How do you have sessions oriented? Blocks of time or trading sessions?
What are the contrast blue lines and predict grey lines?
Could you explain the options as far as pro rata, specific volume percentages,
Thanks for the indicator purplepatch. Is it possible to color the price bars the same color as the session volume? Would make it easier to see highs and lows of each one. I know its easy enough just to place a line there, but I like as few lines as possible. I have too many right now.
Well I guess I need to work on my perception of acc/dist. Tuesdayâs move down into 1.4000 was on very high volume. Wednesdayâs return to 1.4010 was on relatively much lower volume, and then back up. I saw this as no interest in lower prices. Today I was waiting on a retest of the 1.4000 area, and then go long once the proper signs showed up.
It did drop back down and the stopping volume did produce a nice bounce, and I almost went long on the 5 min but it never went back down to test the bottom. There was a pause in action to produce an inside bar which in hindsight was probably the test, but I wanted to see a down bar back into the area on lower volume before I went long, so I just stayed out. Working on that discipline 
Anyway the point is, Dodge was looking for shorts today and I was looking for longs. I see exactly why he was looking for shorts, but I am still letting the accumulation above 1.4200 effect my judgement. Had I been looking for shorts, I would have went short off the bounce and made some money today. But I was blinded by my long view. For anyone else that was looking for shorts today, when did you decide the accumulation above us was no longer relevant? I still say the distribution up top never matched the accumulation on the bottom, but nevertheless here we are at sub 1.4000.
Now that I think about it, on the 5m and 15m I always look for two things before I commit to a reversal: lack of interest in the current move, and a showing of interest going the opposite way. If I had taken that approach to my background today I may have been selling rallies instead.
Although, wednesday showed a lack of interest in a further fall, it still did not show any demand, and really showed even more weakness. Well, I was wrong but my new found discipline kept me from losing any today.
Can you post a screenshot with arrows showing your line of thinking here? On my chart all the high volume candles clearly (to me) showed selling pressure.
The Indicator is just provided as is, suck it and see, itâs easy enough to work it out, if you find it to hard to use, you really shouldnât be trading VSA, if at all.
Sure will, atm I am at work. As soon as I get a chance at home to mark up some charts I will edit this post with them.
I totally agree with you that the hourly bars over the past few days show heavy selling pressure. I believe I am going back to far for my background. Iâve only been trading off the hourly since last week. I have been living in 5min land since April. Which I believe will serve me well once I get this hourly stuff down.
Thanks, and I look forward to your thoughts.
EDIT:
My process goes Big picture, background, current action.
This is the big picture. While marking up this chart, it just hit me that TIME probably should be part of the picture. Price spent more time in the top of the range, so even though the volume in the lower part of the range was higher there was just simply more red boxes than green boxes.
This chart shows what I meant by no interest in lower prices. But like I said before that just isnt enough. Until demand comes into the picture, it just means no interest in lower prices at this time. And then for current action, I need to recognize sooner that my analysis was wrong and start seeing things from the other side.
When I coupled my big picture (accumulation that hasnt been distributed yet) with my background (new lows on lower volume), I convinced myself that today would be a retest of 4000 and start the journey back towards 4500.
Hopefully this is sufficient to see what I was thinking. Also, donât be afraid to analyze my analysis of my analysisâŚhmmm, now things are just getting sillyâŚI may have damaged something.
Very Honorary!:58:
Thatâs pretty harsh donât you think? I disagree with your assessment of HR4âs trading ability based on his request to add functionality to your indicator, or EmptyEternityâs trading ability based on his request for an explanation of how it works. A crucial aspect of VSA is to forgo all other indicators and read the chart with price + volume alone. On the first page Pete said:
Indicators are for refence and secondary to SR, fibbs, and VolumeâŚthe only things you really need to trade Volume. The rest is bells and whistles.
He also made similar statements saying the âBetterVolumeâ indicator is both not needed and a distraction, hindering your ability to accurately read the market.
While you are free to conclude he shouldnât be trading VSA because he requested an additional feature in your indicator, or asked how it works, know that this goes against everything in this thread.
I admit the way I put it did seem a bit presumptuous. To ask someone to go through the trouble of coding something just so [B]I[/B] dont have to see lines on my chart is absurd.
It was merely a suggestion, just thrown out there in case it hadnât been thought of. I realize the color of the price bars has no bearing on reading VSA, and might even be a distraction. I was thinking maybe it would be useful to see how each session respects the support and resistance that the other sessions put in. Your indicator will still already do this and is much appreciated. I need something to replace my Hidden Gap volume anyway, I think it makes me put to much emphasis on bar by bar.
Thanks for the support Dodge. Purplepatch worked hard on something and then when he gave it to us someone asked for more. I didnt mean any disrespect.
Now having said all that, I thought he was responding EmptyEternity lol
There are two problems with this analysis in my view. The first problem is this analysis is based off a 1 HR chart, where the latest data you highlighted looks like itâs on August 29th. Basing a trade on Thursday, using data from [B]last[/B] Monday and earlier, doesnât seem like a good idea to me. Afterall, why would the market finally go long today, after almost two full weeks of trading and dropping 500+ pips?
My personal analysis would say to look for longs on August 31st and September 1st. After that, however, this is what I seeâŚ
and then
I see this as âgapping downâ, the opposite of âgapping upâ. Check the section titled âPushing Up Through Supplyâ on page 10 of the VSA PDF. In this instance, price is rapidly pushed down through old areas of support, to entice people to not buy (either people closing their short positions, or opening new buy positions).
At that point, I would no longer consider the previous accumulation. Maybe there was hidden selling those candles? Maybe there was something I missed?
Think of it this way, what if those accumulation candles were actually Big Money going short? For some reason no other âBig Moneyâ traders joined in with their own shorts them when prices went higher, but they werenât supporting higher prices either. Notice volume was very low across the board on the 29th and the highest two candles were near the high.
That could explain why there was no distribution couldnât it? Big Money wasnât long and had nothing to distribute :13:
All of that is hindsight of course, all I can say for sure is I wouldnât have been looking for longs after September 1st.
EUR/USD buy
Strength in the background, combined with stopping volume and no demand candles showing no shorting pressure.
Hit SL
Well I read that wrong. Next time I wonât count a candle as accumulation if the market has already dropped 100 pips since that candle closed :8:
I think i figured it out: tick volumes are there because you canât really tell if 1000 naive traders are guessing something, or a high roller splits his volume in 1000 tickets because otherwise it would impact immediatly a limited cash pool maked market, so you must have had some naive trading over there. VSA is superb if you could know whats actually behind a tick, thatâs exactly the reason there are ticks displayed and not volumes.
I would insist to tell some people here the correlation between a ticket (tick), its volume and the price reaction, but they just donât get it, and the context of a maked market makes it even blurrier so i give up.
I have found my way around with the help of your complex analysis, so thank you guys. Good luck!
Excellent Dodge. Exactly what I was looking for.
So, potential hidden selling in potential hidden buying barsâŚhmmmm. Also, if you consider the daily range, those down bars are in the upper part of the range, not the lower. More evidence to prove you right.
To keep things from getting too crazy and putting yourself in analysis paralysis, and this is probably obvious to you pros, the best thing to do is just expect to buy dips if you have heavy acc. below you, and sell rallies when you have heavy distr. above you.
Mark these areas on our charts and when price returns to these areas, price action and volume will tell if you if it will hold or not. Like the last bar I pointed out on my second chart and there was also evidence it wasnt going to hold on the 15m. I just have to keep an open mind and not develop a bias before it gets there. Once these are taken out you just switch your strategy from long to short and vice versa.
So simple, so obvious, and so helpful. This has helped tremendously in developing background. Thank you very much.
Short:
Price returns to support that was just taken out:
I also like that it is the bottom of the lower value area for the day, and a 38.2% fib. Stop is above 50% fib. If this doesnt workout I can definately live with it.
Taking half off at bottom of range or when heavy demand shows up.
Well thatâs worked out nicely for you. A lot of the stale longs would have jumped out at 1.3838 which is where they would have entered earlier this morning. Then the news about Stark on the ECB broke and timberrrrr. I wouldnât expect to see heavy demand show up until the round figure - thereâll be barrier interest there which will slow things down a bit.
Yes that worked out great!
I took the first half off 3790 on some demand for 38 pips. Took the rest off at 3731 for 96
I figured the US banks would be successful in taking out the 3750 barrier considering they have bulldozed everything else in their path. But heavy demand came in at 3730 so I took it, turns out I coulda held on for more.
Im happy nonetheless. My account has has grown 4.3% since joining this thread Thanks for the advice guys.
And now that barrier is toast. Usual profit taking now - especially now thatâs Friday afternoon. Wouldnât be surprised though to see it end the day hanging around 1.37 even. Canât see there being any major buyers coming out of the woodwork this late today what with G7 coming up this weekend.
Nice one! Unfortunately your screenshots are low resolution and very hard to read. I recommend against using the forumâs âattachmentâ or âRetrieve remote file and reference locallyâ feature, as it reduces the resolution of your screenshots, making them hard to see.
I just read that statement, so I do not read all the history. Iâd say ticks work sometimes and not all the time as all other tools do not work all the time. I am pretty sure a âbig guyâ would split his orders into some smaller ones and even those are much bigger than those small retail traders with micro lots. At the end of the candle, itâs very likely you can get at least a little info out of the volume. A price is not different in this. How can you know who moved the price? There is also just a little info regarding the price movement. The volume is not more or less like using an indicator for divergence/convergence measurement, but with the advantage of additional information which is not related to price information.
Price, time, volume (tick count) are all original values of different dimensions which can conclude the big picture what is going on in the markets. Sure, real volume would be much better, but you can also get this info: Look at your dom numbers. 
Thank you, that was bugging the heck outta me.