SIUYA

assuming we are talking about the same idea.... my simple view ----if the exchange opens and closes at the same time and simply records the first trade on the same time stamp for everyone, then you could safely assume the charts will be the same. Or if the charts are built up from tick charts then the way it would differ would be if people start from different times. However, the highs and lows of the series of bars would not change, the support and resistance would not change, the trend would not differ too much, the MAs would converge, etc; etc;.....so does it make much of a difference? IMHO no .....unless as suggested you are placing a lot of importance on the close of the bar and as the time frame gets larger the larger the differences become more pronounced. Hence why its often suggested that all you need is a horizontal line.....and a reason why i use more range bars. I also think a lot depends on the instrument. Equities and such that are not 24 hours do have distinct opening and closing times.....are they relevant for the day.....you bet, if you are trading longer term and not intrday. For FX, indexes and other more global macro instruments i might think less so.....but this is all just subjective. Basically - i dont think TA would matter either way - its a road map not a set of universal rules or laws.

i think it is a great idea.....the challenge may be in keeping it simple. otherwise you end up trawling through and trying to decipher other peoples formatting. I am sure we all have plenty of excel sheets that get discovered with a wow, but hell i will never use that. Plus any excel i use usually involves macros which mainly format and automate those pesky things, but still require an understanding of how it all fits together. I also dont want to be dealing with a set of instructions (been there before - its a pain) as a suggestion maybe you are better off using this as a place for people to request certain simple straightforward requests? People can offer suggestions that either perform the specific task, or provide a way of doing it simply and easily, or help direct to a source that can do it.

probably because it wouldn't .....or because TA as you know it is vastly different to how others view it.

Slightly off topic - but maybe not..... Just doing some light reading over a recent break i had and caught up on some books i thought interesting based on their covers.....more theories on how the mind works. I thought they could be useful in such and similar discussions. Switch - How to change things when change is hard - Chip Heath and Dan Heath they referenced and use the elephant and rider idea from The Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt .....in it he talks about the 'elephant (emotions) and the rider (rational thought)', .....but I did not read that.....one for the future. I did read his other book The righteous mind - why good people are divided by politics and religion and found it quite interesting and thought provoking as well. A lot can be derived from these books IMO about why we do what we do, if we really want to do it, how to change if we really want to and what really pushes our buttons or motivates us. (This is the on topic reference) Personally it resonates far more than many other theories of past lives, voices in the head, mummy issues, past or set ideas. Always has for me in my own way. (plus on getting back and reading this thread, it seems most of us prefer to (or cant help ourselves) discussing definitions and concepts more so than actual trade entries and exits - and i would view that as a good thing about TL - also it appears most who argue a lot actually do similar things - maybe its just all about perception.)

1987 was too far back for me also....1997 was my first real panic crash. The lessons are the same - it will occur again at some stage, there will be plenty of warning in the months and weeks before hand and when it occurs it will be like how did this occur. Maybe this will be remembered as the wet Monday

c'mon Tams.....behave yourself. you are very correct, but the thread is still How do you behave? Personally Behaving well...... When the market is going up and I am trying to get long, running those longs and not trying to short it. When the market is going down and I am trying to get short, running those shorts and not trying to get long. If I am bored because I am making money then I am behaving. Behaving badly......... If I am trying to pick tops and bottoms, (without any clear reason to eg; massive support or resistance, and these occurances are rare). If I am getting bored and I am trying to expect too much, or trying to tweak too much or trying to be too smart. If i am not doing my preparation, end of day review or taking punts for the hell of it If I am getting angry because I am loosing money because - I am doing stupid things, OR I am angry at other things in my life but using trading as an excuse as for reactions from individual trades.....please see above. as for reactions for when i behave well.....I am bored. (sad but true) as for what happens when i behave poorly.....my bank account goes down, and that is punishment enough when i would have rather spent it on wine, food, and women - the rest i waste. (thank you George Best). Stop trading, breath in do what you should be doing and start trading again.

no.....but with out some form of disclipline and probably more importantly 'motivation and drive' then the other important elements required for success in any field might be difficult. For trading it involves, plans, thought, testing, preparation, mental toughness blha blah blah. You need discipline not just to apply during trading but also before pushing the button. for extra reading.... Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice: Amazon.co.uk: Matthew Syed: Books

On most of your points - i think it would be hard to disagree - if the market is looking at certain levels or inidcators eg; 200bar MA - then yes - it makes perfect sense to follow the ones that everyone else is using..... but here in lies the rub......are they? if everyone is using the 200 bar MA, why then does it cross it then fall back in the first place? Why does it sometimes cross and keep going? The average may give a 'best fit' - but so to would a 10 bar, or 300 bar give a pretty good fit....The reason why the MA seems to provide support and or resistance is because it has to at some stage! As an average it will always catch up to a trending market and in consolidation will converge to the market price.....but it is the MA that is the average of the prices and not the other way round. It is a guide to past momentum and direction....but if it works for you then great..... Your comment about what others see is an interesting one as no one will see the same thing in real time (hindsight is different of course). Why is it that most professional money managers dont outperform indexes, why is it that when using a simple MA system a computer cant make it profitable (by all general accounts) .....and the other key ingredient is this ---- it not what you or others see its what happens there that is important. This touches at the holy grail hunt - if everyone could see the same thing and acted on it the same way it would be arbitraged away for want of a better description.

yes they are different, i see your point however.....neither will offer S/R and they are certainly not precise as by their nature they offer a variety of prices, and a variety of ways to represent them. A horizontal line is a singular point. No one is obliged to step in on any of them, however in terms of ambiguity I think about it this way.... the x bar MA has been broken on the upside means the bias might have changed....prices could be lower or higher than they were X bars ago, and also means that X-1, or X+2 MA might or might not have significance. or the price level X has been broken on the upside - clear precise and unambiguous. (we are not paid to track and outperform a MA ) semantics maybe..... As for Fibs - again another guideline, but i do like that they can give precise horitzontal lines.....and when they coincide with other areas of support as the Col mentions, then great....i will take the mysticism as part of it. ............... getting back to the original posters Q: that has been waylaid.... P.S. I want to remind (as this has gone slightly off topic) my main question: "What I wanted to ask is how do you cope (if you have to) with issues like this?" And the issue was: people inconsistency of drawing/calculating same thing. Be it MA's, horizontal support levels, trendlines, channels, Fibonacci etc. Hard to see how a MA can be inconsistent....?? If people are inconsistent in drawing something then what are you going to do apart from put in place some rules/guidelines to draw them to get consistency.....even for horizontal lines...... eg; do you place them at areas of support in an uptrend, at areas of previous resistance, both, or somewhere else...? This seems just to revert back to have a plan, a method a style a strategy that is tested - or am i missing something?

....and there in lies the issue ColB - This is of course the chicken and egg - IF you can get a mentor early on then great - but good luck in finding that. I would guess that a like minded trading buddy who can be straightforward and honest with you might be just as good a bet. The type of person who says - why are you shorting, you told me you were bullish 5 mins ago. Finding a good mentor is very difficult, and even then, finding a good mentor that can teach you something that actually suits your personality style is even harder....and even when you do find one - or are lucky enough to be able to be taught by a multitude of different people/styles - you will still most likely have to work things out for yourself - in finding your own way, i think it can be summerised for me as basically working out what works for you - doing more of it, and less of those things you are not good at, or its an inefficient waste of time. its good advice to spend time trying to find a good mentor, or a series of them, and you often dont need to pay for it.....but there is no substitute for hard work and working it out yourself as well - a cliche - but cliches have their basis of truth and are often ignored. The retail market is a very different beast to the institutional world - very very very few institutional traders actually take specualtive risk, or trade their own money, rely purely on it for income or sit by them selves, or have no risk controls. If you are a retail trader and you are losing and you have not first a...tried to understand the market you are trading in terms of the basics, b.....developed a philosophy for how it moves, and the best way for you to make money, c....developed some sort of plan, d....tested it, and e....review your trades ....if you have not first done this then i would guess that finding a mentor for this person is much like trying to skip certain things in order to get around doing the work. (I would also add IMHO - a mentor does not charge money for this, they do it for other reasons, either corporate, responsibility to pass on the baton, educational, pure enjoyment from the web.... Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. However, true mentoring is more than just answering occasional questions or providing ad hoc help. It is about an ongoing relationship of learning, dialog, and challenge. It involves more than just showing some one the ropes.....lets not mix educators and mentors.) ............. Edit : sorry it was off topic..... Back on topic - what else is there to say. Trading is the ulitmate when you are wrong you know it, there is no one else to blame, and even if your pet monkey hit the buy key by mistake, you have to deal with it. If you prefer politics, the blame game, hogging credit or any other coportate strategies trading is not for you.

I would agree with DbP - EVEN WHEN LOOKING AT THE SAME CHART - what you see and what others will see will be different. what you do and what others will do will be different. IMHO - so all open to conjecture, argument, flaming, dismissal, alternative ideas..... MAs, channels, trendlines never ever provide support or resistance - all they provide is a guideline, (or a filter maybe) so when people say - it bounced of the MA support i think it is rubbish - as there are multiple MAs, they move and they are lagging and look great when best fit in hindsight - but there is only one price level - it is clear, defined and obvious to everyone, and it is what happens at these levels which is what is important. (remember the only way to make money is being long those things that go up in price, and short those that go down in price- so all you need is a horizontal line ) (One thing MAs and trendlines could be used for in their defense is that you can use them as a clear place to define risk as a filter - eg; if the price goes above the 200bar MA then i will be long, below i will be short....but as everyone has seen this feeds the brokers as is at best likely break even ---- but the point remains - it is a clear unambiguous boundary that can help define risk if used consistentently AND it is irrelevant as to what the market is thinking......mind you - when people say I use the 26 day MA as everyone else is using the 24 day MA ---- thats an even bigger joke for idiots to differentiate a failed system to sell........you may as well at least use the one that has the most profitable influence on the market - ie; the one that best reflects why you are trying to use it....in your words - at least use the one the market has respect for.) But as DB says - MAs and support and resistance are not related except in your mind.

thought you might appreciate this..... ...................... A single-celled, amoeba-like creature called a slime mold is capable of navigating through a maze to food, despite lacking a brain. The slime mold leaves behind a trail of goo as it oozes along. That trail forms a kind of external memory system, according to a paper released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study showed that creatures that couldn’t use their slime as a marker spent almost 10-fold the amount of time exploring a maze to find food. Slime molds avoid areas where their trail already appears unless there’s no unslimed area available, the authors wrote. That suggests the creatures use their goo as a marker for places they already know. The use of externalized memory may have been a first step toward the development of recollection in other organisms, the researchers said. “Many insects, including species of ants, bees, and wasps, use landmarks to memorize their route to and from the nest,” the authors, led by doctoral student Chris R. Reid of the University of Sydney in Australia, wrote in the paper. “We go a step further by showing that even an organism without a nervous system can effectively navigate complex environments.” Slime molds, which aren’t actually mold, spend the bulk of their lives as huge single cells containing many nuclei. This is called a plasmodium. It searches for food by contracting and expanding. When foods are nearby, the contractions speed up, causing the slime mold to flow toward the food. When salt or light is detected, the contractions slow, allowing the plasmodium to move away from irritants. The species used in this experiment, Physarium polycephalum, originates in forests and can range in size from a few millimeters to more than 12 inches across, according to Washington University at St. Louis. To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net

just to throw a spanner in the works........ what about when you take into account the futures backwardation and contango? does the market adjust for this.....does the market just trade off the spot? Is the memory just short term, or extremely selective and biased by hindsight (as memory actually is) There is reality and there is fantasy, and when a market is in contango for much of the year, and people point to a continuous contract and say - if you had bought here and sold here you would have made X - they are living in a fantasy.....they forget about the reality of the roll each month.......

actually you can..... it is repeated time and time and time again. It is often referred to as picking up pennies in front of steamrollers - at some stage you trip and get taken out. Selling options is certainly one way to do this......and no matter how many times people are told this, they will still choose to ignore it. (not to say selling options is not a valid strategy - however you have to expect hiccups, and if you dont then it wont matter how many times you read it - you are living in denial)

thanks Bob, I prefer to go with the tv shows 'yes minister' and 'yes prime minister' --- ideas that its not actually the government of the day manipulating anything. the father of a friend of mine used to love those tv shows - until he became a politician (a rare breed that actually represented his constituents and went against his party on a few occasions in NSW Australia) Once he joined the system he realised how close to reality these comedy shows were. As for bull or bear - either is great - range is a killer.

FWIW - or maybe there are enough political ideological sites to follow this up, and most would prefer to leave politics out of a trading site ??? (we all know all sides push their own ideas usually based on an ideology rather than evidence that might actually benefit those they are meant to represent, I mean CEOs represent the shareholders right? politicians represent the constituents right? auditors represent the truth right? government numbers never get readjusted, changed, manipulated or restated right?- but that is just my conspiracy theorist friends talking ) As to its important implications for trading, what do you think they are bob?

a tough obstacle......you may have to do a trial and error type of experiment to overcome this, as one size solution often does not fit everyone. a few things that maybe worth trialing as an experiment....(disclaimer....these might also not suit you or be harmful) 1....in your paper trading account trade the exact same setups, but with 10 times the size you would in the real account....it gets you used to the swings in PL, and you will be less worried about the real money. 2....trade the paper account AND the real account at the same time, using the paper account to take trades, and then replicate it in the real one.....it might reveal exactly what you are thinking when switching between accounts as opposed to one on and one off. 3....it sounds like you have done some analysis on the reasons why you think differently....maybe you need to really reduce the size the real account. If its already so small only a one lot is traded, then it may simply be that you are undercapitalised, in which case every loss is going to hurt too much - too much heat - you need more money , (i dont think there is spreadbetting in the US like the UK to reduce size, and then build it up from there - but I would continue to paper trade while building up a bank, but trade larger size, get the mind used to it, and then reduce when using real money - ingrain good habits at least if practicing)

feedback ---- great but damm - i can see a lot of time wasted here a good distraction.

page 29.... ftp://195.214.211.1/books/DVD-033/Smith_G._How_I_Trade_for_a_Living_(1999)(en)(272s).pdf says it all.

When the ASX floor Equity option Pit (much quieter than futures) used to be open...... 10am-12.15 - trade away. 12.15 - quiet day go to lunch, wonder about coming back or getting drunk, on the busy day, watch and wait for the floor to open again at 2pm. on busy days - continue trading as per morning. Frantic fantastic fun. on quiet days - if at lunch maybe rush back square up or get set for the next day at 3.50pm for 4pm close or play backgammon, cards, BS or fall asleep. Curse the exchanges for extending trading through lunch. then it became a sit and stop and watch and wait and wait and wait - busy or quiet. Now its all just electronic, and the computer pees for you. (Often in the ASX equity market the stocks gap open and then have small ranges throughout the day - hence IMHO not the best for intraday trading unless you loooove to scalp. --- which is why i use FX, and dont care about worrying about pits anymore)

i guess i should have clarified it a bit more then - I have an impulsive ENTRY problem As the thread suggests its about knowing yourself.....I know I generally dont have a problem with exits, just entries - maybe this is the classic 'over trading' - but I also know that sometimes these trades are actually intuitive and hence if you get lucky in the timing, then let it ride....and manage the trade. A wise old fella on the floor told me when i first started - if a mistake goes against you, exit immediately, if it starts to go your way then let it ride - but just remember the entry was as a result of a mistake and dont try to justify it otherwise.

only if its a looser Sometimes the impulsiveness is ok - its the old debate about how much value is intuition worth. sometimes, the impulsiveness is 'good intuition' from experience working. BUT - i also know that the trade management for me is best treated differently when the trade was initiated impulsively precisely so that you dont get locked in so to speak and think that it is the norm, and that luck and impulsiveness get mixed up.....there is nothing wrong with running with the impulsiveness when you might just have been lucky in the timing of entry. The key for me is ensuring it does not turn into a looser and then messing with the mind for the rest of the day.

much the same - expecting too much from the markets sometimes, you cant see the forest for the trees. Personal failing - there are many over different times in a trading career. Major one for me has been - impulsiveness, trading too much. solution - I find i often cannot stop it - its the nature of impulsiveness so instead I learnt to recognize when it occurs (by reviewing trades), and then to adapt when it occurs. This adaption took the form of quickly changing stops to being close, or just deciding to take profits......remembering the mantra - get out reassess, as its easy to get back in again. I know that i could not stop the impulsiveness, so instead i changed my reaction when it occurred.

Neg - i am with Zdo.... while it may be simplistic to just say it, and i understand Zdos - we need more than this, often the simple things need to be said as they are too often ignored. how often is this the case - get a plan, test a plan, keep a journal, cut losses, run profits......simple but often ignored. A similar version might be.... do more of the things that work for you and less of the things that dont work for you. not everyone will be good at picking turning points, or running a trend, or increasing size, or cutting a loss 5 times before a direction works for them.....and so it is always easiest to play to your strengths. Then you take it to another level (first you need to be able to understand something of yourself, or be prepared to open your ideas) which is to work out what these are, and how to improve them, or eliminate a lot of the damaging weaknesses. We might find what we think we are good at is not the case......and shock horror what do you mean our personality is not as it appears to us. Obsidian hints at the importance of understanding the expectations - 100%, and this could be applied to ourselves as well as our strategy in the market. but i like the rant - always good.

You might not be able to get this in every country, but if you can its well worth watching for interest.... Masters of money on BBC BBC Two - Masters of Money