing on its high & preferably with a higher high than bar 1. VSA explains this by saying that the down barn, bar 1 contained buying & so the up bar, bar 2, is an up bar closing on the high. This is the meaning of: “When strength appears it appears on down bars.” We can nuance this a little First, let's note here that we only see 2 bars because of our choice of time frame. If this was, say, 30 minute bars, then on the 1 hour time frame we would see a single bar closing high. A 15 minute time fralm would show 4 bars, with the final bar closing on its high. But the song remains the same, and it is this: in this 1 hour of price action (our 2 half hour bars), there was 1. significant activity (the volume) & 2. buyers were buying at higher prices & sellers were refusing lower prices: the supply/demand dynamic is causing higher prices. Let's call this Buying Pressure. Once we have identified Buying Pressure we can go a little further by asking what kind of pressure-keen new buyers or frightened shorts covering? To answer this we have to look at what came before the bar(s) in question. Would we go long on the evidence of this Bottom Reversal? Well, the conservative answer is no, we look for confirmation of strength in the market: a test bar. This will be a down bar but this time we are looking for low volume on the down bar, with narrow spread, & a close off the lows. (A no supply bar would also do just as well but I won't talk about that specifically here.). We want this bar to appear in an area where there was higher volume, ideally in the area of the Bottom Reversal but that won't always happen. Lower volume in an area where before there was higher volume tells us that market participants have moved on, this area no longer attracts activity. The narrow spread confirms this: the market is struggling to go down. And finally the down bar fails to close on the low. The path of least resistance is up. The two bars confirm each other. The Bottom Reversal high volume down bar, bar 1, is confirmed by the low volume down bar which follows, the test. The low volume test bar is significant because it was preceeded by the high volume down bar in the Bottom Reversal. With this in mind we can see that if bar 1 in our Bottom Reversal, a down bar, had been followed by another down bar, especially with increasd volume & at least average spread, then we would conclude that buyers were refusing to buy at higher prices and sellers were willing to sell at lower prices: a weak market. In every case we are asking: what is the balance between demand & supply. “When strength appears it appears on down bars” can be seen as an invitation to do just that. Like all VSA principles it has to be applied in context.

I would love to be able to read order flow in the sense of T&S. Sadly I don't believe it is possible to acquire this skill without a mentor and personal instruction. Please correct me if you think I am wrong in this. I am less convinced by Market Delta, at least from an MP point of view. I do know a profitable trader who enters trades almost exclusively on the basis of the profile. However he also has:1) deep pockets 2)excellent trade management 3) almost flawless discipline. I admire him but if I tried to emulate him I would quickly be broke and probably divorced. I try to redress the balance by employing VSA/Wyckoff ideas. In this thread I have kept the emphasis on MP. Chris

Hello to the forum. I have benefited immensely from the contributions here and wanted to post something as a contribution. The action on the ES on Friday 13 NOV was very interesting and what follows is how I saw the market pre-open and then how I adjusted my analysis as the market developed. Please critique and comment freely. BTW I am a paper trader, still very much a learner and I am not saying in any way “this is how to trade”. Please note: I am on central European time and my opening bracket is D. EOD Analysis of ES Thursday 12 NOV From my journal Direction down vol1741K which is higher than Previous Day & higher than average for this unit, VA is wider than PD & wider than average: trade is being facilitated to downside. Buyers made a b in G-M but fresh selling came in in N, forming a spike. BIAS TO DOWNSIDE TESTING LO OF UNIT AT 74.00 LOOK FOR RESPECT AT G & E SINGLES 0911 Analysis of ES after open on Friday 13 NOV D and E brackets started to build value in the Previous Day spike starting at N. However I missed the significance of price respecting the single print at G on 09 NOV: this was the first clue that the 12 NOV spike at N was not sufficient selling to counter the buyers in the Long Liquidation Break of the G-M period on 12 NOV. CF MP graphic. A psychological aside: I missed this chance to change my downward bias altho I had noted this in my EOD analysis for 12 NOV: I find it extraordinarily hard to keep all elements of my analysis co-ordinated as the market develops. A second chance to change my downward bias came when I looked at the 15 minute chart. Here is the excerpt from my journal: I identified accumulation on the 15 minute chart which confirmed the G-M b loop, Analysis as follows: 1 ultra vol-152K 2 3 4 confirm this as buying 4 hi is the top of the b loop so it looks like the buyers in the b loop are active today For entry I looked at the 4 minute chart. The white diamond bar was my reference because of hi volume and good facilitation. Following this my analysis was VSA based so I will leave this out. However the ellipse at 1 can be considered a Long Liquidation Break on a minor scale (on a small time frame market profile a b shape would appear). This was a heads up for me and an entry long around 91.50. Post Trade Analysis And how did the trade turn out? Adequate R/R but nothing special. My data feed was interrupted but it looks like J was the high and thereafter value built overlapping to higher above the G-M loop. Which brings me to time frames, something which I am very unsure about, but this is how I see it: 12 NOV N spike day time frame takes control EOD (BTW if anyone has ideas about why these spikes develop EOD I would be very interested: it seems often like traders covering or liquidating and making a loss, but I can't figure out why.) 13 NOV BO from 12 NOV LLB loop, swing/overnight traders now in control in the day frame but longer TF is still selling as indicated in the EOD analysis at the beginning. If this is so then Monday (tomorrow) or the following days should see more downside. If (a big if) I have the time frame analysis right then my long trade was OK but it kept me out of the better trade which was to fade the G-M Break Out up so I would be aligned with the longer time frame trader. My grandmother would probably reply” a bird in the hand...”

Hello, I have read with great interest the "Market Profile Strategies" thread which seems to be a continuation of a thread started by ant where he explains his ideas on MP strategies. I have tried to locate ant's original thread by following the directions at the top, viz Trading Articles Thread, Market Profile Strategies in Beginners Forum; Originally Posted by Piptrader But no luck. Can you direct me to ant's thread please. Thank you Chris

Greetings, this is from the recent action on the ES. I was interested in what seems to me an ambiguous test bar. This is how I see the chart: Bars 1,2 break out from congestion. Increase in supply at 2 is successfully tested at 3. Conclude there is strength in the background. Bar 4 mid close increase in supply: potential weakness,but next bar is up, closing near the high & volume is not excessive. Price comes off, but on low volume. 5 is the crucial bar:if there is strength in the background this would be considered a successful test of supply at 4. If we decide to go long 1 tick above bar 5 then bar 6 brings us into the market when it makes a higher high. But Bar 6 then reverses quite dramatically and we are probably stopped out. After bar 6 the chart is easier to read: the market has declared its hand and we have a nice no demand bar entry at 7. Trying to analyse my mistakes: bar 1 has a weak close: does this suggest a weak breakout, so no strength in the background? does the test bar at 3 have too great a range? do the 3 the successive lower lows preceeding bar 5 invalidate the test?

Corrrection to my post above "D & E" should be E & F

Sorry first post went off without attachments A pushes thru the old top to the left on good volume:potential strength. The volume is very high for pre-open:something is happening. The mid close of A & hi volume show there is also a lot of supply but this is immediately tested at B & C. B & C indicate supply drying up. The low of A is not challenged & the close of C is above the low of B:all bullish D is an up bar confirming the test at C. It is technically a no demand bar but we ignore this because we have strength in the background. G is a test in an uptrend. Volume is not less than previous 2 bars but it is low compared to supply at D & E,which is the supply being tested. And we have strength in the background. G is confirmed as a successful test by the next up bar.

It is rare to have signals unanimously pointing in one direction, there is usually a balance of probabilities. As I understand it when in doubt refer to the background. Here is an example-from an amateur! A pushes thru the old top to the left on good volume:potential strength. The volume is very high for pre-open:something is happening. The mid close of A & hi volume show there is also a lot of supply but this is immediately tested at B & C. B & C indicate supply drying up. The low of A is not challenged & the close of C is above the low of B:all bullish D is an up bar confirming the test at C. It is technically a no demand bar but we ignore this because we have strength in the background. G is a test in an uptrend. Volume is not less than previous 2 bars but it is low compared to supply at D & E,which is the supply being tested. And we have strength in the background. G is confirmed as a successful test by the next up bar.

VJ thank you very much. I will post again soon.

This is my first post. I hope it will contribute to this thread. I am looking at the big break down on ES 01 sept from a VSA point of view. I'm concerned with the question of defining stopping volume after a big move down. 60 MIN CHART 01 sept breakdown from balance on hi vol heavy vol continues till 18:30 but this is not stopping vol: mkt continues down. How do we interpret the price action from 18:30 01 sept on? We start with the background: the hi vol down bars thru to 18:30 are potential strength but mkt remains in a downtrend. Conclusion: mkt remains weak. 15 MIN CHART at EOD 01 sept there are 3 white diamond bars, which on this chart indicate higher than usual vol. The question here is "is pro money accumulating anticpating a rally or distributing anticipating continuing break?" Here is my analysis: Bar 1 down bar increased vol narrow spread close off low and making lower low:overall weak altho' narrow spread suggests buying Bar 2 down bar increased vol wide spread close well off low making lower low and rejecting move up: overall weak altho' close is well off low. Note also this is the third lower low. Bar 3 1 tick away from equal close bar, vol decreases relative to previous bar but is still high for this time period, narrow spread, mid low, inside bar: overall neutral So EOD high vol seems to confirm the weak background mentioned above. And yet: what is the result of this high volume down bar activity? Although lower lows are made the close of all three bars is practically unchanged. To confirm weakness we want to see a down bar, increasing but not excessive vol, wide spread and close on the low. 02 sept The first white diamond is up bar, high vol, wide spread, close in the top third. It looks like an effort to break out of the balance of the previous 4 bars. Is the high vol indicative of supply swamping demand? Let's look at the next bar. I will call this bar +1. +1 up bar lower vol wide spread rejection of move higher close near the low and only 2 ticks above close of white diamond bar: overall supply is present. +2 bar up increased vol wide spread close in top third but only 1 tick above close of previous bar: more supply coming in +3 a test bar on decreased vol followed by an up bar but this is overwritten by the background weakness which seems to be confirmed by increasing supply and mkt remains in a downtrend on this TF. Note also that the vol is only slightly less than the first bar in the 3 white diamonds group to the left. +4 this looks like a stop catching manouever, but I don't know much about this sort of thing yet: any enlightenment welcome! Finally a second white diamond: up bar hi vol for the time period BUT decreasing volume relative to previous bar coming into previous top, average spread close near the hi: overall volume is too low to breach old top and mkt remains in downtrend. For the rest of the day the mkt drifts lower with what look like a couple of upthrusts at EOD. Overall I conclude that the mkt remains weak despite the heavy selling on 01 sept and that we have yet to see volume sufficient to stop the down move. However I also note that since then we have not yet seen the kind of wide spread down bar on increasing vol with close on the low that would confirm weakness. Neither am I able to explain why the 01 sept heavy vol down bars produced little downside move.