Error #1: INNACURATE TREND AND CHANNEL LINES
Those of you who chart simultaneously in multiple time frames, as I do, recognize that trend lines and the channels drawn therefrom often look significantly different in the different time frames. This is because the higher the time frame, the greater the uncertainty in where within the bar the price extremes occurred with which the trend line and the channel are constructed.
For example, in the Hershey SCT five-minute charting system, the price extreme in the bar could have occurred anywhere between the first and the fifth minute, a potential uncertainty of four minutes. The two points used to draw a trend line therefore have a potential uncertainty of eight minutes. Similarly the uncertainty in the timing of a potential FTT is four minutes, making the total uncertainty in the FTT construction timing twelve minutes.
Now this is not much of an issue with channels with closely spaced highs and lows, of the type you typically see in midday bull or bear flags. But it can be a significant source of uncertainty in long morning or afternoon runs. The result is clearly and frequently witnessed in Spydertrader's thread where there is much lamentation about erroneously declared FTTs.
You can verify this issue yourself by drawing trend lines and channels in different time frames, for example, five minute vs. thirty minute, and noting how a channel bounce may look like an FTT or vice versa. Or a channel breakout may look like a bounce, or vice versa. What is the solution? Regardless of the time frame in whcih you make your trading decisions, always trend and channel chart intraday in one minute.
Now the Hershey students will retort that their "gaussians" (that regrettably imprecise corruption of a precisely defined word) save them from the errors of which I speak. If the responses to this thread are civil and serious, I will explain why that assumption is fraught with error as well.
Those of you who chart simultaneously in multiple time frames, as I do, recognize that trend lines and the channels drawn therefrom often look significantly different in the different time frames. This is because the higher the time frame, the greater the uncertainty in where within the bar the price extremes occurred with which the trend line and the channel are constructed.
For example, in the Hershey SCT five-minute charting system, the price extreme in the bar could have occurred anywhere between the first and the fifth minute, a potential uncertainty of four minutes. The two points used to draw a trend line therefore have a potential uncertainty of eight minutes. Similarly the uncertainty in the timing of a potential FTT is four minutes, making the total uncertainty in the FTT construction timing twelve minutes.
Now this is not much of an issue with channels with closely spaced highs and lows, of the type you typically see in midday bull or bear flags. But it can be a significant source of uncertainty in long morning or afternoon runs. The result is clearly and frequently witnessed in Spydertrader's thread where there is much lamentation about erroneously declared FTTs.
You can verify this issue yourself by drawing trend lines and channels in different time frames, for example, five minute vs. thirty minute, and noting how a channel bounce may look like an FTT or vice versa. Or a channel breakout may look like a bounce, or vice versa. What is the solution? Regardless of the time frame in whcih you make your trading decisions, always trend and channel chart intraday in one minute.
Now the Hershey students will retort that their "gaussians" (that regrettably imprecise corruption of a precisely defined word) save them from the errors of which I speak. If the responses to this thread are civil and serious, I will explain why that assumption is fraught with error as well.