DbPhoenix

Of course. Do you know how to read charts? By that I mean plain ol' price charts: no indicators, no envelopes, no bands, no whatever. Just price bars on a white background.

People raved about daytrading in 2000 as well. You know how that turned out. And, no, you can't learn daytrading from a course or a book. They will find that out. And, yes, daytrading is akin to gambling IF one doesn't have a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable trading plan. Few do. Which is why so many fail. Those who trade without plans are little different from gamblers who don't know whether or not a straight beats a full house. As for your long-term strategies, I suggest you explore The Motley Fool site. Though the Gardners have become big-time vendors, there are plenty of people there who are actually doing it rather than just writing books about it. I don't know that anyone has written anything really useful regarding long-term investing since Graham.

Welcome to the Wyckoff Forum, though I'm afraid the "Wyckoffians" are long gone. I keep the forum open because all my Wyckoff stuff is here, but I've moved on from it for various reasons and am currently using my "straight line approach", derived from W's trendllines and supply/demand lines. The most recent iteration of it can be found in the AMT stickie above. Have you tried trading or simtrading what you've learned in your courses?

It is true that no system will provide 0 losses. But that is not the meaning of "consistently profitable". "Consistently profitable" means only that profits are greater than losses, the greater, the better, but 51% is greater. For most traders, the losses far outweigh the profits. As for "believing in [yourself] being [your] biggest problem and setback to [your] own success", without a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable trading plan AND the discipline to follow it, no amount of belief in yourself is going to make the least difference unless that belief is founded on your ability to follow your plan, assuming that you believe in your plan (if you don't, then why not?). As for the "why", it's irrelevant. What is important is that you define trend and define chop so that you can recognize them in real time. You must then determine what it is that you are going to do about it, all of which should be done when you create your trading plan. As for forecasting, that's not possible. You must instead understand what you're looking AT and know exactly what you're looking FOR. If and when what you're looking for appears, you must know -- having tested all this in advance -- exactly what to do about it and with it. Issues of randomness and casinos and killer instincts are not pertinent. There isn't even much "art" to it. Rather it is more a matter of study and testing and re-testing until one knows exactly what to look for and what to do with it if and when it appears. This is not a matter of blindly following a statistical model but of understanding and being able to recognize the difference between up and down.

Unless you have a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable trading plan AND the discipline to follow it, faith won't get you very far. If you DO have such a plan, then you have to take however many steps backward are necessary to find the problem and fix it. That's the nature of becoming a successful trader.

This occurred when the blogs were removed and the contents of some were converted into "articles". You can find good links here: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/wyckoff-forum/15386-trading-price.html You may also find the other stickies to be of interest.

This post at BMT may be of interest: https://www.bigmiketrading.com/index-futures-trading/34908-trading-sla-amt-intraday-3.html#post499107

from Ronald Siegel, heavily edited In the Buddhist traditions from which many contemporary mindfulness practices derive, mindfulness techniques evolved as tools for deconstructing our usual view of ourselves and the world, for waking up from conventional, socially reinforced fictions about who we are and how to find happiness. This awakening occurs to the degree that we no longer believe in the self. It involves realizing what’s called in Pali — the language in which the Buddha’s teachings were first recorded — anatta, or non-self. The mindfulness practice that leads to recognizing anatta is deceptively simple. It begins with cultivating concentration: choosing an object of awareness, such as [price movement], and returning attention to that object every time the mind wanders from it. Once some concentration is established, we open the field of awareness to attend to whatever predominates in consciousness. Throughout the process, we try to accept whatever arises, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Ancient Buddhists described the process by which we construct reality and our sense of self much as modern cognitive scientists do. It all begins with sense contact: the coming together of a sense organ (the eye, for example) with an object of awareness. These sensations are then immediately organized into perceptions, conditioned by language, personal history, and culture. The mind doesn’t stay at the level of perception for long, however. It immediately adds a hedonic or feeling tone to all experience (“I like this” or “I don’t like this”). And almost as soon as the feeling tone enters consciousness, intentions arise. Over time, we develop habits of intention that we might call dispositions or conditioned responses—collections of habitual responses to our likes and dislikes. These dispositions become important elements in our identities. In Buddhist psychology, awakening to anatta, or non-self, is central to psychological freedom. And even glimpsing anatta in our mindfulness practice can have profound implications for how we [trade]. Some changes are simple. Instead of asking, “How [does] that make you feel?” we inquire, “What’s happening right now?” Instead of [focusing on the] self, we highlight how everything changes moment by moment. Grasping anatta [means] that we no longer devote our energies so relentlessly to scheming and strategizing about how to feel as good as possible [about our trading] to opening to whatever may be happening in the moment. This shift can be a tremendous relief. It’s as if the mind—worn and weary from endlessly wishing things would be other than they are—gets to rest in accepting what is. And when I notice how much of what I stress about all day involves trying to bolster my self-esteem or hold onto pleasure and avoid discomfort, the struggle gives way to an inner chuckle about my insanity. This awareness of the price we pay for self-preoccupation comes most readily when we can see the thought-stream for what it is and not identify so much with the contents of our minds. Combined with seeing that our emotions are just a mix of bodily sensations, words, and images, this realization can lead to surprising fearlessness, even in the face of major [trading] challenges. When we relate to each moment [during the session] as the impersonal unfolding of [price prints], rather than “my joy” or “my sorrow,” we can face more adversity with less resistance. There really is nothing to fear [if one is thoroughly prepared and focuses on those prints rather than on what one thinks about them, or "feels" about them]. As we come to see the reality of anatta and experience the relief and freedom that this realization brings, our orientation toward [trading] shifts. Egocentrism falls by the wayside as we [focus on price's movements rather than our "selves"].

Spooky So much that can be tested . . .

And yet another something to test. Also lots of examples around, easy to find.

Something to test. Lots of examples around, easy to find.

I realize that the only people who are going to see these are insomniacs, dairy farmers, and Europeans, but . . . The primary way I've learned to trade is to study market behavior and build an understanding of it. If you're not distracting yourself from that goal, over time the mind will start to build an rough, intuitive grasp of basic market characteristics. At the same time, we can work consciously to find parameters to define what we think we know and test them to see if they are consistent with the reality. After enough time, one can build a model of certain market behavior, and then create a system or routine by which to partner with the market and be on the right side of it. I have a conception of what I understand a trend to be. I have a conception of what they do when they are ending, and at those points in time I can trade in the direction of the sentiment of the next trend. I compare what I see unfolding before me to what I anticipate things will do if my hypothesis is correct. If there is inconsistency between the two, I will exit. If there is consistency, I continue to hold the trade as the market goes through the sequences I expect. --llIHeroic

And before this particular setup resolves itself, those who've followed my threads know how important context is to me. So . . . And for those who are familiar with mean reversion: TMI? Looking at a chart on which no trendlines of any sort have been drawn is sort of like the burglary movies where the guy is trying to steal the big diamond that's sitting on a big pedestal in the middle of the room. He knows that there is an alarm which is triggered by the interruption of one or more of a series of laser beams which criss-cross the room. Unfortunately, he doesn't know where those laser beams are because they're invisible to the naked eye. So what does he do? He blows smoke into the room so that the beams become visible. Knowing where they are enables him to miss them and avoid setting off the alarm. Similarly, there are a variety of trendlines on your chart, even though you may not be able to see them. Blowing smoke on your chart will be of no help, however, so you'll have to be satisfied with a less-dramatic straightedge and pencil. --Db

This is about subjects for testing. Not "I think that . . . " Not "In my opinion . . . " Not "I'll bet that . . . " What are the odds that this will fall? Rise? One finds out not by guessing but by finding examples of this and not only tabulating successes and failures but the reasons for each. This is how one develops a robust trading protocol. This is how one is able to take trades without thinking about them. I hope ND won't object to my copying a post she made recently as the point of this thread is of course to highlight "setups" that occur regularly, if not frequently, and are easy to find and easy to test. Once one has done so, there is no need to guess. Note that the reason for my posting this here is to provide an example of how to go about -- or at least to begin to go about -- testing a setup. The particular setup she's addressing is not particularly important to this investigation. This is not the only protocol, of course, but it's an excellent start: Q: How do you predict the odds of a favorable price move on each trade? A: First I select a setup using eyeball analysis. A setup is a price behavior pattern (for example, in a non-trending environment, price came from a swing low, tested the previous swing high, and turned without breaking through that high). I've noticed over time that when this occurs price has a strong tendency to find support at the swing low and make another attempt to visit the high. I now examine every appearance of this setup with a specific instrument during my selected trading hours and I note in a spreadsheet the results: How often does the support hold and how often does it break down? If it breaks down by less than N ticks, how often does price revisit the high? If it breaks down my more than N ticks how often is it possible to exit at break even before the risk:reward ratio becomes negative? Eventually this sort of study leads to a positive expectancy result based on rules. An example might be that if the support level holds or breaks down by less than 4 ticks, a 12 tick profit is possible 61% of the time. If the support level breaks down by more than 8 ticks, an adverse excursion of more than 12 ticks occurs 63% of the time. If the level breaks down by more than 3 ticks, but less than 9 ticks a break even exit is possible 73% of the time. So now I can create a set of rules based on this price behavior in this defined price environment and then apply the rules to 100 consecutive appearances of the setup and see how close to my original study the results are. If I find the result to be very close to the original study, I have a positive expectancy trade setup to add to my arsenal as follows: In a non-trending environment, price comes off a swing low to test a previous swing high and turns back down off that level. 1. Place a limit order to buy 1 tick above the previous swing low. 2. If filled, place a stop loss of 12 ticks and a profit target of 12 ticks. 3. If price breaks through the swing low by more than 3 ticks, move the profit limit order to the entry price. --NoDoji

I read his posts. I always do before replying to a post such as this. Helps to avoid providing generic and usually irrelevant advice. He also posts on more than this site. As to "how markets work", it's hardly a secret.

Learn how markets work. Abandon the indicators. Trade something easier than forex.

I suggest you get rid of the candles as well, or at least plot them as black. The colors have nothing to do with trading price and can create a bias, and you don't need the distraction. Trading the SLA today required only one trade: an entry below the range and an exit at the break of the afternoon SL: Also, don't forget to include the context. Knowing at least the previous day's high would prevent you from going long at the open.

I don't know what sort of comment you're looking for. You're welcome to borrow elements from the SLA to include in your trading plan, and they may help you to improve your results. But what you'll be doing won't be the SLA. So whatever comments I make will depend on what it is you're trying to do. If you're trying to learn the SLA, some things will have to go. But if you're interested only in certain elements of it, that's another subject.

1. While your enthusiasm is admirable, the idea that you will be able to make a living trading in a few months is wildly optimistic. 2. Do not spend a dime of courses, programs, workshops, unvetted gurus, software, or anything else of the like. 3. Avoid the ES. Look instead at either the NQ or the TF. 4. Thoroughly test this plan and any other via replay before even thinking about putting real money to work. The market doesn't care about what you plan to make. It will provide you with whatever opportunities it sees fit. Whether or not you are available to take them is an entirely different matter. 5. Do not begin trading by trading out of fear. If you have any concerns about losing money or being wrong, you are not ready. Stops will not save you if you don't understand (a) what you're looking at and (b) what to do with it.

Since the chart's not visible, I've deleted the post and all the posts referring to it. Sorry.

Schabacker's Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits Schabacker.pdf

If anyone is interested, here's how the SLA/AMT rules applied today's action: Note: You can't do this unless you're in front of your computer and paying attention. You can't do it at work. You can't do it at school. You can't do it while writing your novel.

Another range. Where are you going to enter? Where are you going to exit? If you don't know or you're afraid to take the trades, you shouldn't trade today. See Appendix E and Appendix F.