BlowFish

Sure. In that case you will be very unlikely to get consolidation -> momentum in the new direction -> test/price rejection on the lower time frame. (or the higher time frame for that matter). It's not about forecasting turns it's more about 'good' trade location. EDIT: + price confirming that the bulls/bears are no longer in control.

Not so much a rule as an observation. My reply was to test my understanding of phantoms approach. I don't really want to go too far down my road as that would be impolite!

Well I am obviously not phantom but I'll have a crack at some of that to 'test' my understanding. Hope thats Ok WE are looking for a 'mini sideways channel'. We can anticipate it because we are at/outside the top 120m band. You can pretty much guess what is 'inside' the narrow hammer bar at 2. A narrow bar on 120 will pretty much always be a mini consolidation on 15. Attached charts of the 15 min and 20 min with two consolidation boxes which are based on specific consolidation rules. These rules are not your rules so if people on this forum wants to use your setup in live trading when are they entering the trade? The first breakout down on the 15 min/20 min? The second? The third? The second down bar on the 120 min? You look for he consolidation on the 15 where the 120 bars have poked the BB's not anywhere on the 15 min chart. I enclose a chart, you get a 'mini range' at the top a shift in momentum, price drifts off. There are a couple of rejections that you could trigger entries on. Phantom I wonder which chart you would use for an initial stop? so I am curious what your definition of an uptrend is. Not sure trend is too important to him....see post 55. Please correct me if I am wrong (not unusual)

That is how it appears which is a shame, as on the whole it is actually a "voice worth listening to". Seems that often traders have their little foibles. . "Institutional" is too broad a term to usefully identify a specific type of participant, it is also too vague a term to define a category of participants. There is pretty much always a better word to use. Heck I would bet that most people would not even have the same definition of what the term means. For me I tend to think of 'institutional' as the funds (banks, pension, insurance, unions etc.) I also tend to think buy side. I personally would rule out the more 'boutiquey' operations and most of the 'hedge' funds (another nebulous term) as their mandates are usually much broader. Neither would I include what the COT would call 'commercials' even if there operations are actually conducted by 'jobbing' traders that work for the same organisations, there remit is clearly completely different. Nor would I include market making.

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f34/what-really-works-technical-traders-9764.html

It is a forum, presumably if he did not want discussion he would have chosen a different venue like a blog. It's been pretty civil on the whole anyway. Back on topic, a straightforward way of using BB's. Indeed the bands are at SD's from the average. Edit (I see you use 2,20) Do you use default settings (not that it is that big of a deal)? Do you only go in one direction (in the direction of trend or momentum or something else)? Cheers.

If you are interested from a signal processing point of view Ehlers stuff is interesting. Needs quite good maths (degree level probably). Actually most of his stuff starts with separating the cyclical component from the trending component and goes from there. Pretty much all the time (that I can recall) he uses the hillbert transform to accomplish this. Several papers and indicators on the interwebz to see if worth splashing out on his books (not that they are that expensive)

Guess we need to give the poor guy a chance! I hazard a guess that the BB's may well be to do with volatility 'crash barriers'.

Simple does not mean easy as the old cliché goes. Mind you if one can't make simple work the chances of making complex work are pretty slim. I don't think the problem is just assimilation, if there are too many variables and parameters involved it is much harder to be consistent at trigger time. Edit: Yeah as JohnW says push on...I guess I am as guilty as anyone as decreasing the signal to noise ratio.

Sure you can. Constructive criticism is no bad thing. Of course it would be his prerogative to ignore it. Mind you this is the first mention of 'quality'. Seems to be simply and clearly presented to me. What phantom is presenting is a pretty straight forward approach that is based on 'price action' that demonstrably 'works'. Sure you need some money management and it might be an idea to filter trades (times of the day when you can expect volatility to pick up for example), but at the end of the day its solid TA. Simple concept clearly presented? I was going to comment on your first post. It seems that your approach is pretty radically different from phantoms. (of course I may be wrong) It would certainly seem to merit it's own thread if that is the case? I wonder if any 'criticism' is not really criticism, it's just you do stuff differently?

Quite so. Whatever helps one make consistent decisions at the hard right edge. Your thread your rules Don't tell anyone but I usually have an indicator or two on my charts, often ones I have written. Anything that 'frames' price like VWAP & SD bands or gives a proxy for order flow like cumulative delta or trade intensity. sshhh just don't tell. Here is a chart of the DAX from this morning the VWAP SD lines frame price beautifully, great when I am feeling too lazy to hand draw S/R. Of course you still need to look to see what price is telling you at these levels but indicator it is.

Well assuming price is what we are actually interested in watching it through inidcators is akin to watching a movie through time lapse photography that transforms the image as well Anyway I don't want to derail your thread and will be interested to hear about these crash rails later.

My thoughts too (particularly on the 'squigglies') . One doesn't need a BB to see price tightening up. One Doesn't need an MA to detect trend or a reversion to the mean. One doesn't need a MACD to see a new low is on less momentum to the last low. I wonder if they can help as 'training wheels' until you can see these things with plain price bars? I guess they can also help with quantifying the magnitude of a phenomena (for automation or whatever).

You can find details of some of his price action stuff (swing charts and what not) over at fibonacii trader (software) web site bottom left under downloads look for FT Journal Issues. It presents a fairly simple but comprehensive way of classifying price behaviour. A good resource imho.

Sure whatever works Only comment is that a lot of sites seem to return results in a rather ugly fashion. Rather than being in the sites style results are returned in googles plain blue links & black text on a white background. That really is being nitpicky. Would you still be able to search by user and text?

Ganns basic price action stuff seems pretty solid and somewhat overlooked. Also I have a friend who is quite the student of Gann (including the more 'esoteric' stuff) who tells me his money management was pretty robust. Again not very 'sexy' compared to calling absolute market tops based on plannetary alignments.

True enough. One of the most interesting is that particular style (I call it 'old fashioned trend following' though 'long term trend following' may be more discriptive) is actually very simple. Of course it's still not easy as most of these types of system will have close to 70% losers. You will also need a large account to trade them as they rely on trading multiple markets simultaneously. That kind of compounds the 70% rate as you are likely to suffer big absolute $ draw downs. Oh and you will need pretty large stops (days or even weeks away) But pretty much anyone can 'do it' if they follow the rules. Interesting comment about the turtles being wetware ZDO. I agree however my overall view is different. Trading can be a very a simple activity that requires little intelligence or even background knowledge. One of the reasons people fail is that they find that hard to accept, their ego demands more. Of course you can make it a complicated activity also. You can look at all sorts of sophisticated bells and whistles but it's not absolutely necessary. Those original break out systems still 'work' (you would have absolutely cleaned up over the last few years in fact). None of this really proves much of anything (as has been pointed out:)) however I do suspect that you can train pretty much anyone to trade though you might need to attach electrodes to their genitalia to break some of those traits that where nurtured at an early age. You know, all the ones that help you in many endeavours but are counter productive in trading.

Don't have a time for TV could be a good quality,:)that move in his advantage. My point was if he did he would have known to use a disposable phone! (and so probably not been busted) Guess he'll get plenty of time to catch up in the clink.

I think you have to make that assumption Josh you only have a couple of variables to play with price,volume,time. You could also look at the order book I guess but not sure what that would add to this particular mix. (Having said that 'intensity' of aggressive sellers vs 'intensity' of aggressive buyers is a pretty interesting metric to look at.) Really there are couple of things going on here traders splitting orders to hide intent (personally dubious about how effective that is as it's all going to hit the tape at some stage) and secondly the changes in reporting by the CME. I think it is pretty safe to reconstitute 100x1 lot orders that go off at the same time (well essentially the same time).

You forgot a Z day ....oh wait time cant run backwards though I guess if you straighten the centre section you get a ledge drop ledge. (You let Siuya straighten the 7) Then there is U (cup without handle). My Platitude for the day "platitudes will not improve your trading":D

Competing with other limit orders is a form of execution risk. Basically execution risk is the risk that a transaction will not execute completely within the price limit you have set. 2) yes, limit orders on most excahnges work on a FIFO (first in first out) basis.

Yup that way appears to work. I do recall some issues with search a while back I wonder if they were completely resolved.

There was a thread somewhere something along the lines of 'best of TL' that had links to some of the best threads. Worth submitting/taking nominations for that. Good is relative though, I would hope that only the very best novel or highly informative threads qualify. After all one can read b*ll*cks anywhere of thousands of places on the interwebz.

If you hit advanced search at the top right and type in a user name you get a small subset of posts compared with clicking on the users name in the forum and selecting find all posts by this user? The user name I was looking for was Anna-Maria. I seam to remember search was not returning all it should a while ago but thought it was fixed?

The trouble is people don't work purposefully towards their goals. They do not consider the process. The way you tell whether a setup is a 'high probability' setup is you test it backwards and then forwards. The process allows you to build confidence in the outcome. A principle reason people experience emotional difficulties is they have not adequately done this. Trading is similar to most endeavours in many ways (more so than it's different). There are lot's of 'truisms' (though how true they are is debatable, many are just BS rhetoric) 'don't fight the trend', 'look after the losses and the wins will take care of themselves" etc. (I always liked Ken Wolfs, Jimmy Youngs are good too) The thing is these 'sound bites' are of actually pretty much zero practical use to beginners. Of course posts like this you can bash out in two minutes. DBPhoenix talked about the process in numerous posts on the forum here (Whyckoff section mainly) there is a hint in his blog here The Trading Journal - Traders Laboratory Forums You have to go back in time a fair bit but there are some great threads here that give good actionable advice to fledgling traders. Looking forward to seeing if phantoms develops into such a resource. My tip for the day..."don't eat yellow snow"