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  • #36,141
  • Dec 30, 2023 7:57pm Dec 30, 2023 7:57pm
There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Some call themselves "contrarians". They attempt to pick tops and bottoms.

Me, I am more comfortable BUYING with Buyers and SELLING with Sellers. For me, the TREND is not just my friend, it's my lover.

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Without VSA, you're playing checkers while the Smart Money plays chess.
  • #36,142
  • Edited 2:49pm Dec 31, 2023 6:17am | Edited 2:49pm
Quoting HiddenGap
There is more than one way to skin a cat. Some call themselves "contrarians". They attempt to pick tops and bottoms. Me, I am more comfortable BUYING with Buyers and SELLING with Sellers. For me, the TREND is not just my friend, it's my lover. {image} {image}
I have found even thought I have tried, that trading with the trend is a lot easier for me. It has been very hard to realise that since I trade the from Frankfurt open to one hour after London open so basically 2-3 hours a day and many times during that time is when the market makes the pullback or reverses so that means not trading.
Just out of curiosity how you define the black volume bars, the highest bar of the last 20 or something like that.
I use the pvsra template to define trend and high volume bars but I use vsa nothing from pvsra

Kind regards and happy new year to everyone
  • #36,143
  • Dec 31, 2023 10:11am Dec 31, 2023 10:11am
Quoting Frag8383
{quote} I have found even thought I have tried that trade with the trend is a lot easier for me. It has been very hard to realise that since I trade the from Frankfurt open to one hour after London open so basically 2-3 hours a day and many times during that time is when the market makes the pullback or reverses so that means not trading. Just out of curiosity how you define the black volume bars, the highest bar of the last 20 or something like that. I use the pvsra template to define trend and high volume bars but I use vsa nothing from pvsra...
I think that s ultra high vol. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2024 TO ALL
  • #36,144
  • Dec 31, 2023 11:54am Dec 31, 2023 11:54am
Quoting Frag8383
I have found even thought I have tried that trade with the trend is a lot easier for me. It has been very hard to realise that since I trade the from Frankfurt open to one hour after London open so basically 2-3 hours a day and many times during that time is when the market makes the pullback or reverses so that means not trading.
I get that.

My main point was Buying with Buyers and Selling with Sellers. It is possible to trade counter trend and still be doing just that.

For me, part(s) of the definition of trend includes:
1. Price above or below the daily open - Long above, Short below.
2. Price is above or below VWAP - Long above, Short below.
3. COT is above or below VWAP - Long above, Short below.

However, one could easily say, I want to be Buying with Buyers even during a pullback in the larger trend. Take a look below.

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The two main factors that let you know Buyers are in control are:

1. Price is above the COT line and the COT line is rising. The Commitment of Traders Line (20EMA) of price in each interval with the highest amount of volume. If the COT is rising, we can conclude that buyers are coming in and are thus willing to pay higher prices.

2. Cumulative Delta is positive. Delta is the difference between the Buyers at the Market and the Sellers at the Market. That is, the traders who are hitting the buy or sell bottom rather than placing any kind of limit or stop order. These traders just want to get in.

What I was really trying to say on the previous post is, Most traders would be better off not trying to get long at point (1) on the above chart, although it is an Ultra High volume DOWN bar with the next bar UP. Nor at the first No Supply. The better entry(ies) for a "VWAP retrace", or any trade, would be when there are multiple points of evidence that Buyers are buying. Point (2) is a DOWN bar that closes near its high on increasing volume and closes above the COT line. It is a small Shake Out. Point (3) is a DOWN bar with a narrow range on volume less than the previous two intervals. It's No Supply.

Quoting Frag8383
Just out of curiosity how you define the black volume bars, the highest bar of the last 20 or something like that. I use the pvsra template to define trend and high volume bars but I use vsa nothing from pvsra Kind regards and happy new year to everyone
I use multiple definitions for climax bars. The black bars are the highest volume in the last 12O intervals. I also use 20, 40, and 60.
Without VSA, you're playing checkers while the Smart Money plays chess.
  • #36,145
  • Jan 1, 2024 7:18pm Jan 1, 2024 7:18pm
I have a question about statistics for anyone/everyone. I'm not much of a stat person but something I've been wondering about for a couple of months.

When you look at your win rate, do you include BE trades in the total amount of trades taken?

If you are looking at your RR and wanted to figure out the minimum win rate you need to reach breakeven on your account (I.E. need a 50% win rate to BE on 1:1RR) it seems like you would have to ignore BE trades. Also BE trades don't have an impact on your account balance so seems like from a math perspective you would simplify things by removing variables that always equal 0.

So basically win + 0(BE) + loss = P/L... so why even include the BE if its always 0?

On the other hand its misleading because lets say you have a 50% win rate based on only wins and losses, you don't really have a 50% win rate if 25% of your trades are BE.
  • #36,146
  • Jan 1, 2024 11:09pm Jan 1, 2024 11:09pm
I don't think BE trades are necessary data. I view them as "trades not taken". They are neither loss nor win. They do not affect the data of wins and losses.
Fred
  • #36,147
  • Jan 1, 2024 11:10pm Jan 1, 2024 11:10pm
Its only claim to relevance is to reflect the true amount of trades taken where the total number of trades is taken into account
Fred
  • #36,148
  • Jan 2, 2024 9:22am Jan 2, 2024 9:22am
Quoting Anotan
I have a question about statistics for anyone/everyone. I'm not much of a stat person but something I've been wondering about for a couple of months. When you look at your win rate, do you include BE trades in the total amount of trades taken? If you are looking at your RR and wanted to figure out the minimum win rate you need to reach breakeven on your account (I.E. need a 50% win rate to BE on 1:1RR) it seems like you would have to ignore BE trades. Also BE trades don't have an impact on your account balance so seems like from a math perspective...
It depends if you are trading the same system or if you are trying new things

Tha maths are very simple, if you take into account break even or small loss trades into consideration.
1-Break even trades your win % will go up and your profit ratio will be reduced
2-Small loss your win% will go down and your profit factor will increase.

If you know the above is very easy to trick the metrics.

A classic example of these trick, is very common on the internet to market impressive results by mentioning the winning% being 90% or above, that is what impress people the most since everyone wants no losses and the perfect system but they neves talk about the risk reward.

So the way to do it is to average your winning trades for example 10 dollars. Anything that is on the -2 +2 range should not be considered for the ratios since it will will impact your win% and your risk reward ratio.
Even if you not consider break even trades to calculate the ratios you still need to keep track of them. If you have many trades that hit break even, you have to look into it and see if you are going to early into break even and is affecting your profits or if is ok and is protecting you and those trades would have been a full stop loss.

The reality is that if you always use the same system the break even trades should be taken into account even thought I mentioned the above. For 50 trades or lower the mentioned above will impact your ratios but when you go 100 trades + and take into account loss/winning/break even it will show the reality of how you trade.

For example if you risk 1 to make 2 and remove break even trades it will always show that you have a 1:2 risk reward when in reality that's not true since if you include break even trades now your risk reward will be 1:1.80 for example because the reality is that you are not making 2 on every trade there are trades that you are not making anything.

To end my long and boring post
If you are trading a new system and want to tried for 20/30 trades remove but take into account the break even trades
If you use always the same strategy always include the break even trades and over many trades you will have the real picture

I hope it helps
Thanks
Kind regards
  • #36,149
  • Jan 5, 2024 2:40am Jan 5, 2024 2:40am
Here is a trade for old times sake, I stopped posting trades due to there isn't really any upside to it.

Bar A - Not technically apart of the setup, put price is falling and a sudden surge of volume as price is falling. Odds are in favor of buyers.

Bar 1: Initials Sign on Strength - Potential buying, its not climatic volume but fresh new ground and a bump in volume. Also keep in mind Bar A, bar A should've caught some attention right?

Orange Line: Trend change with 2 consecutive up bars with the 2nd bar making HHs and HLs.

Bar 2: Higher timer frame confirmation - The next H1 bar closing up confirming the strength on M15.

Bar 3: Price responding to buyers - price tested out the close of bar 1 with a strong reaction with the next bar closing up on the highs as well as closing above the high of the test.

I entered right after the strong response to bar 3 just because it was getting close to the end of my day, I usually trade mid Asia till about 3 hours after London open so with price responding to strength I took it as enough to get into a trade. Also looking at the H1 chart not too hard to figure out why I exited the trade at that price.
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  • #36,150
  • Jan 16, 2024 2:53pm Jan 16, 2024 2:53pm
Quoting Anotan
Here is a trade for old times sake, I stopped posting trades due to there isn't really any upside to it. Bar A - Not technically apart of the setup, put price is falling and a sudden surge of volume as price is falling. Odds are in favor of buyers. Bar 1: Initials Sign on Strength - Potential buying
Hi Anotan

I hope you enjoyed the holidays and got lots of presents jejejejeje

I have been trying to simplify my trading. Looking around in this thread, other threads and YouTube, most people use a very simplified vsa strategy.

Mainly to look for a up/down move (in your case has to make a minimum of 5 bars high/low). Look for stopping volume on the higher timeframe, the next candle needs to confirm on the higher timeframe and then move down to lower timeframes and look for entries. So more less like you do

I understand why many people use it since is very straight forward.

What I would like to ask you is about volume. Your bar labeled 2 is the confirmation but it has higher volume than the previous bar.
What I have read from other traders is that the candle making the high/low needs to be the one with thr highest volume. if volume after that bar goes up in the confirmation or later it can mean that there are still in this case sellers around and that is why the big volume is needed to absorb sellers and the pattern is more likely to fall.

In your trade, on the 1h chart the candle labeled 2 is the confirmation candle and it has higher volume than the previous candle, please I will like your take on this.

I have seen using this set up, different variations and the most common one is that after the price makes the last high/low then on the confirmation candle the volume is higher(like on your example) or sometimes one or couple of candles after the confirmation a bigger volume comes in.

What I'm currently doing if I was trading your chart, the candle labeled 2 will not be the confirmation candle I will have to wait for next candle after 2 to see if is confirmed. As you can imagine waiting for a confirmation again makes the price move further away from the low or simply not trade the pattern like I would have done in this case. Candle labeled 2 has higher volume than the previous candle, the one after 2 has the same close so does not tell me anything and the one after that is a down bar so strength is not confirmed.

This happening to me a lot and I will like your take since the trade you posted is a perfect scenario of what I'm talking about

Thanks
Kind regards
  • #36,151
  • Edited 8:48pm Jan 16, 2024 7:53pm | Edited 8:48pm
Heya Frag!

Quoting Frag8383
{quote} Look for stopping volume on the higher timeframe...
The thing is, I don't look for stopping volume on higher time frames. When I look for higher time frame confirmation, I'm simply looking to see whether the next bar closes up or down (from a VSA perspective). I remember a few years ago having a conversation with someone on this thread, Freemind maybe? And he made a point that always stuck with me which is that strength comes in on a lower time frame and works itself up to the higher time frames. If you follow that logic, it doesn't really make sense to look for stopping volume on a higher time frame and then move down to a lower time frame.

Quoting Frag8383
{quote} What I have read from other traders is that the candle making the high/low needs to be the one with thr highest volume.
This is 100% bad logic, price can reverse just as easily on a no supply as it can on climatic volume. Now I understand how hard it is to find a no supply as the initial sign of strength, it's something that you have to train your eyes to see but looking for a no supply into fresh new ground does make it easier to spot. Look at this post here, bar 1 is a no demand into fresh new high ground, from my perspective initial sign of weakness and caused price to fall.

Quoting Frag8383
{quote} if volume after that bar goes up in the confirmation or later it can mean that there are still in this case sellers around and that is why the big volume is needed to absorb sellers and the pattern is more likely to fall.
Once again this is bad logic, do you remember reading master the markets and the analogy of the car going up the hill? The book talks about in order to go up the hill you have to push the accelerator on the car and if you aren't pushing the accelerator the car isn't going up? Once you've seen that initial sign of strength you need to see increasing volume on up bars and decreasing volume on down bars. So if you're seeing price go up on increased volume that is buyers, not sellers.

Quoting Frag8383
{quote} What I'm currently doing if I was trading your chart, the candle labeled 2 will not be the confirmation candle I will have to wait for next candle after 2 to see if is confirmed.
This isn't something I've really talked about, a few people have picked up on it but yeah my entries are usually pretty bad because of all the confirmations I look for. Its not uncommon for me to enter into a trade and sit in draw down for hours on end. In trading just like in real life, everything has a trade-off. If you want a great entry price then you're going to have less reliable setups, if you want reliable setups then you're going to have bad entries. Personally I've always like to risk big money per trade so I look for reliable setups.

Quoting Frag8383
{quote} Candle labeled 2 has higher volume than the previous candle, the one after 2 has the same close so does not tell me anything and the one after that is a down bar so strength is not confirmed. This happening to me a lot and I will like your take since the trade you posted is a perfect scenario of what I'm talking about Thanks Kind regards
So to reiterate, 99% of my analysis is done on the M15 time frame, the only thing I look for on the H1 is whether the next bar is up to confirm the initial sign of strength on M15. If it does, then I go back to M15 and look to see is price responding to strength and/or is price ignoring weakness? If I can see that price is doing one of those two things then I look for my entry.
  • #36,152
  • Jan 16, 2024 8:13pm Jan 16, 2024 8:13pm
I'm going to commit the cardinal sin of ForexFactory and I'm going to show a loss.

But the point of this is to show that by not doing VSA analysis on the higher time frame does have its disadvantages, but in my opinion sticking to a single time frame to do your vsa analysis makes life like a lot simpler.

Bar 1- Initial sign of Weakness with a high volume into fresh new ground. In hindsight this bar is pushing through the previous 2 bar reversal but it met my requirements for with the only thing to the left of the 5 previous bars were wicks. I ignore wicks and look only for bodies when it comes to fresh new ground.

Bar 2- The next H1 bar does close down even though its only slightly down. If I did the H1 analysis I could argue there is a test as well as bar 6 is a test. But doing this just makes trading more complicated.

Bar 3 - high volume pushing price back under the close of bar 1, this was a big selling point for me to short this. After that initial sign of weakness you want to see decreasing volume on up bars and increasing volume on down bars.

Bar 4 - weak reaction to the previous test bar, which is more confirmation that price isn't responding to strength.

Bar 5- bullish test like bar with the next bar closing below it. I would 100% take this trade again.

Losses always suck, but you can't avoid them. Just get comfortable with them and running at least a 2:1RR makes a huge difference. 2:1RR really does make losses trivial.
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  • #36,153
  • Jan 17, 2024 12:28am Jan 17, 2024 12:28am
Quoting Anotan
Heya Frag! {quote} The thing is, I don't look for stopping volume on higher time frames. When I look for higher time frame confirmation, I'm simply looking to see whether the next bar closes up or down (from a VSA perspective). I remember a few years ago having a conversation with someone on this thread, Freemind maybe
Hi Anotan,

really apreccited, you are always willing to help, you post explaining things is gold

Thanks a lot
Kind regards
  • #36,154
  • Jan 19, 2024 2:40pm Jan 19, 2024 2:40pm
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1. Selling climax

2. Up bar high volume, not quite ready to up yet!

3. No demand definitely not ready

4. High vol down thrust/shakeout

5. What I've been waiting for, test bar, which also made a higher low for added confluence
  • #36,155
  • Jan 25, 2024 6:44am Jan 25, 2024 6:44am
A lot of BE trades this week, and all on AJ. Monday / Tuesday I was short on AJ and yesterday was a long.

Today finally paid off though, 60 pip TP was my 2:1RR target, but with how fast price dropped I removed my TP and see if this trade can ride for a few days.

1. Initial Sign of Weakness - 2 bar reversal into fresh new ground. If you look a few bars prior to the 2 bar, there is a bullish shake out into fresh new ground but the volume was average at best. No spike in volume, no decreasing volume. It was a fools shakeout.

Orange Line- Trend change, 2 consecutive down bars with the 2nd bar making LH/LL.

2. Higher Time Frame confirmation - The next H1 bar closing down.

3. Price ignoring strength/responding to weakness - Bar 3 was a bullish test bar with the next bar a weak reaction. Bar 3-A no demand with price started sliding down.

4. Entry - I anticipated a failed test bar and took the close. I think I was eager to get in, shoulda waited for price to dip below for entry.
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  • #36,156
  • Feb 16, 2024 5:50am Feb 16, 2024 5:50am
AU short...

I came soo close to closing this chart and calling it a week because the PA looked like it was ignoring the weakness. I really was just watching a movie and casually just glancing back at the market.

1. Initial Sign of Weakness - Potential selling into fresh new high ground. You can tell there is selling on this bar with the upper wick and also look at the previous wide spread up bar into fresh high ground on high volume.

2. Higher Time Frame Confirmation - H1 chart with the next bar closing down confirming weakness on the M15.

3. Trend Change - Two consecutive down bars with the 2nd bar making a lower high and lower low.

4. Bullish two bar reversal - not great to see this with a weak back ground but at the same time it doesnt mean much if price doesn't react bullishly to it. The next bar does not even pop above the high of the 2 bar reversal.

5. Bearish two bar reversal - This is what made me want to walk away, price just barely popped below the 2 bar reversal and then pushed up. Price seemed like it was ignoring weakness. Not a good sign for sellers.

6. Price pushed up above the close of the initial sign of weakness on very low volume. To be honest I didnt even notice this until after the next bar which is a wide spread down bar.
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  • #36,157
  • Feb 22, 2024 7:22pm Feb 22, 2024 7:22pm
Quoting Anotan
AU short... I came soo close to closing this chart and calling it a week because the PA looked like it was ignoring the weakness. I really was just watching a movie and casually just glancing back at the market. 1. Initial Sign of Weakness - Potential selling into fresh new high ground. You can tell there is selling on this bar with the upper wick and also look at the previous wide spread up bar into fresh high ground on high volume. 2. Higher Time Frame Confirmation - H1 chart with the next bar closing down confirming weakness on the M15. 3. Trend...
Love to see your posts anotan
  • #36,158
  • Feb 24, 2024 5:52am Feb 24, 2024 5:52am
Quoting HiddenGap
{quote} I get that. My main point was Buying with Buyers and Selling with Sellers. It is possible to trade counter trend and still be doing just that. For me, part(s) of the definition of trend includes: 1. Price above or below the daily open - Long above, Short below. 2. Price is above or below VWAP - Long above, Short below. 3. COT is above or below VWAP - Long above, Short below. However, one could easily say, I want to be Buying with Buyers even during a pullback in the larger trend. Take a look below. {image} The two main factors that let you...
Hey HiddenGap.. How are you Man, You Came back again to VSA Wyckof from ICT ?? BTW I saw on some post.. Congratulation on your funded Account
  • #36,159
  • Feb 25, 2024 8:17pm Feb 25, 2024 8:17pm
New video from Jako that I liked where he breaks down some of the nuances when there's no follow through after a potentially ominous bar:
Inserted Video
  • #36,160
  • Mar 6, 2024 1:39am Mar 6, 2024 1:39am
Hi everyone,

I hope you are all doing well,

Quick question, when is the price to overextended to enter a trade?

Im asking this because I feel Im entering a bit late and my trades go well into profit but they are not hitting the take profit that is 1.5 so is not a massive TP that is hard to hit.

For example you can say enter on a rejection of a high volume zone like many people do here but for Hidden Gap a few post above shows a entry that is weel over the high volume bar.

So the question remains how do you avoid entering to late or chasing price

Thanks
Kind regards
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