[BlowFish]

Many peoples view of types of market participant, their motivations, and their methods, is naive in the extreme. Harris (Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners) details participants, there motivations and considers which tend to loose when another category wins and the conditions this will occur under.

There is so much miss information floating around (actually its mainly rhetoric and sound bites rather than information) I am starting to think that some sort of text on market microstructure should be mandatory reading for novice traders.

Sadly Tradeguider do little for their own credibility or for the credibility of VSA by presenting this half baked rhetoric as a fundamental truth and a corner stone of their marketing.

On the subject of keeping threads on topic I think the benefits are plain for most to see. If they are not take a look at the Wycoff corner and compare it to reading say the first VSA thread. As has been pointed out people are free to start their own threads with their own particular view. Mind you the suggestion that the purists leave made me simultaneously and

[monad]

Originally Posted by BlowFish »

Sadly Tradeguider do little for their own credibility or for the credibility of VSA by presenting this half baked rhetoric as a fundamental truth and a corner stone of their marketing.

Don't think they have much problem with credibility, their cyberspace rooms are packed with suckers who are led to believe they are onto something unique. Just listened to a recent video sent by jj, same old stuff, Tom sounded worn out, Manby (needs voice modulation lessons), Gavin announcing the release of new Tradeguider Software pack, plus all the exciting seminars, events, chatrooms for 2009,
so there you go, does not matter what anybody thinks of VSA in here, can keep on debating till doomsday, TG is going from strength to strength for the time being

[DbPhoenix]

Originally Posted by monad »

does that mean wyckoff and for that matter VSA is also obsolete????????????? what do you say.

As I posted elsewhere,

There's a great deal of Wyckoff wrote this and Wyckoff wrote that floating around the internet, much (most?) of which is not true. Wyckoff, for example, never used the term "smart money" in his course, much less equate it with the Composite Man or Composite Operator. In fact, he pointed out that

there is no Composite Operator, but the effect of the combined operations of bankers, pools, large operators, floor traders and the public [bold mine] is, when boiled down on the tape, of the same effect as if it were produced by one man’s operations. It is important that you observe the market from this standpoint, and that your trading operations are based, not on what you formerly regarded as the market’s characteristics but on the fundamental law of supply and demand, which is at the bottom of every move that is made in every stock in the market at all time. This law is working and will continue to work always and forever. There can be no getting away from it. It does not matter whether the buying and the selling, or both, are genuine or artificial, that is, manipulative, designed for a purpose.

Nor did he care much about the open, nor about bar-by-bar analysis, much less about pattern.

A final note: professional money is often but not necessarily "big" money. And big money is not necessarily "smart" money (evidence would suggest, in fact, that just the opposite is true). Big money is just big, and that, in terms of the footprint, is enough for both the retail trader and the professional trader who is himself looking for footprints. For the trader who is not "big", however else he might be characterized, to equate "big" with "smart" can lead to many trading errors, often expensive. "Big" is simply "big", and nothing more. One can either trade with that flow or trade against it. But he should never assume that "big" constitutes "smart".

Gurus breed where novices rely on what somebody says or writes about something rather than read -- much less study -- the original material, which is why I posted the original material, or as close to it as I could get, in the Beginners thread. The term "smart money" appears nowhere in Williams' original work. Nor does the term "composite operator". But when a dozen gurus preach their individual versions of what is "true", confusion reigns. He who bypasses all of that and seeks out the source material is far more likely than the usual groupie to understand just what is being said. If he doesn't want to take the time and make the effort to do so, he has no one to blame but himself.

[monad]

Exactly, majority are just happy to regurgitate the latest fancy names of patterns or bars which they have picked up via seminars, DVDs, books etc. and then aggregate onto these threads where they all can talk the same lingo. (feel good factor-part of the gang) Check out woodie who stands out above all with all his Ghosts, shamu, and god knows what else. Same has happened with VSA(UK) once it changed to Tradeguider in US

[BlowFish]

A distinct feeling fo deja vu with that post DB. Some things bear repeating for people new to the discussion or for those where it still has not sunk in.

[deepblue27]

Could a poll be in order by any chance? As opposed to constantly kicking up the mud with the same old arguments. I think the thread has a lot of good food for thought issues and it would be nice to see the more experienced members put their bias/opinion in some form of vote if thats feasible. Quicker than writing half a page too!

I don't have the requisite knowledge to decide fair options to choose from though. I dunno maybe:

a) I profitably trade VSA circa '93 (rather than that of post 2003)
b) I pick n mix elements of all VSA for profitable trading
c) I profitably trade VSA post 2003 rather than circa '93*
d) The only thing I spread is butter on my toast

*Is it a required improvement for profitable trading. I think you all know what I'm hinting at regarding the dates

Although for some its pretty obvious where they stand .

[monad]

Enough has been said on this subject, best to leave it at that. Otherwise it will all start again - if you have been reading similar threads in the past week or so.

It does not make an iota of difference to TG what we think or debate here, they are on the roll.
If VSA (all or some of it) is useful to your trading, go for it other wise leave it, move on to another method.

[bgtrader]

Hi all,
Best wishes to all. I wanted to chime in and say that I've had the privilege recently of watching most of the educational material by Tom Williams, Sebastian Manby, Todd Krueger, and Gavin Holmes (all currently and Todd formerly of Tradeguider). And, I wanted to communicate that I've learned tons by watching their unique approaches to the markets. It's like previous posters have said that each technique will provide an edge and also, different approaches (i.e. Tom William's VSA) will appeal to different folk's trading personalities. For example, the trader Sebastian Manby is an interesting fellow, who pays no attention to fundamental news whatsoever and uses no trendlines nor support/resistance on his charts at all. Only thing on his charts are high/low/close bars and volume-and this forms the basis of his approach to VSA; he also usually turns the Tradeguider signals (Tom's dialog boxes) off. And he reads those charts bar by bar and trades Forex and eminis in this way, and will often trade around news events totally ignorant to what those events are and what their expected influence will be, which to me represents a great confidence in his method (more on this confidence thing later). He also videos all of his trades and goes over them again and again to refine his techniques. Gavin will uses many of Sebastian's techniques plus pivot points, support/resistance, a volatility trending system, and volume & the hi/lo/close bars... For me, being a 2 year novice in the markets, watching Sebastian's very simple chart approach was somewhat of a revolution, the idea being that one's own mind can be the best analyze of the basic price & volume data. Now, obviously I haven't seen these men's bank account statements, however, after watching them teach, trade, and analyze charts for hours and hours, I will say that they are extremely confident in their approach to the markets, and that confidence is what will really make a mediocre or great technique truly shine. There are tons of examples of this among traders who have the oddest of techniques that many will say are absolute rubbish, however due to their confidence in the techniques and the great match that the given technique(s) have with the traders' personality (very important), they simply work. An interesting fellow in this regard is Dr. Al Larson over at Moneytide.Com, who daytrades the ES using his own math models of Moon tidal energy waves occurring at different times and how they supposedly effect trader's emotions. I've sat in on trading sessions with Dr. Al, and he's great, his method works, it's crazy. I'll post a chart of his moon tide forecast, it's very interesting....but that's not my point, the point is Dr. Al likes moon tides, Tom Williams & Seb Manby & Gavin & Todd like their take on VSA, I like learning about tons of methods right now, and so on. I'm so thankful for this forum, very good folks here posting great perspectives, keep up the great work everyone. -best wishes, B