Yeah, but why though....?

because a chart is a graphical representation of market participants perceived value of the given instrument.

it is effectively a map of the participants views / feelings it is a window to the psychology of the traders involved. this is why no two markets are the same as they are as individual as the individuals trading them.

you have found a way of interpreting this information = profit.

personally fire and i have not always seen eye to eye in the past but i have to say i have benefitted to a great extent from him holding a mirror up to me.

i have found the insight from yourself and mr wasp very eye opening in the past and i hope in the future as well. good to see a thread that has enticed a few hidden big guns to post! lets hope it can continue....

This is the state of mind that takes a long time to arrive at.

I no longer care !

..To me caring means there is something to worry about...if all your time is spent caring about the possibility of x y z happening.....then all mental energies and efforts are negative....trying to find solutions to problems that may or may not exist in reality and everything is a potential problem that needs a solution.

Well actually this is totally necessary as part of the learning process ...to have gone down this route and to have exhausted all this negativity.....every state of price action has to have been experienced many times so that when the same action or the potential for the same action could happen again, you are fully prepared and know how to deal with it.

Using only One form of control of losses for example STOPS...is not a total solution.
There are loads of ways to combat losses and you have to experiment and be imaginative and find different creative solutions, otherwise to keep taking losses means you are still open to the negative loop.

If people have issues with what I write, I can only say One thing.....

I DON'T CARE !

Succinctly summed up Frugi, but completely wrong.

I do care, I care a lot. I know how to profit from the markets day in and day out, and as said further along, without a care in the world. A careful combination of skill, money management, risk, taking losses, running winners, knowing when to fold, hold, rape or walk from positions, that's easy. No emotional content, just bang out the trades and profit from the high W:L and decent R:R like any old business where costs are kept low and profits, huge!

Hell, I even started trading gbp/jpy with no gbp/jpy chart, just using the legs instead. Mainly just for the lulz though!

That doesn't mean I don't care. No way, not at all. I'm not trying to predict or marry my thoughts for the future, past all that, but when the process of trading for money is as natural and boring as breathing, you have to wonder...

This week in gbpjpy, we had an interesting upwards channel, after a week starting with 4 200-odd pip swings... I wonder if that is characteristic of certain CBs strength early in the week and ability to swing it such momentously up and down, and, come Wednesday, the move had changed to what seems to me, like smaller players, all with the same goal, but unable to move it so emphatically and storngly as the CB's.

Or, there is an obvious 240m and 60m supply and demand area we bounced off... Heres comes the price, heading back down...

Who decided to stop it short and make this turn in trend a Higher Low instead of a double bottom and why?
Was it just the way it went with lots of different parties all looking to buy and this time?
Did it just happen that way? or was it specifically done by 'dem Russians' to screw all those who had orders at the bottom?

Bruce Lee was quoted to say '“If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” and I couldn't agree more. Once upon a time, I had a Hull moving average system... It worked, it made money, but at that time, Socrates in particular and his disdain for 'systems' made me push on and look further. Since then, peeps like mrmarcus and kenobi have intrigued me on how to predict and see the future.

These things have spurred me on and I can see why and how and sometimes, can predict the future... why, because I know how GJ traders work, how they move it and how it moves from A to B so blatantly, which, had I not attempted to raise my game through knowledge, I would have never learnt. Back when I feared the result of every trade, it was ignorance. Now, whilst I still have losing trades, I can press the button with 1000% confidence due to this knowledge and time with excel. I won't stop either.

Every aspect of my trading has been fine tuned with countless hours of study, knowledge, trial and error, or just to question others (ATR with Grey1 time firewalker!)

True, none of this matters to make money consistently, all that takes is some well drawn lines. Is what I do some magical thing? No, its TA 101. Did I need to spend 10 years learning all this? Yes and no.

Would I be at the plateau I am, at the consistency I am, trading the 50p per trade I am (cheers Chump!) had I not asked all these questions to understand why I know what I will do, will work; nope. I won't stop either, the more I know, the better I am and besides, I love learning this stuff. If I wanted a job where I log in, click the buttons, earn a wage and then go home again, I'd get an employer.

One does not need to understand just what the Japs are thinking to profit, but in order to trade so comfortably, confidentially and truly understand the markets, and trade and profit daily, consistently, I wouldn't have done it any other way.

All comes back to the Michael Schumacher analogy (an many other similar ones).

Could you beat him if you spent a month with the same driving instructor, sans experience and knowledge and understanding? Sure, by the end of his career, he just 'drove', but would he have got there without the prior questions, thirst for knowledge, practise and understanding?

One of the most important things I learnt when I ran my journal was, discipline and unemotional trading does not come through hitting oneself over the head with a hammer every time they make a mistake to knock it into them, no, the only way to truly remove all emotional aspects, psych issues and fear is not to just prove something is consistent and 'find a way' (that may falter in 3 months time) but to understand what, why, how, who, when and then you know it will work forever as you know what it is you are then doing.

Yes, trading is and should be simplistic and easy and KISS day to day, and once understanding what's going on, you can be, but until then, IMO knowledge, is most definitely, power.

"Would I be at the plateau I am, at the consistency I am, trading the 50p per trade I am (cheers Chump!) "

I was kidding Chris ,an "Elite" member who shall of course remain anonymous assures me you are up to at least £1 pp now and rockin' 'em in the aisles.

Frugi,
I'm truly sorry ,but the gardening jobs gone ,credit crunched ,that is they now tend the lawn for tea and biscuits

The difficulty with talking about trading is what you need to know oft depends upon what you intend to do and people with different needs tend to say oh you can't do this or you can't do that because of course it is not part of their way of trading.
No bigger discussion point than stops.For a newbie a tight stop in the market is the equivalent of a a bikes stabilisers..meant to stop you hurting yourself too much when you get dumped out which you will and often..so you need them for a while at least..

Take an experienced trader playing a relatively illiquid stock would he use a tight in the market stop for entry ..he uses a tight stop he'll never stop meeting his margin calls .

As stop is actually only a means to limit risk it should go without saying that any of the many methods of limiting risk can be used depending upon what and how you trade.
If I position trade across a variety of different assets that are inversely correlated would i really use a tight stop...LOL ..absurb certainly in the usual sense of the word "tight".

Frugi,
Number of screens etc etc...nothing wrong with looking at a lot of data ,I do and I need to do,but what you are referring to is the nonsense of looking at a lot of different data screens carrying umpteen different indicators etc supposedly helping you make a decision and yet most do nothing to add to your ability to trade whatever it is you are trading.There's a world of difference between looking at relevant data and non relevant data.

Anyway there you go.