Tape reading?

Reading won’t change perception but drills do.

If you are earnest about it, start a journal, post the result of this drill and invite to comment.

The drill is called the 5x5 grid.

On a blank sheet of paper make a grid of 5 rows of 5 columns of equal vertical lines (25 in total) each that represent 1pt bars.

These 1pt bars have five horizontal ‘ticks’. One each at the high and low; three that divide each bar into 4 equal segments. Each segment represent a ‘tick’ (which for the ES is $.25).
The horizontal ticks represent a possible open and possible close at that tick.

This sheet is now a template, make copies as clean templates.

Drill 1
Begin to make a catalog of bars by drawing over this template one bar at a time.

Start on the left hand side either at the top or bottom going by rows or by columns in a logical progression to organize your result.

An example of the first bar could be, opens at the low, moves up to the high, moves down to the low and exits at the low, next bar opens at the low, moves up to the high, moves down to the low and exits one tick above the low. Next bar same open same sequence but exits two ticks from the low, etc.

There are other logical progressions by which to orient to process the drill.

By creating a limit of a 1pt bar, the drill excludes volatility for the moment so that one can discern the three parts of any bar. These parts are known as legs - basically a unidirectional graphical artifact. Observing a bar live is distinct from doing the drill. Exclude the live dynamic for now.

By viewing from the perspective of legs, the grid can be sorted so that the bars fall into three different piles otherwise known as types based on legs.

What are the three types?

How many of each type are there?


All bars start as a doji - the open and close are on the same tick.

Something happens on a bar when it transforms and adds a leg. It’s easier to see the more legs a bar has.

What is this thing that happens?


Drill 2
Add color.

Have one template colored as bars.

Have another template as candles.

By comparing and contrasting bars and candles, something is emphasized more in one than in the other.

What does each emphasize that the other does not?



Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
-Lao Tzu

I'm trying to get it, but what has it actually to do with the tape? Like I draw bars with marks about its volumes with regard to info in the tape and in such a manner I learn the patterns? Or what?
 
Thought you were out of here?

If you want to make some money, Trading and Exchanges by Harris.

Probably too thick if substance for the ahad adolescents whom know it all.
 
Thought you were out of here?

If you want to make some money, Trading and Exchanges by Harris.

Probably too thick if substance for the ahad adolescents whom know it all.

Looking at description of this book it looks like it's about general market structure and its interconnections. You mean it has the info about how to approach to understanding of tape reading?
 
I'm trying to get it, but what has it actually to do with the tape? Like I draw bars with marks about its volumes with regard to info in the tape and in such a manner I learn the patterns? Or what?


To learn a language one starts with an alphabet. Having an alphabet, then form words to build a vocabulary, then syntax, grammar, and sentence structure. Then concepts can be understood unique to that specific language. The market has untranslatable words and concepts inaccessible without doing the fundamental prerequisites.
It’s a fairly common trait in any profession.

To ‘see’ a market requires more than Nison’s candlestick catalog and looking for ‘setups’

The market is more a constant stream of opportunity that requires focus and steering to be in and to be on the ‘right’ side.

Learning how to really read a tape keeps one on the right side which for the monitoring the fastest fractal in a liquid instrument like the ES 5m with current volatility is between 30-40 trades during RTH

Market data is seamless and continuous which requires building facility and capacity to process on a discretionary level.

But if the preschool caricatures are more appealing, by all means listen to them.
 
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Looking at description of this book it looks like it's about general market structure and its interconnections. You mean it has the info about how to approach to understanding of tape reading?

To clarify, my comment was for the previous poser.

To answer your question, and using a metaphor, it’s more like understanding the basic navigation rules at sea than the specific mechanics of sailing.

One approaches the market’s as a hobby or a profession, each path will require different scales of effort as well as receiving scales of reward.
 
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Thanks for the book. But going back to our topic, I'm just want to find an approach to tape understanding, lets call it mechanics. Can you please elaborate on the "drill" or your main idea is "just learn markets"?
 
Thanks for the book. But going back to our topic, I'm just want to find an approach to tape understanding, lets call it mechanics. Can you please elaborate on the "drill" or your main idea is "just learn markets"?


I’ve done my due diligence, my posting a 5m chart snippet and write up would have limited usefulness with the current level of distinctions on the table. It’ll sound like a foreign language. It’ll also just be the chart and not what I sweep through at specific moments on my trading platform which has a DOM ladder, OTR charts and T&S streams. I don’t have market replay so the above information is encapsulated in a chart and log which I archive.

There’s a majority interpretation that reading a tape is observing the ‘games’ being played on the DOM ladder while also being aware of the actual trades in the T&S stream.

Upon closer examination, actual trades are not the primary activity on the DOM, what can be seen is the dynamic pulling and stacking of limit orders on the book, which from one perspective is the ‘feign.’ What is generally unseen is the replenishment of limit orders facing market orders on the inside spread as well as new market orders entering the top of the queue This is where an imbalance causes price to move.

What moves price is time urgency with the motivation of one of the 35ish trader types outlined by Harris whom participate in continuous dual auction regulated markets.

Each of these trader types have different levels of buying power, risk tolerance, trade horizons and frequency, etc. and thus enter the market at various events based upon distinct motivations.

A minority orientation in reading a tape distinguishes the difference in sentiment as it is expressed in what is called Dominant and non-Dominant volume. The easiest way to distinguish this is through a graphical display on a discretionary level simply due to how our physical senses process stimuli. Our eyes filter perception through beliefs through the sensing operators of space, shape and movement to derive meaning.

This is worthy of repeating, beliefs filter perception.

This is why anyone from their point of view are speaking their truth. It’s also why beliefs when first adopted as a way of efficacy to process information -simultaneously create limitations on perceiving all the information that is present.

This brings us to the utility of drills by processing market information in it’s basic granularity. The goal is to increase one’s ‘spectrum of differentiation.’ In other words, having more words to describe more perception. Drills alter perception bringing what was previously unseen into conscious awareness.

That’s the function of the first drill in identifying parts of a bar and bar types. After analyzing a single bar, bars form in specific sequences as one adds bars to form what others might call patterns, however as others are looking at price, The method is processing the independent variable that price is dependent upon. It’s one of the leading indicators of price which to the dismay of folks burdened by fossilized beliefs doesn’t exist nor is possible.

There is but one essential ‘pattern’ that governs all trends. It is composed of 3 moves of price coupled with 4 volume elements.
The market is symmetrical and this pattern repeats itself switching operating points from long to short to long to short, etc.

This can be distilling to interpreting all market information as signals of continue or that of change. It is context dependent and can be decoupled from time. By doing so, then the market operates via a repeating Order Of Events.

All observable to an astute open mind willing to think and do the work. To those with fossilized beliefs and minds everything I said sounds like gibberish and stimulates an emotional response of negativity.

To avoid the predictable braying of trolls, I recommend going into the journal section where one can keep the signal-to-noise manageable then out here in the general forum.
 
Looking at description of this book it looks like it's about general market structure and its interconnections.
It’s a good read. But outdated - marker structure has been change since book published.
 
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