Support and resistance levels work just as well in a non trending market as in a treding one but the concept of s/r is not as simple as it is made out to be. That is to say, one cannot simply buy support and sell resistance and hope to make money.
You have to have a very thorough understanding of how not only the markets work but also how the market participants trade - both the strong and the weak hands. You have to watch how the price moves at support and resistance and be able to see what is happening to be able to use it to trade profitably.
The most successful traders I know are using support and resistance only and they make more money than most of us can easily comprehend.
Interesting stuff.
In the Ian Williams course - it is very simple - it says to buy when a resistance level is broken & sell when a support level is breached. That's it. It also talks a little on MA crossovers as a sign of a trend reversal. It also tells you to use a trailing stop of a DMA that fit well on prior trends on the same instrument. As this can be 100's of points, you actually need quite a lot of $$$ to try this out if you are only risking 4% of your stake each trade.
It talks about doing this on daily charts only - no time level below that
That is all it teaches & it says you can make a living with this limited knowledge.
Now - with just this method, at the time I was trading it, about 50% of my trades broke through the S/R level & then rolled over and went in completely the opposite direction.
If you are looking at a daily chart with history going back years (which Ian teaches is just as relevant) then there's pretty much support & resistance everywhere.
So - I am not saying that S&R are irrelevant, just that blindly picking an S/R level & waiting for a breakthrough (without a retest) and ignoring volume on daily charts hasn't worked FOR ME in either live trading (admittedly only 4 months) or in the paper trading I did when I abandoned the live trading.
One thing about this course - Ian Williams never actually says he makes a living from this method, if you look at the customer comments no-one says that they have made money long term from this. Also - Ian is always pointing out that those who complain aren't taking responsibility for their own results.
I have followed his WICS posts - once a week he has a rant about the market & twice a week he posts chart analysis videos that stay there for a short period. I download these videos & when Ian says 'what will probably happen next' on a chart - it rarely does what he thinks.
This is why I believe that following S & R without any other knowledge is as good as using a dartboard. Of course - when the next major bull market comes along & everything is going up - both methodologies (dartboard & Ian Williams) will work well.
