I was just browsing on youtube a little recently. OMG there's SO MANY people trying to sell their training. OMG they charge alot too -- like $200 a month or $1000 lifetime subscription, etc. I looked at some of their videos explaining how to trade. OMG BARF! Or they don't even show you what they really do LOL. Hey, maybe some are good, IDK, it just seems funny to me.
I see them using time bars (barf), and they use regular levels too (lame). Ugh. I could probably tell people how to be way more profitable just by looking at the standard signals that pros use -- like wait for a new low swing (a swing-low lower than the last swing-low), and then if there's a potential higher swing-low right after that last swing, then buy off of that retracement bar if it's an upbar, but best if you can ascertain that the trend is ending around there too. Like that's standard bread & butter, yet these "pros" on youtube never tell you that. They don't seem to have a clue what the trend is either. I was looking at one guy's videos and I just looked at his crappy time charts and did what he was saying to find the trend, but I did a better job than he did just by adding one little obvious thing (it was so duh), and I found better trades than he was suggesting by just using the signal I mentioned above. But this guy wants big bucks for his training knowledge. Okaaaaay. Seriously, just look for that signal I mentioned above and add that to whatever you do to ascertain the trend and it'll be a better system than what the youtube trainers do. It's best to use range bars because time bars & volume bars (or tick bars) are different sizes (the H - L of their bars are all differen't). But range bars always have the perfect amount of price movement (1 full bar-range that Closes on the H (if you're buying) or the L (if you're selling)).
What is up with time bars anyways? We're trading PRICE, not time, so we should plot charts with price bars (range bars), not time bars. It makes everything easier, but oh well, whatever, I guess people like to make things hard for themselves. And about regular levels... by the time you try to use them, all the big volume players are not using that level anymore, they've already decided to enter/exit past it or before it. So levels are always outdated. Everytime there is a new swing, everyone is changing their plans based on that swing. But if the levels are on a huge scale or there's alot of sideways movement then the levels may have some merit in that case. But hey, whatever. I know it's hard because I honestly don't know of anything that really actually works or even makes any sense, except for one indicator (that I wrote myself), and except for some basic signals (signal patterns).
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YouTube is a cesspool of what I'd consider illegal and deceptive trading "ads." Here are some example of outrageous ones - that were not hard at all to find:
As far as time based bars, it is hard for most trading software to properly backtest anything but time based bars. I never trust backtests of "exotic" bar types, as the calculations in real time are almost always different than in history.
But your point is sound - you've got to spend your time looking for ways to trade successfully, and not just rely on poor methods.
Kevin
P.S. I just saw a TV show last night about your area, and people searching for WWII balloon bombs in the forests in your area. neat stuff!
The following 7 users say Thank You to kevinkdog for this post:
Lots of snake oil salesmen.
Best to take your time, open a small account and watch live trading yourself.
Get as much information as you can for free.
Futures.io is one of the best ways to meet real traders and get good information.
Trading is a very personal thing to me.
I trade differently than most but it suits me, you should do the same.
FWIW
Rejoice in the Thunderstorms of Life . . .
Knowing it's not about Clouds or Wind. . .
But Learning to Dance in the Rain ! ! !
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LOL Yeah those (pics) are some good ones! Alot of them are shameless.
There ARE some halfway decent videos though.
I don't want to throw levels under the bus either. Trend Tracker is superior, but hey, regular levels aren't the worst thing I guess. You could run the same basic system/strategy that TT uses, with levels instead. For any given scale, use the most recent swing-high & swing-low as the levels, and those are basically your 'channel', and also run a line exactly halfway between those two levels (the middle). If the market passes that middle then it's probably going to reach the other side/level. And just enter off a basic signal like I described in my previous post (probably on a smaller signal scale -- you usually always use the same one or two scales for signals). If the market breaks out of a level, then it's 'out of range' on that scale, so you go to a larger scale (exactly 1/2 fractal scale larger), and you look at that scale to see if the market is past it's middle or not: if it is past it's middle then you should stay in/wait until the side is reached then look at the next larger scale (the same way), ..., or if it's not past it's middle then you should get out & start looking for a reversal. What I just described probably beats everything out there... save yourself $1000, $5000, whatever in training fees and try that. I look at some of the journals on this forum, and I think they should try what I just said above.
Most people don't look at multiple scales, I think that is key to determining the trend. And most people don't look at the swings -- but that's what it's all about -- that's the real data, not the bars. So get rid of the candlesticks since they literally do nothing for anyone, and get rid of the time bars... that just obfuscates the data and messes up the swings somewhat.
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This one has been driving me crazy lately as I'm seeing robot vendors push algos that use exotic bars. I bet you know exactly who I'm talking about. Hard for me to believe that they don't understand the problem with it.
I've done a bit of work on swings. Stuff like higher highs and other such price action type setups. My backtesting did not support the efficacy of such strategies. In fact, it seems to me that the higher interest in such locations just makes the market that much more random there.
- SpeculatorSeth
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Oh, the vendors I'm sure understand the problem with exotic bars - if they even traded for 1 day, they'd realize it.
But most vendors do not trade. And the people buying these robots do not know any better. So the scams live on.
In the past year or so, there have been 3 well respected, high profile trading educators who have passed away. They all had good reputations. And guess what? NONE of them even traded!!!
So if some of the "good guys" sell stuff without trading, it is easy to believe the scum educators do not trade either.
The following 6 users say Thank You to kevinkdog for this post:
Yeah backtesting on renko bars is probably a bit sketchy... renko is confusing because there's a standard way to calculate a renko bar, but NO software companies do it just right... they all calc it a little differently, but regardless, it's a little complicated... but they're still just bars so you'd think it'd work but I guess there's issues when the algo is trying to place an order in real-time, but IDK I guess if the algo waits for a bar to actually complete, then maybe it would work without a problem. It's just bars. I would assume range bars, and volume bars (or tick bars) should be backtestable without any issues.
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Renko bars are particularly problematic because they rewrite bars. Heikin-Ashi bars are the worst as they basically change the open/close price of the bar which screws up the prices the simulator takes. Any non time based bar will be problematic though.
The bar type determines when your strategy is calculated. So if you're using price or volume to determine that calculation point you're introducing a certain bias into the strategy. It tends to select for bars that only represent a few milliseconds of time. Places where you'd never get the price you want. In other words, it selects trades where the sim is less likely to be accurate to live trading. Something that you'll almost immediately notice when you run the strategy live as kevindog points out.
- SpeculatorSeth
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my thoughts are that most anyone who teaches more than one person aka a mentor is not making money consistently in the markets, but this does not mean
this entity or person is not worth watching or learning or expanding your horizons. new fresh ideas often come from the teachers who know a lot about the subject but just couldnt
apply it or do things right in the mkts to make money. it is not ever easy !! if its easy then you are doing it wrong.
I used to think teachers and you tubers were all B.S. but some of them have helped me in ways i never thought possible just by watching free stuff to get ideas and stay humble.
my advice on technical trading is to pull up a chart on your symbol or contract set it for say 3 minutes and just watch it. get into the flow of it and trade it. no indicators no averages no news nothing. just watch watch watch then trade.. watch watch watch then trade.
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IDK why anyone would use heiken-ashi bars, IMHO I can't see what the point of them is. The purpose of renko is just to eliminate alot of the bars in between the swings, so you can fit more data on the screen, and just to make it easier to look at I guess. Point & figure is the same as renko but it doesn't show any bars in between the swings.
Range bars are the same thing as renko, except that they show the overlapping bars. However most software doesn't calculate renko exactly the same as range bars (like it should), so range bars are the #1 defacto standard. Plus sometimes the overlapping bars of range charts makes a 2-bar swing, when renko only makes a 1-bar swing, and since usually everyone wants to filter out the tiny 1-bar swings, then with renko you would miss that 2-bar swing.
About time charts, if the market moves fast then a bar may be large, so if an algo is waiting for each bar to finish before doing anything, then it'll miss some fast moves. Whereas range bars are always the same size so you know your algo won't miss any fast moves. Yet lots of people still use time charts. I guess they like losing money LOL.
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