NexusFi: Find Your Edge


Home Menu

 





Random Line Theory


Discussion in Traders Hideout

Updated
      Top Posters
    1. looks_one Big Mike with 58 posts (218 thanks)
    2. looks_two Fat Tails with 41 posts (172 thanks)
    3. looks_3 trendisyourfriend with 36 posts (38 thanks)
    4. looks_4 bobwest with 14 posts (75 thanks)
      Best Posters
    1. looks_one bobwest with 5.4 thanks per post
    2. looks_two Jigsaw Trading with 4.5 thanks per post
    3. looks_3 Fat Tails with 4.2 thanks per post
    4. looks_4 Big Mike with 3.8 thanks per post
    1. trending_up 231,147 views
    2. thumb_up 835 thanks given
    3. group 117 followers
    1. forum 367 posts
    2. attach_file 100 attachments




 
Search this Thread

Random Line Theory

  #311 (permalink)
Krav69
Denver, Colorado
 
Posts: 59 since Aug 2014
Thanks Given: 0
Thanks Received: 44

Someone mentioned actually trading or setting up a trade plan around the lines.

A buddy of mine recently joined a trading chat room, Leading Edge Trading, and he claims that that is exactly what they do; Take trades off lines on the ES charts. I'm guessing that the lines, however, are not random.

I sent him over here to read this thread, but he'll now have his work cut out for him since it has grown 7 pages since the last time I was here.

Reply With Quote

Can you help answer these questions
from other members on NexusFi?
New Micros: Ultra 10-Year & Ultra T-Bond -- Live Now
Treasury Notes and Bonds
NT7 Indicator Script Troubleshooting - Camarilla Pivots
NinjaTrader
NexusFi Journal Challenge - April 2024
Feedback and Announcements
The space time continuum and the dynamics of a financial …
Emini and Emicro Index
Deepmoney LLM
Elite Quantitative GenAI/LLM
 
  #312 (permalink)
 
Fat Tails's Avatar
 Fat Tails 
Berlin, Europe
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: NinjaTrader, MultiCharts
Broker: Interactive Brokers
Trading: Keyboard
Posts: 9,888 since Mar 2010
Thanks Given: 4,242
Thanks Received: 27,102

If you still do not believe that your brain plays tricks on you, please watch this picture for a while.

Traders develop that sort of tunnel vision in front of their screens, don't they?



Reply With Quote
  #313 (permalink)
 
learning0101's Avatar
 learning0101 
Houston, Texas
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader,TOS,Etrade,St
Broker: NT:( tos,etrade,CS
Trading: stocks,options,futures,forex
Frequency: Never
Duration: Never
Posts: 287 since Aug 2011
Thanks Given: 3,613
Thanks Received: 222



Fat Tails View Post
If you still do not believe that your brain plays tricks on you, please watch this picture for a while.

Traders develop that sort of tunnel vision in front of their screens, don't they?



So, I saw it right off does that mean I am special or lagging. LOL @Fat Tails Kudos for all you do, mucho thanks to you

Reply With Quote
  #314 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
Philadelphia
 
Experience: None
Platform: corded black telephone
Trading: ticker tape
Posts: 2,894 since Apr 2012
Thanks Given: 1,683
Thanks Received: 3,681


Fat Tails View Post


Now this one is hard to believe it's not really moving like a gif or something



I guess some are just going to have to right click it to find out

R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #315 (permalink)
 
trendisyourfriend's Avatar
 trendisyourfriend 
Quebec Canada
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: AMP/CQG
Trading: ES, NQ, YM
Frequency: Daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 4,527 since Oct 2009
Thanks Given: 4,171
Thanks Received: 6,018

Your lights are on, but you're not home
Your mind is not your own
Your heart sweats, your body shakes
Another random line is what it takes

You can't sleep, you can't eat
There's no doubt, you're in deep
Your throat is tight, you can't breathe
Another random line is all you need

Whoa, you like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah
It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough
You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to lines.

Original transformed from Robert Palmer song Addicted To Lines oops! sorry to Love.

Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #316 (permalink)
 
Fat Tails's Avatar
 Fat Tails 
Berlin, Europe
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: NinjaTrader, MultiCharts
Broker: Interactive Brokers
Trading: Keyboard
Posts: 9,888 since Mar 2010
Thanks Given: 4,242
Thanks Received: 27,102


gtrader62 View Post
To the Pundants...who are seniors like Fattails...

Brain energies or whatever you wish to call how our brain relates...
The color picture are not helping traders mature.

Can you get past the waste of time...and demonstrate reality in relating to lines in a healthy way.

Its a joke about "proving a point....so here is a picture to "STUFF THE NOSE" of relating to lines with some mature analysis and actual trades based on relating to lines.

I realize the seniors are also programmers...who also have friends who have trading schools and sell indicator packages. A lot of things on this website are borrowed ideas.

Now... I am relating to a online indicator system...named after a movie concerning the future.
His tools are nothing about what Gann taught...and its a marketing ploy.
His tools are modified replica's of indicators off BigMikes...and it needs to be said.

Several other indicator sales are also replication from this site and I also can look with regularity...
noting they crop in here to copy ides.

I have a great forecasting model I employ...and I will not post it here.
I don't want something that actually works...95% of the time...stolen.

it has lines... WOW a novel idea.
Just as Babson, Elliott, and Gann USED EXCLUSIVELY and ARE THE FATHERS OF THE MARKETS.

Fat Tails or any one in posted on Big Mikes...producing a seminar...have nothing revolutionary to teach us.
No indicator giving you an edge... SORRY WITH OUT REGRET.

Go back to the FATHERS... BABSON, ELLIOTT, GANN.... and stop following "stuff indicators".

You don't need them. NO YOU DON"T...NO Market profiles, no deltas, no MACD, no CCI's.
You don't need anything.

If the FATHERS made a LIVING and MILLIONS off of LINES...that moderators here pluff about...

Today...nailed 10 lot trades +8 and 15 ticks. No need to trade for today.

Yes... I use lines...that don't make my brain energies and nerves vibrate.

Lines is what turned Gann into a $50,000,000 in gains in the early 1900's.
This equates to $1 Trillion today...from lines on paper.

Now...can we actually have some intelligence and show traders how to make money...
Or will Fat Tails act like a child...and post more Playschool toys?

Not sorry for the comments. You earned it. No insults implied.

I come back to the forum...and see playschool pictures...nothing to actually help a trader mature.



@gtrader62: Thank you for your serious comment.

The discussion on random lines just makes the point that many charts are clustered with lines in a more or less random fashion. There are lots of secret pivots and lines which have never been tested but are sold to retail traders. This thread has only been created as a warning that many lines and indicators just create an illusion. Our brain will make sense of any lines with hindsight knowledge. It will even add order and causality between indicators, lines and price, where no such order and causality exists.

The playschool picture was just posted as an example to show how our brain plays tricks on us. I believe that we interpret charts with lines and indicators in a similar way. I also believe that pattern recognition is a route to failure when it comes to trading. The only tools that are beneficial in the longer run are those that have passed statistical tests.

The criticism of random lines - or any set of untested lines with an unknown expectation of how price will behave when approaching them - does not imply that all lines that can be drawn on a chart are random lines. It is just impossible or difficult to differentiate between valid and invalid tools by using pattern recognition alone.

And yes, I do use support and resistance zones and they do give me an edge. But I am neither a follower of Gann (too much numerology and hokus-pokus) nor Elliot. Wave counts are very much like random lines. With hindsight you can always explain how the wave count had to be applied and why the random line acted as support or resistance.

Reply With Quote
  #317 (permalink)
 Underexposed 
Calgary Alberta/Canada
 
Posts: 934 since Feb 2014

In reading some (though I confess not all) the posts in this thread. I get the impression that many feel that many lines used in charts are figments of our imagination as far as usefulness is concerned.

Certainly, lines placed randomly on a chart are useless. Bounces off of these are nothing but coincidence at best.

But to deny a pattern recognition of resistance or support is to deny the competition of buyer and seller.





this chart shows horizontal resistance and diagonal support.... these are not random lines... Admittedly they are subject to interpretation by the chartist and in most cases will be a best straight line or even a thick line. But these lines are not drawn randomly but rather an extrapolation of data observed and reflects the battle between the buyer and seller.

Lines drawn a random ARE useless...there is no theory involved here.

But lines drawn based on observation of data repeatedly fall to and rising from (or reverse) consistent points are NOT random and extrapolations of those lines are very useful in locating breakouts when they are breached.

Not all lines are equal.

Reply With Quote
  #318 (permalink)
 
bobwest's Avatar
 bobwest 
Western Florida
Site Moderator
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra Chart
Trading: ES, YM
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 8,162 since Jan 2013
Thanks Given: 57,341
Thanks Received: 26,267


Underexposed View Post
In reading some (though I confess not all) the posts in this thread. I get the impression that many feel that many lines used in charts are figments of our imagination as far as usefulness is concerned.

Certainly, lines placed randomly on a chart are useless. Bounces off of these are nothing but coincidence at best.

But to deny a pattern recognition of resistance or support is to deny the competition of buyer and seller.





this chart shows horizontal resistance and diagonal support.... these are not random lines... Admittedly they are subject to interpretation by the chartist and in most cases will be a best straight line or even a thick line. But these lines are not drawn randomly but rather an extrapolation of data observed and reflects the battle between the buyer and seller.

Lines drawn a random ARE useless...there is no theory involved here.

But lines drawn based on observation of data repeatedly fall to and rising from (or reverse) consistent points are NOT random and extrapolations of those lines are very useful in locating breakouts when they are breached.

Not all lines are equal.

Hi, @Underexposed. Normally I would not respond to a post in this thread any more, because I basically became burned out by the whole thing.

This was an old and inactive thread, originally started by @Big Mike, but I put up a summary post recently giving some of my thoughts on it, and it revived for a time.

I think you may have received the wrong impression of the point of the thread, at least as I understand it, which is not that all lines or levels or other things are random, or are nothing better than random, or that none of them work or none are useful. I use many of them, quite happily, every day.

Since I gave it my very best shot in that post (and some subsequent replies to other posters), I recommend you take a look at it, if you haven't seen it. Here it is:



I think I fielded about 2 million incensed replies to this post, most of which told me that not everything is random. Which I sort of knew . Hence the burnout....

It would not at all hurt my feelings if you were to read it, and decide I didn't know what I was talking about. That's happened often enough, and sometimes I don't.

However, as a contributor to this thread, I do want to tell you that I agree with what you wrote in your post, and I do not think that it conflicts with the point that is being made here at all, which also is not really about lines... it's about what the person who is using them does with them.

Anyway, just wanted to point you to that if you hadn't read it, and let you know that I have no problem with the chart you posted.... which might be a slight surprise to you.

Take care.

Bob.

Reply With Quote
  #319 (permalink)
 Underexposed 
Calgary Alberta/Canada
 
Posts: 934 since Feb 2014


bobwest View Post
Random Line Theory, Revisited

.........

But I am inclined to think that it is more fundamental than that. I think that each person brings a unique perspective -- and perhaps invents one -- to the market and to the "method" he/she is supposedly using. And that this personal viewpoint is what makes the difference between, let's say, someone who is using something as simple, even crude, as trendlines and support/resistance and is very successful (say, Al Brooks), while the next person gives up on it in disgust.... and has to find something else that they can put to use.

Well, I don't know how much else can be gotten out of this experiment, but I think it helps in understanding why some people succeed or fail, or succeed or fail with one approach but not another. Unfortunately, it doesn't say much about how to be successful, but I think it does help to understand the situation a little more clearly. Including the situation I face when I'm looking at a chart and trying to decide what to do.

It certainly explains why searching for the new ultimate method when things aren't working is usually not going to work out that well.

Bob.

Hi Bob...that was quite a rambling post but I think it can be condensed to these paragraph which I do agree in the main.

Pattern recognition, IMHO as a person who in his many careers was once a research chemist at the beginning of his working life, is an essential part of scientific discovery.

Their researcher analyses their data set based on a hypothesis that something may or may not be true. They discover a pattern that if they do something and get a predictable response they have a possible pattern for something bigger.

So they then invent other tests, essentially doing a larger test or maybe a variation on the test to try to disprove the pattern they first saw. If the pattern repeats itself often enough the hypothesis may graduate to a theory. There may be exceptions to the theory but in general the pattern repeats enough to be reliable in most cases.

This is not to saw that one should accept all patterns that are postulated as gospel. Candlestick patterns are really bad for this. Every year new patterns of candle formation seem to be promoted. Many write books on just such a subject... you would be foolish IMHO to believe all these patterns as being true predictors ... in fact any book on candlesticks worth their salt tells you to wait for that 4th candle to confirm what the pattern suggests. Frankly, memorizing candlestick patterns are a waste of time in my opinion... what you really need to do is understand the struggle between buyer and seller, as each candlestick is presented to, to make a prediction on a price movement... no need for memorization.

But I digress here..... Random lines are meaningless when added to a stock chart.... Looking at a collection of chart data and drawing resistance/support lines is not a random event. The chartist has made a hypothesis and extrapolated those lines to test that hypothesis. As long as that hypothesis holds, the movement is predictable, breaching established lines becomes more significant with each additional time the extrapolated lines are tested and the resistance/support holds... and the chartist knows that a breach of these lines up/down will result usually in a major change and he looks for another pattern to test.... This is not a random process

So as I said, these lines are very subjective when drawn... and they may not be universally agreed upon...but they are NOT random.

Having said that, I don't adhere to all line generator algorithms, Standard pivot points don't really mean much to me and Fibonacci pivot points have the same effect, these lines seem contrived to me... they are not random as they have a calculation involved with their generation but my tests have yielded nothing that I could not figure out with simple resistance support determinations. I don't follow Elliot wave theory either...basically because I don't understand the math behind it and I don't find it particular useful as a fit with my personal TA.

If I try to understand what Mike was trying to suggest in this experiment, (and I may be wrong here) is that many purported published line patterns are of little value and blind application of memorized pattern formations without understanding the buyer/seller forces at work in the price movement is a recipe for financial loss.

hahaha... I guess this is the end of MY rambling post on the subject

Reply With Quote
  #320 (permalink)
 
Big Mike's Avatar
 Big Mike 
Manta, Ecuador
Site Administrator
Developer
Swing Trader
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Custom solution
Broker: IBKR
Trading: Stocks & Futures
Frequency: Every few days
Duration: Weeks
Posts: 50,397 since Jun 2009
Thanks Given: 33,173
Thanks Received: 101,537


Just a follow-up, Adam Grimes did a webinar on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) here:



This webinar is directly related to the content in this thread, but Adam has done a better job of explaining it. It is a must watch/required understanding.

Mike

We're here to help: just ask the community or contact our Help Desk

Quick Links: Change your Username or Register as a Vendor
Searching for trading reviews? Review this list
Lifetime Elite Membership: Sign-up for only $149 USD
Exclusive money saving offers from our Site Sponsors: Browse Offers
Report problems with the site: Using the NexusFi changelog thread
Follow me on Twitter Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote
Thanked by:




Last Updated on September 26, 2019


© 2024 NexusFi™, s.a., All Rights Reserved.
Av Ricardo J. Alfaro, Century Tower, Panama City, Panama, Ph: +507 833-9432 (Panama and Intl), +1 888-312-3001 (USA and Canada)
All information is for educational use only and is not investment advice. There is a substantial risk of loss in trading commodity futures, stocks, options and foreign exchange products. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
About Us - Contact Us - Site Rules, Acceptable Use, and Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy - Downloads - Top
no new posts