I have learned, and continue to learn a massive amount over the years from Babypips by having interaction with other traders, not saying I agree with everything they write or say, far from it, but often those are the times that I learn most.
Shouting at each other just causes a discussion to deteriorate into an argument, I don’t think I have ever learned anything useful from arguments, other than to stay away from them.
Edit; I had finished my post and then started to read - the answer the headline question for me is YES.
Please start a new thread with OutThisLife if you’d like to continue your discussion about support and resistance. This is exactly the type of post that DOESN’T BELONG IN THIS THREAD. Please read my reply directly above yours. If you have questions, contact me directly.
I had to reply to this just to ask the question: Who do you think you’re protecting from the big bad ICT/Michael Huddlestone and why do you think they need protecting?
Don’t you think they know by now how to make decisions by themselves? Did they not learn these skills from their mommy and daddy from very young? Weren’t they born with that thing called common sense? I ask because you’re either being really insulting to them (us?) or really over-estimating ICT’s hypnotic powers of writing!
To clarify, I did read and watch ICT’s stuff - some of it! I didn’t read the longer threads because well they were too long. I did follow his videos because they made sense to me, they helped me put some picture on the market at a time when I didn’t have the skills to do so (or lipstick on the pig as he once said).
That’s all. Just some new way to view the market that helped me. I’ve also read other posters here and other books as well and they’ve helped develop my picture of the market, nothing more, nothing less. That’s called learning. We take what we find useful, research and apply it and drop what doesn’t work.
i didn’t pursue some of the concepts like COT, smart money etc because they weren’t for me. I did follow other concepts, maybe not necessarily unique to ICT or created by him. But introduced by him to me among others. I used my common sense, I read more about these concepts from other sources.
But I didn’t blindly throw money into the market based on those videos or make any payments to him. He didn’t try to sell me anything, he didn’t force me to think things I didn’t want to think. He simply provided is opinion, his take on the market. Isn’t that what everyone here does? Isn’t it up to us to follow or not follow, believe or not believe?
People say he lied, It’s not for me to judge for the other posters, I’m not a mod or God. But even if he did, aren’t there many who lie on the internet? Does it mean we shouldn’t engage with the internet? No, it simply means we should exercise our common sense. That’s what I do. But then, I’m 32. I’ve been doing that since I was old enough to have sense.
Just to clarify, I’m not sticking up for anyone, just questioning the motivations of the different people here. No one is in danger from anyone’s words. Only themselves if they allow themselves to be conned (by anyone here or in the real world). Therefore, why jump on this guy. We all make claims, we all have ego. They’re not bad qualities only human ones.
My comment’s weren’t directed towards you or people with common sense, like you. It was directed to the plenty who have put so much faith into ICT that they’ve failed to “go their own way”. I made a list earlier, and I’m positive there is more.
Sure there is more, there is always more, but the big man sums it up.
You are an inquisitive guy, I’ve seen you on gears, you ask, you learn - believe this - it’s not in the asking that you learn, it’s big time in the giving.
I would guess that most members of this site would agree that by answering, thinking, responding they actually learn more about their own trading - my other guess is that the OP is no different - I’d suggest that in the making of all that material that maybe he too has learned some.
Many times I despair of us retail, we are loners, the guys they call smart take our money, but reality is they are smart only because they act together as ‘the market’ - sites like BP, where we can interact and learn, we can choose to fight.
I would like you to please explain what your thoughts are about why ICT methods (meaning what he teaches) are not valuable to traders. Mechanically speaking we will be seeing charts in the weeks to come that attempt to identify order flow and liquidity, identify points where institutions are accumulating, distributing and taking profit from mark-up/down, and identifying ahead of time where day traders can enter the market with an understanding of the intent behind the numbers / candles. Can you please enlighten us with your next post, and explain what you believe the shortcomings of this approach are. I would be very psyched to see the discussion progress into the methods themselves.
At the end of the day, price retraces to structure and this is obvious to all of us. I believe this happens because of institutional pricing rather than free market supply and demand. This is debatable, but S&D implies that the markets price levels are not pre-determined, and the movement of price at times (often) is so precise, that I can not envision un-manipulated S/D as the driver - to use you words ‘common sense’ and repeatability tell me that something deliberate is taking place… So please, tell us why the methods being taught are misleading.
I’m not Out, but for the sake of conversations sake (and hopefully not get myself banned for being off topic hehe), I can go into some more detail as to why I’m not the greatest fan of ICT methods.
Everyone will have different opinions, but to me the biggest questions are:
Do ICT methods have merit? (pure technical)
Should he even be posting? (pure “moral”)
I’ll just be talking about the first. The second point really boils down to asking yourself if you would take advice from someone with a questionable or unknown past. On one hand, you potentially have an issue of the blind leading the blind. In FX, this leads to losing traders creating more losing traders. On the other hand, information is information. Take it or leave it. This is the internet (the real world); if you need someone to tell you what to read and what not to read, you’re SOL.
So, what are my problems with ICT methods? Like the majority of technical trading, it lacks what I call consistent identification. There were a couple of ideas that I was really curious about (that ICT covered in his videos); fib levels, institutional levels, “kill zones” and the like. I was really drawn to precision and timing. However, the videos themselves really just said “these things exist and they work, I use them”, and said “here’s what they look like in hindsight”, both things that are the bane of new traders.
In all the videos I watched on fib levels, kill zones, “judas swings” (which is really just a fake break and I get annoyed when people introduce new phrases that mean the same thing, personal thing though I know), there was never a true proposal for how these things take shape. There was never a “setup”. There was no way for a trader to understand the difference between a true breakout (trend continuation) and a judas swing (a trend reversal). There was never a hint on how to understand if a fib level was going to hold or not. As I’ve grown as a trader over the months I know that identifying these things is really, really hard. Doing so on a consistent basis would turn you from a regular trader to a billionaire trader. I understand. But my issue is with lack of direction, and lack of proof.
When I say lack of direction I mean that the material leaves little room for traders to further their education themselves. There’s a lot of general statements and not enough defining. There’s a lot of “this happens a lot” and not enough “this happens enough that if you can get yourself a 1:3 risk to reward you’ll win” or “this happens about 50-70% of the time” or “this happens about once a week”. There’s a lot of “trust me folks I’ve been doing this for a long time” and not enough “if you pull the data and identify areas that look like x, you’ll see a pattern”. The “x” that I’m talking about doesn’t even have to be specific! But my issue time and time again is that I watch the videos and think “huh”, and not “hmm, let me try to do this”. It doesn’t inspire me to learn more. I’m not expecting him to put numbers on everything (although this is what I do on my own time), but I would like a little more.
Perhaps his videos do indeed touch on points that I say he does not. Admittedly I’ve only watched 10-15 of his videos, but considering the average length of his videos, it was enough time for me to decide if continuing to watch his videos was worth my time or not.
On a market note, I’m expecting 1.081x to break before 1.121x does so long as price doesn’t break 1.109x in the next week or so.
I see the old me in a lot of the posters here, it’s sad and embarrassing that I was once like this towards Michael.
All I want to say is this is toxic thinking and can destroy ones health very quickly, I am speaking from experience. Keep studying his material or move on, whatever route you choose, please remove the toxic thinking.
I met Jim Rogers in a conference and asked his opinion about technical vs fundamental analysis. His answer is he trust neither. Larry William uses fundamental a lot. But both of them are highly successful traders. Why? I guess as the saying goes, different folks different strokes.
You find the methods lack consistent identification and that is rightly so because the market itself is never consistent and it’s because it’s the many key players (humans) who are playing/manipulating the market, not machines. And where many humans are involved, you can’t expect consistent indications. That’s why indicators and systems don’t work all the time.
As for furthering your journey. I can only offer this from my own learning experience:
My own learning methodology, FX and other things: I go through and remember as much as I could, practice them, get rid of those that I find not suitable for me, go through the materials again, practice again, review my results, maybe pickup some of those that I discarded and add here and there, practice again, review results again, and so on and so forth.
One of our fellow traders in the other forum took such meticulous notes that I find difficulty in understanding them. Yet she did it as a FX novice (and with health issues), eyeing a single pair for months (which ICT do not touch), taking notes during trading sessions like a seismometer and I believe she is closed to internalizing the concepts. Sorry, I can’t take notes like her. But I had my way of learning.
One of the forumers wrote this as his/her signature: [B]rinse, wash, repeat[/B]. Though it is referring to the market. But I find that it is also an attitude we should have in trading, and life - keep refreshing.
Oh yes, ICT don’t do “if… then…” so if you are looking that “if… then”, he is not the right person for you.
On the part of “different strokes for different folks”, I agree; my dislike for the methods mostly comes from ICT methods not meeting my “tolerance level” so to speak when it comes to proof of concept. For me to believe that his concepts work, I need to have either:
A very technical approach with numbers or suggestions on how to find numbers (which is mostly what I covered in the previous post) or
A discretionary approach with enough historical calls to back the evidence. Personally this is why I’d like to see an fxbook, but it’s very difficult for me to follow discretionary methods anyway so I’m generally not in the “book or stfu” camp.
So yes, I’m just a very technical person I suppose. Personally (after pursuing other methods), I’m slightly shocked at how consistent I find the market to be, despite the fact that I’m often told there are no patterns and indicators don’t work. I have met many other people who are in search of a more specific method, or a more detailed method.
Think about but no need to answer me because it is you who must decide if you want to continue with this thread:
What is your tolerance for POC? The success percentage of a technique/method/system? Even a cookie cutter cannot be 100% for every cookie it produces (0.01% failure?).
To me, “consistency” means it occurs all the time. However, in this market, there is only high probability, no consistency (or maybe you prefer “consistency of high probability”). So what consistency are you looking for? There will always be reactions at 00/20/50/80 levels, are those good enough?
1 thing is for sure, the closest thing to historical calls from ICT will only start from his next myfxbook trade. So you can wait and read, and find other consistent technical setups at the meantime.
If you choose to learn from ICT, then you should know that he teaches patience very well.
Again, there is no “if… then” in this market, only “if… probably”.
I think we might be hijacking the thread so I shall tread carefully from here on…
What caught my attention was the last 5 words of the thread title, as palmy says, the market is made up of humans, price is the result of those people’s collective thought, many of those guys are employed by the ‘institutions’ - so my aim is to attempt to get inside that thinking.
The market, especially the FX market is changing fast, this is a good article that gives us some insight into institutional context from BIS:
I can see this perspective, but where I am in my success w/ trading is pretty much 100% due to my self-study. I feel like ICT tries to spoon-feed his followers and a lot of people don’t seem to pick up and move on from there. ICT material is not the end of the spectrum, it’s really near the beginning IME.
I don’t mean to disregard anyone who is learning from him. It’s just those that have stuck around hanging onto his words that bother me. It shouldn’t, but I’m a guy that really wants everyone to succeed… I feel like sticking to a “mentor” is one great way to fail. Or, at least, not realize your own true potential.
I don’t think the methods are necessarily misleading, but they need not be renamed either. Order blocks, mitigation blocks, breakers are just pseudo-clever ways of pointing out SR or S/D. They aren’t necessary.
The rest of the material, mostly the macroeconomics and some of session-based information (killzones) are interesting. Not new, but they have been put into a neat format for beginners.
I know, I agree. I’m mostly bored. Trading has always been a passion of mine, and there isn’t much information to delve into anymore. Communities like this are one place to discuss trading, but there’s a ton of noise… I don’t see what else I can do from here besides bicker.
So I’m going to say this. Trade with/like the institutions. No way in hell. First of all I’m speculating with my money, not trading multi-billion dollar accounts of my international corporate clients. Secondly, I don’t have access to order flow. This is not going down to the cattle yards for this weeks sales. I can’t afford a team of programmers to automate my systems - remember 75% of institution trading is automatic. Why because they own the order book. Nor do I have a spare 100 million laying around to lay 20 km of optic cable so I can reduce latency from 25 ms to 12. Do I need to carry on.
See these institutes make money trading money. I don’t. My “trade” is nothing more than a variable odds bet (and lets not dwell into that statement) on whether the market price will rise or fall. So I don’t have to give a damn about how institutes trade. As long as they keep doing what it is they do. And they will. Because they are corporations. This then leaves footprints in the sand which you and I can then interpret and make our trade decisions from. Price and time thats all we need. Its all we got.
Now the marketing guru’s have feed us bull dung for years about price. However time IMO is a far more valuable tool when it comes to market analysis. These institutes “tend” to do the same thing at the same time each and every day. Or at least they use to. The recent fines handed out may (and thats a big may) force them to change their habits but I doubt it. Understand this and there are opportunities though-out the day to get in and get out. But the returns can be small and the use of leverage can be high.
Apart from that, nobody at the end of the day can influence supply and demand. Thats up to us the consumer. So IMO we speculators have only one of two choices. Trade the very fast moving time frames or the very slow. Anything in-between leaves you exposed to what these corporate bodies are doing. Making the game just that little bit harder.
Now my journey was just starting when the first round of this ICT bull begin. So I don’t give a crap about any of ewes (deliberate play on words). If you have come back to BP’s to FREELY share you perspective - there is nothing new to offer us - then I welcome you. But if there’s a price tag attached then I will call you out for a snake skin salesman. For the reality is that is what your doing, praying on the innocence of the masses.
But some 18 pages into the thread and not one piece of unique perspective.
Hey Bob, are you intentionally missing the point to goad ICT students into responding, or does someone print out your forum posts at the end of the year to claim a tax deduction? If I thought you would take the time to understand it, I’d explain why there is a difference between Supply and Demand versus Institutional Order Flow, and why it helps you to recognize it. There are many ways to trade that are valid. It’s fine to not like his methods or style, but why are you posting on this thread if you have no interest?
I’m a student of the market so always interested to learn but as I said, 178 posts and no-one has said nothing. Do I have to wait until post 14 384 before we get to the good stuff.
Original thought and fresh perspective. Freely given. Is that to much to ask?
