Well, here goes another week of doing this all by myself. The number of reads for my topic actually outnumbered the reads for the open section, and I started it part way into the week, so I know people are following it. I just miss the possibility of the back and forth, as limited as it was. And it's too early to tell, but it seems like the posts in the open section have dropped since all this started.

This is just not how I envisioned this forum. I'm very saddened by it. I'll keep plugging away because people like tomo tell me this forum is important to them. I know I have a small, core group that read it pretty much day in and day out. But it just doesn't 'feel' the way it should to me. I had a vision, I got kind of close at times, but it really feels far away right now. And that's too bad.

Key level hit on 1-min volume expansion. Time for caution for me, very short-term.

Okay, just one man's opinion, but since yesterday, that was some really, really great potential trading action. Wow. I could live with that every day.

So, let me clarify one thing as I wrap this up. I was saying 'very short-term' and 'short-term'. Those are very imprecise terms I am using to try to distinguish the size of the moves if you will, the level of 'pressure' that is pushing them. It's all fractal to my way of thinking, in that the patterns and setups appear across all time frames, and each piece is made up of smaller pieces of the same, and are smaller pieces of bigger moves themselves.

So, a trade isn't just a trade for me, it's a 'timeframe sensitive fractal piece'. That's just a fancy way of saying I take into account what piece I am looking at. For example, for you Elliott people, if you are trading a 'W3', which 'W3'? Surely you know. But don't get confused in the middle of a trade with another bigger or smaller 'W3' that you may also be in. It's like that.

So, the 'very short-term' may be just to this level for an intraday play (a 'daytrade', even though I call them intraday swing trades), while in the 'short-term' I am looking for that full bounce level. That can still be in the ES, but it would be outside the RTH, into the overnight or the next day, whatever. Those plays are different. They may run concurrently for a time, but they are different plays.

What will really bake your noodle later when you think about it (to use a Matrix expression, since they have been playing the Matrix trilogy on TV all weekend and I'm saturated ...) is that I see no issue with being long and short at the same time, depending on the timeframes, doing a potentially countertrend trade in one fractal.

Anyway, that's what I an trying to convey with the use of the timeframe labels. And no, 'very short-term' doesn't always imply 'daytrade', it just means 'very short-term'. And 'short-term' doesn't always mean more than 'daytrade'. It depends on the size of the move, which is based on the layout, and where I came in in the sequence. But it is a way to explain where the levels are coming from and their relative relationships.

BTW, ES still smokin', just on fire. If they can hack this area up in here at these previous highs, it should give me my levels with ease.

Still setting new highs in the last seconds!

One tick from the previous highs. The crazy thing is, there is nothing, as far as price congestion, until around the 50's. There is a ton geometrically, Fib, and pattern-wise at my levels, but congestion-wise, nothing. So, you never know...

Let me toss something out there. If you are a 'staunch' follower of my methodology and my posts, feel free to send me an e-mail and let me know if you like this approach, with me having a separate thread that is locked, or if you like the old way better. If you don't let me know, I have no way of knowing what is better for you. I know who is following the forum, so I know who may e-mail me. And I know some of you haven't contacted me for awhile (some a long while). But, feel free to just drop me a quick note so I know what your thoughts are. I'm here to try to help you, not me. So, I'm expecting some replies in the next 24 hours...

P.S. Please e-mail me directly, I prefer that over the forum PM, so I have a record for my files of my correspondence. Thanks.

Futures open up, as expected, and are now at the high tick of those previous highs. Stop run coming any time now, I think...

There it is!

Okay, now just a few points from my area. How easy is this? EZ-PZ. Not making any claims, just joking around.

All right, let me do my spiel on the forum and posting. It will be long, and rambling. In other words, typical Jim.

These last two weeks have been extremely discouraging to me. I'm down. Seriously down. I've done this forum for just about six years now. This will be my 17,107th post, if I read that right. Just try to imagine that. That's like an average of eleven posts a day for every trading day for six straight years. I'm tired. My health is none too good.

I had visions of why I created this forum, and what I was trying to accomplish. It was my job to try to keep it on track. Everyone has their own vision of what they are trying to do, and what they want to get out of it. Ultimately, though, it has been my job to steer the ship. It sounds easy. It's not.

The forum has devolved to me posting a bunch, followed by a bunch of rat posts, the occasional roofer burst, and then a few scattered posts by people like Al. There is very little discussion. I wanted discussion. Questions. Give and take. It was not to be. I've spent endless hours pondering why that is, and trying different things, but to no avail. Nothing I did mattered; it brought no more posts, and no more discussion. So I would fill the empty space with more and more endless posts.

In other words, I’ve been wandering in the desert by myself. Now I’m really tired, and very frustrated by the last few weeks. It has me rethinking my mission, and what I’m doing here. As the two weeks has passed by, I kept posting more and more. Like somehow I expected my herculean effort to motivate someone to start a new topic, for more than one person to respond to my request for feedback. But, no. Nothing. Dead silence. Crickets chirping in the background. The people have spoken. Loud and clear.

Now, part of me wants to ‘retaliate’. I will respond in kind. Part of me realizes this will punish the handful that follow me day in and day out. That would not be fair to them. So, I find myself in a quandary. I do not want to go forward and do another 150 posts next week (that’s still almost 30 a day when Sunday is accounted for, and I only post a small part of the trading day). It reached the point of rambling, posting on every little wiggle, for something to do. Yes, I could cut back, keep to just the most salient points. Many have said they like my KT philosophy posts, and explanations of what I am thinking, and why. That’s one ‘solution’.

Still, I am busting my a#% off in here, and I ask my serious readers for input, to help me in my direction with this new approach, and I get one response. One. Are you f#%&in’ serious? One? No one else is even willing to stop for two minutes and help me out, for all I give? That makes me a little upset (I’m exaggerating to the downside for effect), and makes me want to quit. I can’t get any discussion in an open forum, and I can’t even get feedback about how you want me to post? It only makes sense for me to quit at this point.

Now, one thing I thought of is that I can require a feedback e-mail from everyone who wants to remain a follower in here. Send me feedback by a certain date, or I will delete your name from the permissions. I can even do a little form about what I am asking for. But, I recall when I was thinking awhile back that everyone should participate in the forum in order to enjoy all the benefits, and do like two posts every whatever the time period was, and the backlash was insane. I got down votes, I got people telling me they hated the idea. Geez.

When I look at what I have been willing to do to get to where I am, the dues I was willing to pay, the hours, the work, whatever it takes was my attitude. If I had a resource like me available to me not only would I have asked so many questions I’d have probably gotten myself booted out, if I was told I needed to jump through this and that and the other hoops, I’d have said ‘When do we start?’ I know, because I’ve played that game with some pretty mean mentors in other fields in the past. Some were very mean people, and treated me very badly. I endured it because what I got from them, as far as learning, was simply not available anywhere else.

And I’m not treating anyone mean. I bend over backwards to try to give of myself. Maybe that’s part of the problem. I never made participation a requirement from the start. I never gave clear guidelines for posters to avoid trouble like we had a few weeks back. I never ‘took charge’ right from the start. I acted, to a great extent, like California parents in the 60’s. Let the kids do whatever they want, eat what they want, go to bed when they want, go to school if they want, they’ll do the right thing. And now they are older, and how’s that working for you? Now it’s too late.

So, do I just archive the forum at this point? If no one else is going to post, I am not going to leave the forum as is and feel like a total a#%. It goes to archive status. Do I keep posting? If the forum is archived, I might as well post, if I am going to post, in a blog. Should I just finally call it good after six years? I’m tired, my health isn’t good, why am I doing this? I can’t even get more than one person to tell me what they want out of my postings, what helps them the most. I already know tomo doesn’t want me to quit, and really gets a lot out of my postings. I also know what the one person who gave me feedback thinks. (Maybe I should say two people are willing to tell me, since I basically said tomo doesn’t need to respond, his viewpoint is clear.)

Part of me is leaning towards creating a little form and giving everyone a few days to fill it out or your permissions are deleted. There are no right or wrong answers. I just want to know what you want out of my postings. KT theory discussion? More discussion about example trade sequences from start to finish? More levels? More about why I see things the way I do at a given time? More price action reading? And on and on. What isn’t useful? Is it better with other people posting, or do you prefer a pure KT section? Would discussion and give and take be helpful (even though this is a theoretical question, since it can never, ever be…)?

One other option I am considering is to take a break. Let the forum ‘go dark’ for awhile. I think if I do that most will leave, never to return, and that would bring the numbers down to a level that won’t make it worth me coming back. But, I could give that a try. So, those are some of the things I am pondering. I just know it can’t go on like this. It’s no longer appealing to me. It’s kind of too bad, too, because it seemed like things were going okay, and then other people do things, things which they perceive as completely fine, and maybe many agree with them, and it sends the forum on a downward spiral which may, in the end, bring it to a close after all this time. How crazy is that?