Is anyone consistently profitable with the ES?

[FinancialTerrrrist]

Any chart indicates imbalance. When price moved up from A to B or down from A to B there was an imbalance between the available supply/demand during that price excursion.

I happen to use a couple charts that served as my plan development framework. If I used a 10- range chart and a 10-tick chart, or a daily chart and a monthly chart, or a 60-min chart and a 15-min chart, or a single chart without referencing any other chart, I'd still be looking for price behaviors that repeat often enough on a regular basis to derive a profit over each series of N trades.

If any of your traders A, B, C, or D have profitable systems, that's fine by me.

indeed a chart does show price DID this or that. The problem though is that happened in the past. While useful to a small extent, its no guarantee of future event. OK, there are no guarantees in the game. Were trying to see how we can spot these imbalances.

So youre saying these 1min/5min patterns repeat, and you hope they will keep repeating forever and ever and ever. Good luck with that. Good luck with changing parameter time frames with vol too.

Is the 5min is the sum of the 1min charts, or are the 1 min charts the servant of the 5min charts? Do you see where this is going and where the fault lies?

If a profitable system could be found through bar pattern recognition - like candle stick patterns, Im pretty sure some bright spark with a bunch of super computer power would have been through every iteration and found one by now. Toby Crabel had a go with some ok results and his fund is doing ok over the years - but at least he puts some market logic in to his theory on why the patterns work, incorporating psychology into his ideas - which is what Im trying to see if you can explain. However Crabel worked off daily charts before US markets went 23 hrs. The patterns therefore wouldnt work on intraday charts that you work off. The markets arent as 'fractal' as the fools believe. How can they be if you think of it.

Perhaps youre starting to see where you fall over and why its so clear to me and a few others that you cant possibly have the results you claim to.

 

[convexx]

indeed a chart does show price DID this or that. The problem though is that happened in the past. While useful to a small extent, its no guarantee of future event. OK, there are no guarantees in the game. Were trying to see how we can spot these imbalances.

It's too simplistic. If it were true, we would all be trading from tick-charts on our hand-helds and/or trading exclusively off of the order book. My biggest PNL ever came from trading-off an internal figure of number of listed stocks above an MA. Yes, it's derivative of price, but it sure as F isn't macro and I am no technician.

Recent history is probably the biggest single influence on our trading behavior. Charts are a crude historical record of that crowd-behavior. To ignore it is suicide.

You have no idea how to distinguish, let alone be aware of, all of the inputs you perceive (consciously or subcon.) when you place a trade. Your brain is a massively-complex backprop NN with nearly infinite nodes. It's simply absurd to believe that you're "sanitized" when viewing your order-book imbalances or whatever you use. Everything in your environment is influential if you're a discretionary trader -- mood, hunger, endocrinology, stress, weather, tv, family...

 

[NoDoji]

So youre saying these 1min/5min patterns repeat, and you hope they will keep repeating forever and ever and ever. Good luck with that. Good luck with changing parameter time frames with vol too.

Is the 5min is the sum of the 1min charts, or are the 1 min charts the servant of the 5min charts? Do you see where this is going and where the fault lies?

If a profitable system could be found through bar pattern recognition - like candle stick patterns, Im pretty sure some bright spark with a bunch of super computer power would have been through every iteration and found one by now.

The patterns repeat all the time. Significant price moves that arise out of them repeat some of the time. If I keep my profit targets larger than my stop losses, it's hard to lose over each series of N trades. There are also setups that result in tradeable price moves more than 55% of the time, in which case a narrower R:R combo can be used. Counter-trend faders often have win rates of 90%, but their losses are much larger than their winners. It really doesn't matter as long as the net result over time is positive.

As to bright sparks with supercomputers, those are the hedge funds,Goldman Sachs', etc. of the world. They don't piss around with a few lots; they move SIZE. Because they move size around, they leave footprints that little retail traders can learn to recognize and profit from.

The 1-min chart is the servant of the 5-min chart for me. No matter how juicy and delightful a pattern looks on the 1-min chart, if I haven't got a signal from the 5-min chart, no trade.

 

[Redneck]

and why its so clear to me and a few others that you cant possibly have the results you claim to.

Back in the day..., when NOD learning this craft - she asked me what was possible

I told her.., she listened


You feel like calling someone out - have at it

RN

 

[Redneck]

Everything in your environment is influential if you're a discretionary trader -- mood, hunger, endocrinology, stress, weather, tv, family...

Precisely why I have spent exponentially more on me.., than I ever have on my actual trading education/ tools


RN

 

[convexx]

Precisely why I have spent exponentially more on me.., than I ever have on my actual trading education/ tools


RN

I think it's also why deconstructive methodologies like NLP always fail.

 

[Redneck]

Yes Sir

RN

 

[convexx]

There is nothing more objective in trading than a price chart. You could state raw-data, but unless you read Braille we need to consume it visually. I hate to come-off as queerly-philosophical, but you don't need to be into TA to use charts. In fact, it's a huge hang-up.

 

[FinancialTerrrrist]

It's too simplistic. If it were true, we would all be trading from tick-charts on our hand-helds and/or trading exclusively off of the order book. My biggest PNL ever came from trading-off an internal figure of number of listed stocks above an MA. Yes, it's derivative of price, but it sure as F isn't macro and I am no technician.

Recent history is probably the biggest single influence on our trading behavior. Charts are a crude historical record of that crowd-behavior. To ignore it is suicide.

You have no idea how to distinguish, let alone be aware of, all of the inputs you perceive (consciously or subcon.) when you place a trade. Your brain is a massively-complex backprop NN with nearly infinite nodes. It's simply absurd to believe that you're "sanitized" when viewing your order-book imbalances or whatever you use. Everything in your environment is influential if you're a discretionary trader -- mood, hunger, endocrinology, stress, weather, tv, family...

Sure I agree.

There are important levels and charts are useful for that. However they are no good for saying if that level will hold next time or not. Patterns wont tell you that either. Nothing will give any certainty. Manage the trade.

 

[FinancialTerrrrist]

The patterns repeat all the time. Significant price moves that arise out of them repeat some of the time. If I keep my profit targets larger than my stop losses, it's hard to lose over each series of N trades. There are also setups that result in tradeable price moves more than 55% of the time, in which case a narrower R:R combo can be used. Counter-trend faders often have win rates of 90%, but their losses are much larger than their winners. It really doesn't matter as long as the net result over time is positive.

As to bright sparks with supercomputers, those are the hedge funds,Goldman Sachs', etc. of the world. They don't piss around with a few lots; they move SIZE. Because they move size around, they leave footprints that little retail traders can learn to recognize and profit from.

The 1-min chart is the servant of the 5-min chart for me. No matter how juicy and delightful a pattern looks on the 1-min chart, if I haven't got a signal from the 5-min chart, no trade.

No, no, and no.

Its like this....

You study the outcomes of a million coin tosses. You see, as expected, there are trends of consecutive heads and tails in the random outcomes. You notice however that if you get a run of 4 heads in a row, there is a 65% chance the next outcome is also heads.

Would you trade this?

Common sense tells us the next outcome of any coin toss is 50%. Yet your results tell you in some circumstances the result is 65% based on previous outcomes. Do you over ride an elementary fact of life because you've been fooled by randomness?

This is all your chart patterns are. Nothing more. You think youve seen something though as you want to find something. The markets you tell yourself are so more complex than a simple coin toss so you rationalise your findings that there must be other forces at work that give your result. You stick some simplifed risk and money management rules straight out of trading for dummies and off you go. Riches are just round the corner right? We both know it's wrong. So why persist?

Your quaint little picture of 'footprints' sounds nice, sweet and simple, and Im sure such a simple analogy is what helps sucker your poor followers in. It may have been true 10-15 years ago, but no longer is. Much money is spent covering your 'footprints' so they cant be seen by other algos etc. Its an arms race. Yet there in little nojodie, sitting at home, and you can see all this from a 5min/1min chart! Magic! You've just seen the face of Jesus in a Tortilla chip.

Trading isnt that easy. If it were, everyone would be at it. It cant be easy if you think about it.

You need to understand what will drive price from A to B. A repeating pattern is an illusion. You need to understand and thus be able to explain why there will be an imbalance. You are unable to do this. You have seen something, and you scramble to find an (outdated) explanation for what you see. It's back to front. You need to understand the market first in order to find a way to trade it.