Trading The Wyckoff Way

It's not a matter of greed but of planning. If one doesn't know ahead of time what he's going to do, then whatever decision he makes in real time is essentially a gamble.

The hindsight postings are fine for what they are, but they are only marginally related to RT trading. Even if you guys are only paper-trading, you need to conduct yourselves as though you were trading for real.

One thing I learned is you take the hand you're dealt, greed gets you in trouble.

erie

Actually, the majority of my trades seem to mirror a "lack of greed", if you want to put it that way. I'm still adjusting and tweaking my strategy as I go along, but today for instance I had sufficient reason to take some off at 1342. Resistance for me was - like you in the chart you posted - around 1349.

Holding on for 4 hours might not be 'difficult' strategywise, but it requires a patient mindset, something that I lack from time to time... (but I'll stop now too, as this stuff is more appropriate for my blog).

I am, no surprise, a proponent of blogs. They play an important part in one's development. But only a part. If either or both of you want to take this to the next level, I suggest you take advantage of the chat room facilities here. Doing so will enable you to maintain the discipline required to follow price as it moves from S to R and back again and focus on how it behaves as it approaches each. You won't then be relying on what "feels right" or "seems best". Posting to the boards can wait until the end of the day, or until you've wrapped it up for the day.

Well I can't speak for FW, but i'm trading , not much mind you , just one trade a day when I am confident in s/r , otherwise one doesn't hear a peep out of me .

erie

One trade a day is too much pressure. If you miss the trade, then you are too likely to be thinking of the trade you missed rather than focusing on what price is doing. And if you make only one trade a day, there won't be any need for you to focus on what price is doing if you miss the trade because you consider yourself done.

Not sure what you mean. I have no pressure at all. When I post s/r for the day,(on the daily) when price hits one of these and the set up is confirmed, I take it.(it's a high probability trade )

So you took the trade at 44 +/-?

You didn't notice where price hit after the employment report?

One trade a day is too much pressure. If you miss the trade, then you are too likely to be thinking of the trade you missed rather than focusing on what price is doing. And if you make only one trade a day, there won't be any need for you to focus on what price is doing if you miss the trade because you consider yourself done.

I understand erie's point of view, and to be honest I think forcing yourself to take more trades than necessary is putting pressure on yourself. I prefer to take only one or two trades per day, per instrument. If my first trade is a profitable one, I prefer to squeeze out as much as possible out of that instead of looking for another entry. Trade management is more relaxing than concentrating on getting the entry right. I've spent too much time in the past looking to find trades all day when most of them are not worth the risk. But again, it's personal and it's not because one considers himself 'done' that he can't observe price from a neutral point of view. Observing price without thinking of an entry has helped me a lot, so after I'm done I still like to do that to acquire a better understanding.

I am, no surprise, a proponent of blogs. They play an important part in one's development. But only a part. If either or both of you want to take this to the next level, I suggest you take advantage of the chat room facilities here. Doing so will enable you to maintain the discipline required to follow price as it moves from S to R and back again and focus on how it behaves as it approaches each. You won't then be relying on what "feels right" or "seems best". Posting to the boards can wait until the end of the day, or until you've wrapped it up for the day.

Not sure what you mean by "the next level". I've been in some chatrooms and Skype trading rooms, but most of the time I found them to divert my concentration from what I should be looking at. I've also been in the one here several times and -from what I've seen- Jwhite is doing a very nice, and interesting job in analyzing price behaviour real time. But at the same time it can be distracting if you're seeing or looking at something else and you are focusing on your chart or your instrument while the other guys are talking about something which is (or can be) totally unrelated to what you're doing... I might give the chatroom another shot, the lock-ups I was experiencing might have been resolved by now.

I understand erie's point of view, and to be honest I think forcing yourself to take more trades than necessary is putting pressure on yourself. I prefer to take only one or two trades per day, per instrument. If my first trade is a profitable one, I prefer to squeeze out as much as possible out of that instead of looking for another entry. Trade management is more relaxing than concentrating on getting the entry right. I've spent too much time in the past looking to find trades all day when most of them are not worth the risk. But again, it's personal and it's not because one considers himself 'done' that he can't observe price from a neutral point of view. Observing price without thinking of an entry has helped me a lot, so after I'm done I still like to do that to acquire a better understanding.

I wish you wouldn't put words in my mouth, FW. I never said that one should take more trades than necessary. Nor did I say that one should spend all day "looking to find trades". And as for getting the entry right, if one doesn't do so, then there won't be a trade to manage.

There were five good shorts off resistance in the ES yesterday, none of which apparently were taken. Trading partners can help one see these if for some reason he doesn't see them himself. If one chooses to go it alone, that's fine. But hindsight charts can take one only so far, and RT trading can't be learned by following message boards.

Not sure what you mean by "the next level". I've been in some chatrooms and Skype trading rooms, but most of the time I found them to divert my concentration from what I should be looking at. I've also been in the one here several times and -from what I've seen- Jwhite is doing a very nice, and interesting job in analyzing price behaviour real time. But at the same time it can be distracting if you're seeing or looking at something else and you are focusing on your chart or your instrument while the other guys are talking about something which is (or can be) totally unrelated to what you're doing... I might give the chatroom another shot, the lock-ups I was experiencing might have been resolved by now.

The experience is generally more beneficial if one invites like-minded traders to join him in either an existing room or a new one. Thus everyone has more or less the same focus. This beats here are all the signals you should have seen and all the trades you could have taken.

The following chart was posted last Sunday:

Let's see how it all worked out (same chart but drawn with Sierra):

Monday and Tuesday, price tested R ©. Thursday it bounced off the midpoint of the lower trading range (D) and tested R © again. Friday it dropped to S (E).

The advantage being, again, that all of this can be plotted in advance, saving one from having to peer fixedly at his screen for however long looking for a particular type of bar.

For the coming week, the setup's the same, keeping in mind that the interface between the two ranges, at 1960, may take on added importance.

 

For the coming week, the setup's the same, keeping in mind that the interface between the two ranges, at 1960, may take on added importance.

And as it turned out.....

And back to the macro:

How long does S/R last? If S/R are representative levels from the past where important action took place, so that traders act again on those levels at a later time, how far back does the memory of traders go?

First a 4 hour chart from the DOW from about two years ago.

Next, a 15-min chart of the last two days of the DOW e-mini: