[brownsfan019]

During my time in the TL chat room this past week, a few of us discussed some candlestick trading on an intraday basis. Since the attendance in the chat room is minimal currently, I thought we could open a thread to discuss specifically trading on an intraday basis with candlesticks.

Let me preface this discussion with this - I've proven many times over that the smaller the timeframe, the less reliable a candlestick pattern becomes by ITSELF in isolation. In other words, a hammer that appears on a 1 minute chart is not a valid signal in my opinion simply b/c there is a hammer in front of you. Now, a hammer on a 15 minute chart could be a possible trade by itself.

Basically this thread is to toss some ideas out there on possible intraday trading techniques utilizing candlesticks in some fashion. Intraday meaning 1 minute (or lower) up to 1 trade per day.

Personally I have found that any type of minute timeframe (1-60) is probably going to require some sort of additional confirmation outside of just the candle pattern. Now, what that confirmation is could be any number of things. I've seen candle traders use pivots, fibs, oscillators, support/resistance areas, WRB's, moving averages, trend lines, etc. etc. to aid in the decision making process of using candlesticks in their trading.

Our good friend Walter has gotten the candlestick bug, so we'll see if he takes a few different twists and turns with the candlesticks or not.

Good trading!

PS
Go Browns! BIG Game Sunday!!

[MC]

I was sharing Walters enthusiasm and can't wait to see some more of your candle magic. Good stuff.

[westhilltrader]

Hi there everybody, I am the "westhilltrader" and new to this forum.

For two years now, I do mostly day-trading and only use 1 minute candlestick charts. They give the best representation of price evolution during any period, intraday or multi-day.

However, none of my critical decisions for entry or exit points is done based on candle formations. I only use indicators for that. I also belive that the 1 minute period is the best choice for day-trading. Going smaller than that adds too much noise to the indicators and to the price itself. Larger periods cannot keep up with the speed of data change and action response required in day-trading.

I do not have an expert view of the candles but, during my after market trade analysis, the classic candles or formations do not appear as reliably as required for a critical decision. So I stick to what has proven reliable to me

[mister ed]

Originally Posted by brownsfan019 »

Let me preface this discussion with this - I've proven many times over that the smaller the timeframe, the less reliable a candlestick pattern becomes by ITSELF in isolation. In other words, a hammer that appears on a 1 minute chart is not a valid signal in my opinion simply b/c there is a hammer in front of you.

Personally I have found that any type of minute timeframe (1-60) is probably going to require some sort of additional confirmation outside of just the candle pattern.

Regarding not viewing candlesticks in isolation, one of the major points raised in the VSA thread is to always look to the background, or the context, within which a "signal" occurs. Probably the post that summarises and highlights the importance of viewing the context within which a signal occurs is this one.

In "pure" VSA analysis the price bars do not have an open on them, the bars are simply HLC, with a volume histogram below. Now, candles of course require an opening price on them, and a lot of the traders on the VSA thread use candles anyway, so there is plenty of scope for applying candle "patterns"/bars with background/context, especially for intra-day trading.

[james_gsx]

I'd much rather use VBCs, I think candles are more valuable that way in the sense that you actually see the fight. I know I stole that from you brownsfan lol

I also think it depends on the type of day, is it trending or is it rangebound? If it's a trending day I like to use a larger VBC number and look for setups that will catch the bigger trend. For example if I see a hammer, and that is confirmed a MA crossover then I will enter the trade.

On a range bound day I use mostly support/resistance and other technical patterns that I have learned to read fairly quickly. This is a little more difficult and requires more screen time IMO. If I see the market trending towards resistance then a doji appears I will wait for confirmation, then when I get that confirmation I will go with the new trend. As Brownsfan said sometimes it helps to add something aside from just the candles and support and resistance lines. I came up with my own stochastic's that used the same integer I use for my VBC's. Not really sure if this works yet, but looking at historical charts it seems to work. I will have to play with it more in real time and decide if that's the direction I want to take. I also think it's important to point out that I use a smaller VBC setting for this.

For those that don't know how to choose a VBC setting all I did was found a simple integer (usually 3 or 4) and kept multiplying it until I found what worked best for me.

3 x 3 x 3 x 3 etc until I came up with 243 and 729
4 x 4 x 4 x 4 etc, it all depends on what works best with your trading style.

I included a few charts. Two of them are 243vbc and the other two are 729vbc. One is for Friday the other is for Thursday, you can probably figure out which is range bound and which one is a trending day. What do you notice between the two? Frankly with that choppy market on Thursday that 729 chart would have chopped me up, but the 243vbc let me see more opportunities. Other people may see different things and completely disagree with me, but each person is different and has their own style of trading.


Right now I am working on learning Market Profile. I want to see if I can integrate Market Profile into my candlestick analysis. So if anyone has a lot of experience in MP or in both I think it would be beneficial if we could start a thread on that.

Personally I believe CA on it's own is worthless... and this comes from personal experience. But if you combine CA with other technical techniques such as VSA, support/resistance, other technical patterns, etc... then candlestick analysis can be very beneficial. For example would you buy/sell a doji in the middle of a tight range? No, but if the market was trending higher and you saw a defined doji against resistance whether that be a Fib number or a previous high then that would definitely resemble a much stronger warning.

I am definitely no expert with candlestick analysis, I can read a chart and tell you what the candle means and things like that. But I still have a lot to learn, and only screen time can get me there.

[james_gsx]

Oops, I forgot the charts so here you go.

I went with 243 and 729 because I like things to happen fast, for some of you that might be too fast or too slow. Notice that the contract is the YM. If you plug in a 243vbc into the ES it will look like splattered paint. Just multiply 729 by 3 once or twice until you get something that you can work with. If you don't like the integer number then just make one up, there isn't a magic number just go with whatever works for you.

[BlowFish]

Hope you dont mind if I tag along and play Devils Advocate from the "its the underlying price action that the candle represents that is important" point of view. I promise to behave.

[walterw]

Thanks Brown for this new thread ¡¡ it will be very interesting to see where we can get here...


My motivation here is to reduce my cronic scalping to a larger span but at the same time not so large... so it would be a more "larger scalping" aproach...

So far I am very new to candles, so I cant talk with authority on this and I would like to learn from the masters... what I see is that 3 min and 5 min candles can do "something" for my idea, key is to create a good context so this patterns on this small time frames could be more credible...

At this point I am paying a very close attention too dojis and hammers...

Thanks for this oportunity ¡¡ and let the interaction start ¡¡ cheers Walter.