Vsa learning club
step one...
IMO...to me as a beginer in vsa the very first thing i do when i sit down in front of the charts is "check my calendar for possible news reports for that day"...why? futher along in this thread we will get into news and how Professional Money uses this news to to trap poor traders into bad trades..but at this early stage of vsa approach i feel its best to steer clear of trading 30mins before or after a significant news report! at some point we hope to be able to recognize this manipulation by SM (Smart money) , in foresight, and profit from it..but thats advanced level VSA and you must crawl before you walk! I can / will post many examples( as the thread progresses) of where the news was good but the currency fell ..showing exactly what SM was doing and why! But for now it best to steer clear , me thinks!
So we have defined our first step! anyone with anything to add please chime in !! All this is new to me and im stumbling my way throughs so any thought are welcome and appreciated!! We only ask that if you offer a suugestion please also explai WHY you feel its important so everyone can follow along and learn! regards, John
finding the trend...
The very next thing i look for once i have calendared the news is to look at my charts and define the trend... much has been written on defining a trend but heres how i approach it ....IMO , at this ground floor stage of VSA trading , i will only take a trade that is going with the trend! It just adds the probability factor in my favor ...more VSA advanced methods will explain how to approach "counter - Trend trades", and they work well. But at the begining stages of becoming a successful trader confidence in your chosen methodology is absolutely vital to your survial and in order to build that confidence you need to put the highest amount of probability in your favor....trading with the trend does just that...
The second aspect of this , i feel , has to do with your personality and goals as a trader...in other words what type of trader do you aspire to be and what do you reasonably expect to take out of the market on each trade? are you a scalper..who likes to to be in and out 5-6 times day with no more than 10 pips? or are you the guy that doest like looking a screens all day and wants to catch a 150 pip move and doesnt mind a 60 pip retracement to get it! I personally know a professional trader, who i hope to see here, who will sit through a 100 pip retracement, waiting for the move !! but he banks 500 pip runs!!! i myself feel like if your waiting through a 100 pip retracement for the move...that was the move!!! LOL...so this is where you have to decided who your are and the kinda trader you are!! your screen time tolerance, patients and risk tolerence all pay a key in this.....
Once you have defined the above you can go to your charts and choose the TF's you will be using.....i myself prefer to take 1-2 trades a day for 20-30 pips each..i like looking at charts all day so this suites me well!
indentifiey the trend...
Now as i explained above im a short to mid term trader ...but in any case ...im looking at ALL Time Frames at the start of my day....if your a scalper maybe the daily isnt as important, i dont know, but for me if i can i dentify whats happening on the daily ,all the better....my main set up is to look at the 4h/2h/ and 1h charts..usually the 2h and 1h are in some sync and that reall y helps define which direction , long or short, im looking to trade..if the the 1h/2h are intrend with the 4h and even daily all the better for me, but more time than not they arentit seems and if you wait for the stars to align you could be waiting along time! so i dont really sweat it if my daily doesnt jive with my 1h/2h trend..the 4h is kinda middle of the road...please dont get me wrong it is very important to know what and where these larger TF's are saying...i just dont let them discourge me from trading if they dont all agree..
Now im looking at my 2h/1h chart ..once i define my trend its on to the next step...if my chosen currency / market(VSA works on any liquid market) is consolidating i have 2 choices...i can attempt to define whether SM is accumalating or distributing ( more on this later)and base my trade on that or chose another currency....regards, john
The very next thing i look for once i have calendared the news is to look at my charts and define the trend... much has been written on defining a trend but heres how i approach it ....IMO , at this ground floor stage of VSA trading , i will only take a trade that is going with the trend! It just adds the probability factor in my favor ...more VSA advanced methods will explain how to approach "counter - Trend trades", and they work well. But at the begining stages of becoming a successful trader confidence in your chosen methodology is absolutely vital to your survial and in order to build that confidence you need to put the highest amount of probability in your favor....trading with the trend does just that...
The second aspect of this , i feel , has to do with your personality and goals as a trader...in other words what type of trader do you aspire to be and what do you reasonably expect to take out of the market on each trade? are you a scalper..who likes to to be in and out 5-6 times day with no more than 10 pips? or are you the guy that doest like looking a screens all day and wants to catch a 150 pip move and doesnt mind a 60 pip retracement to get it! I personally know a professional trader, who i hope to see here, who will sit through a 100 pip retracement, waiting for the move !! but he banks 500 pip runs!!! i myself feel like if your waiting through a 100 pip retracement for the move...that was the move!!! LOL...so this is where you have to decided who your are and the kinda trader you are!! your screen time tolerance, patients and risk tolerence all pay a key in this.....
Once you have defined the above you can go to your charts and choose the TF's you will be using.....i myself prefer to take 1-2 trades a day for 20-30 pips each..i like looking at charts all day so this suites me well!Hi Trader_X333
I agree with you and on my side I also prefer to trade using lower timeframes. My problem is how to trend when the trend is up is one timeframe and down in the other one. At least it is very important to understand price action before using VSA and I've a lot to learn to use them together to become a successful trader.
Now as i explained above im a short to mid term trader ...but in any case ...im looking at ALL Time Frames at the start of my day....if your a scalper maybe the daily isnt as important, i dont know, but for me if i can i dentify whats happening on the daily ,all the better....my main set up is to look at the 4h/2h/ and 1h charts..usually the 2h and 1h are in some sync and that reall y helps define which direction , long or short, im looking to trade..if the the 1h/2h are intrend with the 4h and even daily all the better for me, but more time than not they arentit seems and if you wait for the stars to align you could be waiting along time! so i dont really sweat it if my daily doesnt jive with my 1h/2h trend..the 4h is kinda middle of the road...please dont get me wrong it is very important to know what and where these larger TF's are saying...i just dont let them discourge me from trading if they dont all agree.. Now im looking at my 2h/1h chart ..once i define my trend its on to the next step...if my chosen currency / market(VSA works on any liquid market) is consolidating i have 2 choices...i can attempt to define whether SM is accumalating or distributing ( more on this later)and base my trade on that or chose another currency....regards, john
I think defining whether there is accumulation or distribution is also part of identifying the trend, but how do we do that? What do we look at on the chart?
When I see a trading range it is very difficult for me to know what it is until I see the price breaking out of the range in one or the other direction.
dvarrin
hey buudy ..first of all great to see you here!! you can just call me john if you'd like...ok so lets go ahead and start working on defining the trend right now on the E/U...as for Acc/Dist, your are so correct on being able to recognize it and yes it is tough for me as well ..so where going to learn it together, as i have some ideas....first lets start with the trend!!!! give me a few minutes to figure out how to post a couple of charts..its my first one here!!!LOL, j
trouble posting charts
hey DV ...im having trouble getting the charts to load...it seems the tsd is running really slow or something...can you try on your end please...gonna step out for luch be back in about an hour...regards, john
Nothing wrong with speed ... maybe you are exceeding maximum size
Save your charts as gif and not as bmp (the size difference is considerable) and if you have a mean to upload png format (a lot of screen grabbers have that option) it is even better. bmp is in average at least 20-30 times bigger (bitwise) than gif, png or any compressed format
hey DV ...im having trouble getting the charts to load...it seems the tsd is running really slow or something...can you try on your end please...gonna step out for luch be back in about an hour...regards, john
testing i,2,3...
testing chart upload...damn, no good!..when i click on manage attachments its taking 3 whole minutes just to come up!..but theres nothing wrong with any of my other charts or web sites...i dont understand...Hmmm. im gonna go home and try from my laptop! thanks for the help though!...best regards, john
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This thread is devoted to the begining phases of learning volume spread analysis...Here where going to try to cover all of the basic steps of learning the vsa approach to trading...The very first step is to read "Master the Markets" by Tom Williams..This will lay the foundation for this methodology...the book , IMO, is more of an avanced level approach to trading and assumes a trader has already obtained a level of skill...here were gonna try to lay out the groud work, step by step, that leads into applying VSA ...The very first step in learning anything new is to learn the language..there are many vsa terms and reading MTM will explain them all in detail! if you havent read the book it will be difficult to follow the thread....so please take the time to do so...we will be refering back to it quite abit, so keep it handy! best regards, john