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I have not pursued his method too much lately. I think some of his concepts are likely sound, but in limited testing I could not find anything that satisfied me.
I may try to incorporate some of his stuff in other projects I am working on (for example, the whole "buy pullback" principle seems to be good), but I doubt I'll ever follow his method exactly.
I use similar (discretionary) methods in crude oil futures. I don't see why implementing one or two of Volman's methods should not work for you. You have to realize that type of strategy pans out over the long term: individual wins or losses don't matter much. What matters is the cumulative effect over time and this cannot be measured in terms of a small number of trades. You will only see the results coming to fruition after many trades. As long as you are accepting of that, it is a perfectly valid way to trade. It is in fact the way that I trade.
To add some context, kevinkdog may be referring to implementing the methods for automated trading. Which, from what I understand, automating price action trading methods can be a difficult task.
But I am in the middle of reading this book and so far I like it. Very easy to read and understand. For me its doing a good job of explaining the mystery behind reading price action activity on a chart. With practice I think his setups would be useful for a beginner.
It would not matter to me if it was discretionary or rule based/automated. I'd just have to prove to myself that the methods provided a tangible edge / positive expectancy. I haven't been able to do that...yet.
edit: I'm the kind of person who tests everything, regardless of source. I believe nothing until I test and evaluate it to my satisfaction. Probably many people are satisfied with Volman's explanations in his book, without any additional need for proof. Different strokes for different folks...
It can be done. But only over a large number of trades. On the order of 100 round turns is a good start. The more you do, the more you will see the actual results start to form an expected curve.
It's like in math you have convergent series. A convergent series will approach a number or a curve, but you'll only be able to see it the more iterations you look at. (however, in math you can prove a series, but in trading there is no way to know what the curve will look like - it's entirely empirical.)
What does your "i haven't been able to do that...yet" mean exactly? That you have not had enough time to test it or despite some preliminary tests you are not convinced there is an edge to be gained with this approach?
Definitely some of both. I haven't been able to test things completely, and the preliminary tests I did run didn't show me much.
But, a lot of any discretionary method depends on context ("always take the 2nd pullback, oh except when A or B or occasionally C occurs"), and it is cumbersome to try to program all these contingencies.
So, for me the jury is still out. But that's just me.
Since Volman's method uses a predefined profit and loss, I'm assuming each of your wins is the same dollar amount, as are each of your losses. Otherwise if you could include those stats as well?....
Since I did not test exactly what Volman puts forth in his book (for example, I did not use 70 tick charts [only 6 months of that data available in Tradestation], I tested with Euro futures, not Euro forex [testing with forex gets tricky with bid data stream and limit/stop orders], I have to, in fairness to the author, refrain from showing my preliminary results.
If I ever test exactly what Volman puts forth, I will gladly share all statistics.
Like mwtzzz, I'd love to see any comprehensive test results from anyone on this method. It would save me a lot of time!
It certainly depends on how "accurately" someone is able to code a Volman-like trading strategy into tradestation. Even very minor deviatons have the potential to produce markedly different results.
I wrote him myself recently and asked whether he was a discretionary or a system trader and he said he only trades on a discretionary basis.