Here's another chart I look at, though it's not the one I use to trade. It's basically the same chart I use to trade but with the other moving averages Perry discussed in his seminar, displayed as bars in panels 2-5, and the Force Index displayed in panel 7. I doubt I have the Force Index configured correctly. This chart is set up to easily see the alternative entry conditions Perry discussed in the seminar.

"As a pit trader, part of what differentiated me from my competitors was my ability to tape read, and I've decided to try to focus on applying that skill to screen based trading."

Seeing your comment above makes me think you might find this of value:

Jigsaw Trading, Daytradr and Journalytix, www.jigsawtrading.com I noticed that DionysusToast is a vendor. Probably been identified as a vendor for a long time but I just noticed it and went to his website. Found a free offering of a book called "Surviving Day Trading" and read it. I found this book to be …

And my memory is Jeff Castille posted further about it in his Jeffs CCI thread and his True Stength Index thread.

Have much appreciated your various posts Jstnbrg.

16 trades today. 7 winners, 7 losers, 3 tics gross profit but $75.52 in total commissions. Net loss of $38.02. I traded way too long today, from about 7:50 AM to about 3:30 pm.

I've been bothered by two aspects of this system: the fact that the largest losses far exceed the largest profits and the fact that often when the market starts to run in one direction, I'll take an entry, make my 4 ticks, and exit the trade on what turns out to be the setup bar for the next trade, or a setup bar appears before I'm out of the trade that would project a more favorable profit target.. It's often easy to anticipate this situation. Today I tried to deal with both problems by letting my winners run when the exit bar (even the exit price on one trade!) was the entry bar (price) for the next trade. When that happened I'd move my stop down (for a short) to the level it would have been established had the second entry level been taken as an actual trade. For example at about 8:02 I got short at 1.2905. While in the trade there were three subsequent setup bars (I only count red bars for shorts as setups), I put an ellipse around the last one at 8:10. Had I been flat I would have gotten short at 1.2902, but my profit target for the trade I was in was 1.2901. I handled the situation by lowering my profit target to 1.2998 (then I modified it to 99 because 98 was a previous swing low, possibly strong support) and my stop to 1.2906. This particular trade worked out, but others like it did not. Had I just taken 4 tick profits on every opportunity until I got to my goal, I would have made either 15 or 19 ticks and been done either at 10:08 or at 10:30. Tomorrow I'll just take 4 tick profits but log how it would have gone with either methodology. Also, had I quit after 4 hours, I would have been about scratched on the day (I don't considering losing what I did to be a very bad day, but I am beat, unnecessarily).

Had I only taken 4 tick profits, my w/l ratio would have been 3 losers, 6 winners, two scratches and I would have saved $18.88 in commissions, assuming I did not stop trading until I hit my goal of 16 ticks.

A bad day and then I had to go into Chicago. I'll let the chart speak for itself. It's annotated. Based on Perry's claim of 90% winners, clearly just using the simplest setup isn't sufficient to achieve that consistency. I'm going to stick with just this set of indicators for a while anyway, I'm mostly trying to get a feel for the price action now.

I don't mean to throw you off, but I think you should trade bigger not smaller. The 4 range chart is 1 hour for the entire range of the chart, that is pretty small, you might look at a much bigger chart instead.

Mike

If you didn't see part 1 of my last webinar, trading bigger does not mean more risk. Trade smaller size or micro but bigger charts with less noise.

Mike

Big Mike 

I don't mean to throw you off, but I think you should trade bigger not smaller. The 4 range chart is 1 hour for the entire range of the chart, that is pretty small, you might look at a much bigger chart instead. Mike

Looking at the chart again, I realize I didn't post the entire thing. But I think that's not what you're talking about. On another chart I have all of Perry's moving averages, including the 8 and 10 range moving averages. I also have a time based chart I look at for context. I look at 60, 15, 5, 3 and 1 minute bars but I'm not making specific trading decisions off of that chart. I made an executive decision to start by looking at Perry's simplest setup for a little while just to get comfortable with it, and I've tried to arrange it to present the information as simply as possible. In a week or so I'll move on to

Just read your second post too. Which webinar is that?

In my mind Perry basically is looking for high percentage scalps. That style of trading fits my personality. I don't do so well if I have to wait too long, I get bored and lose focus. What remains to be seen in my mind is if his system actually accomplishes that. He made a pretty big claim in his webinar about the win percentage of the system, a percentage it's impossible for me to believe can be achieved with a system. Perry himself may be able to achieve a percentage like that (I knew a guy from the bond pit who didn't have a losing day for over two years!, his former clerk was trading in my pit and confirmed it), but that's probably more a function of Perry's tape reading skill than the system itself.

Right now, I'm mostly trying to reestablish a routine of getting up early, trading for a few hours with one specific methodology that others have had some success with, trying to understand as much about that methodology as possible, and being disciplined about keeping a journal.

Mike, thanks for the input, point taken.

The webinar series is "Where to start as a trader" and is currently set at 6 or 7 installments, where I try to just help where I can with common mistakes.

I know you have a lot of trading experience. But I do immediately see the pattern of possibly trading too small (to minimize pain/losses) and having a ton of indicators for "confirmation". I have a lot of respect for perryg, but I would advocate "simple is better" for the most part, and simply encourage you to find your own trading method.

But I would suggest trading a larger time frame and just looking at 1 or 2 bigger charts. Like if you trade a 5 minute time frame for entry, then look at a 1 hour and 1 day chart for major s/r zones and key resistance levels, trends, etc.

Of course I would advise only trading bigger charts while maintaining the same risk, of 1% or 2% per trade. Change your instrument accordingly to get reach this risk level. I covered risk briefly in part 1 of the webinar series where I was just trying to make a point about instrument selection. But risk will have its own webinar at a future date.

Mike