DrEvil

First of all, I want to say that I'm massively impressed with traderslaboratory, especially the video section. It's one of the better forums that I've found so far. I can really see the advantages of tape reading in giving clues at pivot points/support/restistance. I trade forex, which means that I don't have a tape so I'm left without some very valuable price information. I use MetaTrader for it's charts, but I notice that it has volume bars as well. I expected that their volume bars would be useless as no doubt it captures only one piece of the forex volume moving the market. However, I have noticed that candlesticks at support/resistance (for example) more often than not predict a turning point or continuation when you use the volume bars as confirmation. What I would like to know ask to the people that tape read on this forum is do you think that candllesticks at key support/resistance levels confirmed with volume bars are in any way an alternative to tape reading? I'm not so sure because from looking at Soultrader's tape reading videos I see that he looks for clues from the big players (larger lot size trades) and this seems to be far more important that the little guys. You can't see this with a plain old volume bar (at least I think you can't!). Would love to hear anybody's thoughts on this. cheers The evil one.

Thanks for the the answers guys. I'n my limited experience I find that on daily forex charts, a combination of classic price patterns and candlesticks are quite reliable. The problems I have are mainly trying to day trade by using hourly charts after receiving a signal on a daily chart ... the patterns certainly don't behave as well intraday. I am not at this point trading big enough to trade off daily charts. I find that I get a lot of information from looking at daily closing prices, which I assume filters out the day trading noise. For example if I can get a breakout of an congestion area on a daily chart, confirmed by a close on the daily bar, then I will always take a hourly trading on ideally a flag or pullback to a trend line, or m.a. I agree that lack of volume info is a handicap, but isn't it a handicap for everyone? ... thus leveling the playing field? I wasted months trying to figure out indicators and since I have removed them and focussed on price, I think I have raised my game. I hope I am on the right path. Good trading!

Soultrader, I'm relatively new to trading (less than a year). I have made a decision to be a discretionary trader. I trade forex, using only price, candlesticks, support and resistance. Looking for breakouts of channels, consolidations and trendlines on longer term charts, then taking the signal in same direction on an hourly chart. More or less this is my style of trading so far. I read everywhere that backtesting is essential to succeed. As I mostly trade off price patterns, how can I backtest? If I can't backtest how can I put together statistics like, percentage winners, losers, drawdown etc. Any answers greatly appreciated. Thanks, Soultrader