Quote from fortydraws:
I went over to TL to review an old post in the Wyckoff forum, and I saw I had a couple of PM's wondering where I have been and whether I was OK. I am doing well. I closed my long NQ soon after the open on Monday, and I did not trade yesterday.
I am working on an EOD trading plan, and I have been spending a lot of time doing replay on daily and hourly charts of stocks, indexes, and futures. I am leaning heavily toward selecting one, or perhaps a small handful of futures markets to trade for the swings rather than individual stock issues.
When I was day trading stocks, stock selection was not too much of a problem - scan for what was moving in the premkt, and then watch to see what it did after the open. I was only going to own it for a few minutes or maybe even a few hours, but by the end of the day, I had no more care about what it did. Holding a stock overnight, for days, weeks, or even a few months feels different to me. During my replay, I have found times where even large capitalized stocks, like IBM, can have large gaps. If I am long a stock that gaps up, that would be nice. But If I am long a stock that gaps down, that would be not so nice.
Futures, especially the index, energy, and metals futures seem to trade nearly 24 hours. And I would be a small trader - one contract in most cases would be sufficient for now.
I find that when I am doing this part of the process, I do best by avoiding the day to day message board stuff. Besides, I have my Wyckoff course, as well as the Book that Shall not be Named always at hand for reference, so it is more nose to the grindstone for me, at least for the next week or so.
I did read back over the last few pages of posts. One thing I want to say is that DbPhoneix is right: This is work. It is enjoyable work, but to get this method there is work that must be done. I did not just sign in to elitetrader in June and "get this" the next day. I had already had almost a year where nearly the only market related stuff I studied was written by Wyckoff or DbPhoenix. And I spent a lot of time both when I started out and over the last three months in the Wyckoff forum.
If you want a trading plan that is "If price does X, then buy - sell when price does Y," this isn't it. It may appear that way at times, and looking at some of my posts and my charts I know It can seem like that. But looking at a chart that has everything marked and is posted after the activity is completed is not the same as having followed that activity and taken those actions as price was unfolding. This is why DbPhoenix stresses observing, either in real time or by using market replay or scrolling a chart bar by bar, slowly, from left to right.
And I would add that you have to be engaged and thinking and observing with a specific purpose - to learn what traders are doing and why they are doing what they are doing. Your purpose is not to identify where you would buy, where you would sell, where you would short, where you would cover. That all comes about as a result of you first coming to understand what and why price moves as it does, especially as it encounters areas of activity that had been significant in the past, i.e. at the highs and lows of various movements.