Trading Indicator Balance

Trading Insights

This afternoon I had a conversation with a Pro trader. He is new to trading family here and an already very successful trader in his own right.

But he knew there was a missing component to what he was doing.

We were discussing some of the parameters in his new time cycle indicator. The excitement and exuberance over the newly found freedom, and trading insight is something I never get tired of hearing. Sometimes the smallest things can trigger a thought that can be so profound, if not written down it would almost be a sin. Today this came to mind.

In the conversation something started to become overly clear to me about most day traders.  I guess I really already knew it - and that was the overwhelming majority of them are so unbalanced in their approach to the markets. I say this, because when you get used to having a predictive timing indicator that gives you actual insight into the upcoming market moves, you tend to get somewhat spoiled and see your previous imbalances.

Most day traders give about 95% of their attention to price , and or price based indicators. Is that a bad thing? Not really, and for the majority of day traders it is all they know for many reasons. For example, if I look in my Ninjatrader indicator list, I see about 150 price based trading  indicators  and 4 time based trading  indicators. I have experimented with most of the price indicators over the last several years, and actually use about 3 of them regularly. I have used my Time Cycle trading indicators every day for about the last 3 years, and couldn't trade without them at this point .

How is it that we have become so one sided in our approach to day trading  that we do not consider something as significant as time. I have seen trading indicators that reference everything from yesterdays market price at close, to the position of  the stars and planets. Even entire trading platforms that look like you need a physics degree to decipher, and yet none of them deal with the time cycles of the markets. This seems so unbalanced to me in the light of all the knowledge we day-traders have accumulated over the years.

The power of "time" itself, the one unstoppable force that we must all deal with everyday, like it or not!  So with a force so strong, why has it been so ignored by the vast majority of retail day-traders, and stock traders alike?

Oh,  few guys over the years figured it out, and were very successful with it. Most of them sold only pieces of their knowledge, or were so brilliant that they couldn't effectively communicate what they saw to the average person .Guys like WD Gann, and Welles Wilder were in these categories. I tried to study them some, but it seemed way over my head.

I guess I am spoiled at this point, and I sometimes forget that only a few years ago I was in the darkness too, staring at the charts on the monitor for hours on end, wondering , "is this the right place to get into the market?".  Killing hours looking for the one thing I needed to know the most, the" time" the market  is  expected to turn. For me, that one "time cycle indicator" leveled the field, and it was the same for the new Flux member I talked to this afternoon.

 

It kinda reminds me of the star wars series, the Jedi studied the universe and were always looking for one thing, "Balance in the force". For us Day-traders, we have had hundreds of trading indicators based on price ,but the trading indicator based on" Time"  brings "Balance to the Force", don't miss out on the obvious!