I thought I'd create a new topic and try something out and see if it seems beneficial to everyone. I'll try to post every day or so the times that setups completed that I thought were good based on the methodology. I will only do posts for times for 3-minute or higher timeframe setups. If the setup is on a 1-min or 2-min but could be used as an entry setup for a higher timeframe bias I may mention those, too.

The idea here is to point out the completion points for setups I thought were acceptable so everyone can make sure they see the setup, and go back and do the work, perhaps working through how they might have entered, managed, and so on. Mostly, though, it is to give everyone a chance to see the places I thought were the best setups on a given day based on my application of the methodology. Some will not have 'played out', but were still worth looking at.

One more point. These are not necessarily going to be areas I traded off of, they are going to be areas I thought were good enough to be looking at. I am not implying I traded them. I may have, or may not have, but that will be independent of whether I list them here. I want to give everyone a chance to 'start to see' the areas I think are the ones that best fit the methodology.

Most of these will be ABCD's, even though I will sometimes find areas that have enough for me to consider them without the ABCD. As I generally say to my students 'The ABCD is the 'hub of the wheel', the center point of where I start.' I suggest until one has the methodology down cold, start everything with the ABCD. I may, though, throw in a few setup times where other factors contribute to the area (like POC, pivots, GLOBEX points, and so on) such that some of the usual KT factors may be less.

As you will soon see, the posts will be in a format something like this, of course subject to any improvements I discover as I try this:

March XX, 2009

10:34 AM EXP ABCD, 3-min

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome.

And that, it seems, is the ultimate paradox. The personality that makes me have to do such a detailed job with this is also the personality that allowed me to push myself to discover and create all this material, put it together in the books, do the website and commentaries, and everything else that has allowed everyone to have access to this material. If I could do simple writeups here you wouldn't have all the rest of the work to know what I was talking about. And hence the paradox...

I hear you. I guess you just can't have it the easy way :)
The other crazy thing of course is that it was your idea in the first place...
I hope you don't feel obligated to do this 'cause you're not.
Thanks for all of your work.

I know, I thought it would be something simple that would help a lot, a lot of 'bang for the buck'. But what I realized is, without the detail, it is just the same old fluff everyone deals out. It needs the detail. And hence the trap. I'll probably do it once a week, when the mood strikes me.

On another note, look at the futures. Very odd. It will probably ramp right back up like it usually does. But seeing it drop about nine points well into negative that fast sure is something.

Why not try it the way you did it first time around and let people aka your students figure out on their own what you saw there and why. If they can't I am sure they will ask the question (as far as questions are being asked in here). It's called homework and it's good practice.

Yes I see the futures, Euro dumped too.

I could do that. The main thing is, I think people struggle the most with the sets, if posts are any indication. You see pretty much all the sets so you can follow along very easily. Lately, as we started this potential topping formation, the trending stopped and we do more up and down moves intraday, with less ABCD's, and more of like what I have pointed out the last few days. That is a lot harder to point out in short form. Also, I have found that when there are a lot of questions that usually takes more time than the long writeups.

It kind of goes back to what I said before, too. If you can see the sets already, what you get from this is confirmation you are seeing what I am looking at, too. If you don't see the sets you may see the patterns, but probably won't see why I am looking at the other areas, and likely won't have any idea about the sets. So, without that, I'm not sure, even if they work hard, they will get much out of it. I guess maybe at least seeing where the areas I thought were key are has some value? And maybe I should be happy with that? Perhaps. Maybe I'll try again to just do the short version. I'm just getting tired of failing, though, I'm not big on it.

I get a lot of sets because I draw a lot. Truthfully I usually have 3-4 ES charts running in parallel and most of them with different sets and then I determine which ones I give priority. Some are RTH, others Globex.One thing I frequently do is start a blank chart in a quiet period of the day or before open and start drawing from scratch. This often confirms what the important sets are. I could never do all of that on one chart. It's not ideal, but it's the best way I have found so far. To each his own I guess is my point.
You can only give so much and the rest is up to the receiver. The feedback in here is so minimal that I am not even sure many are watching. Now if that was your frustration I'd fully understand.
On another note, I find it paradoxical that you speak of failure...

Basically I do the same thing as you with the parallel charts, and the blank chart, all of that.

Why paradoxical?

On another note, the drop was because of the Chinese GDP report. Better than expected across all fronts, but they dumped it. I guess they wanted miracles? So, they didn't price in the true expectations, they priced in more than better, they priced in a lot better. Selling on good news, better than expected. It may be starting... :-) Remember I said watch for the sentiment shift.

paradoxical may not be the best word, but I am saying this because you are so way ahead than most in this game and there are lots who'd love to have all your skills and yet you set the bar so high for yourself and as a result perhaps you see more failure. Failure that a lot of others would see as success.

Yep, you're exactly right.

Jim I like those posts here very much. It helps a lot to someone like me. I really started to see some things after few posts in this topic. So any post you can make is great :) Thanks.

Jim, whatever you put down in this forum is of value. I don't have the time to interact as much as I used to right now, but I do read everything and it's much appreciated.