Can you trade by price action alone?

[oldtime]

CAVEAT EMPTOR, If you've seen any of those Keystone Light ads on tv and it seems like all you have to do is drink it and a sleazy slut will be attracted to you, well, think again, I have been drinking the shit out of that crap and haven't gotten laid one time.

I'm going back to Busch. At least then I didn't care.

I tell ya, trading is not easy. You need to be very careful. There are a lot of scams out there.

at anyrate, I'm down right now and thinking about changing strategies. Have any of you heard about a website called supportandresistence.com? Apparently, once you determine support and resistence areas you can consistently make money.

It only costs $50 to join and you get membership to the live trading room. You wouldn't believe the profits some of the members are making.

 

[DoubleTop]

I do believe that identifying support and resistance is important. Another aspect to take into account is Context. Just knowing support and resistance doesn't mean that you can always get on the right side of a move. It's something that I like to call as Context, where u are in a trend. If you are in a trend or ranging market. I found that in watching price action there are these areas or zones of support and resistance and those really help to keep you on the right side of the move. But most of a pure price action appoach deals with learning how to read the price action to the left of you.

 

[oldtime]

take a little support and resistence, add to that some MACD, introduce some stochastics (both fast and slow) throw in some Bollinger Bands just for good measure and you should be able to buy or sell at any time without ever doing anything wrong. (as long as you are always aware of RSI.)

I also have a few proprietory indicators which if they don't make me fabulously wealthy I promise to reveal to the general public.

 

[Onra]

Quote from lindq:

I listened to most of this webinar out of curiosity.

The trick for these self-professed 'gurus' is to first toss out some general platitudes that every trader has heard repeated a thousand times. These opening gambits are also accompanied by the claim that they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, to share their knowledge with others. (Gimme a break!)

Then he proceeds to go through chart after chart showing a seemingly endless series of possible entries and rules, all of which in total are a complicated mish-mash that prevents him from ever being held accountable for results. And sadly, this often results in newbies thinking that if they can't follow him, it must be because his brilliance and understanding of the markets is so deep.

But wait...if only they can buy the book, or sign up for the chat room...there they will be more likely to gain a greater understanding and the chance for real wealth.

(Get wise, folks. If somebody is running a live chat room they aren't trading for a living.)

Ah, yes, hope springs eternal at the foot of the master.

Hi Lindq,

Al doesn't run a "live" trading room and his site is mostly updated by a small group of followers.
Al doesn't give trade recommendations and is very secluded.
He wants to trade with as little distractions as possible and certainly doesn't take time to answer all kinds of questions.
Following his bar by bar analysis on the site, you can see he is very knowledgeable, very careful and off course not always right.

Al's work made me understand the markets better than any other book, indicator, EA or system that I bought over the years.
Reading his (first) book for the third time, everything makes sense, but to someone new to this, it's almost incomprehensible.

It's clear your strategies differ, but please don't discard him as a self-proclaimed guru.

Good trading,
Onra

 

[DoubleTop]

Quote from oldtime:

take a little support and resistence, add to that some MACD, introduce some stochastics (both fast and slow) throw in some Bollinger Bands just for good measure and you should be able to buy or sell at any time without ever doing anything wrong. (as long as you are always aware of RSI.)

I also have a few proprietory indicators which if they don't make me fabulously wealthy I promise to reveal to the general public.

How are all those lagging indicators trading pure price action??? I had all those on my charts when I first started trading and I lost a couple grand. I really didn't understand price action then. Now a naked chart is one of my best friends and it a really good way to trade.

 

[logic_man]

Quote from Onra:

Hi Lindq,

Al doesn't run a "live" trading room and his site is mostly updated by a small group of followers.
Al doesn't give trade recommendations and is very secluded.
He wants to trade with as little distractions as possible and certainly doesn't take time to answer all kinds of questions.
Following his bar by bar analysis on the site, you can see he is very knowledgeable, very careful and off course not always right.

Al's work made me understand the markets better than any other book, indicator, EA or system that I bought over the years.
Reading his (first) book for the third time, everything makes sense, but to someone new to this, it's almost incomprehensible.

It's clear your strategies differ, but please don't discard him as a self-proclaimed guru.

Good trading,
Onra

I think knee-jerk cynicism about "gurus" giving away their methods is short-sighted (not to mention boring).

Let's say I'm a "guru" with a system that I know a bunch of people will follow. All I need to do is watch as the market moves toward triggering a system trade and buy 1 tick below where I know my followers will be buying. Then, assuming that my followers can generate any sort of upward movement (or will be part of what should be upward movement, if my system generally works enough of the time to generate positive expectancy), I sell into the ensuing buying. So, there is not ALWAYS a disconnect between giving away my system and its efficacy.

If I were to give away my strategy, you can be damn well sure that I'd be buying one tick below where I knew the strategy would say it was time to buy.

Obviously, this won't apply to all "gurus" just the ones who actually do have enough confidence in their systems to trade them and who are looking for that extra buying or selling power to help push their trades in a favorable direction.

 

[oldtime]

the cynics call it front running, I prefer the term "trading ahead." I never ask my followers to buy unless I have first just bought. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

Some of the more thinly traded markets are quite treacherous. If you need help navigating them let me know.

 

[logic_man]

Quote from oldtime:

the cynics call it front running, I prefer the term "trading ahead." I never ask my followers to buy unless I have first just bought. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

Some of the more thinly traded markets are quite treacherous. If you need help navigating them let me know.

If the only factor enabling the guru's trading strategy to have positive expectancy is being able to sell to his followers at higher prices after having bought before them at lower prices, that's clearly outside the boundaries of the scenario I was drawing up, so your point here doesn't invalidate the scenario at all.

 

[piezoe]

Quote from Onra:



...
Reading his (first) book for the third time, everything makes sense, but to someone new to this, it's almost incomprehensible.

..
Onra

Just a friendly suggestion:
Since you now understand Brooks' book, you'd be the perfect one to translate it into English, assuming you passed your junior high English composition class.

 

[oldtime]

Quote from logic_man:

If the only factor enabling the guru's trading strategy to have positive expectancy is being able to sell to his followers at higher prices after having bought before them at lower prices, that's clearly outside the boundaries of the scenario I was drawing up, so your point here doesn't invalidate the scenario at all.

well, if you're going to introduce logic into the conversation then yes, a little positive expectation never hurts. My job is to just keep everything down on a level even I can understand. Too late now, I have to go to work in 40 minutes and plan to use half of that time getting a good nights rest. These gap openings in forex keep me awake all weekend long. Talk about a crap shoot.