eminiman414

Made one entry for the day (blue triangle, magenta triangle exit). Marked down 5 other places that I was considering an entry but did not take because they were not a part of my pre market plan and for the most part they were within the overnight range. Two potential entries could have made a few points the other two would have lost a few points and there was one entry that would not have been triggered. The entry I did make I followed what I had planned out. Waiting for an entry above the overnight range. Price made two consecutive higher highs and lows after the open. The second higher low ended at about 15.75 which was above the mean and above 50% of the move from 07.25 to 22.25. I have been trying to be more patient with my entries and trying to become more in tune with how I am as a trader. What situations I do better with versus not. To me I want to use what I have been learning to make a plan for the day that hopefully makes sense with the context of the market and also makes sense for me and the results I have obtained so far. Maybe that is incorrect but watching the bigger swings at the open didn't really bother me because I had a plan and I was able to focus a lot better because I didn't have to wing it saying okay here's a possible entry oops now an exit etc etc. I waited then executed. Given that my long entry did not go very far I suppose the next short SLA trade could have been taken but then that puts me back into the range and I ask myself if it's worth the risk if we stop at the mean/opposite end of the range. I skipped it because I did not have it written out and I have not been too successful trading within ranges. For the future part of my planning could and maybe should include something like if a long above 18 fails I will do xyz etc.

Right now I am watching 17.75 and 09.50. If we are still in this range when we open I will wait to see which way price breaks and take the RET thereafter. If we happen to break before I will see what traders are up to after the open utilizing SLA if an opportunity arises. I think by now the levels below price have been documented. Above price we will have to see what happens at 18.50 which is a previous swing high. I also have 57,67 and 90 as levels.

Waited for price to get under 18. 18 then held so I entered the RET short. Nothing going on there so trade was exited. Since nothing really happened under 18 I took the next long opportunity. I was giving price room but my exit was literally at the 50% mark and right at about 18. Here either I needed to exit on the DL break probably at breakeven or give price a bit of room under 50%. To exit right at 50% doesn't make much sense logically. I re-entered off the bounce of 18 which was also 50% of the up wave. This one was exited pretty quickly. After that this day started to remind me of the Gorilla in the room day. I had some other places where I wanted to enter and why I did not I really have no idea as this is sim. I suppose if it was real money I wouldn't have made any more entries so that's why I did not in sim. I did mark off places I thought of entering. I suppose I need better planning. I had my eyes on 18 and 40. I need to take it a step further and decide what I am going to do if price gets there. I am ok with what happened at 18. After we began moving back up I basically just went with the SLA for the next two trades. Price did get to 40 and there were two opps to enter and I didn't. Why? I do not know. Entering around 40 my thoughts were coming back to the mean around the 26-23 area first and then to 11. Most likely losing those trades has some affect on that. Picking out the price levels for the day while I am getting better at, I am missing a big piece to the puzzle which is what am I going to do exactly when/if price gets there. What am I looking for one way or the other? What is expected is this or that happens OR does not happen? It is unacceptable to miss the action at 40. It becomes a profitable day. I will work on getting more detailed in my planning and not plan pretty much on the fly.

finding this morning's prep to be a little more difficult. Why? I do not know. For example we have the mean of the daily hinge at 40, we have the previous hinge means of 30 and 18, we are near the mean of the TC and right now we are sitting at 28. Given the last couple of days and given where price is in relation to these means is today likely to be a choppy day? Can the limits of the daily hinge be played as extremes or is trading within a longer term hinge a different story? I guess to me it is when does a prior mean or extreme not become relevant in terms of planning? Since we moved pretty much equally around 50 yesterday and that is also a mean is that still a price level to keep an eye on? This to me is where I have had my issues with AMT. Is it okay that I have all of these levels in my head as long as my plan is simplified enough to be able to trade without handcuffs and not wanting to exit every time we hesitate at particular price levels which appear to be every 10 points or so. Will today be one of those "wavey" up and down SLA days that trumps AMT? I think to keep it simple I will wait to see what happens above 40 and/or below 18. Above 40 keeping an eye on 50 and the top of the TC. Below 18 on 3500, 3480 and 3470/71.

I should have went long at the double bottom then chased it around. By the time I got back to the screen I would have been a happy camper and missed all the points I may have exited at if I was in. Hahaha

Missed today was chasing a queen bee around my house this morning. It was actually the second one that got into my house in the past two weeks. I am going to have to look into that lol. Should have turned off my monitor and replayed it later but sat down so I know what has happened. Will replay it anyway for learning purposes.

Fair enough. Thank you.

I was thinking more in terms of price movement around the mean of 50. I wasn't thinking it was a range. Since we moved up 11 I was thinking down about 11 once we passed through 50. I suppose I was incorrect in thinking that. So only in an already established range that type of thinking would be relevant? Don't pass on a trade just because of something that hasn't happened yet and may not. Take it, and if you have to exit later, then exit. If you don't, then just ride it.

That is something I have been thinking about also. I have also been thinking about sticking with the side that seems to be in control and then just entering with the possibility of maybe a quick scratch then the typical SLA entry or even some type of SAR. Then I think if we do go long either on a SAR or SLA (if it showed up) what's our potential? Chopped around 50? Get back to 61 or even 66? Maybe higher? Since we made a HL (61) from the ON high (66) and then made a LL from the open and among other things my eye stuck with down as the direction. Another thing that I have noticed from my own run through of all of this is your first entry which is an entry I saw but skipped, I have found that when I see action like what happened about 5 bars up from the entry the RET after that hardly ever worked for me or worked minimally. Don't have exact stats on it yet. It's as if the 5th bar from the bar where the entry was triggered (sorry about the bar talk) is the first hesitation in that wave. I have found similar results with missing a dog and then taking the subsequent RET. This no where near as effective as a whole. Again no stats on these yet just general observations. Sorry for the big post in your general.

Who let the dogs out? The mean of about 50 was rejected at the open and price went up 11 points. We passed through the mean and down 12 points. No entry was taken on the slight hesitation under the PDL as I had 40 as a level I wanted to see what would happen at and as well I remember DB stating that if we move x amount from the mean we tend to move the same amount to the opposite side. In a trading range. That's what creates the range. This isn't/wasn't a range. Once you take the entry at 44/45, there's no reason to exit. Knowing we had about 3 points or so from where the entry would have been to that point of "equaling" the other extreme I passed and waited. We moved up from 38/40 and could not get back into the opening range, could not get back to the mean and barely traded above the PDL. Also not back up 50%. Took the dog short 43.75 exit at 30 because of buying coming in and being at the mean of the hinge. Price came back 50% and no further took the next dog short at 30 exit at 07.

Still a great trade nonetheless.

definitely some nice dogs.

Zooming in a bit more the 15m and 5m. Overall I have my eyes on 70 and we'll see what happens there. If we enter back into the previous range I would be paying close attention to the mean of the TR and the UL of the TC. I believe in market profile they say when price enters back into a range the odds favor a test of the opposite end. 62/63 is a prev swing high and an area where we have seen hesitation and it appears we are seeing that now again. The PDL of 46.75 could be tested if we reverse from 63 or possibly 40 which puts us close to the mean of the TC. If we break above 70 I will be looking long and if we bounce from 70 I will be looking short via the SLA. Since 70 seems to be an interesting level for many reasons it may also be choppy so I will be on the look out for that as well. 72 Is also 50% of the down move from the top of the previous range. If we reverse from where we are now I will wait to see what happens at 46ish/40. In planning I am wondering right now if waiting for the area of the top of the range/UL of the TC would be a better idea since that is the extreme. Seems as if where I am looking 70 & 40 or so are big meanies lol. If 3604/06 is the extreme of the TR and I have about 3590 as the UL of the TC if thats the upper most extreme then the lower extremes would be 3490/80?

Getting going now. Just thinking are we looking more like chart A or chart B?

As the title says I am doing the best I can at putting it all together. I went through 70 days of replays without regards to context mainly trading the SLA but also looking at re-entries and when to hold on and when to get out fast. All in all my win rate was 46% however I accumulated 349.5 points trading one contract which I thought wasn't too bad. I expected worse. I did this to sort of give me "an idea" as to what might be expected based on how i've been trading. Now I am adding in the context moving forward with the goal of being able to trade more intelligently which in my head will hopefully increase my win rate by keeping me out of what might be a silly trade. I have been studying my tail off so we shall see what happens. For today I had 2 entries one short, one long. The short was a loser the long a "winner." As we opened up my focus was on the mean I had of 89 from the previous TR and around 91.5/92 which was the extreme set during the overnight. Reading through some posts today I found it interesting DB talking about 93 and 84 and the mean it created. I will investigate this type of thing tomorrow. We started trading around 89 and for the most part went equally up and down around 89. On the upside we could not get back past the on extreme of 92+/-. Downside 86. We made a second trip back up and again can't get past 92 and make a LH. I recognized this and probably should have entered short but the fact that we were at the mean of the TR caused me not to take it. I went short on the first RET after the break of 86. This failed rather quickly and I held on too long. I didn't "think" 79/80 was anything special but it's not about what I think. If the trade fails quickly it fails quickly period. My eyes were more on 70 after my entry. In hindsight sure the entry at the mean would have worked out far better but is that a riskier entry or is my entry riskier due to mean reversion? The further we move from the mean are we more likely to come right back if price doesn't get to another mean or another extreme? Second trade was the long which was exited pretty much at the mean. Taking this long 89 was on my mind as was 92 and then 98 which was the mean during the overnight. Again we reject prices above the mean and below 92 making another LH. From here after the HL at about 9:55 we are in a hinge with a mean of 86. I was done before the break of the hinge. I was curious as to which way it would break and given that hardly any trades were found above 92 I was interested to see if we would break to the downside. Given from the overnight we had a mean of 98 and now with the hinge/range mean being 86 would that give us a clue to the direction of price movement? Sorry I did not post the context. Will do so tomorrow. I also have the stats of the 70 days I traded if anyone wants to take a look at them I can post it up.

A quick note the results I am about to post are not 100% SLA. Just saying that as to not discredit DBs method. It is fantastic and I am forever grateful to have stumbled upon it. With that said... I traded a time period from 1/6-4/23. Some trades were 100% SLA others I looked at re-entering, some at 50% some not at 50%. I took some trades based on SARs. Some trades I gave some room and others played tighter. Basically I did this to get a general idea as to what makes sense and what does not. I traded one contract from 9:30-11:00 for the most part. I pretty much wanted to know how successful or not I would be and in a way possibly have an idea of a worst case scenario trading this method (with the exception of the few things I looked at). All of the trades also were taken without any context behind them. My plan now is to go back and review these days and what I did while adding in the context to give me a better understanding of the successes and failures. I will also review the re-entries and SARs etc. to see what worked out better than the others. From there along with the context I will look at what happened at certain times of the session. I will also look at how many days were range days that could be traded, vs. choppy days vs. trend days and what came before them. I will also look at things like if we open at the high of the day what typically happens? How many times do we reverse vs. BO and continue etc.? Just things like that to give me more of an idea of how the NQ moves. I know the SLA works I just want to get better at it. # of trades taken: 191 winning points: 593.75 losing points: 244.25 net points: 349.5 winning trades: 89 losing trades: 102 winning percentage: 46.6 losing percentage: 53.4 Avg. winning trade: 6.67 Avg. losing trade: 2.39 Ratio: 2.79 Avg. MFE: 5.81 Avg. MAE: 1.90 I will review all of this and then try to characterize this market. I know there is a lot of info posted and a lot of the work is done, but going thru this process, finding things out and learning for myself will be a great help. I also know just adding in the context will increase my winning% etc. Back to work!

Right. By all means at this point I understand the principles but entering and profiting from situations like this are where I don't want to say struggle it's more of "missing out." Let me see if I can word this better. Once price breaks the line initially we switch gears from short to long. We do not get a retracement before the 50% point. Is that a cause to switch back momentarily to the short side? In my mind I am still thinking long and when we get to 50% literally the next bar reverses almost the whole move that broke the SL. How does one time that correctly? Maybe to simplify the question. When do you place your sell stop order? Is it simply price doesn't move past 50% so I am putting in my sell stop below the bar that gets to 50% as if it's a break/ret trade? Then that next long 1m bar takes me in? The break/ret to me is so simple/straight forward like a very easy slow dance where the 50% entry is like learning to salsa dance (a little more skill involved). In my head for the above situation is break/ret but then we get a break...price gets to 50%...okay and my retttt oops there goes the boat without me in the same direction as my exit. I'm not sure you do understand the principles if you're still focused on lines and line "breaks" and bars and where to enter and how. The lines are merely an aid to help the trader focus on supply and demand and the balance between them. If one is still using them after two or three weeks then he's focused on the wrong thing (some people have been using them for months, which may be one reason why success continues to elude them, though many give up a lot sooner). The objective of traders is to trade. Therefore they will look for those levels where they are most likely to find trades. If they don't find them there, they will look elsewhere. All the bullshit about how the market is out to get you and searches for your stops and so forth is a distraction from the business of trading. Therefore, if traders can't find trades to the upside and the rally effort they make in order to find them is feeble, e.g., less than 50%, the logical move is to look for the downside, particularly if all of this is taking place after a lower low. If one is unsure about where they're going to go, he can bracket the trade. But if he's tied up by inflexible protocols, he'll be focused on those protocols rather than on what price is doing. There aren't going to be a lot of explanatory posts in this thread, i.e., as close as possible to none. Five thousand is more than enough. What I intend to do is post the charts. It's up to whoever is interested to read the material, try it out, compare what they did with what should have been done, rework their strategy/tactics, then try again the next day, then again and again until they either get it or give up and try something else. It's not like this is the only way to make money. No I get it I was just referring to the lines as they were drawn on your chart. Last question regarding this would be what made you conclude that at or less than 50% traders were done at those prices and it was time to look lower? Because price didn't move higher. TDTDB. I've updated the annotation on the chart to point out the lower high and the lower low. A lower high followed by a lower low indicate a downtrend. One doesn't go long in a downtrend absent a break in the SL and a subsequent retracement.

At what point does your brain switch from a potential long entry to shorting TDTDB? What do you see when price moves down that makes you short instead of seeing if that turns into a retracement to take long? Is the entry a one point stop entry or do you just enter at the market? When the trade doesn't go. If the entry is not only not triggered but traders make no attempt whatsoever to move toward it, then clearly the action is in the other direction. If not, then price will simply go sideways, which it sometimes does, but not at that hour. In this case, traders balked at the 50% level and there never was even a retracement. So a long entry never came up. And never enter at the market.

Thanks. I skipped section 8 so ill check that out.

Well I mean he followed the average then the stocks that aligned themselves w the average that were ready to move. Wasn't asking about wyckoff specifically but more about the principles. So if I was interested in trading stocks within lets say the Nasdaq I would follow the trend of what? The composite? If its strong find the sectors are strong then the stocks that are poised for an advance?

If one is approaching the stock market using the wyckoff methods what would be considered the average? Something like the Nasdaq composite?

Should one also consider the distance of the down move before the rally as a clue to how far the current retracement may go?

Haha that's awesome I am actually at that point in the course right now where price ranges near the high and wyckoff explains how the supply from those trying to get out even is being absorbed. My main concern is missing action by not viewing a smaller interval but then being confused in my decision making process by what that smaller interval is telling me. Example. A supply line breaking on the 60 min before the daily. Almost worried about having too much time to analyze a situation and having a variety of ways to look at it. If that makes sense. This is new and I suppose ill get used to it

So since I will be reveiwing charts when I get home from work ideally I should create my setups off the daily chart? Understanding everything that's been discussed.

So for example if I can not watch the 60min. in real time should that view be eliminated from my decision making process? I understand what you are saying, and I am going to begin going through the course again this evening. Was just curious on the views of those here if you can not observe price behavior in real time at a specific interval should you not even look at it? In creating setups/strategies why would one include an interval that he can not watch in real time? How could one have a strategy of taking double bottoms at support on the 60min if he only has about an hour a day to observe his charts? Wouldn't most opportunities be missed? Those that would be taken would only be I feel out of sheer luck of coming at the right place at the right time. Then I think if I am making decision from a daily chart, what about that continuous nature of price movement that is not 100% visible on the daily chart? Going through the thinking too much stage.