Humbled Trading Log

[humbled 10]

Again, I think you need to concentrate on "doing business" in the areas of better risk/reward. Stay away from the small stuff. Use what Thales is teaching you to identify those places.

 

Enigmatics,

 

I agree with almost every comments you have said to me . I am just not sure yet how to avoid the choppy ones :crap:

 

Humbled

[Enigmatics 10]

Enigmatics,

 

I agree with almost every comments you have said to me . I am just not sure yet how to avoid the choppy ones :crap:

 

Humbled

 

Obviously to only want to take a trade where there is less "congestion" between your previously drawn "levels" as well as supply/demand lines. Then obviously understanding if the market is ranging or trending .... can't forget proper candlestick analysis.

[thalestrader 14]

Obviously to only want to take a trade where there is less "congestion" between your previously drawn "levels" as well as supply/demand lines. Then obviously understanding if the market is ranging or trending .... can't forget proper candlestick analysis.

 

No need to throw "candlestick analysis" here too.

 

This is about highs and lows, higher highs and higher lows or lower highs and lower lows. It is about what price does when it revisits those levels where demand and supply swapped upper hands in the past.

 

If you go to the Reading Charts thread, and look at my post #1462, you will see a chart.

 

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-markets/6151-reading-charts-real-time-183.html#post81324

 

I direct your attention to the last paragraph of my comments on that chart. Someone had asked me about trading a "pin bar." My answer was it would depend upon the order in which that bar's high and low printed relative to its close. This is because price is not "bars" or "candlesticks" or whatever discreet graphical technique you use to visualize trading activity. Price exists only as the activity of folks buying and selling to one another. As Db would say, "price is continuous," i.e. it is a flow of activity and not a batch of discreet bundles of transactions separated into "bars" or "candlesticks."

 

As such, what matters is using that information to determine who has the upper hand, and how can I join them?

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[humbled 10]

A pattern that allowed for a very small stop at a key level. I took the chance. as price was holding up.

 

 

Humbled

[humbled 10]

I took this exit based on my current lessons from reading DBPhoenix's work.

 

Humbled

[humbled 10]

No need to throw "candlestick analysis" here too.

 

This is about highs and lows, higher highs and higher lows or lower highs and lower lows. It is about what price does when it revisits those levels where demand and supply swapped upper hands in the past.

 

If you go to the Reading Charts thread, and look at my post #1462, you will see a chart.

 

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/trading-markets/6151-reading-charts-real-time-183.html#post81324

 

I direct your attention to the last paragraph of my comments on that chart. Someone had asked me about trading a "pin bar." My answer was it would depend upon the order in which that bar's high and low printed relative to its close. This is because price is not "bars" or "candlesticks" or whatever discreet graphical technique you use to visualize trading activity. Price exists only as the activity of folks buying and selling to one another. As Db would say, "price is continuous," i.e. it is a flow of activity and not a batch of discreet bundles of transactions separated into "bars" or "candlesticks."

 

As such, what matters is using that information to determine who has the upper hand, and how can I join them?

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

 

Thales,

 

 

I understand that structure as it is the same as a 123 pattern.

 

Humbled

[thalestrader 14]

Wait .............. 2B?

 

2B reversal pattern

 

Victor "Trader Vic" Sperandeo has been referenced several times in this thread. The "123" trend change and the "2B" are his terms for two price behaviors that can signals to make a trade.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[humbled 10]

Note the added extensions. I was reading a thread from previous work of Thales and noticed he taught his daughter extensions using fibs. I used the -23.6% fib.

 

Thales please let me know if you believe this added piece is needed or should be left out. I have a absence of levels above.

Edited July 6, 2013 by humbled

[thalestrader 14]

Note the added extensions. I was reading a thread from previous work of Thales and noticed he taught his daughter extensions using fibs. I used the -23.6% fib.

 

Thales please let me know if you believe this added piece needed or should be left out. I have a absence of levels above.

 

I see 46, 52, 54, 74, 87 and no need for fibs.

 

You have everything you need. Prior highs and prior lows, the immediately prior session's high and low, and the overall trend for context - is it up, down, or sideways. If it is in a trend, has it been consolidating for a day or two? Then look for a potential trend day where the market closes on the extreme in favor of the trend. Has the market been forming a line? Then where is it relative to the high and low of that range? Is it moving toward a test of the high or low (even is a trading range, there are swings from one extreme of the range to the other that can last a few sessions).

 

If the market gaps up and trades down, look for a potential long somewhere between the prior day's high and it's close, vice versa for a market hat gaps down and trades up.

 

If it gaps up or down and trends in the direction of the gap, then buy/sell an opening range break or a pullback (assuming you are at all times aware of potential S/R that could foil the trade).

 

Stop looking for the non-existent missing piece. You need to work on yourself.

 

Plan your day ahead of time. What are you going to do if price gaps down below yesterday's low? What will you be looking for? What if price gaps open higher? What will get you short? What would get you long?

 

You have every tool you need. You need no more trips to Trader's Depot. You need to watch and learn how price behaves as it makes its way from S to R and back again. You will make mistakes. You will have losses. But you can do this, but only if you focus on price itself, and how it acts at S/R in the context of its overall trend.

 

Plan your day ahead of time. It will relax you and reduce the stress you feel from the uncertainty of not having planned your day.

 

See you Monday after the bell.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[humbled 10]

I see 46, 52, 54, 74, 87 and no need for fibs.

 

You have everything you need. Prior highs and prior lows, the immediately prior session's high and low, and the overall trend for context - is it up, down, or sideways. If it is in a trend, has it been consolidating for a day or two? Then look for a potential trend day where the market closes on the extreme in favor of the trend. Has the market been forming a line? Then where is it relative to the high and low of that range? Is it moving toward a test of the high or low (even is a trading range, there are swings from one extreme of the range to the other that can last a few sessions).

 

If the market gaps up and trades down, look for a potential long somewhere between the prior day's high and it's close, vice versa for a market hat gaps down and trades up.

 

If it gaps up or down and trends in the direction of the gap, then buy/sell an opening range break or a pullback (assuming you are at all times aware of potential S/R that could foil the trade).

 

Stop looking for the non-existent missing piece. You need to work on yourself.

 

Plan your day ahead of time. What are you going to do if price gaps down below yesterday's low? What will you be looking for? What if price gaps open higher? What will get you short? What would get you long?

 

You have every tool you need. You need no more trips to Trader's Depot. You need to watch and learn how price behaves as it makes its way from S to R and back again. You will make mistakes. You will have losses. But you can do this, but only if you focus on price itself, and how it acts at S/R in the context of its overall trend.

 

Plan your day ahead of time. It will relax you and reduce the stress you feel from the uncertainty of not having planned your day.

 

See you Monday after the bell.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

 

Thales,

 

I did not want to rush to respond to this post. I am still digesting the value of your comments. I appreciate the help. I have killed the Fib use other than the 50% line.

 

 

I am working up a plan for tomorrow. Can you suggest an opening range time period to use for my plan?

 

 

Humbled and very thankful for the help

[40draws 10]

Stop looking for the non-existent missing piece. You need to work on yourself

 

I'm a relative newcomer to this trading game, and I mean no offense to Thales, but it does seem to me that humbled is missing a piece. When I read his posts and look at his own explanations for his trades, I am reminded of the following passage from DbPhoenix's essay, "How To Do It":

 

"If he focuses on setups and patterns as gimmicks rather than as manifestations of changes in the balance of buying and selling pressure, then he blocks the process through which he would otherwise understand it and profit from it."

 

I do not see that humbled looks at the market as buyers and sellers looking for a trade. I do not see that he views the market with an awareness of the ever present functioning of the law of supply and demand. I do agree that other than that, he has everything he needs. I use a 2B set up, but I simply call it a double top or a double bottom. I use the 123 set up, but I simply call it a lower high or a higher low. I use supply and demand lines to clue me in to when the market may be in for a change of pace. I use support and resistance as price levels where I look for a trade. What I have that I think humbled is missing is a sense of what Thales referred to above in his post about candlesticks: A sense of the flow or continuous nature of the market as the constant shifting in the balance, or lack thereof, between supply and demand, those who wish to sell and those who wish to buy.

 

As I said, I'm new, just coming up on a year since I decided I would try to learn to day trade, so take what I said with whatever size grain of whatever substance you might think it is worth. Whatever it is, the op is missing something. Whatever it is, I hope he finds it.

 

Good luck!

[humbled 10]

I'm a relative newcomer to this trading game, and I mean no offense to Thales, but it does seem to me that humbled is missing a piece. When I read his posts and look at his own explanations for his trades, I am reminded of the following passage from DbPhoenix's essay, "How To Do It":

 

"If he focuses on setups and patterns as gimmicks rather than as manifestations of changes in the balance of buying and selling pressure, then he blocks the process through which he would otherwise understand it and profit from it."

 

I do not see that humbled looks at the market as buyers and sellers looking for a trade. I do not see that he views the market with an awareness of the ever present functioning of the law of supply and demand. I do agree that other than that, he has everything he needs. I use a 2B set up, but I simply call it a double top or a double bottom. I use the 123 set up, but I simply call it a lower high or a higher low. I use supply and demand lines to clue me in to when the market may be in for a change of pace. I use support and resistance as price levels where I look for a trade. What I have that I think humbled is missing is a sense of what Thales referred to above in his post about candlesticks: A sense of the flow or continuous nature of the market as the constant shifting in the balance, or lack thereof, between supply and demand, those who wish to sell and those who wish to buy.

 

As I said, I'm new, just coming up on a year since I decided I would try to learn to day trade, so take what I said with whatever size grain of whatever substance you might think it is worth. Whatever it is, the op is missing something. Whatever it is, I hope he finds it.

 

Good luck!

 

 

40Draws,

 

Thank you for your input. Maybe you can share your view on how you read the market supply and demand beyond the lines we draw. Beyond support and resistance. Beyond the tools that we both use. You are suggesting there is another layer. I am not aware of how to detect it.

 

Thanks,

 

Humbled

[40draws 10]

You are suggesting there is another layer. I am not aware of how to detect it.

 

Thanks,

 

Humbled

 

I can't tell you how to detect it. It is a sense of what is going on that you must develop. Here is the link to DbPhoenix's essay "How To Do It." I guess my advice would be to read that essay, and take seriously the task under the heading "Hire yourself to do a job."

 

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/wyckoff-forum/15896-how-do.html#179656

 

"The job is just to sit there and watch the bars form, to watch the buying and selling waves, the pokes and prods and feelers cast by buyers and sellers looking for a trade, not to create or test a strategy, not to make money, not to learn the "secrets" or the "tricks", just to develop a sensitivity to buying and selling pressure. No indicators, no MAs, no nothing but price bars/points and volume bars."

 

I did essentially that by doing a lot of market replay. I have traded stocks exclusively since I started, and specifically trade stocks that gap open higher. By using market replay, I was able to watch many "days" each and every evening.

 

I just started trading futures on Friday, taking my first trade on the NQ. I did a few days of replay leading up to that trade, in addition to going back through several weeks and doing a manual "bar by bar" left to right reading.

 

I was lucky in that my first exposure to trading literature was Wyckoff's Studies in Tape Reading, which is also published as The Day Trader's Bible. I also stumbled upon TL.com and DbPhoenix's posts. I bought his eBook, and it was a great help. I say I was lucky because I started out thinking in terms of supply and demand and I understood the artificial nature of bar intervals. I read your post a few days ago where you said the one minute timeframe was too fast or too noisy for you. I think that is a big tell that you do not view the market as an auction market. I find that it is easier to gauge buying and selling pressure on a shorter bar interval than a longer.

 

Here is a link to a copy of Studies in Tape Reading:

 

http://cdn3.traderslaboratory.com/forums/attachments/131/6500d1211046697-introduction-dtb-1919.pdf

 

The "layer" you ask about is supply and demand. It is not a set-up that I can spell out for you. The elements or forces are described and explained in Wyckoff and DbPhoenix. You need first to acquaint yourself with those elements, and then "hire yourself" to get to work learning to understand and recognize these forces in action with one another.

 

Good Luck!

[thalestrader 14]

"The job is just to sit there and watch the bars form, to watch the buying and selling waves, the pokes and prods and feelers cast by buyers and sellers looking for a trade, not to create or test a strategy, not to make money, not to learn the "secrets" or the "tricks", just to develop a sensitivity to buying and selling pressure. No indicators, no MAs, no nothing but price bars/points and volume bars."

 

Hi there 40draws,

 

I remember having read a post by Db where suggested that if a trader really wants to learn to read price, he or she should just sit and watch a line chart all day long "to develop a sensitivity to buying and selling pressure."

 

However, I believe he also said "but the trader won't do it."

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[tradingwizzard 10]

what's written above sounds like price action to me

[humbled 10]

Hi there 40draws,

 

I remember having read a post by Db where suggested that if a trader really wants to learn to read price, he or she should just sit and watch a line chart all day long "to develop a sensitivity to buying and selling pressure."

 

However, I believe he also said "but the trader won't do it."

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

 

I have done that and will do so again. I never extracted the feel but will work on Ninja replays again.

 

Humbled

[humbled 10]

Whatever "feel" I am missing is not due to being lazy. I can assure you I give this my all.

 

 

Humbled

[thalestrader 14]

Whatever "feel" I am missing is not due to being lazy. I can assure you I give this my all.

 

 

Humbled

 

Did I miss something? I don't see where anyone said that your work ethic was the source of your difficulty.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[humbled 10]

Did I miss something? I don't see where anyone said that your work ethic was the source of your difficulty.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

 

Thales,

 

No I just wanted you to know that I did try the idea of watching price before like DB had suggested. I did not avoid it or skip it. I took as many steps as I could on my own before asking for help.

You did not say anything , I just wanted to be clear that the missing "feel" has been something I have been searching for.

 

 

Humbled

 

PS. I am trying a 1 second chart as the 1 minute is not speaking to. I put up a line on close chart and I will keep it on watch.

[Enigmatics 10]

A 1 second chart? Man that would be too intense for me personally.

 

I agree though that this shouldn't be about candles and price. It should be about understanding the flow of supply/demand.

[humbled 10]

This is what I could see today on a LineOnClose Chart.

 

No magical experiences Just price moving to test levels. Chop and more chop.

 

Humbled

[humbled 10]

Here are my levels for tomorrow.

[40draws 10]

This is what I could see today on a LineOnClose Chart.

 

No magical experiences Just price moving to test levels. Chop and more chop.

 

Humbled

 

I see several places where a long would have been called for. Can you find them too?

 

Here are my levels for tomorrow.

 

I know you didn't ask me, but if you were to ask me what I think of that chart I'd have to say that it looks more like something intended to induce a stroke rather than serve as a trading tool

 

I do not trade the ES emini, but I took a look at it tonight and did a little exercise to see what I would be looking at tomorrow.

 

 

I know you didn't ask, and I know I've not been at this as long as most people here, but I have to say that the last few days, the charts you've posted look like you're going backwards.

[TradeRunner 10]

Thales,

 

No I just wanted you to know that I did try the idea of watching price before like DB had suggested. I did not avoid it or skip it. I took as many steps as I could on my own before asking for help.

You did not say anything , I just wanted to be clear that the missing "feel" has been something I have been searching for.

 

 

Humbled

 

PS. I am trying a 1 second chart as the 1 minute is not speaking to. I put up a line on close chart and I will keep it on watch.

 

I would summarise DB's "plan" post like this:

 

1. Stop trading

2. Observe price

3. Notice repeatable behaviour

4. Write plan base on (3)

5. Test plan

6. Make adjustments

7. Trade plan

 

Is this what you have done?

[humbled 10]

I would summarise DB's "plan" post like this:

 

1. Stop trading

2. Observe price

3. Notice repeatable behaviour

4. Write plan base on (3)

5. Test plan

6. Make adjustments

7. Trade plan

 

Is this what you have done?

 

 

TradeRunner,

 

I did stop trading for weeks to observe price and did replays. That was step #1&2

 

I never extracted any "feel" but i did notice patterns like the 2b, double bottom. H&S and such.

 

I did write several plans to trade the right shoulder after a spike down and the 2b's as I was tried to buy the area being held as support and the spike downs would chop me to death.

 

Even with those adjustments I still came out with so many losses I admit I felt exhausted from the pain and moved to longer time frames.

 

I think the frustration got me. Maybe I did not do enough time with it. I can tell you I never felt anything other than watching the reactions and praying once I entered they did not spike outside the range to take me out.

 

Humbled