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If you want to study others I think that is great. But do not copy. Do not try to emulate. Don't trade the same chart they do just because it's their chart.
Think for yourself. Find your own method, take the ideas that resonate and then build on them. Lead don't follow...
@Pauley, I'm at a very similar place to you in the whole learning path, and looked at the same areas you did. I did a lot of excel backtesting, and found most strategies were 50:50 or worse. Its an area i love to play around with, and will do more in the future but now i'm trying to find my statisical edge by looking for intra day entries on end of day charts. How would i have entered that trade to catch that move. I then identified 3 recurring patterns. I looked for these patterns in places that would have also resulted in losing trades - trying to get a rough idea of whether i'd take that trade at the hard right edge. After working through a month of data, and tracking all these trades i have some stats on what might work. The next job is to play another months worth of data bar by bar to see if i can identify these patterns 'live'. I'll then review this 2nd month by looking at the EOD chart. Which trades did I miss? Why? If the patterns are producing decent results i'll keep repeating the process til i know these patterns inside out. I should get to the point where I identify all patterns, both winners and losers. I'll later even play back prior months to see if i identify all the same trades. Or perhaps whether I have now avoided certain trades due to some filtering process that i now have after knowing these patterns inside out. Once the trade frequency and risk reward is good enough for a decent income i'll move forward. If not I'll repeat the whole process over and over again until i get the statisics and confidence i need. It's not going to be the quickest exercise in the world, but I think its probably the best way.
Sorry Ft71 for jumping in on your thread - Pauley's position resonated with me, and I felt like throwing in my 2 cents.
The two video series that I have found most helpful (and I mean orders of magnitude greater than 95% of what is out there) are FT's paid webinars and Mark Douglas' "How to Think Like a Professional Trader."
Ironically, both come in 4 parts. Watch all 8 and you will be a changed person. (Repetition suggested)
There is a fair amount of overlap between them. But that just makes it work synergisticly. It is hard to doubt both of them, and it is good to hear similar concepts from two different people who know what they are talking about.
Personally, I did the exact opposite thing, I got back to market profile.
Like @Big Mike said, "...Think for yourself. Find your own method, take the ideas that resonate and then build on them. Lead don't follow..."
Dalton way to read volume resonated far greater than the way FT uses it.
I've used FT method for many months but I could never see price areas the way I see them on a market profile chart, especially when looking at daily profiles.
I'm on the "build on them" phase, to quote Big Mike.
I'm perfecting my method.
It was 3 years walking on thin ice.
Working with many tools, feel the way they would impact on who I am.
Now I'm putting all together.
I will be forever thankful to FT71 because his videos had indeed a life change effect on me.
It's not so his method but everything else that encompasses it. The homework and the stats were indeed something priceless to see and hear about and most recently, talking about habits. Those little things we do and most of them without having a clue we do them.
Yes, life change is something that I can say about FT71.
If I become half a percent smarter each year, I'll be a genius by the time I die
To Mike, I will continue to journal and perhaps I need to re-evaluate my journal process to be more comprehensive and "tell the story" so to speak. As far as copying others, I agree whole heartedly and therein lies the balance between productive work/learning and spinning ones wheels.
To garyboy, I will look more into the master homework statistics thread you and others have mentioned. As far as jumping around is concerned, this is an interesting subject and I don't want to start a whole conversation about it but everyone says not to jump around and I believe that to be sound advice BUT the truth is that everyone jumps around for the first two years. I think it is a prerequisite and completely necessary in order to narrow down an area you want to focus on with the caveat that you will eventually pick a style that suits you. It's like starting a sculpture with an enormous block of marble, you have to chink away at it piece by piece moving from one area to another until you have a sculpture that you want. I think you could say my sculpture is still a little rough around the edges! But the basic form is there.
To futuretrader, I have not read that book and will certainly look into it. It's good to know that the professionals with all of their support and backing struggle to "do the right thing" some of the time.
To RichardHK, Thank you for the words of encouragement and all of your advice. I can certainly see the importance of order flow analysis and am working toward incorporating it into my methods. I am very familiar with Mack's work and enjoy its simplicity. Perhaps it's a bit too simple? Like Brooks on an austerity program.
To sixtyseven, Thank you for sharing your process, I agree that your method, though time consuming, is a valid and effective process for determining a strategy that you have confidence in and is statistically valid. I hope you are not overlooking the importance of context in the testing of your setups I have found myself doing that a time or two....thousand.
To bob, Thank you for the video recommendations. They are both on the list and will be viewed (with suggested repetition) shortly. I look forward to being a changed person.
I made a classic blunder. It turns out I somehow missed FT71's webinar on the "master homework statistics" thread. Though my original post is seated in realistic concerns about homework and developing edges, my response to Mike about seeing all the videos turns out to be false. For that I sincerely apologize. Is there a list of all the AMAs and webinars somewhere so that I don't continue to ramble on like an idiot under false pretenses in the future?!
Hey FT, I was wondering if you or anyone else on futures.io (formerly BMT) has an excel expectancy spreadsheet that you could upload for those of us who have trouble with excel to download?
Thank You joselopezde! It is really nice to have this list of free FT71 webinars in one place. I watched them all and found them tremendously helpful!
I also bought FT71's other four webinars on his website. They help explain his terminology a lot and fill in the holes. While I thought the free webinars were slightly better than the paid ones, I don't regret paying for his other webinars since I feel he deserves it. If anyone is serious about trading I recommend you first buy and watch his paid webinars, then watch the free ones. The paid webinars were recorded first and the free ones pickup where he left off.
After watching the webinars, if you like what you saw, I strongly recommend signing up with FT71's brokerage firm, Stage 5 Trading. I just signed up last week and I am happy with their responsiveness so far. I haven't traded with them yet, so I can't comment on their execution. Stage 5 customers have their own chat room, FT71 provides what looks like bi-weekly Stage 5 webinars, and they have a Stage 5 Trade Alert twitter account where FT71 tweets some insight as the market unfolds. I just signed up for the alerts but haven't been approved yet, so I can't comment on that. I don't plan on depending on his tweets, but it is nice to know it is there and that FT71 is involved.