gosu

Yeah I tweaked it a bit. You can do the same with candleschtiks but it adds unnecessary clutter because of the body color already built into them.

Not quite the same...........................

I too prefer bars, less clutter. You are right that candleschtiks don't convey anything more than bars, but they don't convey anything less either. Why can't you see where the candle closes? That's what the candle emphasizes - the distance between the open and close - in the form of the body. Being more attuned to the extremes, I don't find that emphasis all that useful.

You might be nitpicking regarding price not doing anything but overall I share your sentiment. There is an entire cottage industry built around the promulgation of these two catchphrases. So far I haven't seen anyone put the two together to stand out amongst the crowd. Yet it could be any day now that I see a book has been written or a course made up on the PRICE ACTION SETUP.

Right now you are just a babe in the woods. We all start out that way. You should know that you have much to learn, much more than you can possibly comprehend from your current situation. The good news for you is that you are starting out at a time when it has never been cheaper and more convenient to do so, not just in terms of the cost of hardware, software, data, capital requirements, etc., but the fact that access to these things is even available. People who started pre-internet know what I'm talking about. The bad news for you is that an entire industry has come about to teach, train, educate, coach people like you who do not have a clue. Their goal is to get some of your trading funds before you lose it all to the market. Now, what to do. First, you should admit that you are not currently equipped to be participating in the markets with people who know what they are doing. The markets do not provide a Sesame Street where you can play and learn with others like yourself and not get hurt. Second, you should come up with a learning plan that thoroughly details how you are going to get from ground zero to a point where you can at least participate in the markets without risking your survival. I call this being operational. It is the most important place for you because from it you can stay in the game and continue to learn and improve. Success in this business is all about survival. You asked how you can tell if you know how to trade. You can tell by having done it a very long time. Third, if you're really serious about wanting to trade, you will come up with a plan to sustain yourself while you take yourself from ground zero to operational. This period should be measured in years not months. And when I say sustain, I don't mean just financially, although that is the most obvious. Last, the single most important thing to know while you're learning is whether or not you're learning correctly. By all means, avoid falling into the trap that learning for the sake of learning is helpful. If you fall into this trap, either you will eventually drop out and move on or you will join the ranks of people who run a business to teach, train, educate, coach others about the stuff they've learned. Goooooood luck!

Speak for yourself, I'm always objective. Cheers. :beer:

It does? If that is indeed your viewpoint, what was the point of your original question? The way I read your statement, it goes beyond what I stated regarding the removal of subjectivity with the mere act of drawing a line on a chart. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but there is the requirement of trust in the line that is usually lacking.

I've posted numerous charts in this thread and all RTLs in them are nonsubjective. The funny comment previously made that what's likeable about a trendline is that it can be moved if you don't like it is not quite accurate. For me, RTLs cannot be moved; they can only be broken out of and replaced by another RTL.

Your list is a decent summary of your ignorance about the (right) trendline. People who do not know that price movement is always contained invariably talk about the trendline in isolation. What they mean is the line that reveals the right side of the container and they leave out the left side. In any case, see if you can understand that you have yet to figure out how to draw a (right) trendline in a way that removes subjectivity. If you can accept that preliminarily, you may be able to see that drawing a right trendline is a matter of selection among finite choices. Gann wasn't the first to discover this but he is probably the most famous.

This is a good question. I won't provide a list but just the extremes of what I think are the possibilities in the learning spectrum. The best way to learn to trade is to come into it with an open mind with no preconceived notions and get together with an expert who can get you from ground zero to being operational with no risk to your own capital, usually by the expert making up all your losses while learning. The displays to see the market, the tools to annotate and the vocabulary to describe its movements are all set up for you. Your sole object is to follow his instructions and do what you are told. The learning progression would start with drilling how to flawlessly enter and exit the market with no loss and then on to anticipating and executing the gimme opportunities as they arise. This gets you to operational and you can then survive to continue gaining knowledge, experience, and skill in order to increase your participation. The worst way to learn to trade is to come into it after much exposure to conventional wisdom and then look to obtain "education" that just reinforces your preconceived notions. Almost always the education does not reduce the risk of loss associated with learning and is a sunk cost. It usually consists of dumping a method or a system onto the learner with the standard caveats of keeping losses small, letting profits run, having more winners than losers, etc. More recently, trader psychology is the focus wherein a particular method or system is not provided but a way to handle "uncertainty" usually by focusing on the trader without regard to the market. In either case, the educator may or may not know how to trade. Obviously the best way is unavailable to most if not everyone starting out. Still I think it's good to have an idea of what the best could be in order to move toward it and away from the worst way to learn which seems to be gaining increasing acceptance as the path to success. This is just my opinion, of course.

Sounds like something straight out of their sales manual. In theory, what you say makes sense. But back to reality. What is the cost of learning things wrong from the beginning? At the least, probably a heck of a lot more than the $26,000 forked over for "education." At the most, the permanent loss of the opportunity to learn correctly because of a wrecked mind.

My personal experience with OTA: I was required to take a week-long "training" course prior to trading my own money at Momentum Securities with whom they shared office space in Irvine and the same owner. This was before broadband became widely available to residential areas. The minimum to open an account was $50,000. I thought the course was unnecessary and just a way to make more fees off the traders. Actually their policy required an "intro" class before the week-long class but I balked at paying for both courses and was allowed to skip the intro course after breezing through its final exam on the spot to their amazement. Prior to applying to trade there I had obtained and studied all their Level 2 material which wasn't that much at the time. Eventually broadband became available in my area and it was pure heaven to trade from home without having to commute to the trading office. Initially I subscribed to their "virtual" trading room which gave me some connection to other traders but the constant chatter was too distracting. After the tech crash, the trading office disappeared and OTA moved to a smaller office nearby. For years I received calls to attend events at their new location until I disconnected my landline and changed my phone number. I did visit one evening to check out their new digs and they were just starting to sell DVDs and opening up new branches. I did wonder if their business model of selling "trading education" without a trading arm could be viable. Obviously, the answer is yes, to the tune of $26,000 per person, as given in a previous post. On another site, someone posted that there are some who spend $60,000 with OTA. It seems the "trading education" industry is very large indeed. I have a feeling that if PT Barnum were still alive he would give up the circus and become a trading vendor.

Well then, you've reached the limit of what you can get out of this place. Expect more and you're liable to be disappointed. Again just my OPINION. :evil tongue: Cheers to you as well.

Yeah but you're enjoying yourself, right?

No, mate, what I expressed was an OPINION. Just like your "belief" that it's possible for you to trade is YOUR opinion, or more accurately, your HOPE until you do it. If you're still confused, go ask your coach.

Just want to clarify that I'm not advising you or anyone else of anything. There may be some direct and indirect suggestions in my post but that's all they are.

Hmm.... Two words came to my mind when I read your post: cannon fodder. People who talk constantly about how possible it is are usually in the same boat with people who have convinced themselves it is impossible. Instead of talking with others about how possible it is, you're much better off keeping silent and just doing it. The corollary is that if you need to hear that it is possible, you're not in much shape to do it. Moreover, beliefs are overrated. Either a person can or cannot. If he can, he doesn't stop to think whether he believes or not. If you he can't, then maybe he wants to believe he can, but that doesn't change the fact that he can't.

How do I customize Trader IQ?

And then there are people who bash charts of any kind to trade from. Bashing in general seems to be endemic to trading. You are right to investigate for yourself. Personally, I like my price bars in time increments, from the 2m to...well that's my little secret.

West 3rd and MacDougal in the Village for me.

38. We go on with our lives and accomplish many of the goals we had always dreamed of. You can get to step 38 at any time. Simply quit trading.

Why so many? Maybe a few of those steps ought to be skipped. They are redundant.

I wasn't attacking you or your words. I was saying you are probably right about describing it as a scam. I have no problem with the use of the word either. There are a lot of scams in this industry and you could even go so far as to say that the financial industry itself is based on a scam. Most scam artists are rarely punished, and if they are, it's usually a slap on the wrist and a return of partial profits from the scam. The ones selling courses and seminars are usually light scam artists who take from the gullible such as yourself. Of course, we all start out gullible. What's important is how you end up.

If it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

I am familiar with those references and read them near the time when they were made. The statements regarding the continuity of the markets from one RTH session to the next do not comport with my own experience monitoring the same markets on the same time increments day after day for many years. Personally, I do not find the incongruity important. I took a mercenary approach to gathering the pieces to a trade methodology and arrived at a place where the all-sessions chart provides important data. My comments are not meant to criticize or stir debate. For more than 10 years I have studied and otherwise made an effort to follow the discussion and have seen the transition from waiting until "sync" to enter to entering on bar 1 with reference to yesterday's bar 81. The arbitrariness of both approaches do not bother me at all and I accept that in trading sometimes choices need to be made that are at bottom arbitrary. Notwithstanding the explanations offered, this appears to be one of those arbitrary choices. That's just my opinion, of course.