Spydertrader's Jack Hershey Futures Trading Journal

[dkm]

Quote from guavaman:

...can someone explain what the 11:35 bar was. Volume levels sure make it look like a flaw to moi.

At the close of the 11:30 bar on ES we have a possible peaking volume and a close well off the high. The 11:34 bar on ym shows decreasing black vol, suggesting lateral movement. The 11:36 and 11:38 ym bars show decreasing red vol - just what you need for an FTT. By the close of the 11:35 bar on ES we have decreasing red vol and a low close, supporting the idea that the 11:30 bar on the ES was an FTT. However, the 11:35 bar does have significantly less volume, so thinking that this may be turn out to be a flaw is understandable. For this to be the case, we need increasing black and sure enough, that appears on the 11:40 ym bar. However, the 11:42 ym bar shows decreasing red (not supporting the flaw conclusion) and the 11:44 ym bar shows increasing red (invalidating the idea of a flaw). By this time, ES is showing an RTL BO on increasing red prv volume, supporting the alternative conclusion that 11:30 was indeed an FTT on ES. Ater that, we don't get follow through on the short side but the situation changes as ym bounces off its RTL at 11:48.

As part of the validate/invalidate process, it is important to note what doesn't appear, just as much as what does. In this case, we didn't get increasing black vol on ES to support the flaw conclusion.

I hope that helps.

 

[ericta]

ES_5min_07242007, 2nd

Please advice, Thank you.
PS the brutal the better. PLEASE

 

[guavaman]

Life is so sweet when I only monitor and annotate. Unfortunately not actually trying to execute the formations I annotate- where my big problem lies- doesn't really get me any closer to trading nirvana. But at the moment, life is much less stressful

 

[bundlemaker]

Quote from guavaman:

Life is so sweet when I only monitor and annotate. Unfortunately not actually trying to execute the formations I annotate- where my big problem lies- doesn't really get me any closer to trading nirvana. But at the moment, life is much less stressful

I would suggest that it gets you much, much, much closer. I think DKM will agree with this, as well as others. In time, I suspect you will come to agree.

 

[dkm]

Quote from bundlemaker:

... I think DKM will agree with this...

I most certainly do. However, there clearly must come a time when one moves on from monitoring/annotating and I would be interested to hear from others who have done so as to how they decided when this is appropriate.

 

[Bearbelly]

Quote from dkm:

I most certainly do. However, there clearly must come a time when one moves on from monitoring/annotating and I would be interested to hear from others who have done so as to how they decided when this is appropriate.

My personal opinion is that you should already be trading the forest level with cash. I fail to understand how people expect to jump into sct trading fullblown at a specified time. Point threes are a relatively safe entry. Exits are debatable but they all work to one degree or another. You have to walk before you can run.

 

[nkhoi]

the trick is train your mind to stay away from p/l and keep focus on the execution, restrict yourself to 1 wash trade a day until you get use to it, no telling how long will this take.

 

[ivob]

Quote from dkm:

I most certainly do. However, there clearly must come a time when one moves on from monitoring/annotating and I would be interested to hear from others who have done so as to how they decided when this is appropriate.

Me too.

Is it something like "you will feel it when you are ready?"

regards,
Ivo

 

[ivob]

Quote from Bearbelly:

My personal opinion is that you should already be trading the forest level with cash. I fail to understand how people expect to jump into sct trading fullblown at a specified time. Point threes are a relatively safe entry. Exits are debatable but they all work to one degree or another. You have to walk before you can run.

I agree.

All these details, even trying to spot an FTT, distract me too often from the most important thing: the channels. Today was a very good example.

regards,
Ivo

 

[ticktrade]

Quote from dkm:

I most certainly do. However, there clearly must come a time when one moves on from monitoring/annotating and I would be interested to hear from others who have done so as to how they decided when this is appropriate.

When I started this journey I was using a 300 tick chart and market delta(buy-sell vol) for trade decisions. Upon Spyders encouragement I removed everything from my charts except volume and have adhered to the journals methods. After reading some posts, especially those from DKM, I quit simming and trading with real money and just monitored. I was a liitle slow to figure this out and those that mentioned doing this were right on. I started seeing things even better. After several weeks of this I started taking trades with real money on setups that had extreme clarity to me. While I am a long way from putting this all together in SCT form, the trades I have been taking have been the correct decision almost everytime and showed profit very shortly after entry.
I look for a retrace of a retrace on every L-R traverse and find spotting the ftt's that have a sizeable move much easier. I find them after flaws and ve's but mainly the ones I trade follow a vol divergence with price, or decreasing gaussian peaks if you will. These almost always follow some form of a flaw on some fractal.
The past couple weeks I have put the buy-sell vol indicator back on and look at it only on bars that I think are stalls. It made it obvious what was going on on those high volume bars that in the past would have had me taking a counter trend trade. Only to get instantly burned. I no longer need the indicator as I can see those bars for what they are now, continuation.
This is how I have been slowly incorporating trading realtime into monitoring.
For me monitoring without any simming or trading provided a huge breakthrough. My job has been so busy lately I don't get to watch the market constantly so I have been doing a couple things different. One was using the buy-sell indicator on stalls, the other was adding a 1 min ym close only line chart to filter the intrabar noise. I use the p-v channels on it just like the bar charts. I know this is not part of the method but has helped in my situation. Now I am able to look at the screen after being away for extended periods, see where things are, and find a correct entry in a matter of minutes.
As successful as things have been lately I still feel like I am way behind as I find it difficult to use any of the other tools available to lower the resolution.
I see flaws on the 1 min ym chart that don't show up on the other fractals so I guess this is how I am seeing a finer resolution.
I plan to continue to mainly monitor and slowly incorporate trading as this has proved to create the greatest improvement in my understanding of these methods.
I welcome any comments/suggestions.