Not at all, either of you. Let me correct a couple of points , WellsShot . I cannot be considered as a professional teacher of the Dow and you're not being rude. You are also correct in that I don't trade for a living. I trade for fun , and infrequently at that and there in lies the BIG difference. I don't have any pressure to deliver results. I trade when I have time and when I fancy. I trade as both a "gambler" and I trade for serious. I really don't know if I could ever cut it as a full time trader, having to rely on winnings to make a living. Those that do have my utmost respect.
Now then. As to calling tops and bottoms consistently.... It depends on what you are referring to. If you are referring to my daily analysis, yes it's true, but anyone can do that.If you are referring to when I post real time on the bb, yes, I get some good calls, but as you can see from today, the gambler side of me took over and I took a half trade when I should have packed up shop.
So how did I nail the top? It's down to knowing (guessing- no-one actually can know) what the Dow will do after a given set of circumstances. This knowledge or expectation can only be gained with time. In this particular case, the news drop was followed by an excellent rally. From this we can expect , for sure , a 3 peak NDs top. Well, having got the first two, the third comes after an equal period of time, give or take. The first clue of continuation was the smaller second pullback. At the expected third peak at 16:30 the ND had already broken it's expected form. From this, I took the formation to be a triangle with a target of 604. It touched that and dropped, so why not close? Take a look at the size of the pullbacks. I normally expect to see 20 odd points in a good rally. We were getting 6 -12. This tells me the bears have no balls. Just the suckers trying to guess the drop, or early sellers cashing in a panick gain.
So, having passed the ND situation and the triangle went past target what's the next likely sign of a top? It will be swift. There's no chance now of another shot at a 3 pk ND top, so I look for volume action on ES, RSI seriously overbought, ( >80) or a D/top. as it happened, we got a D/top with short divergence, so I closed. OK so it went up a couple of more points.
Now why didn't I short the top like others?
I can understand your trauma from a big loss too. There's no easy way round that because you are forced to trade to make a living. You can't make a living trading a penny a point and few have the luxury of trading £100 per point and only have to make a few points a day to make a good living. The answer for me was to reduce the stake size to a point where the fear of loss was non existent, to the point where I was able to concentrate on what was really going on, instead of how much cash I was winning or losing. From what you say, it seems you are stuck between a brick wall and a hard place. I don't have an answer for that.
I know this much. You can't trade the Dow well, just by looking at the Dow. You need outside assistance by way of ES and it's volume , or NDX as some others prefer.