Just posting this because I think I have had an aha moment and I wanted to put it to paper to read later and see if it still makes sense in my head lol. DB has said that "bars" don't matter, the lines are in the traders head, etc etc (paraphrasing obv). I think I get it now. None of these entities really exists. They are visible but they do not exist to the market the only thing that exists is the price of what we are trading and the people trading it. I've read this countless times and I would even say I understood it bc it makes sense but now I think I get it. One could even say that the idea of a bar could potentially even be a distraction just as if one gets too crazy with the straight lines and placing too much significance on them. What's important is the movement of price up vs the movement of price down. How far price moves, how long price moves, how fast or slow price moves, and the comparisons of the moves up and down.
In terms of being focused for the trading day while I feel as if I have been focued I still think where my focus was was still not 100%. Looking at lines, retracements etc and while trading based on those things has improved my performance and helped me to understand certain concepts it still is not trading behavior. Taking a break and retracement without the focus on trader behavior would essentially be the same as trading "patterns" such as flags, triangles, h&s patterns etc etc. Again what's important are the behaviors of traders bc these bars and patterns don't necessarily even exist (this all makes sense in my head I hope im writing it right). What really exists is the price ticker (price) and the behavior/characteristics (traders) of how it moves. The bar intervals, the lines only help in terms of adding a visual representation of what has already happened so the trader doesnt necessarily have to remember every up and down tick. The lines just help to see up vs down. An example is once price moves back 50% the bar interval helps us to quickly see price has moved back 50%. What's truly important is that price moved down 50%, how fast it got there, and how long it took to do so. How one chooses to depict all that is irrelevant.
The bars/lines help you're eye so that the past doesn't have to be memorized although remembering the activity of the ticker during the moves helps to detect a change if there is some sort of test of a prev swing or of a line break depicting a change in the stride of price. The pauses, the dead stops, the swatting away of a price are important and have meaning. If the ticker is acting like a teenager (teenager A) rolling out of bed on a monday morning slow and lethargic that means something. If the ticker is acting like a teenager jumping around, doing backflips on xmas morning (teenager B) that also means something. This is then where the lines, and bars come in. When the stride of price changes depicted by the breaking of lines does it do so like teenager A or teenager B. How the price moves, where the price moves, and why the price moves provides us information about the people behind these price movements.
I could prob ramble on about this trying to get these thoughts out there, but the last thing I'll say is regarding focus. I think once a bar prints my mind almost turns off/forgets about the past bc of the visual representation of the bar. The previous 1 min bar/series of 1 mins bars the spreads/slopes of the moves are important, at a glance to see what happened, but I think I can't turn off the fact of how these "bars" formed. Price movement is continuous so my focus must be continuous and not ease up so to speak after a 1 min period of time. If that makes sense. Once the bar prints I cant forget about the past activity of the ticker when/if traders move price back to those areas. Last example lets say price is moving up slowly, not a lot of excitability etc then price moves aggressively downward. This may be depicted but shortening of the spreads of the bars for lets say 4 or 5 bars and price moving sideways and then a longer one or two bars to the down side. If price moves back up to the area of those bars with the shorter spreads my mind hasnt really remember how those bars formed (the activity/characteristics of what happened at those prices). What I've seen when price moves back up to that type of area if price testing an area where smaller bars previous formed. If I can remember what happened at that point I will have the ability to compare then the test of that area more effectively. On the test then if price gets swatted away at that same area that has more weight then just watching the bar. Price getting swatted away at a previous price level after there being a lack of interest up shown by the activity of the ticker at that level sheds a ton of light on what traders are thinking.
Sorry to ramble and i feel like this all makes sense in my head now just not sure if i explained it right. If anyone does read all of this and has anything to add or comments they would be much appreciated.
