Quote from noaveragingdown:
I'm with you No Doji except that the market is not always as kind as you make it out to be, respectfully, I'l afraid you are too optimistic in your examples.
Consolidation and chop many times comes before we can spot it, when we already have our scars to show.
Many times the two-bar breakouts you suggest are nothing but noise up and down chopping your head off with tiny losses and this can happen just about anywhere, and so forth.
Bottomline trading is not that easy and rarely that kind 
Good posts by the way, just too optimistic when I apply to reality.
NAD
Trading does become easy eventually. Once you've proven that trading your plan (based on extensive research) produces real-world results that match months of post-market bar-by-bar analysis, it becomes very routine.
You really have to do your homework, learn methods of filtering out uncertainty, lose the fear of missing a good move which results in chasing price inside range/chop. Many times it's better to let price show its hand first, miss out on the initial move, and be the second mouse (confirmed trade). You pay more for the entry, but the odds of success go way up. One good way to do this is to wait for the break out of chop/consolidation, then look for an entry trigger on a pullback to (or near) the breakout level, which should now hold as new support or resistance.
Quote from nakachalet:
i must focus on my setup regardless. but i must confess, many a day for many long hours, i did have to sit with both hands under my butt.... to wait for a profitable setup.... 
And this is a key to trading becoming easier. You know your valid setups very well. You've learned how to filter out chop and wait patiently for confirmation. Hands under butt or talking to oneself is very helpful in preventing over-trading during consolidation or chop.
Quote from dv4632:
Awesome stuff, NoD. I'm truly in awe of you traders who can run all these if-then statements through your mind and still keep a clear head in real live bullets trading. Thanks for the feedback and I'll be sure to re-read and process it all fully.
Do you use a stop or a stop-limit when you reverse direction? Given that you have to keep breakout trades on a tight leash I assume stop-limit would be best. If day trading you could get burned on a bad fill if the breakout is sharp enough.
It comes with practice and as much as I practice doing this, I still get discombobulated a lot; it's the nature of trading a volatile instrument. Day trading ES is like a zen meditation compared to day trading CL.
Sometimes I just get tired of the constant focus and concentration and I start managing a trade by watching the action on the DOM. This is NOT a good way to trade!
Quote from dv4632:
I really like the stop-and-reverse idea because it potentially profits from pattern failure. Just as everyone who saw the obvious pattern is stopping out with a loss you're taking the other side of their trade. Even if you played the pattern in the traditional way you now have a shot to make back your own loss by playing the failure. Easier said than done and something I've never tried to do, but I like the idea.
SAR is a great tactic on key failures, but not a good idea around a flat 20 EMA. That's one great filter to keep you out of trading chop - avoid trading around a flat 20 EMA in your time frame. If a smaller time frame offers clarity, great. If not, wait for the breakout, then trade the next setup off of it.
Quote from nakachalet:
with all due respect, maam.
are there or are there not any significant differences between webinar presentations and presentations contained in trading books dvds et al....?
however, attending FREE webinars to listen to others who claimed to be experts in this and that specialties can surely help us to gauge ourselves and what we know and experience against whatever they claim to know or to have for sale....
When I read a book, watch a webinar or DVD, or watch a recorded trading session, I pay attention to information that is useful. I don't care if the people presenting are profitable traders or not. If I see information that's useful to me, I will study it and integrate it into my trading plan if it sharpens my edge.
Sometimes information takes a long time to sink in. I read Al Brooks' book and he's a big proponent of using stop orders to enter trades. I never grasped the power of this method of trade entry until I traded my first breakout (bought a new high in an up trend). I eventually came to realize that every time you use a stop order to enter a trade it's like a mini-breakout. You're automatically positioned in the direction of price movement (as long as you don't trade right into a key S/R level).
I honed my edge tremendously from information in this thread. I "got it" very quickly, mainly because the timing of this thread coincided with my gradual understanding of trend lines.
nakachalet, you've been following and posting on this thread for quite a while. Are you gaining useful knowledge from it?
