If You Can Draw A Straight Line . . .
- Thread starter dbphoenix
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I don't get it either. But maybe your first thought - that a thread this long may be too long to interest more than a few to read it - points the way somewhat.
I found the Making of a Method journal just last week. By the end of the weekend, I had read it all. I have spent many hours reading and reviewing the stuff at the Wyckoff forum. This has all been study, study, study. It is very much an active learning process. I haven't studied anything this much since high school - and, tell you the truth, I don't remember applying myself to anything in high school as I have this. So this is study - discovery, learning, application.
I've been at this study, as you know, for about a year. I'm not as far along as I thought I'd be by now, but I'm close. I've learned a lot - about the markets, about people in general, and, believe it or not, about myself! You might say I got more than I bargained for, or I got into more than I bargained for when I first decided I'd look into this trading business. I have certainly made positive progress, and the goal I set for myself from the start - to trade profitably enough to replace my then current income - is halfway attained. And I see no reason, whatsoever, why it will not soon be 100% achieved.
So what's my point? My point is that to me I always figured trading to be a skill. I had a conversation early on with a rep from a day trading school, and he told they could "teach" me to "read the tape," "recognize patterns," and "read price action" so that I could trade profitably. All skills, it seems, that can be learned. So I have approached this as me going back to school to learn a trade, just like I did years ago as a young man (younger man
From what I have seen here at ET and over at TL is that many of the people struggling have been looking for a "gimmick," an indicator, a set of mechanical instructions, a blinking red light or whirring siren that will tell them what to do and when to do it. They do not care to ask or to know why they should do that and at that time, they just want to have something that tells them to "do this now, now do that." They spend year after year looking for that "one thing," which likely does not exist.
And if you spend year after year looking for a non-existent goose that lays golden eggs, you are necessarily going to be frustrated. Many seem to be looking almost for a "thing," when instead they should be looking to understand and acquire a "skill."
And one more thing - I shared this quote from you over at the Making of a Method journal, but it belongs here as well:
Trading price begins with determining the context, i.e., what is the market doing outside the intraday world? By finding the various support and resistance levels -- i.e., those levels at which sellers have turned price down and buyers have pushed it back up -- in the daily and even weekly charts, the trader will have some idea where to find zones and levels of tradeable action in his upcoming intraday chart, though if he wants to trade only daily charts, that's okay too.
Why bother? Because if you learn to trade price, your edge will never fail.
Now that, along with your review post, and the three charts from your original post of the thread should be enough to get someone off on the right track.
It appears that the downdraft in futures was due primarily to MSFT. If so, and if I have the trend channel drawn correctly, the midpoint is around 30. If MSFT bounces off that, then futures should recover nicely since they are resting at the bottom of their trend channel.
If not . . .
If not . . .
Please define OL, RET, FO and DL
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