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I am still learning, and really appreciate all the education that is available here on futures.io (formerly BMT). I had purchased Adam's book when it first came out and finally got a chance to listen to his webinar on futures.io (formerly BMT). He made some good points, but traders need to recognize Adam trades stocks/ETFs. Futures are different.
Some salient points on the futures market I took from his webinar are --
1. Look for the 100 day trend continuation patterns and take them.
2. Look for 5 day -20 day ATR volatility contractions and go with breakout. **Bruce Babcock went even further, and said it is ok to go with a 66% range expansion of previous day range. Bruce Babcock's book is excellent. He tested futures markets extensively before he died early from lung cancer. His work really helped me more than Adam's book and I highly recommend it. The Dow Jones-Irwin Guide To Trading Systems
If I take anything about Adam's work is that you really do need to wait for an imbalance in the market and then press your trades. That is for trend trading. So in practice, if I just wait for price to get outside VAL or VAH and then trend trade, I will make more money.
In range trading it is very simple. Draw a bracket (box) around a price range and buy or sell when price hits the lines.
THE BEST THING ABOUT ADAM GRIMES BOOK -- "Newer traders especially are drawn to focus on elements of performance psychology and positive thinking. There is an entire industry that caters to struggling traders, holding out hope that if they could just get their psychological issues resolved, money would flow into their trading accounts. However, this fails to address the core problem, which is that most traders are doing things in the market that do not work. Excellent execution, risk management, discipline, and proper psychology are all important elements of a good trading plan, but it is all futile if the trading system does not have a positive expectancy."
But, I do not agree with Adam's hypothesis on support and resistance levels. But overall, great work from Adam and thank you Mike for bringing excellent education to us.
So is the "quantitative" side of Adam's trading methodology based on the grounds of someone else's work? He's just done his own independent testing, thus drawn his own conclusions.
I could believe the premise that you might form some kind of edge around short term directional bias based on ATR compression's/ expansions. However I can't comprehend how trading a pull break to a 20 MA could yield a positive expectancy without some serious discretionary element. Am I missing something?
I am sure Adam did his own work. And from his work, he concluded the best positive expectancy comes from trading pullbacks after an impulse move.
I trade futures, and I can say I have a lot of positive expectancy trading to the intraday levels, Initial Balance, VWAP, Floor Pivots. And even more when I simply draw a bracket around price (240 min, 60 min) and trade reversals at these lines because markets range more than they trend.
Its interesting that you say that. I don't believe he states a hypothesis ... more a combination of fact and challenge.
His fact is that he's been unable to prove that any set of S&R lines are more useful than randomly placed lines. His challenge is that he welcomes any proof that he's wrong.
I rather like that as this is the scientific position ... invite disproof of the null hypothesis ... rather than religious.
Personally, fwiw, I trade supply and demand with the trend based on zones (fat lines of likely s or d) and trendlines to confirm or disconfirm likelihood of continuation. But I'm not sure I can (or maybe even want) to prove the validity of what I do.
Perhaps him and Suri Duddella from one of the other BM presentations need to be introduced. Just as Adam has found a "statistical edge" trading MA pullbacks, Suri has apparently found an edge trading geometric patterns- which are based around the magic fib S/R ratios.
I worked in the legal field for 35 years and learned that anyone can make assumptions and base whatever findings they want off those. It doesn't mean anything. They are just assumptions until the underlying data is published and confirmed. I'm not suggesting Adam is doing anything wrong or devious. Not at all. I think his work is great. But there is nothing scientific about just saying in a book or in a webinar, "I found this."
I am here to learn and certainly do not think I know more than Adam. I just think Adam may be coming from a longer term perspective than I currently have as a very short-term day trader. If I want to put an options position on, I will absolutely remember what Adam is saying. And take that into consideration. To me, it's all good.
And not being scientific myself, all I can say from my empirical experience is that I use S/R levels all the time in my trading. S/R can take all forms. A moving average. A red/green bar combination. A pivot high low. Do you know the level where your daily pivots are in the instrument you trade? I know where my daily pivots are in crude. Every day. I also watch 240 min and 60 min trend lines, among others, and want to place trades off those trend line breaks or reversals as much as I can. Other traders do too. That's why trading pivots and trend lines work. From my short term trading perspective.
* footnote: Look at how crude went to tap Globex VAH/VAL and then took off yesterday. Hum.... I think it is more important to us to know what levels the algos are trading.
While I actually agree with your premise that certain prices are more significant than others, your example is a model for a random, unscientific approach. Whereas Adam has done many studies and found no correlation, you have taken one example, said 'see, it bounced at two levels, it does work after all.' You even threw a random "algos" association in there, completely without any basis in fact, at least none that you presented.
I'll reiterate--I disagree that a randomly selected price is as good as others with a logical basis, much of the time. But your singular example is nothing more than a one- off, if presented without context, a stronger statistical backing, or at least a reason why it makes sense logically.
In short, you have taken a belief, and backed it with an example, which is statistically insignificant.
My example was from yesterday in crude. A very real world, every day trading example that the algos are tied to VAH/VAL/POC, especially the globex and previous RTH session values. Just like I see price reverse at VWAP and VWAP standard deviation bands for short term intraday moves. I am not suggesting that a price bouncing at a level creates a singular trading system. But these reversals can often cause a 100 tick move in crude. You just never know.
You probably have much more experience than I do in the markets, so I am deferring to your knowledge and experience. I was just pointing things out from my point of view. I'm not holding positions over night or building trading strategies off 100 day breaks of the Daily High. I am here to learn.