Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
You've brought up a couple great questions, Of course, today is an exception to most trading rules, but others stand up to Ben and Mario. I always (try to) keep it simple, I rarely split out volume profiles to look at "micro" levels. There's usually a support or resistance level nearby (I'm overlooking), maybe it was "yesterday" and the market is "remembering" what happened. Trading the 14/16 tick rotations around whole numbers can generate profits again and again in a sideways moving market. Stay focused in reality, don't look for a pot of gold, and keep your risk small.
The VP is not the answer to all trading situations, for instance the range you speak of. The profile just builds and builds as the range tightens and tightens. The "3 am Tavern Trade" ,, "You have to go somewhere, 'cause you can't stay here." The question is, of all that sideways trading, who's still in the market and how are they positioned? Your question of accumulation and distribution leads down this rabbit hole. You're probably not going to like my response to this question but I believe "knowing your market" is the best "indicator" you'll ever find. I believe going into today's trade, Before, During and After Mario's comments 2 price levels where on every traders mind, Yesterday's Low and Yesterday's Low. There was (1) 1 minute bar with a burst of volume (+/- 1000) that "touched" 3253/55 (as I recall, I don't have my charts), that burst of volume told me the Bears where willing to absorb every trade thrown at them and drive price to 3209, price NEVER traded on "50 again, until after it traded on "09.
Every open trade consists of a bull and a bear, the only indication we get as to the direction of the market is the urgency in which (some of) the participants want to conduct business. I don't want to beat a dead cat here but the "Taylor" numbers are pretty darn good at telling traders the day before where price might stop and change direction. IF price traded on '09 (yesterday's low) wouldn't you assume there would be stops under that level, the Taylor numbers suggested before the Globex open anticipate a turn-a-round at 1.3194, the LOD was 1'3193,,, pretty darn close! The numbers also suggested IF a rally did materialize anticipate a turn-a-round at 1.3263, the top of the rally off the lows stopped at 1'3270, again pretty darn close. Sorry for getting a bit off topic.
Platform: "I trade, therefore, I AM!"; Theme Song: "Atomic Dog!"
Trading: EMD, 6J, ZB
Posts: 796 since Oct 2009
let's work with that premise, VP is not the answer, because it works on larger time frames best, and on smaller than 15mins the results are so skewed, as well as the expectation and fulfillment of the projections too. Half life is an expression that comes to mind. Namely, if a 15min chart projects an expected pattern fulfillment, then one would expect that the outcome would last 7 minutes or less, or occur in 7 minutes, or take 7 minutes to start happening. Either way to sunday its one of the above. Such confusion, each outcome, has its own justification points, hence the confusion.
Dust off your scalping tools and techniques, is the answer, without taking too long to lead these dead horses to water before thy croak. oops, too late!
use pure price action, and your mental ability to remember price action, combined with 2 other charts (the dome, and the T&S un-filitered). If you see flush red (heavy one way selling), or flush green (heavy one way buying) then you have the choice to join or fade. Either way, keep your stop and target close to the vest, and whatever you do, try not to enter a naked order. Be prepared to move your stop to +2 and be content with that (with slippage, you might only pay 2 commissions and BE). Be prepared to move your target and let the frothing current prices chase you, just don't play too hard to get. Here's is another rule breaker (since everything said above, violates most well disciplined rule-book-traders), have a mental "satisfaction profit number in mind" and be content with that or slightly less as a moving target.
this does lead to over trading, in that you will, yes, you will see more trades than you would normally, and they will be within your risk quotient and you just might take them, but this does work. Sim101 first, and you might not click in live101, but at least you have the Blue-print!
I just finished writing a study/ code for ThinkorSwim that plots all those crazy numbers...... all you have to do is plug in the daily number set and off she goes
Got tired of drawing them in by hand only then to somewhere five minutes later click, confirm, Delete All Drawings,,,, followed by shit, I didn't mean to do that
Before you start dreaming of huge fast profits, take a look at these 2 charts. This first chart shows price movements in the 6E 10 seconds BEFORE the release of the Non Farm Numbers. These are 1 tick charts, and YES just under the Yesterday's Low line is what ended up being the Low of the Day. This is 10 seconds of data.
This chart shows the price movement AFTER the NFP Numbers came out, the gray box highlights 1 second of trading.
There was (1) 1 minute bar with a burst of volume (+/- 1000) that "touched" 3253/55 (as I recall, I don't have my charts), that burst of volume told me the 
