Would a Pinbar by any other name....?

Just for the record - I trade potential trend continuations after retracement - in an up trend a hammer as the final candle of a retracement is sufficiently significant to cause me to double position size. In a down trend a shooting star as the final candle of a retracement is less significant and not enough to affect position size.

Inverted hammers (up trend retracement) and hanging men (down trend retracement) have no significance.

good trading

jon
 
Speaking of trading screens on the telly, how many times do you see a candle chart in the backround?

In a previous thread I mentioned that candles, especially green and red ones taken out of context by the inexperienced can be extremely emotive. Green does not mean go or buy any more than red means danger or sell. Frequently, quite the opposite.

Good point. Not that I am against candles in any way. In fact I like them, especially side by side with a close line or a tick stream or a volume constant line.

I notice in China that red candles are up and green are down.
 
Even if a particular candle did retrospectively yield 100% positive result this is no indication for the next time one occurs. Without context the whole exercise is meaningless. Yet why do we persist with these fallacies?

Because they're shortcuts. Or seem to be. Or are claimed to be. I've said before than indicators can be very handy for scanning, e.g., look for all the stocks whose 20d XO their 50d yesterday. And once candlesticks became standard issue in charting programs, their popularity exploded, in large part because one could scan for them just as one had with other indicators.

But all that these scans can do, whether computerized or visual, is plop one into the more or less relevant part of the territory, like a parachute drop (sometimes a parachute drop at night). Once landed, one must then pull out his maps and check them against the territory, and, if he finds that they don't correspond with reality, he must dig out his pad and pencil, re-examine the territory, and start again.
 
Because they're shortcuts. Or seem to be. Or are claimed to be. I've said before than indicators can be very handy for scanning, e.g., look for all the stocks whose 20d XO their 50d yesterday. And once candlesticks became standard issue in charting programs, their popularity exploded, in large part because one could scan for them just as one had with other indicators.

But all that these scans can do, whether computerized or visual, is plop one into the more or less relevant part of the territory, like a parachute drop (sometimes a parachute drop at night). Once landed, one must then pull out his maps and check them against the territory, and, if he finds that they don't correspond with reality, he must dig out his pad and pencil, re-examine the territory, and start again.

We are sliding into the inevitable vortex of complexity with this debate about Pin bars, a debate fueled by that hoary old chesnut called perception.

I was re-reading Taleb this morning and the thrust of his mighty tome are in these five propositions, unfortunately he presents them as platitudes and thus shoots himself in the foot, after all they are only his perception of the Universe, a narrative fallacy of his own perhaps.

1. We focus on preselected elements of the seen and generalise from it to the unseen: the error of confirmation.

2. We fool ourselves with stories that cater to our Platonic thirst for distinct patterns: the narrative fallacy.

3. What we see is not necessarily all that is there: History hides Black Swans from us and gives us a mistaken idea about the odds of these events: this is the distortion of silent evidence.

4. We behave as if the Black Swan does not exist: human nature is not programmed for the Black Swan.

5. We "tunnel": that is, we focus on a few well defined sources of uncertainty, on too specific a list of Black Swans (at the expense of others which do not easily come to mind)

I could argue for and against all these points equally and that would have nothing to do with the truth of the matter. It would just mean I was good at arguing.

Sometime ago on these boards a member demonstrated that he could see 'Wot happened next' by looking at a candle chart posted by Barjon, and he did this several times in an extraordinary fashion with great accuracy if I remember correctly.

If we take the holographic view of the Universe then the future is not only one outcome but a set of probable futures and a master trader such as the afore mentioned member illustrated this perfectly by selecting the most probable outcome based on his perception of previous events.

As the Bramble's signature states;

Direct knowing, without conscious use of reasoning, can only come after extensive training and preparation

and I have a perception that this true though I don't yet know it.
 
So if one wants to make a success of "pinbars", he is more likely to do so if he gets beneath the surface to determine what is going on down there rather than perseverate on the time interval and the data provider and the charting program and the shape and length and position of the bar he thinks he sees.

A challenging post indeed. I am currently working on additional supporting factors for "pin bar" entries, including how price moves on the lower timeframes within the pinbar and S/R.
 
I'm glad you brought this up Lurker. A post with a subject matter this "deep" deserves to be kept going. If ever a topic warranted a thread it has to be "getting beneath the surface" and seeing "how the gears move and work together" whatever is above.

...when one learns how and why price moves, nearly all of this becomes irrelevant: candles, bars (time bars, tick bars, price bars, constant volume bars, range bars, etc, etc), all the hundreds of indicators (including the bars themselves). Once one breaks below the surface and sees how the gears move and work together, whatever is happening on the surface -- regardless of how pretty it is -- is extraneous and hardly a matter of curiosity.
 
Because they're shortcuts. Or seem to be. Or are claimed to be. I've said before than indicators can be very handy for scanning, e.g., look for all the stocks whose 20d XO their 50d yesterday. And once candlesticks became standard issue in charting programs, their popularity exploded, in large part because one could scan for them just as one had with other indicators.

But all that these scans can do, whether computerized or visual, is plop one into the more or less relevant part of the territory, like a parachute drop (sometimes a parachute drop at night). Once landed, one must then pull out his maps and check them against the territory, and, if he finds that they don't correspond with reality, he must dig out his pad and pencil, re-examine the territory, and start again.
I haven't seen so many macho trading metaphors since Bertie's heyday.

While the subjective comfort of a metaphor might make for easy reading and blissful slumber, it does not a trader make. Quite the opposite.

I asked the original question on this thread to see who was really awake and willing to expend energy and effort into original research into looking at something old afresh, not who was still tossing and turning, their eyes still clamped firmly closed shut against the eternal nightmare of the alternative to saying the same thing time after time with a decreasing sense of conviction and diminishing credibility.

Simply doing the same old Map-Territory thing time after time really isn’t where it’s at. You’ve borrowed this Korzybski quote and utilised in an area so remote from his original area of research that, like others before, it has become ‘accepted’ – as yet another metaphor – the irony is incredible.

You and anyone else who cares to think afresh, ditch the tired worn out, standard generic responses to this sort of enquiry, can join in with something new, innovative and useful – or at least worthy of intelligent debate - or, you can to confine yourself to imposing acceptance of dogma as more important than ground-breaking and innovative thought.
 
A challenging post indeed. I am currently working on additional supporting factors for "pin bar" entries, including how price moves on the lower timeframes within the pinbar and S/R.

1. Are you using static charts, or do you watch the bars form in real time?

2. What bar interval have you chosen as your focus?
 
A challenging post indeed. I am currently working on additional supporting factors for "pin bar" entries, including how price moves on the lower timeframes within the pinbar and S/R.

lurkerlurker,

You came very close to doing what you ought to be doing but you got distracted and misdirected. If you had confidence, determination and resolve you would be way ahead of where you are now and would ignore some (a lot) of the insufferable rhetoric being posted here by some. Good Luck...
 
1. Are you using static charts, or do you watch the bars form in real time?

2. What bar interval have you chosen as your focus?

Unfortunately static as I can't watch the screen all day. The FX charting software I use does not have a replay feature. I am using hourly bars.
 
Unfortunately static as I can't watch the screen all day. The FX charting software I use does not have a replay feature. I am using hourly bars.

What time frame did you use when you were watching the DOW play out? Wasn't that a 5-min chart?
 
Unfortunately static as I can't watch the screen all day. The FX charting software I use does not have a replay feature. I am using hourly bars.

That's not an insurmountable obstacle. When I was learning this stuff, I used static charts. A number of things became clearer when streaming charts became available, and replay enabled me to work nights and weekends, but the basics can nonetheless be learned with static charts. Note that VSATrader uses static charts.

If you want to continue, I suggest using the group.
 
Are the bars created as they would be in real time, or are they presented one by one already complete?

I've never installed it DB so cannot answer...it's way down my list of things to check out...but i'm sure some kind soul will test drive it (y)

cv
 
That's not an insurmountable obstacle. When I was learning this stuff, I used static charts. A number of things became clearer when streaming charts became available, and replay enabled me to work nights and weekends, but the basics can nonetheless be learned with static charts. Note that VSATrader uses static charts.

If you want to continue, I suggest using the group.

I've started a thread over on the PV board - I hope this is in order. I would like to continue there if possible.
 
I've never installed it DB so cannot answer...it's way down my list of things to check out...but i'm sure some kind soul will test drive it (y)

cv

Back in the day, one had to be satisfied with covering the chart with a sheet of paper and revealing the bars one by one. Hardly replay, but at least it taught one to read the chart from left to right.
 
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