When do I become enlightened in terms of price action trading?

Lol, yeah I understand latency arbitrage as well as English.

A tick can be the difference between an order triggering or one filling.

If you want to continue to think of a tick as noise, nbd.
you are implying that hft’s are trading based on tick and I’m saying they do not… you’re welcome to show me a ppm of an hft that does though
 
you said hft’s are trading based on tick and I’m telling you no they do not… you’re welcome to show me a ppm of an hft that does though

Ok, I’m not gonna repeat myself - we’ll have to agree to disagree.
 
I’d just compare your total portfolio quarter by quarter and see how well you did vs buy and hold through the period. Or get one of those trading journals.
It's not very scientific but here goes.
I took every trade I made this year and compared the price I sold at with todays price.
If I had kept every position, today I would be down just over 4% (Maybe even less as January hasn't been very nice so far)
My returns for 2021 were over 30% with my max drawdown just over 4%
 
It's not very scientific but here goes.
I took every trade I made this year and compared the price I sold at with todays price.
If I had kept every position, today I would be down just over 4% (Maybe even less as January hasn't been very nice so far)
My returns for 2021 were over 30% with my max drawdown just over 4%
That’s pretty good!
 
@longandshort, I am curious what you think about order flow concepts like volume at price, absorption/distribution, auction/Market profile, etc? Not asking if it “works”, but rather if the concepts make sense.

My understanding is that Brooks is more of a scalper (taking small profits often) which is, imho, taking advantage of the “price noise” throughout the day.
Personally, I think he overcomplicates things, maybe even on purpose.
There is a liquidity risk premia so it is possible to make money through volume analytics, but Brooks’ has not made a dollar with his methods because he’s on the wrong track, so I would avoid his approach completely. Look up liquidity provisioning, small cap risk premia (and size factor), and volume-price cointegration. Those would give you a good start to understand where volume and market profile can give you some source of excess returns. Another thing to look at is market structure and why gaps in volume or liquidity exist in the first place. Hope this helps.
 
I did read Dr Brooks first book. Out of the entire book, I found 2 concepts that help me with my trading. I will mention one of them. This is his famous bard wire pattern.

If you see this, you want to sit on your hands and not trade. The market is moving the sideways, your edge is you don't need to risk any money and you should not. Just do something else for an hour or so with your time. Take a walk.
 
This is going to be a confused and rambling post.

As I have mentioned in other posts, I am currently reading Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar.
When I first started reading this book, it was hard to read

... [snip]

It is my hope, therefore, that Edwards and Magee will produce a kind of synergy with Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar to deepen my understanding of price action.

I have no knowledge of Al Brooks, but the Amazon reviews of the book you mentioned (the single star reviews) are pretty bad. If you are clueless about what Mr. Brooks is trying to say, seems you have a lot of company.

I wouldn't spend anymore time with that book right now.
Move on to Edwards and MaGee.
It is very straightforward, and will give you "actionable" trading ideas immediately.
This book is a true classic. My copy is printed 1984, and I still flip through it.
The book is dated though. You really can't use it without some knowledge of Moving Averages and Oscillators. Stockcharts.com has a extensive documentation on these tools online.

It is my experience that people who have difficulty explaining their ideas are not totally sure what those ideas are.

Good luck to you.
 
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there are lots of opinions on this thread and i dont want to get in to any form of augment but after reading a few books and watching and following traders for a year or 2 i also wondered when i would see the light and understanding to price action. but after having a discussion with a friend i found i had a lot of knowledge but no experience, even just using a demo account and looking for the examples of price action i had learnt from all the resources and taking the trades and seeing the out comes along with evaluation of the trade and what happen after gave me more confidence and understanding of the principle and how it works.
 
You have to keep one thing in mind. What you see in the market is not anything new and it has probably been seen by most other traders too! You might have a lot of thoughts in your mind regarding it but the best you can do about it is research it on the internet. You will find more accurate answers.
 
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