hdcafe

idaxtrader, A few things to look for here some VSA some not. A) Your trade took place during lunch time trading 11:30 to 12:30 when volume becomes relatively light. B) The WRB just after 11:30 has no follow thru (lunch time trade?) This tends to cause the shorts to cover their positions prematurely which is what stopped out your trade. C) You have to consider the WRB with ultra high volume to be a sign of strength whether it truly is or not and once that occurs you then have to get a strong sign of weakness to take a short posistion. That sign does not come until the upthrust occurs at 1:00 I am sure you are fully aware of this but I will comment anyway. When trading the futures markets IMHO it pays NOT to use the terms "Supply and Demand". With futures, the supply is unlimited and demand is not. I prefer to use the terms "Willing Buyers and Willing Sellers". This reminds me that the Smart Money has to be searching for signs of what other traders are willing to do and not do rather than searching for the availability of a limited amount of stock. This makes the futures market that much more of mind game. It appears that you are using a 2 minute chart here. That is alot of noise to have to filter thru especially with the ES. I use a 5 minute chart on the ES and then use 3 and 4 minute charts to back up the 5 minute. Sometimes the VSA bars will be more recognizeable in different time frames. This also helps with volume changes during different times of the day. The high just before 12:30 is also an upthrust but a weak one and you could have taken the trade at the close of the down bar. I would have waited and taken the trade at the 1:00 upthrust. As far as the books go I do not have both so I cannot comment. I think someone else wrote about the difference between the two in this thread. I have owned Tradeguider for about 18 months now and it was not until I got the Boot Camp CD's that I really got a good understanding of VSA. The Tradeguider folks should not even sell the software without these CD's in my opinion. Hope this helps Good luck!

In the Forex markets volume is made up of changes to the bid/ask and not actual trades. Tom Williams calls this "indicative volume". I have one of Tom's videos where he states that "indicative volume" is actually more useful for VSA than trade volume because it shows areas in price where there is increased or decreased trading activity. Because Esignal uses many different feeds it provides a broader overall look at this activity than a single data feed.