johnw

gm BH, Many years ago I switched to a 280 second chart to give me an edge over the 5 minute guys.... My results after this bold move were as abysmal as before, but it did encourage me to find out what slice of the market was controlled by the retail Guys..... something less than 15% as I recall and I imagine that has diminished since then.

Now you are getting to the hub of the problem JD ..... if the compilation of the source information we are observing is fundamentally flawed then we need to deal with it before we can push on. Kiwi says the intraday bar close is important because it locks in the high/low of the bar and provides a snapshot of the price. I happen to agree with his statement but the information has absolutely no meaning to me since the bar size is not set by the market. Some of the posts I have read in this most interesting thread remind me of a blindfolded boxer coming out of his corner swinging ... his reasoning being that if he swings enough times, then he is bound to land the odd punch or two and yet he has not stopped to wonder whether his opponent is even in the ring. There is surprisingly little source information available to us from the markets and yet we bring with us from the outside world an overwhelming desire to create more of it. This in turn creates an inverted pyramid .... not unlike balancing an Elephant on a pinhead ... it can possibly be done I suppose, but why would you bother, the Elephant is going to fall off. The other big surprise is just how little information we need to trade profitably. And so I would suggest that we make ourselves aware of the quality, source volume (amount) and accuracy of our information and it's presentation before pushing on. One other thing while I am on a roll. The law of cause and effect. As an example ... Some of us may discover a pattern that emerges from the bars that signal a reversal and so we trade it with 65% accuracy over a sample of say 34 trades. Because we are not paying attention ( looking but not seeing) we are oblivious to the fact that 65% of our signals occur at supply/demand zones whilst the other 35% land between the zones. We are in fact trading the 'effect' and not the 'cause' ....imagine our results when we start paying attention. And I will leave you with one last thought. There is a popular belief running around TL that we can have a high win/loss ratio of trades or we can have a high points won/points lost ratio ... but we cannot have both. This is crap, pure crap along with some of the crappy theories concerning the need and placement of stops .... obviously some people do not understand the importance on momentum because they cannot see it correctly on their screen.

This is the catch-22 we all face to some extent or another. On the one hand we strive for consistency and results and on the other hand we are unaware of our ultimate potential ... we just know that it lies in front of us. You mentioned 'habit' and I believe that as our consistency becomes more consistent then it becomes a good habit leaving us free to open our minds to pushing our potential.

Rolling along ... What you will be doing by undertaking this exercise is revealing everything that goes on inside the bar that you have elected as the cornerstone of your trading method. But you will be seeing it for the first time. Some of you may look at the one tic chart and see nothing ... nothing at all. Other People may be amazed at the amount of information they have been denying themselves. Some People may be thinking right now that the action is too fast, whilst other People correctly surmise that their synthesized bar must be building at the same speed ... how can it not!

Excellent comment, I couldn't agree more and that is why I only trust myself with simplicity. I have a suggestion for people to try if they have not tried this exercise before. Switch your chart to one tic and watch what happens ... every bar closes on the high or the low ... watch it for a reasonable period of time over several days and see what comes to mind. I don't know what bar sizes and bar types People are running, or whether they think that the Intraday bar close is useful or useless. But if you want to know the root of the bars you watch then you might find this exercise enlightening.

You are talking of the Daily/Weekly Close and Open and therefore Gaps Try reading the Opening Post of this thread again and it will hopefully put you back on track

When the ES rth Next Bar Open mostly equals the Current bar Close, sometimes a tic up or down simply because that is the luck of the draw at bar rollover ... I can't imagine how I am going to find a whole new world.

Just to push on with this conversation for bit ... and then I will shut up and go away. If I were using time bars and the price flow became snagged on a supply/demand zone, I would then need to maintain a running calculation of the number of contracts from the time the price became snagged, which was probably in the middle of a bar. Whilst I am staggering under the burden of doing this, I am not paying attention to the only thing that matters to me ...Price How many times have we all made the correct analysis of what is going to happen next, only to find that some large MOs have been fired into the arena and price has taken off without us being onboard. Conversely when we stuff-up, we are always on board, because we are always filled. Well this happened to me once too often and I vowed that I must always watch the price ... nothing must distract me from watching price. This single decision marked the turning point in my trading because it forced me back beyond the bars and into the orderflow

gm Siuya, The bars form the orderflow because The Trader creates them from orderflow in the first place. The price moves more or less diagonally across our screen and from time to time it intersects with horizontal zones representing supply and demand ... this is the sum total of my 15 year learning experience. If we were having this conversation 10 or 12 twelve years ago, I would have offered a more complicated analysis of trading. But in the search for a profitable trading style I have gradually reduced myself to the simplicity of the statement above. I think that the biggest enemy within ourselves when looking at the screen is delusion ..self delusion ... and I do not mean this in an unkind spirit. The enemy of delusion is simplicity [ well it is one of the enemies] and therefore the less moving parts that I permit myself to look at and the less opinions and thoughts I hold concerning orderflow, then the less likely I am to trip over my own shoe laces.

Yes it is a great topic onesmith and joshdance has introduced it well as can be seen from the responses. I don't use it anymore but for some time I saw the Close from Siuya's point of view as a snapshot ... yes I agree that price may close up in this 3 minute bar but on another guy's machine it may be the following bar and that is why I used Close as a component of the Typical price [(H+L+C)/3] Now I don't even do this. As has been clearly stated, Close of day, week month, quarter is important and becomes even more so if it is preceded and succeeded by both higher or lower Closes.

gm Steve, What you are demonstrating is one of life's great advantages and that is to put yourself in the other guy's head. It is not easily done and is beyond the scope of most people because they simply cannot let go of their own thoughts and so they wind up with a mish-mash of ideas... in fact they drop themselves into an even deeper mess.

gm Rande, I don't disagree with "detachment from reality" but I wonder if it is the answer or just a stepping stone to a better frame of mind and way of life.. As you say Rande, 'detachment' needs to be applied very selectively otherwise the outcome can be very unpredictable. Traders are always looking for balance/ imbalance ... it is balance in the market that give us direction [trends as some people call them] and it is imbalance that gives us reversals. Since markets are the collective results of thousands / millions of human minds,emotions and feelings, it is probably fair to surmise that we are trading ourselves ... because, if we do not trade ourselves then who are we trading. And so if we are seeking positions of balance/ imbalance within the markets, our best strategy would be to come from a position of balance within us. This is quite different to 'detachment' .. well to me it is.. but IMO we need to detach first in order to seek balance... I don't mean that one follows the other, I mean that detachment enables the pursuit of balance. As with everything worth having, the more we pursue it, the more we push it away and so we come back to that tricky skill of relaxing back into our own progress. Right now, our World is in a dangerous state of imbalance and no amount of detachment is going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again ... quite the reverse in fact. We are living somewhere between a Greek tragedy and a soap opera and despite all the lies and the rhetoric, we still have yet to reach the turning point ... let alone the path to a better life... yes, we can forget 'recovery' this is a brave new world we are forging for ourselves. IMO, the People who will enjoy life and prosper the most are those who appreciate the value of balance and it would be nice to think that the people of this Forum would be apart of this new prosperity...

gm gosu, Well MM seems to have covered the subject pretty well. I would like to add one thing, and that it is important to know the difference between being passionate about what you do and being passionate about who you do. This is never more so than in trading, because although you are getting screwed either way, only one way has a happy ending. enjoy the week.

gm gosu, You have somehow managed to miss the point entirely.

Ahhhh yes indeed, this is the twelfth commandment. "Do unto others before they do it to you" Just in case you are wondering after the eleventh commandment. "Thou shalt not get caught"

gm SIUYA, So be it.. But if dissenter and free thinker mean the same to you, I think that you are selling yourself short. To me your posts offer originality rather than a push against convention or authority. That is why I enjoy them .

Are you really a 'dissenter' SIUYA .. your posts leave me with the impression that you are mostly a 'Free Thinker' ... that is why I enjoy them.

Ahhh! .. the old chestnut 'self deception' ... I can never figure out whether self deception is the same as self delusion ... somehow I think it starts with self deception and then grows into self delusion, but maybe I have it wrong. But then again I spent six weeks in the company of dolphins a few months ago and it made me ponder on the thought that humans are the only species to have created a God and then continue to live their lives as though God does not exist.

Good heavens zdo, what every are you thinking of. Your suggestion would lead to The Individual taking responsibility for their actions and therefore control of their lives.... it would lead to self reliance, happiness and a sense of self fulfillment ... if enough people followed your lead it could result in creating the tipping point of the imbalance that plagues the Human Race. No No No this will never do ... as the English would say ' you must be barking mad' for even entertaining such a silly notion.

thank you for the explanation Rande. I have often pondered on the validity of the ADHD dx ... it appears to me that it is often paraded as a 'badge of honour' or excuse, rather than a valid condition. However in this upside down world of ours where self pity and false confessions are deemed to be acceptable, whereas bravery and self reliance are to be ignored or scorned, why am I not surprised.

Good for you mitsubishi, you passed that test with flying colors. Keep your BS meter fully charged at the moment, I have a feeling it will serve you well if not already.

gm mistsubishi, If a European traded short coffee only, would that make him a Short White?

Yes, I agree, there is no future in this thread and so I shall say bye bye. mitsubishi is a glowing example of a person who has allowed his intelligence (or academic side) to overly compensate for his under developed emotional side. I imagine that without the necessary balance in his life, he views the world through a pervading veil of fear ... everything he experiences is tinted a shade of dirty brown at best. His attempts at trading have amplified this imbalance, simply because there is nobody to blame but himself and fear prevents him from seeing himself.... this is evidenced by his postings as he tries to drag the Readers into mitsubishi's world and punish them for his own woeful attempts at trading .... All in all, mitsubishi is not a pretty sight and he faces an increasingly painful future .... that is why Zdo posted his advice as a friend "be careful what you let ‘crystallize’ in this stage of your life" .... it is an excellent reminder to all of us.

gm mitsubishi, I see you have trouble dealing with the unexpected .... somehow, I thought you might. You will need to deal with this problem and 'take your blinkers off' and allow your frustration levels to drop before you enter trading. Otherwise the Markets will make dog tucker of you and your account. You wrote a rather good post #100. Why don't you re-read it, in the sense that you wrote it to yourself... you could be in danger of learning something....

Why not lift your game and take a real trade for once ..... if nothing else it might make you feel good about yourself