Mapping Your Voyage of Discovery - CQG.com

Part 3Putting it all together.Creating your structure.In trading, time and timing are critical to the success. The common plan of attack, especiallyon timing, is usually concentrated on creating combinations of momentum with patterns.This involves crossovers of indicators that have special, magical settings. Many of theexamples I have used have simply been the CQG defaults. It seems to have escaped manythat no matter much work and testing is done, the chances are that the combination that isderived and its subsequent success are more to do with good money management,emotional stability or just plain great trading. It’s a cliché, but true based on the feedback Ireceive that you can give a great commentary or set of technical set-ups to a poor traderand they’ll lose. Give a poor commentary and set up to a great trader and they won’t losemuch.Therefore, to make technical analysis work you must structure the analysis in order that youfind it easy to use. There is no benefit developing a form of analysis that utilizes 1-minutebars if you don’t like spending hours in front of a screen. Choose correctly, and the technicalanalysis that you develop will support your trading. Remember thatTechnical Analysis is a Support Structure for good traders and an excuse for poor ones.In addition, you must overcome the hurdle of believing the support structure you havedeveloped. It is easy to have a few bad trades and begin to think the structure is flawed. Ifeel very fortunate that I have experienced two sides to trading over long periodsthroughout my career. The first period was when I worked in the market using justfundamentals, touch, an understanding of pure price action and some guesswork. Thesecond period began when I stumbled into a job that theoretically gave me the brief, timeand resources to embark on a 15 year voyage of discovery into what is a bottomless“Pandora’s box” of theory and experimentation.It is no accident that it was when I was forced myself to analyse week in, week out via thecommentaries that trading and technical analysis switched from being a random supportstructure to an actual live fluid methodology. The result is a lack of frustration at missingtrades, whilst all the excuses, disciplinary problems and laziness have evaporated. Structureis everything.