james16 Chart Thread

wow! had to check on the date ...lol
was actually going thru some of your posts over the weekend and when i refreshed the current J16 page...I was confused when I saw ur latestt post....thought I was loosing it.
please do post more....pretty please
and if u r planning any mentoring soon.....lol (ill definately sign up)

hope u r here to stay DS
EDIT: just like ikki & jigsaw ,

Here's the thing: you are chasing shadows.

'Market inefficiency' isnt something you are spotting on your USDCHF chart. It isnt something you are going to read about on an internet forum. Why? Well, assuming you know basic finance theory - EMH, sharpe, CAPM/APT, etc - then you should be able to figure it out.

And if not, how do you even know what you are looking for?

When Mike said that there is never enough liquidity, he gave you the answer to the problem. Honestly. It is all in that post.

Uuniversities, colleges and business schools have the smartest people in finance studying market efficiency. All day, every day. And I mean actual market study, not reading forums or retail books.

Banks and hedge funds pay people with pure math and applied statistics doctorates many millions of dollars to find exploitable inefficiencies, and they exploit them until the market closes them.

And then you have the brokers and interbank players, who your orders actually get sent to. You are going to somehow beat them to the market?

This is the core of the problem - the 'market' isnt just the bars on your screen, or the orders behind them. It is these people you are competing against. So while you are searching for market inefficiencies on the internet, these guys have found it, figured out how to exploit it and arbitraged it into the ground.

It's the very nature of an efficient market that any explotable inefficiencies will quickly vanish. And by the time you hear about it, it is long dead.

Look at the list of thing that dont work anymore - off the top of my head: seasonality, 'the January Effect', dividend stripping, mon/fri, cross-listing arb, the whole 'Turtle' system that retail traders love to get hyped up over, and a whole ton more that I am too tired to think of.

You, the retail trader, are very unlikely to ever discover an exploitable inefficiency. You lack information that everyone else has, you have to deal with retail brokerage spreads, and you are trying to get your order in faster than people with hundreds of millions worth of IT equipment. Look at the HFT programs of some of the big investos - you really think you are outtrading that with MT4 on your laptop and your adsl line?

At best, you might find a loophole in a dodgy brokers software that they will close, and quite possibly reverse your trades.

I'm not saying it cant be done - look at the SOES guys, they made a killing. But that was a one in a million, and was quickly closed. Without inside information and an inside view of how the market really works, it just isnt gonna happen. Sorry. But it wont. Neither you nor I trade anywhere near enough money to get that inside information.

I honestly think your time would be better spent reading what a big guy from texas is trying to teach. It is a thousand times more valuable than anything else you will read.

And that is the key here. We arent trying to outsmart the market. We arent trying to outtrade the market. We arent even trying to predict the market. We dont need to. All we are doing is looking at a chart, trying to determine what the market is doing, and piggybacking onto it. Combine it with some self discipline and good money management, and that's all we have to do to make alot of money.

I'm all for people learning more about what they are trading - hell, I would never throw my money away betting on something I dont understand (and make no mistake about it, betting is what we do here). But so many people seem to think that 'order flow' is some kind of magic trading bullet. And it isnt. It's a great way to understand why the market is doing what it is doing, sometimes. But, with the resources you have, you arent going to profit from it.

Stock traders have had L2 info for years. And they still, at least the bottom 85%, suck at life.

Anyways, this wasnt meant to sound harsh, you seem like a nice guy and I'm just trying to help you avoid walking down a path that will only end in frustration. But I honestly think there are alot of people here spending alot of time studying something they dont understand to try and find something that doesnt exist that they couldnt profitably exploit even if they found it.

hey joel

just saw your post and thanks for your inputs and for your time writing this post.

I have actually a few pages to read of this thread and I'm finishing reading the hole thred.
I know I messed up with this stuff, sorry guys but I'm such a noob, my all forex experience come from no more than 6 months.

the more I read through this thread the more I bealive in Jame's words.
and about the james requirement from post nr 1 I think this is "to outsmart the market".


ps: as more as I read through the FF I have the feeling that a majority of the people who really are successful are ex student from james class. In the near future I'm planning to join the PF, but in the meanwhile I'll study hard(for eg yestarday cost me 11 hours,
and in average 8-10 hour/day)

Hey, no need to apologise. We are all here to learn. And we all get carried away in the details sometimes, trust me


Everything you need to be a profitable trader is in this thread. Seriously. It's mindblowing how much valuable time and info Jim and the senior guys have given away here, for absolutely nothing.

And with a work ethic like that, I suspect you are going to do very well at this game

Darkstar in the house??!
too bad i was about 14hrs late from his live post.

God bless, Sir! & post more...
(we are blessed Sir mbqb11 sort of 'summoned' him via that provocative post)

Really good post

GBPAUD close to a long term PPZ going back to 95.
Waiting for PA on daily, don't quite see any yet.
I guess these long term PPZ situations can probably take a while to
play out.

Trig -

As sure as the sun rises tomorrow morning, someone is not going to like this response.

That much time is not helping.
Working hard is a good thing of course. Work smart is far better.

Tell me - how hard is it to:

Draw a PPZ?
See a PA bar that is bigger than the preceding bars?
Draw a fib and measure a retrace to 50 - 61 percent?
See that the PA is formed at a PPZ along with some sort of confluence? (Divergence, round number, fib)
Notice that it is at an extreme or at least a swing high or low?
That it is not trading right into a PPZ or into very tight sideways traffic?

Those are all you need.

The hard part is to not make junk up in your mind when you see a bar and avoid the dance of the sugar plum fairies.

Before this sound too simple - time and practice is the only thing that will make you better.

Cheers mate! You have the tools, you should be encouraged! Hope to see you on the PF!

GU Daily PB. Nice break.

Not sure what's going on here. Are the posts disappearing?

I saw two posts from rac... And in those posts he referred to two of his earlier posts (which when i tried to look i didn't find it.).

Now even the two of this latest posts that i have seen few hours ago are not there. ????

quote by Joelcf

"But I honestly think there are alot of people here spending alot of time studying something they dont understand to try and find something that doesnt exist that they couldnt profitably exploit even if they found it."

I have worked in the mental health field and this reminded me of a (not so) tongue in cheek analogy of a psychiatrist.....

....someone in a dark room looking for a black cat that doesnt exist....

Good post Joel! we can spend too much energy on fruitless endeavours..we need to know where to focus ourselves.

sorry to any psychiatrists out there..

No, i pulled it out. lol
just kidding.

rac must've pulled it out, or something FF server-related (i believe this happens sometimes).

1st Target hit. That was easy.

are we bouncing off this ppz or going for 60? Stop moved to 64.10

PB and then break out. 1.10 is next? or just 1.0620

Like the 1.0900 and then (you remember) 1.1400 well maybe a little shy of that level.

Just the way it ought to be, great Jarroo

Lol... yes, I remember. I have revised it now to 1.1360. Meet you there in few weeks.

Thanks Dale.

There's nothing like a hard break off of a good setup to start the week.