If You Can Draw A Straight Line . . .
- Thread starter dbphoenix
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Now this is intriguing. I'm trying to understand what made you think to reverse long here. I would have been thinking downward continuation. It spent all that time consolidating just above and the 72 support seems the LOLR.
If you don't mind, tell me more of this 'dog that didn't bark'. I saw the post where db first mentioned it, but didn't grasp the nature of it at the time.
Great trading btw. I aspire to join your ranks one day.
when are you going to show your losers
oh I forgot...you never have any losers..you catch all the turns :eek:
typical internet forum hindsight bullshit....newbs....run, don't walk, away from this thread like the plague
I use the phrase "the dog didn't bark" as DbPhoenix used it: I use it to denote price action where traders behave differently than I would have thought that they would behave.
In this case, price had consolidated in a hinge-like sequence of trades. The assumption is that once price breaks out from the hinge that it will continue in that direction. I too was expecting price to again test 72, and possibly finally head down for that test of the Monday premkt 3060. But that is not what happened.
Instead, price dropped to 75.25, drifted higher, and then, on the next attempt lower managed to make a lower low by just one tick, trading 75. Price then rose two points, pulled back a point or so, and then quickly headed higher.
Your post itself shows some of the logic and behavior behind the trade. You said that "I would have been thinking downward continuation." Guess what - so were a whole lot of other traders, including me! But when the thing that so many expected did not happen, i.e. when the dog that should be barking his fool head off remains quiet, then the game is afoot
I think what stands in the way of getting this method of trading that DbPhoenix teaches is that most people (traders) are not viewing the activity unfolding on their charts as buying and selling by other people engaged in the same activity that they are (trading).
Think about it: Price consolidated just below a potential, highly visible R level, formed an easily recognizable "pattern," and then broke out to the downside. You have a lot of people seeing the same thing, and then acting upon it The "pattern" and break down were the result of traders fighting it out, and, for a moment, those traders wishing to sell in the hope of lower prices brought more effort to the fight than those wanting to buy for higher prices. Nothing happens without people acting. This is what I was trying to say yesterday about bar interval - traders are going to respond to important price levels were they perceive value, or the lack of value. It is that perception of value to which they are responding, so how you choose to graph those transactions is not nearly as important as the mere fact of them.
And one other thing - I traded hinges as my only set up on individual stock issues for almost a year. One thing I observed during that time was that if a hinge breaks one way but gets no follow through, then look out! Because price is probably going to steam roll the other way, and cover a lot of price levels in the process.
A large part of it also is that many beginning traders -- and many not-so-beginning traders -- think that the market, or the "big" money, or the "smart" money, is out to get them, to trick them. It never occurs to them that neither the market nor the big/smart money could care less about them. Therefore they are forever looking out for the trick, the trap, the gotcha, and are thus guarding themselves against a threat that doesn't exist, making all the wrong decisions at the wrong times.
It's really just a matter of looking for trades, which is after all the business of trading. If traders can find trades out of the bottom of a trading range, great. If there are none, traders will search for trades out of the top of the range. This doesn't mean that anybody "tricked" anybody into selling the breakdown. It means only that there was no business there. This is also why first exits from hinges are so often in the opposite direction from the ultimate move. Knowing this gives the trader the confidence to reverse his position. And, yes, sometimes there are no trades out of the opposite side, either. Then everybody returns to their corners and futzes around inside the range for a while, and the "price action" trader is standing aside, waiting for everybody to decide what they want to do. Quite often what they want to do is go to lunch.
DB,
Are most/all of your entries when price hinges-consolidates evenly? I dont have the stats to back this up but price seems to chop more near s/r when flags form-when one side is seemingly in control.
BD
Are most/all of your entries when price hinges-consolidates evenly? I dont have the stats to back this up but price seems to chop more near s/r when flags form-when one side is seemingly in control.
BD
I posted a bunch of charts at the beginning of the thread (the first 80 posts), but after a couple dozen, they become redundant and there isn't any point in continuing. At that stage, the trader is either interested or he isn't. If he is, it's time to open up a journal and start doing the work. If he isn't, we've both saved a lot of time.
I trade off support and resistance, though hinges are always a welcome surprise when they form. I don't trade patterns, including flags, so I can't address that. As to "chop", so often traders will characterize action as chop when they don't understand what's going on. This is particularly true in what may become but has not yet become a trading range. If it occurs at support or resistance, one has to focus on what traders are trying to do, e.g., preparing to break out or preparing to reverse. If one has no idea what to look for, then the safest thing is to wait for a retracement after either event and enter there. What he loses in points he may gain in confidence in the trade. He may even be able to make up the "lost" points by pyramiding.
Quote from HurricaneUS:
when are you going to show your losers
oh I forgot...you never have any losers..you catch all the turns :eek:
typical internet forum hindsight bullshit....newbs....run, don't walk, away from this thread like the plague
Most of these have come to me by PM. I guess it was only a matter of time before one showed up here in the thread itself. I was going to ignore it, but I will instead respond this once.
I've posted losses when I have had them, and I will post them when I have more of them. I approach this activity the same way every day. If you were to look back at the charts I have posted, and if you were to read them from left to right , rather than right to left, I think you would find that my entries over the last two weeks, and the last two/three months, for that matter, have been based on a consistent application of what has been discussed in this thread and in other Wyckoff/Trading by Price threads here and elsewhere, and that these entries were based on clear indications, or at least what one might reasonably have thought to be clear indications given by price, before the fact.
Such negative responses as above imply, I suppose, that I am attempting to fool people. Toward what end? No one here knows me. You don't know me. The only person here who does know my real name is DbPhoenix, and that is because I bought his book.
What motive would I have to only post profitable trades and not losing trades? I am here to learn. The feedback I have received from both DbPhoenix and nodoji from my losses has been far more beneficial to my trading than the feedback (or no feedback) that I get as a result of having good days. In fact, as a direct result of their feedback to two back to back losing trades I posted here I was able to make some changes that led to my having my best trading day to date.
I have been very straight about what my situation is and how I got here. I have been a blue collar tradesman my whole adult life whose body, specifically the vertabrea that form the lower third of my spine, is giving out. I have a wife and a family to support, and little time left where I'll be able to physically continue my trade without risking a grave result: I either quit soon, and be able to maintain and enjoy an otherwise active life, or I push myself on to the point were any mobility that will remain in my body will be accompanied by constant agony. One might say that my choice is being a day trader who can still play golf, or become a 50 year old who needs a walker and morphine to get around and disability and charity to get by.
So what I have to gain from my participation here is the help and instruction offered by DbPhoenix, nodoji, gringo, niko, and anyone else who might want to offer a good word. I am very thankful for having found DbPhoenix when I did. I am very grateful to him and the others for the support and advice they have shown me here and elsewhere.
And I am doing well. I'll not apologize for it. I have done so by studying materials that are for the most part FREE, and what few I bought were very inexpensive. I use FREE data from my broker, and a FREE charting platform. While I never opened a journal on a message board of my own, I have twice now interjected myself into discussions started by DbPhoenix. I have kept a trading journal/log of my own since last September. I have recorded every trade, saved a copy of every chart, and wrote at least a sentence or two assessing myself at the end of everyday.
I now start my day by looking at the context of price action over the preceding 24 to 48 hours, and based on what price has done, what it is doing, and where it is doing it, I try to have a long and a short scenario in mind before the open. That has been working well for me. Often one or the other scenario comes to pass. From there, it is a matter of watching how and where trade unfolds. I use nothing other than information that is free to anyone who wishes to access it - a simple price chart.
I posted a blotter before, and I did so exactly to head off just this kind of negativity. I see no reason to post my blotter as I have offered a detailed explantion of what I did and why, including an annotated chart. Yes, it was "after the fact." That goes without saying. We are here to "talk shop," so to speak, aren't we? Am I to try to focus on what the market is doing, enter, manage, and exit my trades, and post a running blow by blow here on a message board on top of that? Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do it. It takes all of my focus and all of my energy to trade. If you were to notice, I generally do not post here at all in the mornings, and if I do, I do not post once the market opens until I am finished trading for the day. And even then, I may not be able to post until night time, as I have to go to work.
But here is today's pnl - I trade the NQ, and I do not trade what I or anyone else would consider "size," but even the small lot trader can do well when catching a chunk of a 25 point range with a few additional buys or sells during the trend. And this is my second $1400+ day in a row, and my 11th profitable day in a row, and think what you will, the dollars are real, this approach to trading is real, and so am I.
Forty,
When the Jackals start coming around, best to just ignore them or thank them for their interest and input and let them go. Don't be baited into justifications. Most are losers with big egos that can not stand to see someone else succeed. Especially when they have been on ET for many years.
When the Jackals start coming around, best to just ignore them or thank them for their interest and input and let them go. Don't be baited into justifications. Most are losers with big egos that can not stand to see someone else succeed. Especially when they have been on ET for many years.
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