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I'm happy to be trialling a couple of less well known candlestick patterns - outside key reversals Smash Days - see Larry Williams Both on forex and the S&P index: both give entry level and a stop-loss level which is just a little over a day's range away.

Be prepared to be underwhelmed if using candlestick patterns in isolation. A win rate of 50-60% from a good pattern is going to be the norm. There are things that can be done to tilt the odds a little in your favour (and these are not unique to candlestick patterns) - be strict with pattern...

The pull-back in prices is not justified if you just want a discount on recent prices. What it is useful for is as a test of the trend strength. So if price drops in an uptrend it's valid to set a buy entry order above the pull-back and wait to see if the market will be bullish enough to...

They're not used for no reason. They are a useful sketch of what price has been doing. Not the whole picture, but a useful summary all the same.

Saw Napoleon this week and I know less about the man himself now than I did before I sat down to watch it. Rod Steiger's Napoeleon in Waterloo was a much more credible piece of acting and that film illustrated Napoleon's character - his genius and his weaknesses - far better. Even the battle...

I don't track what big funds are doing but there is no doubt that trend-following is a viable technique for private retail traders. A thing which needs attention however is calculating win rate so as not to be misleading. Trend-following trades should be pyramided for maximum gains. Pyramiding...

I don't see the table given with reward v's risk in the three phases of trends as valid. It is unrealistic and unhelpful to divide trends in this way because that's not how trend-following trading is done. Surely the highest risk phase of a trend is the very beginning since a trend which is...

It's not really faith as we know it. Animals have only instinctive and Pavlovian drivers for actions.

I think only humans have faith, as this derives from the ability to think in the abstract. So humans use faith to ensure that their gods do not rain fire onto the earth and wipe us all out. Animals cannot conceive of anything which does not exist or has not happened ever yet so they can have no...

You can't rationalise faith. I suppose the closest approach would be ability to rationalise the reasons why people have faith, i.e. why they believe things for which there is no credible physical evidence. But I don't find people like that are worth talking to.

I realised that most of my winners were trend-following: most of the big winners were trend-following: I could pyramid winners and make them bigger.

I think it would be a job for far more people if that's what they regarded it as from the very outset. But most see it as a gambling platform, a cash lottery.

Is a holding of 100 positions the best way to run your strategy? Is your strategy the best strategy you could run?

Yes, it is breach of a certain price level, but a certain price level in an uptrend. Breach of a price level in a random price context would itself be random, and there would be no justification for going long here rather than short.

It's useful to have price confirm the uptrend by resuming it after a pull-back. Using a buy entry order above some form of price level is a good way of doing this, as it offers price the chance to go lower (and not trigger the entry order) at zero cost/risk. Various entry opportunities also...

If you're interested in the probability of price doing this or that the next day, take a look at Thomas Bulkowski's thepatternsite.com. Price action such as you describe is what he terms either a Long White Day or a White Marubozu. If these occur in an established uptrend, their probabilities...

Good work. Good luck. Goodbye.

As a consumer I cannot see the day when AI directly makes my life better. Maybe companies I deal with will make fewer errors when I order stuff, maybe they will be more responsive when I report problems or glitches, but I doubt this is life-changing nor significantly more economical. Maybe AI...

It's a known and historic approach. Highly objective, which appeals to me.

I would have set buy orders on all of these set-ups, A-E. My buy orders go in when a consistent uptrend is well established. They're placed above the high of the third consecutive (or nearly consecutive) HL bar with a lower high and lower low. The stop-loss is below the low of the same bar. If...