Back to the Future – My Freewheeling Journal

Welcome to my universe.

"According to Darwin’s Origin of Species,
it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives;
it is not the strongest that survives;
but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust
to the changing environment in which it finds itself."

Leon C. Megginson,
Professor of Management and Marketing at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge
‘Lessons from Europe for American Business’,
Southwestern Social Science Quarterly (1963) 44(1): 3-13, at p. 4.


Rule n°1 – This is my journal and I'll do and write what I want.
Rule n°2 – Respect. For you, for me, for everyone.
Rule n°3 – Don't post charts on drugs or works of art on these pages. (LOL)

Rule n°4 - Don't forget rule n°2, please.

2010-2017
29th of September was my “birthday” in the market...
Yes, I took note of the date. It was a turning point in my life.
Some years ago, that day... I decided to try to be a trader. (Please: notice the conscious “try”)

This is what I wrote that morning on my personal journal.
(You know, I have a pile of handwritten Moleskine... and from today this digital notebook, as well.)
This is my balance of these years condensed in a few words.
I'll share it with you... …
Why? I really don't know...
maybe I'm just searching for a bit of good karma saving some pain and suffering here and there.

After these years of quest, all is here: “Act on facts and not on opinions!”
All is in this W.D. Gann's lesson!
Our minds just cannot accept the reality of the market.
We try to justify with our thoughts why Price should or shouldn’t be this way or that way,
when all we really need to do is see what the market is telling us now and act on that.

Happy birthday to me.
Good trading life to you.

My experience?
Use the Price Action alone to identify and classify Price Models and Price Behaviour.
It is a question of knowing how to understand the straightforward language that the market directly uses to speak to us.
There is no delay in comprehending these signals.
It is perfectly possible if you know how to observe the charts.
So, don’t be fooled by the many complicated trading software programs, indicators, signals, and strategies that are available.
Learn the market’s own language...
and you will have the power to identify, analyse, and trade the market true will: the Right Side and the Changing of Side.

Market tells everything.
She speaks to us... (to me of course Mother Market is a Lady...!)
Market speaks, speaks, speaks and we simply don't understand.
How to learn this (apparently) incomprehensible foreign language?

Why do we have to reinvent the wheel each and every time?
Trading has an History, Trading has Fathers Founders. Everything is in their precious books and charts samples.
A diligent student of the Markets have to, just and only, humbly go back to the roots.
Knock to doors of the Greats, listen and understand. Only then he could build his future.

My Personal Mental Road Map.

Price and Markets are not random.
Market is a “Complex System” that comprises several actors and participants.

Complex systems are systems whose behaviour is intrinsically difficult to model
due to the dependencies, relationships, or interactions between their parts or between a given system and its environment.
Systems that are complex have distinct properties that arise from these relationships,
such as non-linearity, emergence, spontaneous order, adaptation, and feedback loops, among others. (from Wikipedia)

Markets have their owners.
Owners have vested interest, aims and objectives.... and they have tactics and strategies to obtain them.
Markets respect profound laws.
Markets have a deep logic.
On the battlefield we face Bulls Campaigns and Bears Campaigns.
“Campaign” is a term that has a particular and specific significance.

Price and Markets are not completely unpredictable.
Just like water, the Price will take “the Path of Least Resistance” between different Clouds of Orders.
We could perfectly guesstimate where the possible Clouds of Orders of the different participants could be.
We have a main direction and a series of precise “Time Windows”, precise “Levels of Interest”
where seasoned and expert traders surely have an edge, even if they don't see the Orders' Flow!

On the battlefield there are no constant conditions.
The relative, comparative Force can mutate at each new trench during the eternal fight between Bulls and Bears.
So.
Question is the UNCERTAINTY on the result, not the ANTICIPATION/EXPECTATION of SOME SPECIFIC reactions and behaviours.

On the other side, what we could perfectly predict are:
1) the emotions that the traders have, facing the (apparently to them) unpredictable price, and
2) the traders' decisions taken on the basis of those emotions.
And these two “categories” are ALWAYS the same.
(As I demonstrated on Traders' Academy thanks to cat's hospitality)


This intro is in pure Wyckoff's style: the man (journalist, broker and trader) who studied in depth Livermore, Gann and Keene.
You don't see anything of your interest in what I wrote?
Turn the page and go to play with your fancy indicators.

My view on DAX, this morning.

Same reasonaments and warnings as in this post.
Let the Trend be your friend.
Don't fight the Tape.
Be water in the water. Don't think and just follow the Flow.

"It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid." - Charlie Munger.
(Warren Buffet's business partner )

Disputable or indisputable,
subjective or objective,
assumption or verification,
interpretation or reality...

We surely act on “bias”...
but – if we want to survive on the market - we must adapt on “verification”.
Obey is the verb. Imperative.

Whether asked whether the market was going up or down, the late J.P. Morgan replied: “Young man, I think the market is going to fluctuate."
(R. Wyckoff - Stock Market Technique Number One )

So... Take a pen and a piece of paper and write down The Question (capital letters): “How to profit from oscillations?”

Each and every morning, my trading day starts well before the Frankfurt Opening.
I have the habit to use the first hours of the day for some reading, re-reading and review of my charts.
I prefer to do that with a fresh and active mind.
This “forced meditation” prepares my Ego to the new challenge that I am going to face on markets.

Last Friday I was just re-reading a Gann's page...
Something “clicked” in me.
Bulb lamp.
A-ah moment. “I have already seen that one! I'm sure!”
And I brought out an old “live trading” chart of my mentor and teacher fti, and...

...it took me 7 years of trading to get enough experience and summed, cumulated, adequate knowledge to understand both of them:
Mr. Gann's theoretical lesson and my mentor's perfect, brilliant and spectacular execution!

Gann was clear and technical in the description of the Retracement Dynamics.
fti was simply amazing in trading it.
Scale in, scale out. Unbelievable control in defence and in attack, dancing inside the fluctuations.
Dancing the “Price Dance”. At its tempo. Perfectly responding to its oscillations.
Simply following and flowing. Flexible. Never rigid and fixed.
And I could – at last, after years of pain – see, feel and understand each passage and each shade of my mentor's thoughts in that trade.
Candle by candle, action and reaction.

I had to share this episode.
But I'm not going to show you that technique... LOL
Don't worry. I told you almost all... if you want to listen.
I'll keep some of my discoveries just for me. OK?

Instead I'll reveal you another secret I'm discovering everyday.
That is: “Never stop studying. Love and cultivate your formation.”

Yes. The learning process is longer than you can imagine... and is made by subtle and continuous “overlayers” and “refinements”.
Acquisition and internalisation lead you to a new base from which to start again, and again...
Keep studying with the enthusiasm of this certainty: it's your PERSONAL and individual growth.
Do not trade on guesswork and, please, never gamble on hope.
Remember of the 4 impostors/enemies: fear, greed, hope, ignorance.
They can be beaten by knowledge.
Knowledge is the power, knowledge is the key.
Time spent in study is money in the bank as in all intellectual professions.

Sure, you must know what is worth studying and what not... garbage in, garbage out!

As far as I am concern, considering the result in my understanding... I daresay I got a good goal!
I borrow Livermore's words...
“...from then on I never deviate from those points. I make no exceptions.
Nor do I make excuses, if the results are not exactly as I anticipated.”

Seven years are too much? Am I particularly dumb? May be.
Tell me.
How many years are required to learn to play an instrument at concert level?
… and to be able to cross an ocean on a sailing boat?
… to become a Lawyer?
… to be able to play chess like a Grandmaster?
Do you think that playing with (or against...) the Wall Street Boys and the HFT Machines is easier or less complicated?
Why 90-95% of us are then stupid losers?

One day I was really, really, really tired of my losses. My pain and humiliation were becoming to be unbearable.
So I started my journey toward developing a better approach to market comprehension and analysis.
I discovered Forex Factory... and I bumped into feb2865 and then, from there, I found fti.
Got a certain impression of their attitude and work.
And I started my research, My Own Holy Quest..., of an antidote against arbitrary opinions and subjective decisions.
I wanted to find a way that would let me hear the market telling me which direction it/she/he was going to take.
I knew, I felt, I saw that everything one needs was on charts.
I wanted to find a way to discover the proper Market's voice.
And I started my journey: Livermore, Gann and Wyckoff.

2,649 pages.
This is the dimension of my Gann's Archive now... after 5 years of intense study.
Original, personal, autographed.
Books, papers, writings.
And no one on Astro-bullshit.
Gann was simply the Master of Swing Trading.
I almost killed myself reading all that and writing my notes and practising and re-reading... and so on!
They had been years of “blood, sweat & tears”, plus some yelling and a lot of punches on my desk.
(Actually I broke one desk and one keyboard! Really! I'm not joking... ask my wife.)

Now...
Did I claim that I understood everything? Not for sure.
Have I found the “Crystal Ball”? No, it doesn't exist!
But someone see something more than the others!
Price and Markets are not random and they are “not completely” unpredictable.
Did I became the greatest champion of all? I am not interested in this sort of things.
Am I trading better? Oh, yeah! No doubts at all.
I demonstrated it finding the courage to trade live in front of fti, in person, and had his speficic judgement on my MO.
And I continue to demonstrate it every day, here on FF. Trading Live.

OK.
Let's try to put together some pieces of the puzzle.
But it needs and takes time and patience and dedication.
And do not expect predictions or crystal ball type analyses on these pages.
You will find just and only thousands of hours of hard work and humble study, here.

It is always a question of interpretation... LOL. ROFL.

To get high.
> use any mood elevating (often illicit)

To elevate
> To move (something) to a higher place or position from a lower one;lift.
> To raise to a higher moral, cultural, or intellectual level:
> To lift the spirits of; elate.

How to determine some strong “pillars” on which to build a “successful mindset/attitude”?
Let's try to start reading Sun Tzu – The Art of War.
OK. I'll tell you... I love this thing of the Western and Eastern fusion in the particular way fti tried his teaching.
So I propose you the way I got it.
How to study? What to study?
Block by block!... Program your mind with the proper “software”.

1-3
“The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors,
to be taken into account in one's deliberations,
when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.”
1-4
“These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.”

My interpretation.
The Trading Strategy/Approach/Envision must be planned through five elements
and continuously corrected by the appropriate “calculations”.
The five factors are:
the Way, the Tao, the Moral Law (harmony with the course of events, the correct direction inside the flow),
Heaven (variability, unpredictability),
Earth (environment, data objective, charts and terrain),
the Command (choice, decision, mindset)
the Organization (optimal use of the resources).

If you are not ready and well prepared,
if something is missing in your comprehension of this 5 factors (from Trend Analysis to the Money Management)
simply don't start to trade.
It is completely useless. It will be a disaster.
As Sun Tzu teaches, this point is:“... of vital importance...
It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.
Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”

You must understand what “Preplanned sequences plus Extemporaneous Responses” signifies.
In this ever changing environment this is paramount.

Here. Food for our mind. This was posted by dongsky some years ago.
Not a bad read. Get the message. Do your own researches...
Activate your brain and your soul. Search your path.

You have so much in you that needs to be shared well done sir! now let the dance begin...

Here we are, my dear friend.
My home is your home.

I'm working on a second block of "stupid bull.....t".

here's my take on british pounds...

left over positions from last thursday after scaling out

GU
Next level of interest. 1.3125
A large area of "Changing of Polarity".
Support becomes Resistance and vice versa.

GBP is still very much bullish... i believe best is to buy into every dip

GU
H1 turned to Up.
A natural retest is possible.
1.3100 ema9 H1.
Support 1.31058 up to 1.31038. We'll see.

(Yes... I use Moving Averages... but "My Way" I'm not a slave of them!)

The analysis of this sort of skirmish between Highs and Lows is paramount.
We are in Uptrend. Lows are more important.

But you have to judge and understand whether that LH is coming from Bears Attack os Bears Surprise/Defense.

m1 attached

No need to over analyse, watch, feel her pulse and participate... then watch and feel... watch and feel most traders will be defeated by the boredom of loneliness.

rigidity kills!

this is what i do when i start to get bored...

i ripped the old dead grass and replaced with new ones... not even near the professionals workmanship but to me its good enough