Truth be told, I wasn't really taking exact SLA trades. On the one hand, you sometimes see Db post hourly charts and show SLA, then you see him post 1 min chart, and use SLA. For the most part, I think SLA has been taught with 1 min chart, and using the entry as 1 point away from the trough or crest. This I have found to often be quite late into a move. Its works great when it works, but can also chop you up when it doesn't. In the past few months, especially ever since 40D started posting in January, the emphasis started to turn to only taking trades at the extreme, so you could take SLA trades once price bounce off an extreme.
I think the AMT part though is the more critical part, and I think Db is absolutely right when he says it comes down to first finding the range. The tricky bit is when price leaves a range and re-enters... then what is one to do? He might get stopped out in the long, trying a breakout, and then get stopped out of a short, trying to take a reversal once price re-penetrates. But when you zoom out far enough, price reacting to ranges does seem to work quite well, albeit in hindsight.
Just today, as in this chart below, you see price bounce off 4452 roughly after the open, a quadruple bounce if looking at the 1 min (which was an obvious trade), and then you see it penetrate that cyan line around 4464 and turn back down. This cyan line was clearly the support level of the previous range overnight, so traders didn't want to re-enter this range.
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Now of course this is perfect analysis in hindsight. Perhaps some took the trade, some didn't, and since I'm no longer working on my journal for now, I'm not saying what I did. But this is something that could be acted upon.
But of course since Db hardly ever talks about entries, goes back and forth between 1 min and 1 hour charts, and wont commit to discussing any trades, only saying that his trades are 30 or 40 points in the green without making reference to where he first called it, we have no proof that he is able to trade any of this. But I can't argue with the fact that what he shows does have some elegance and repeatability to it. How does one profit from this in real time with money on the line? I'll be dammed if I know... but if I figure it out, you can bet I will start a journal once again and show my trades.
The SLA part is the crutch of what Db shows in my opinion. Unless you have a perfect bounce from a level, a perfect RET you can see on a 1 min chart, and instant continuation, then things get messy. But a failure or bounce from a level happens at the tick level, so if you know what to look for and can take the trade sooner... perhaps this can work. But this isn't SLA in my opinion because these trades happen without lines being broken or any significant retracements appearing on a 1 min chart. Its more AMT in this respect.