Quote from gravitonium77:
No simming or live trading icarus. I did try to start simmming, believing that trying something different might help. Upon Spyder's instructions to STOP, I did.
SInce then I've reverting to just working through as many static charts (printed out) as I can manage.
Jack Heshey, I believe, espouses NLP. I happen to have some fluency in that subject. He MUST know that one of the fundamental precepts of getting rid of learning blocks is to TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Anything different. WHen people do that here, they get ridiculed for not following the instructions.
I have been reviewing the beginning of the futures journal. I can tell you, much of the confusion today stems from the fact that some of the language has changed. I can't honeestly tell you for sure what a traverse or tree level is.
I can repeat Spyder's words, but that doesn't have me "get it". Again, the fractal nature of the market makes it so that a tree one day doesn't look like a tree the next. I have attempted to look for the similarities and dissimilarities of a what I think a traverse is, attempting to define (for me that means "gettting it") it. So far I have been unsuccessful. Any observations, comments, or instruction is welcomed; from anyone who is consistantly successful.
Thanks for the response.
I took some time to consider how I could reply that might prove helpful to you and I was stumped. I'm limiting my comments to just a couple of observations and expressing my opinions based on my experience.
First, I reviewed the beginning of your posting history and if I understand where you are now, you have applied yourself for over 6 months and currently you are working with printed out charts after having done some simulated trading. This just baffles me as to how this can be considered progress. From my viewpoint, there's no substitute for real-time monitoring and drawing lines as bars are forming. Were I you, I'd take the mindset of getting set up to trade the minimum ASAP. You said it yourself in your original post that you observed the people who "get it" that they traded early on. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
Second, I get the feeling that you relate learning to trade to some kind of course in a group-learning setting with an instructor and pupils. That's just not the case in my opinion. Take full responsibility for where you are. Utilize whatever you find helpful to you from whatever source. But YOU must package it all for yourself to make it work. How do you know if something is helpful? Only one way to know: RESULTS. You don't have any as of yet. Nor are you set up right now to get any.
Last, in your post you seem to be stuck on the semantics of terms others have made up. This seems to me a waste of energy and time. I think we are using the word "traverse" similarly, but what is a "tree"? Who cares. I don't know anything about NLP. That Jack Hershey "espouses" it maybe...really who cares. Evidently you do. But why?
My interest is in extracting $$$ from the ES. Trading is not an academic exercise. I'm like the farmer who gets his hands dirty putting in a full day of work every day. I prepare, I trade, I rest and prepare again to trade the next day.
What is your expectation from trading? Is it to extract $$$ to be used by you to enhance your life? Do you not realize how little KSE (knowledge, skill, experience) it takes to do that? Do you not realize that a bare minimum level of competence is all it takes to get the ball rolling? Not mastery, a bare minimum of competence.
This requires a choice, however, and what I say the choice is will run counter to what others say here. You have to choose between striving for "certainty" and striving for results. The adjustment for lacking certainty is not protection but washing. The irony is, once you build a level of competence not requiring certainty, obtaining results will be certain.
!!