Agreed. Wycoff is pretty clear. But my point is he isn't the ONLY expert on tape reading in those early years. Therefore, his method is certainly not the ONLY way of reading the tape.Quote from Mike805:
I think we are arguing semantics here.
wyckoff is pretty clear in his definition. Tape reading seeks to exploit short term inefficiencies. This is all I am basing my point from. Note his stuff is from the 20's and 30's.
Mike
Quote from pinabetal:
You are absolutely 100% wrong if you think tape reading is an intraday strategy ONLY. The facts are it CAN be applied to daily even weekly or monthly. Tape reading can but does not have to only seek to capture quarters..50 or just a point or two. And it certainly doesn't have to be just short-term. You my friend are very wrong. Classical tape reading involved intraday interpretation of the markets as prices went down or up but it also was used on a daily even weekly basis.
I quote Gann in the Truth of the Stock Market Tape "The best way to read the tape correctly is to stay away from it" "Therefore the correct way to read the tape is to keep up a chart showing moves of three days to one week and the amount of volume. Of course, you must consider the total outstanding stock and the floating supply. Again I emphasize the correct way to read the tape and interpret it accurately is to stay away from it".
Traders who are always looking at the screen tracking every transaction as they try to trade every minor fluctuation usually don't see the larger trend and miss out on the bigger money. If you look at a painting and focus only on the details you will miss the overall beauty, and overall form of the picture.
The more one focuses on the minor fluctuations the less one will see the true supply/demand in the larger trend.
Linda Bradford Raschke once said : "Tape reading is not watching every trade that passes by (a monotonous task) but rather keeping an eye out for unusual impulsive action, unusual volume, or just observing the way price trades at significant levels." "Tape Reading is the art of swing trading". (Drokes book).
Did you get that? The art of SWING trading!
So, there is more than one way to read the tape. Sure it can be done intraday but also daily..weekly..
I think it was you who mentioned books first! Wycoff to my recollection. So, maybe you should quit reading wycoff and start trading. It is VERY apparent YOU don't have an understanding of tape reading. You are stuck on just wycoff's definition. Is he your guru or what? In case you don't know there were alot of other tape readers besides Mr. Wycoff. And tape reading goes beyond what he said it was. Sure the specialst paint a false picture. So do the MM's on the Naz. But on either quick trades can be made.Quote from Hydroblunt:
Hey before you make yourself out to be an expert, you may want to stop quoting books and actually getting down to trade. Because it is very apparent you do not have an understanding of tape reading for the professional full time daytrader and also a bit apparent that you do not really trade besides your occasional odd lot swings in your Ameritrade account.
The chart and the tape are not the same thing, the chart comes after the fact of what is actually happening on the tape. If you had any real successful experience with NYSE stocks you would know that in at least half the scenarios the specialist purposely paints a false chart signals just to get the chart only traders out. A good reader of the NYSE tape will actually recognize the fake out and take the correct trade, which could either be an intraday swing or just a quick 5 second trade.
A lot harder to do on Naz, when instead of the readable human tendencies you have very fragmented order flow and auto progs flipping around 100 share lots back and forth. They don't call it Nazcrack for nothing.
Quote from Hydroblunt:
I sense you do not really know what you're talking about. I do not think you even understand what the tape means and what Livermore meant when he started to recognize the bucket shop scam through the tape. I suggest you re-read the first few chapters of ROS to understand the type of tape reading most NYSE day traders do (or at least try to).
The NYSE tape and Nasdaq Time & Sales are quite different. The reason you would want Level II is to see the MMIDs so that you can try to pick up which one may moving the stock.
But hey you sound like the standard ET super multi millionaire trader. I dunno why you're asking Steve for some calls on ACI, you should just go and make a killing on it since you seem to be such an expert on the tape.