If You Can Draw A Straight Line (You Can Become A Successful Trader)

[barjon]

If you want to try long again, I suggest waiting until the FTSE reaches and reverses off the bottom of that hinge I posted.

Aye, that's the problem with shares - you've generally got to be in sync with the overall market unless you happen to light on a leader of the pack who heads the market charge.

 

[counter_violent]

Aye, that's the problem with shares - you've generally got to be in sync with the overall market unless you happen to light on a leader of the pack who heads the market charge.

I'm pretty sure that's an advantage not a problem

A rising tide floats most boats.

 

[barjon]

I'm pretty sure that's an advantage not a problem

A rising tide floats most boats.

well, you always were a glass half full sort of guy
I still go against the market sometimes - only half position though.

 

[dbphoenix]

Aye, that's the problem with shares - you've generally got to be in sync with the overall market unless you happen to light on a leader of the pack who heads the market charge.

The bottom-fishing chapter gets into synching with the market, sector, and group, along with finding "indicator" stocks, i.e., group leaders, as does "Stalking the Wild Equity".

 

[Morpheus Mobius]

Is it really this difficult? Market, sector, group...Kingdom, phylum, class.

Great for academics but not traders.

If you want write about trading then good, but if you want to trade, just trade. There are no tricks or treatments.

Posting chart show what happened next, what woul;d/should have done. no use to onward trader?

 

[counter_violent]

Is it really this difficult? Market, sector, group...Kingdom, phylum, class.

Great for academics but not traders.

If you want write about trading then good, but if you want to trade, just trade. There are no tricks or treatments.

Posting chart show what happened next, what woul;d/should have done. no use to onward trader?

Thank you, this post highlights perfectly why so many fail.

Drawing a few lines or popping some indicators on a chart in isolation and expecting to trade successfully is just a nonsense. The trade might work occasionally and it's possible that a run of trades may work, but you can be certain that a string of losses is just as likely. So when you put spread and costs into the equation, the overall results will be loss.

So the instrument of choice will always benefit from context, which should tilt the odds in your favour, (this is the edge).

Example, look for coordination, pay particular attention to price and time moves and time of day.

 

[barjon]

The bottom-fishing chapter gets into synching with the market, sector, and group, along with finding "indicator" stocks, i.e., group leaders, as does "Stalking the Wild Equity".

Not sure if that's a + or a -, db. Weren't you suggesting more longs should wait until FTSE gave the lead when you said "If you want to try long again, I suggest waiting until the FTSE reaches and reverses off the bottom of that hinge I posted."?

 

[dbphoenix]

Not sure if that's a + or a -, db. Weren't you suggesting more longs should wait until FTSE gave the lead when you said "If you want to try long again, I suggest waiting until the FTSE reaches and reverses off the bottom of that hinge I posted."?

I don't see a contradiction here. If the market, sector, and group are against you, expecting an individual stock to buck the trend is unreasonable.

So, yes, if the market is falling, I would at minimum look at the sector and group to see what's going on there. If they are falling as well, I'd wait until they reversed course before taking a long position. The two chapters I mentioned explained how to go about doing this for those who are unfamiliar with the principle. I'm sure you're well aware of it.

 

[barjon]

I don't see a contradiction here. If the market, sector, and group are against you, expecting an individual stock to buck the trend is unreasonable.

So, yes, if the market is falling, I would at minimum look at the sector and group to see what's going on there. If they are falling as well, I'd wait until they reversed course before taking a long position. The two chapters I mentioned explained how to go about doing this for those who are unfamiliar with the principle. I'm sure you're well aware of it.

That's a relief, we're in sync then

 

[dbphoenix]

I put this together for the fun of it as I haven't done it in so long, for the benefit of those who don't know what I'm talking about.

I used the American market, sector, and group, along with the GSK ADR as I don't know what you have available regarding sector and group charts. But the principle's the same:

Skeptics should ask themselves "why swim against the current?"

 

[counter_violent]

Thank you, this post highlights perfectly why so many fail.

Drawing a few lines or popping some indicators on a chart in isolation and expecting to trade successfully is just a nonsense. The trade might work occasionally and it's possible that a run of trades may work, but you can be certain that a string of losses is just as likely. So when you put spread and costs into the equation, the overall results will be loss.

So the instrument of choice will always benefit from context, which should tilt the odds in your favour, (this is the edge).

Example, look for coordination, pay particular attention to price and time moves and time of day.

More clues.

Coordinated turn on related instruments.
Coordinated Classic HL
Coordinated Price and Time breaks.

 

[dbphoenix]

More clues.

Coordinated turn on related instruments.
Coordinated Classic HL
Coordinated Price and Time breaks.

Is it just my imagination or do people not know this stuff anymore?

 

[counter_violent]

Is it just my imagination or do people not know this stuff anymore?

I suspect they don't. A lot of time and member turnover has taken place since we were active back in the day. Quality content diminished over time and all but dried up.

Also what hasn't helped is the global market crash from 2008, where traders, banks and anything finance related have been pilloried ever since. There are of course members who will be absorbed as we once were, but they tend to go about their searching for nuggets in a somewhat quieter fashion.

 

[dbphoenix]

I suspect they don't. A lot of time and member turnover has taken place since we were active back in the day. Quality content diminished over time and all but dried up.

Also what hasn't helped is the global market crash from 2008, where traders, banks and anything finance related have been pilloried ever since. There are of course members who will be absorbed as we once were, but they tend to go about their searching for nuggets in a somewhat quieter fashion.

I used to be insistent that those who wanted my help open and maintain journals, and in those journals they'd begin to develop trading plans (you may remember that I had a private "club" here). With rare exceptions, that was never very successful, and it took me a while (I won't say how long) to understand that virtually no one knew what the scientific method was, much less how to apply it to the testing required for a robust trading plan. This business about looking at sectors and groups is part of the same "unawareness".

But then I realized as I was putting those charts together than an entire generation has passed since AOL hung out its shingle. The millenials, with some exceptions, know nothing about any of this. Which likely accounts for the perception that indicators are not only desirable but necessary. The idea of doing without them and trading price alone is completely foreign.

This is not to say that there are none who are interested. But there aren't many. And I sometimes feel like a character in Farenheit 451.

 

[mangetout]

There are of course members who will be absorbed as we once were, but they tend to go about their searching for nuggets in a somewhat quieter fashion.

Back "a few" years ago deciding to power on a desktop machine and then sit down at a dedicated computer desk required a certain amount of commitment. (I won't mention dial-up modems, Netscape, Windows 3 or turbo buttons.)

In contrast, 'Swipe n Like' culture today - swiping one's finger across a 7" tablet from the sofa whilst being inundated with social media, not to mention 140 character limitations doesn't exactly encourage comprehensive conversation about trading methodology.

A possible partial explanation of the quietness amongst the new crowd?

Good to see you here, DBP. You're getting around a bit lately.


(Sent via my beige desktop PC with full sized qwerty keyboard)

 

[counter_violent]

Back "a few" years ago deciding to power on a desktop machine and then sit down at a dedicated computer desk required a certain amount of commitment. (I won't mention dial-up modems, Netscape, Windows 3 or turbo buttons.)

In contrast, 'Swipe n Like' culture today - swiping one's finger across a 7" tablet from the sofa whilst being inundated with social media, not to mention 140 character limitations doesn't exactly encourage comprehensive conversation about trading methodology.

A possible partial explanation of the quietness amongst the new crowd?

Good to see you here, DBP. You're getting around a bit lately.


(Sent via my beige desktop PC with full sized qwerty keyboard)

Good points well made.

 

[dgaubatz313]

Hello dbphoenix.

What would you suggest to someone wo wants to start from scratch, like a complete newbie? Things like books i should read, websites i should visit, things of this nature?

Thank you in advance. There is a lot of deception in the world but when i read your post on this thread i feel like your honest and successful. I registered just so i could ask you this

I used to be insistent that those who wanted my help open and maintain journals, and in those journals they'd begin to develop trading plans (you may remember that I had a private "club" here). With rare exceptions, that was never very successful, and it took me a while (I won't say how long) to understand that virtually no one knew what the scientific method was, much less how to apply it to the testing required for a robust trading plan. This business about looking at sectors and groups is part of the same "unawareness".

But then I realized as I was putting those charts together than an entire generation has passed since AOL hung out its shingle. The millenials, with some exceptions, know nothing about any of this. Which likely accounts for the perception that indicators are not only desirable but necessary. The idea of doing without them and trading price alone is completely foreign.

This is not to say that there are none who are interested. But there aren't many. And I sometimes feel like a character in Farenheit 451.

 

[barjon]

Yesterday's dow M5 playtime

 

[dbphoenix]

Hello dbphoenix.

What would you suggest to someone wo wants to start from scratch, like a complete newbie? Things like books i should read, websites i should visit, things of this nature?

Thank you in advance. There is a lot of deception in the world but when i read your post on this thread i feel like your honest and successful. I registered just so i could ask you this

Well, I wrote "Developing A Plan" for those who are only thinking about starting as well as those who have thought about it and want to get on with the process of cobbling together a plan.

In order to succeed at trading, you must have an edge. Your edge begins with the knowledge you gain through your research and testing that a particular market behavior offers a level of predictability that provides a consistently profitable outcome over time. Without it, one is just "playing" the market in order to have something to talk about on message boards. To get it, you have to know exactly what you're looking for and what to do with it once you've found it. This process is what the journal is all about.

The journal goes through several stages depending on where you are. Once you've decided where you want to concentrate your efforts (at this level, the journal may resemble a diary), then you begin the process of developing a system (or method, strategy, procedure, whatever you want to call it). Here the journal takes on a different character. Once you've developed a tentative/preliminary system, you begin testing/trading it, and the journal adopts a still different character.

The first step is to decide what kind of trader you want to be.

• What do you want to accomplish with your trading? Is it recreational? Supplementary income? A part-time job? Do you want to make a living at it? Even the greenest of the green knows whether or not he wants to make a living at it, trade only part time, trade for recreation, trade for the action, trade to have something to talk about with other traders (for whatever reason), trade only long enough to earn money to do or buy X.
  
  
• Do you have any idea what sort of trading is most comfortable? Long or intermediate-term trading? Short-term trading? Day-trading? Trend-trading? Scalping? (Note here that a short-term trader, for example, does not become a long-term trader just because his stop was hit and he didn't sell; a long-term trader doesn't become a short-term trader because he chickened out and sold too soon. Each of these approaches are selected deliberately and for thoroughly-considered reasons.) How patient are you? How adventurous? Are you a leader or a follower (most people think they're leaders)?

The second step is to decide what you're going to trade and when you're going to trade it.

• Have you found an instrument -- futures, stocks, ETFs, bonds, options -- that provides you with the range and volatility you require but also the safety that enables you to relax and trade in an objective and rational manner?
  
  
• Have you yet found a time (5m, hourly, daily) interval that gives you enough trading opportunities but also gives you enough time to think about what you're doing? If you want to limit your trading to the "morning", are you physically and psychologically prepared to trade all day? If not, can you shrug off whatever opportunities you may miss by limiting the amount of time you spend trading?

The third step is to develop your system.

And the rest is in the pdf below. This is also part of my book. Tim put something together as well but I don't know what his plans are for it. However, the attached may get you started.

Websites? No. Books? Other than my own, of course, about the only books I can recommend to a beginner are The General Semantics of Wall Street by John Magee (don't spend tons of money on this; try to get it from your library; you might also find a pdf of it floating around), The Nature of Risk by Justin Mamis, and How To Make Money In Stocks by Wm O'Neil (I recommend the first edition because later ones became increasingly obnoxious about pushing "Investor's Business Daily"). Avoid anything that claims to be able to tell you "how to trade". Granted mine offers a simple approach to trading price, but it is only one option among several that one has available after having gone through the process of developing a plan (one may, for example, decide after having gone through that process that his future lies with MACD divergences, in which case I'll provide him with a box lunch and my best wishes as I send him on his way). There are other things in it -- particularly the appendix on fear -- that will be useful to just about anybody.

The best teacher is the market. Study the market. If you don't know what to look at, or for, "Developing A Plan" will be useful as well as HTMMIS. If you don't understand what you're looking at, much less what to look for, you'll be susceptible to every pitch out there: the books, the courses, the dvds, the software plugins, and all the rest of it. Above all, be skeptical of everything and everybody. Only the market can be relied upon. Only the market will not lie.

Do not even think about beginning without a plan. To do so invites failure, and once that cycle begins, fear busts in and drives its hooks into your back. At that point, you've got a long, rough, and extremely difficult road ahead of you, all of which can be avoided by putting your eagerness to trade on the back burner and instead studying and practicing. As for the plan, you can put together a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable plan without spending a dime. Investing.com, for example, has free live charts that you can use to observe price movements in real time, though whether the feed is real-time or delayed isn't particularly important at this level as long as it's moving. NinjaTrader offers free replay functionality (which is not to say that I recommend NT as a broker; the onslaught of emails you'll receive are an unintended turnoff, and you may eventually decide to categorize them all as spam; even so, replay will enable you to test out your plan).

If the study and the practice are intolerable, then you will very likely fail. They won't take forever. Perhaps, with replay, only a few months. Otherwise you may go on for two or three or five years or more without even being able to do more than breakeven, if that, and perhaps that only after having blown through several accounts. A few months of study and practice are a cheap price to pay.

 

[dgaubatz313]

I'll take a look at your developing a plan book. I just got done reading the book you posted in your first post on this thread and understood maybe 80% of it. In the book you quote Richard Wyckoff a lot, i could read his book eventually.

The O'neil book you recommended though it has stocks in the title can still be useful for forex and futures, right?

I thought i could start with an hourly chart and 15 minute while paying attention to the trend in the daily and weekly and the support and resistance levels.

I am a poor person so futures is not an option right now to start with because the required account size. I heard of a site called Nadex and thought i could start there so i already deposited a little over $300 there. I'm not going to trade with real money though until i know i'm ready, and i know if i can't make money in demo i won't make money live.

Eventually i would love to make a living trading, but know that i can't do it overnight.

You mentioned falling for bad courses and stuff so i thought i'd mention that i did find good reviews on a course by Chris Capre from 2ndskiesforex where he teaches price action. Based on your response i would guess you wouldn't recommend this.

Trading seems complicated, but i imagine for people who have found the truth it is simple. I got sucked into the whole indicator thing and it wasn't doing very well so i'm glad i found this thread, because i want to start from scratch, because i feel like i know nothing.

Well, I wrote "Developing A Plan" for those who are only thinking about starting as well as those who have thought about it and want to get on with the process of cobbling together a plan.

In order to succeed at trading, you must have an edge. Your edge begins with the knowledge you gain through your research and testing that a particular market behavior offers a level of predictability that provides a consistently profitable outcome over time. Without it, one is just "playing" the market in order to have something to talk about on message boards. To get it, you have to know exactly what you're looking for and what to do with it once you've found it. This process is what the journal is all about.

The journal goes through several stages depending on where you are. Once you've decided where you want to concentrate your efforts (at this level, the journal may resemble a diary), then you begin the process of developing a system (or method, strategy, procedure, whatever you want to call it). Here the journal takes on a different character. Once you've developed a tentative/preliminary system, you begin testing/trading it, and the journal adopts a still different character.

The first step is to decide what kind of trader you want to be.

• What do you want to accomplish with your trading? Is it recreational? Supplementary income? A part-time job? Do you want to make a living at it? Even the greenest of the green knows whether or not he wants to make a living at it, trade only part time, trade for recreation, trade for the action, trade to have something to talk about with other traders (for whatever reason), trade only long enough to earn money to do or buy X.
  
  
• Do you have any idea what sort of trading is most comfortable? Long or intermediate-term trading? Short-term trading? Day-trading? Trend-trading? Scalping? (Note here that a short-term trader, for example, does not become a long-term trader just because his stop was hit and he didn't sell; a long-term trader doesn't become a short-term trader because he chickened out and sold too soon. Each of these approaches are selected deliberately and for thoroughly-considered reasons.) How patient are you? How adventurous? Are you a leader or a follower (most people think they're leaders)?

The second step is to decide what you're going to trade and when you're going to trade it.

• Have you found an instrument -- futures, stocks, ETFs, bonds, options -- that provides you with the range and volatility you require but also the safety that enables you to relax and trade in an objective and rational manner?
  
  
• Have you yet found a time (5m, hourly, daily) interval that gives you enough trading opportunities but also gives you enough time to think about what you're doing? If you want to limit your trading to the "morning", are you physically and psychologically prepared to trade all day? If not, can you shrug off whatever opportunities you may miss by limiting the amount of time you spend trading?

The third step is to develop your system.

And the rest is in the pdf below. This is also part of my book. Tim put something together as well but I don't know what his plans are for it. However, the attached may get you started.

Websites? No. Books? Other than my own, of course, about the only books I can recommend to a beginner are The General Semantics of Wall Street by John Magee (don't spend tons of money on this; try to get it from your library; you might also find a pdf of it floating around), The Nature of Risk by Justin Mamis, and How To Make Money In Stocks by Wm O'Neil (I recommend the first edition because later ones became increasingly obnoxious about pushing "Investor's Business Daily"). Avoid anything that claims to be able to tell you "how to trade". Granted mine offers a simple approach to trading price, but it is only one option among several that one has available after having gone through the process of developing a plan (one may, for example, decide after having gone through that process that his future lies with MACD divergences, in which case I'll provide him with a box lunch and my best wishes as I send him on his way). There are other things in it -- particularly the appendix on fear -- that will be useful to just about anybody.

The best teacher is the market. Study the market. If you don't know what to look at, or for, "Developing A Plan" will be useful as well as HTMMIS. If you don't understand what you're looking at, much less what to look for, you'll be susceptible to every pitch out there: the books, the courses, the dvds, the software plugins, and all the rest of it. Above all, be skeptical of everything and everybody. Only the market can be relied upon. Only the market will not lie.

Do not even think about beginning without a plan. To do so invites failure, and once that cycle begins, fear busts in and drives its hooks into your back. At that point, you've got a long, rough, and extremely difficult road ahead of you, all of which can be avoided by putting your eagerness to trade on the back burner and instead studying and practicing. As for the plan, you can put together a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable plan without spending a dime. Investing.com, for example, has free live charts that you can use to observe price movements in real time, though whether the feed is real-time or delayed isn't particularly important at this level. NinjaTrader offers free replay functionality (which is not to say that I recommend NT as a broker; the onslaught of emails you'll receive are an unintended turnoff, and you may eventually decide to categorize them all as spam; even so, replay will enable you to test out your plan).

If the study and the practice are intolerable, then you will very likely fail. They won't take forever. Perhaps, with replay, only a few months. Otherwise you may go on for two or three or five years or more without even being able to do more than breakeven, if that, and perhaps that only after having blown through several accounts. A few months of study and practice are a cheap price to pay.