Quote from NoDoji:
...each morning before I start trading. Having a plan in advance makes the trade easier to manage, than simply reacting to price.
That is really the key that makes the day work for a trader. It is easier to draw lines intraday because you have more inputs and on a liquid contract there are few gaps.
The advantage for EoD traders is that they have many hours to ponder their decision and don't have to be vary active. The downside to that it it takes many years to build up the experience a day trader builds in a few months.
When I saw the potential pattern on the Dow I could draw the likely progress months in advance and the record is on ET. So when the daily reversed on the pattern trend line it looked like the reversal was on. Note: IT LOOKED LIKE. Did I know for sure? No! I had to gather the evidence. Exhaustion, position, S&R, PA and all the other things I have mentioned.
After that I could read the PA and volume signals intraday and said the strong hands were taking the market down and you would need luck to make money holding longs.
The time frame doesn't matter. It doesn't somehow straighten up its act on a bigger time frame and confuse on lower time frames. If you want to know how to do it, use the principles shown here and get on with it. I only see two people doing that. One is making money with it (ND) and the other is in sim and finding their feet with it. More are talking crap about gurus and why it can't work and that is why some try and do, some try and fail and more sit on their arse in the armchair and explain to all that nothing works.
It's like driving a car: it takes practice behind the wheel. Yet some people will fail their driving test a 100 times, some drive with white knuckled stress and some sing and take in the scenery. Some can, some can't and lots think they are know it all's.
I believed I was a pretty hot driver until a female special forces driving instructor got behind the wheel and broke all the rules for positioning a car, red-lined constantly and never got out of 3rd gear. She could leave me for dead.
Think you are a guru killer? You might think you know a lot, but what can you post before the event? If you can't make a positive contribution, why not start up a "how not to do it" thread?
If you want to see if it works - go thru the pain barrier. Honestly, these are first principles. What are some of you guys going to do if we go on the the next chapter?
If you know the market is in a downtrend you better have a short bias in your intraday trading. One week back I said the Dow was at a critical point. That was all you needed to know to make money over the past week. If you didn't catch the importance of that statement and see why it was so with a whole weekend to ponder it, you'll have zero chance on a 30 min time frame let alone a one minute chart. That's the reality behind a lot of problems here.
