Showing posts with label Linda Bradford Raschke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linda Bradford Raschke. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

The Taylor Trading Technique | Scott Hoffman

In my opinion, George Douglass Taylor was one of the greatest trading thinkers, and luckily he left behind one book on trading: 'The Taylor Trading Technique' (1950). This book lays out his 'Taylor Book Method' for swing trading in futures. Taylor postulated that the markets had patterns based on "market engineering" from the "powers that be" in the grain markets. These insiders would frequently cause prices to decline to set up a buying opportunity for themselves. Then, after the market rallied sufficiently to yield profit for these insiders, a short-term top was created to give them a selling opportunity. The market would sell off, and the cycle would start again. 
 
George Douglass Taylor was a grain trader in the 1940s and 1950s at the CBOT pit
and is credited original author of the 3 Day Cycle Short-Term Trading System.

The effect of this engineering was to amplify the natural rhythm of the market, creating false moves that would fool traders into buying when they should be selling, and vice versa. The thrust of the Taylor Technique is to identify this rhythm and take advantage of the "false moves". I have long maintained that if an individual could identify moves in the market that would serve to inflict the most pain on unwary traders then they would have a great trading system. I believe the Taylor Technique does that. Taylor created this method for the grain futures markets, but I find it equally applicable in the financial futures markets today. 
 
George Douglass Taylor’s system of short-term swing trading is based on the premise that the market moves in two to three day timeframes, moving from a low to a high and back to a low. The other important concepts are the importance of the previous day’s high and low, the length of upswings relative to downswings, and being a solely technical trader (ignoring fundamentals).

Cycle Day #1 – Buy Day
The first day of the cycle is the buying day. Look for a Buy Day two days after a swing high (the highest high of the past few days). On a Buy Day, look for the market to make its lows first, finding support around yesterday’s low. If the market opens flat to higher, look to buy the first sell off towards the previous low. If the market trades under yesterday’s low, be careful about going home long. The market should close higher than where it opened. If it is making new lows late in the day, it is usually best to exit. You can often get in the next day at a better price.
 
Cycle Day #1 - Buy Day

Generally, it’s good rule of thumb not to buy late in the day on a buy day if the market is heading lower or closing lower than where it opened. Odds favor a lower opening the next day, giving you a better enter price. Likewise, if the market is going to close lower than it opened, don’t be afraid to liquidate your position. Odds are in your favor that you’ll be able to buy at a lower price the next day.

Cycle Day #2 – Sell Day
If you are long and the market is closing in your favor, carry your long position overnight. Odds favor a higher opening the next day setting up the Sell Day, the second day of the cycle. On the Sell Day you should look to sell into strength, liquidating your position, and going home flat. Often, the sell day trades on both sides in what I call a 'fade' day. A fade day often follows a trend day and can be traded from either side.

 Cycle Day #2 - Sell Day

Cycle Day #3 – Sell Short Day
The third day of the cycle is the Sell Short Day. The Sell Short Day is the mirror image of the buying day. On a sell short day, you should be looking to sell early morning resistance, looking for resistance around the previous day’s high. The market should not be making highs late in the day, if it is you should be able to get a better entry point the next day. On a Sell Short Day, the market should close lower than it opened. The Sell Short Day is often followed by a 'Fade' day.
 
Cycle Day #3 - Sell Short Day.

That is the gist of Taylor’s technique - a rhythm of buy-sell-sell short. I don’t always recognize where we are in Taylor’s cycle (you’re always learning!), but on days when it is clear, at the least it gives you a good indication of the market’s bias for that day. In swing trading, the relation of the open to the close should indicate the direction of the next morning’s opening. This helps you determine whether the odds favor being a buyer or a seller on a given day.

Reference:

Sunday, June 16, 2024

The Complete 3 Day Cycle Short-Term Trading System | Cameron Benson

 
[...] Back in the 1950s George Douglass Taylor was a pit trader and he is the original author of the 3-Day Cycle. He watched the people trading larger capital and started to notice a rhythmic 1, 2, 3 to the markets. He used these rhythmic studies to develop the 3-Day Cycle Short-Term Trading System.
  1. A Buy Day (Day 1) occurs after 1-5 Days of decline, when a market that has opened, made its low in the morning, and closed in the upper third of the days range.
  2. Then follows the Sell Day (Day 2) which in fact (contrary to what its name suggests) rallies higher above Day 1 and one could already cover long positions on that day. However, if the 'Sell Day' has a strong close, a directional follow through could occur the next day (Day 3/1).
  3. The Sell Short Day (Day 3) could come immediately following the Buy Day (Day 1), if price action presents in the opposite direction. However, after Day 1 the market could also move higher for 2-3 days before printing new highs in the morning, and close in the lower third of the days range. If you ever notice a market breaking out for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 days in one direction, it's probably because it is breaking out of a larger structural pattern. [...] 
 » Once you see it, you can't unsee it. «

 
» The largest Aha moment I ever had when I started trading the 3 Day Cycle strategy was that the above three things can be traded completely different. It is massively important to your understanding of this style of trading:

(1.) 3 Day Setups using signal days (previous day's high and low, inside day, first green/red day).
(2.) Weekly Template.
(3.) 3 Day Cycle.
 
All three can also be mashed together into one big trading strategy that will present setups for parabolic trend trades, short squeeze, long squeeze, and some other setups that can help you get into the trade. « - Cameron Benson, 2023 

 

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Turtle Soup, Day In, Day Out │ Max Singh

The Turtle Soup trading strategy was developed by Linda Bradford-Raschke and published in her 1996 book Street Smarts: High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies
 

The strategy’s name is a reference to a well-known strategy called Turtle trading, taught by Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt in the 1980s to a group of novice traders called the 'Turtles'. 
 
 

Linda Bradford-Raschke inverted the reasoning behind the original Turtle strategy in order to develop a short-term trading method using false breakout reversals at key levels. The strategy can be used on 1 hour, 4 hour or daily charts. The method is simple but requires understanding of order flow and market structure. 

 
Ref
erence:

Thursday, April 27, 2023

The Three Day Cycle | Cameron Benson

 
The 3 Day Cycle  is a recurring market cycle, that when identified, can be the groundwork of a trade setup. It consists of 3 days, and begins with a false break at the current weeks high or low. In his Best Trade Setups Playbook Stacey Burke described the 3 Day Cycle setups as either pump and dumps, or dump and pumps: "They [the market makers] pump, pump, pump, go sideways and drop a bit, one more small pump, then a dump. The dump can go straight down, fast. The pump up, may often be hard to trade on the first day, the price action can be choppy, and back and forth, a slow grinding auction. Other times, you are forced to "chase the move."  

 
Finding Day 1:
Look for a false break above or below a previous day's high or low AT THE HIGH OR LOW OF THE WEEK.

Attributes of Day 1:
1. Breaks Below/Above Previous Days High or Low at the high of the week, and the day closes back inside of previous days range.
a. Sub Variation: Breaks through previous days level and days closes above/below that level. 
The following day, price comes back inside of the the range from 2 days ago and closes.
2. Can become a First Green Day or First Red Day (Signal for following day).
3. Day 3 sometimes turns into Day 1 at the close of the day.


 
 Attributes of Day 2 of the 3 Day Cycle:

Day 2 can be either
1. Continuation in direction of false break; or:
2. It can turn into ...
    a.) a First Red Day (FGD)
    b.) a First Green Day (FRD)
    c.) an Inside Day
    d.) a Trend Day

Areas of Interest:
1. High of the Day/Low of the Day (HOD/LOD)
2. High of the Session/Low of the Session (HOS/LOS)
3. Outside Day/Inside Day (Was there a false break?) (Act as Support/Resistance)
4. Low Bear/High Bull (Support/Resistance)

Day 2 Trade Setups:
- Long/Short Squeeze
- Parabolic Trend Trade
- High of the Session/Low of the Session (HOD/LOD) Trade
- High of the Day/Low of the Day (HOD/LOD)
- Low Hanging Fruit (LHF) Continuation (Trend Trade)

Method:
1. Support/Resistance References:
a. Low Bear/High Bull
b. Previous Days High/Low
c. HOD/LOD
2. Measure 3 Levels of rise/fall from Low/High of day for potential strike zone.
3. Use Support/Resistance References as additional confluence.
 
 
Attributes of Day 3 of the 3 Day Cycle:

1. Day 3 is the last day of the 3 Day Cycle.
2. A lot of times Day 3 can turn into Day 1, either on the current day or the next day 
(Reset of the Day Count).
3. Day 3 can either become a blow off trend continuation day (in the direction of the trend) or a reversal day.

Trade Setups:
1. Parabolic/Capitulation Trend
2. Reversal HOW/LOW
3. LHF Continuation (Trend Trade)

Areas of Interest:
1. Low/High of week
2. Previous Days High/Low (Support/Resistance/Trapped Volume)
3. High/Low of Day
4. High Bull/Low Bear (Support/Resistance)
5. OD/ID (Outside Day/Inside Day)

Reference:
 
See also:

The Three Week Cycle | Cameron Benson

 
There are multiple ways of Week 1 taking place: 

1.) Price breaks out and fails at the High/Low of the month above or below a previous weeks high/low.
2.) A 3 Week Cycle has completed (gone through week 1,2,3), but has not reversed on week 3. 
I refer to this as a "revolving door" style a.k.a. Trending Model of the 3 week cycle.
3.) A breakout occurs above/below previous weeks level, and on the following week reverses back above/below that level.
4.) On week 3 the market reverses BUT on the following week the market continues in the previous direction (a.k.a. Reset). 
 
 
 
See also:

Friday, December 16, 2022

The Four Guiding Principles of Market Behavior | Momentum & Trend

Principle 1:     Trend is More Likely to Continue its Direction than to Reverse
With price established in a clearly defined trend of higher highs and higher lows, certain key strategies and probabilities begin to take shape. Once a trend is established, it takes considerable force and capitalization to turn the tide. Fading a trend is generally a low-probability endeavor and the greatest profits can be made by entering reactions or retracements following a counter trend move and playing for either the most recent swing high or a certain target just beyond the most recent swing high. An absence of chart patterns or swings implies trend continuation until both a higher high and a higher low (vice versa for uptrend changes) form and price takes out the most recent higher high.

Be aware that recent statistical analysis of market action (from intraday to 20 day periods) over the last five years shows that mean reversion, rather than trend continuation is more probable in many equities/indices (as shown by more up days followed by down days than continuation upwards). For the current market environment, until volatility returns (as it may be doing now), this rule may be restated, “Trends with strong momentum show favorable odds for continuation.”
 
Principle 2:     Trends End in Climax (Euphoria/Capitulation)
Trends continue in push/pull fashion until some external force exerts convincing pressure on the system, be it in the form of sharply increased volume or volatility. This typically occurs when we experience extreme continuity of thought and euphoria of the mass public (that price will continue upwards forever). However, price action – because of extreme emotions – tends to carry further than most traders anticipate, and anticipating reversals still can be financially dangerous. In fact, some price action becomes so parabolic in the end stage that up to 70% of the gains come in the final 20% of the move. Markets also rarely change trends overnight; rather, a sideways trend or consolidation is more likely to occur before rolling over into a new downtrend.
 
Three Things Markets do:
1. Breakout and Trend.
2. Breakout and Reverse (False Breakout).
3. Trading Range (High and Low).
 
 
Principle 3:     Momentum Precedes Price
Momentum – force of buying/selling pressure – leads price in that new momentum highs have higher probability of resulting in a new price high following the next reaction against that momentum high. Stated differently, expect a new price high following a new momentum high reading on momentum indicators (including MACD, momentum, rate of change). A gap may also serve as a momentum indicator. Some of the highest probability trades occur after the first reaction following a new momentum high in a freshly confirmed trend. Also, be aware that momentum highs following a trend exhaustion point are invalidated by principle #2. Never establish a position in the direction of the original trend following a clear exhaustion point.
 
Principle 4:     Price Alternates Between Range Expansion and Range Contraction
Price tends to consolidate (trend sideways) much more frequently than it expands (breakouts). Consolidation indicates equilibrium points where buyers and sellers are satisfied (efficiency) and expansion indicates disequilibrium and imbalance (inefficiency) between buyers and sellers. It is much easier to predict volatility changes than price, as price-directional prediction (breakout) following a low-volatility environment is almost impossible. Though low volatility environments are difficult to predict, they provide some of the best risk/reward trades possible (when you play for a very large target when your initial stop is very small – think NR-7 Bars).

Various strategies can be developed that take advantages of these principles. In fact, almost all sensible trades base their origin in at least one of these market principles: breakout strategies, retracement strategies, trend trading, momentum trading, swing trading, etc. across all timeframes.
 
Concept Credit for arranging the four principles
 
See also:
 

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Swing Trading - Rules and Philosophy | Linda Bradford Raschke

My style is based on the 'Taylor Trading Technique', a short-term method for trading daily price movements that relies entirely on odds and percentages. It is a method as opposed to a system. Very few people can blindly follow a system, though many find it easier to be discretionary in a systematic way. 
 
 
Because of the short-term nature of this technique, swing traders must adhere to some very basic rules, including: 
  • If the trade moves in your favor, carry it overnight--the odds favor follow-through. Expect to exit the next day around the objective point. An overnight gap presents an excellent opportunity to take profits. Concentrating on only one entry or one exit per day relieves the pressure. 
  • If your entry is correct, the market should move favorably almost immediately. It may come back to test and/or exceed your entry point a little, but that's OK. 
  • Do not carry a losing position overnight. Exit and play for better position the next day. 
  • A strong close indicates a strong opening the following day. 
  • If the market doesn't perform as expected, exit on the first reaction. 
  • If the market offers you a windfall of big profits, take them to the bank on the close. 
  • If you are long and the market closes flat, indicating a lower opening the following day, scratch or exit the trade. Play for better position the next day. 
  • It is always OK to scratch a trade! 
  • Use tight stops when swing trading (wider stops when trading trend). 
  • The goal always is to minimize risk and create "Freebies." 
  • When in doubt--get out! You have lost your road map and your game plan! 
  • Place your orders at the market. 
  • When the trade isn't working, exit on the first reaction. ANTICIPATE! 
 
Traders Laboratory (2007) - Taylor Trading Technique

How does one anticipate entry? The following may be indicators of a buy day or a sell day:

The Count
Start searching for a buying day 2 days after a swing high or, conversely, a shorting day 2 days after a swing low. Ideally, the market will move in complete 5-day cycles. (In a strong trend, the market will move 4 days in the primary direction and only 1 in reaction. Thus, one must seek entry 1 day earlier.)
 
"Check Mark" on the Test
The potential entry is sought opposite, or contrary to, the previous day's close. If looking to buy (sell), one first wants the market to "test" the previous day's low (high), preferably early in the day, and then form a trading pattern that looks like a "check mark" (see examples). This pattern sets up and establishes a "double stop point" or strong support. If entering a market with only a "single stop point" or support formed by today's low only, exit on the same day--the trade is clearly against the trend.

Close vs. Open
The close should indicate the following day's opening. When a market opens opposite what is expected or indicated by the trend, one may first look to "fade" it--but must take profits quickly. Then look to reverse!

Support (Resistance)
Is today's support (resistance) higher or lower than yesterday's?

Swing Measurements
Where is the market relative to the last swing high or low? Look for swings (up or down) of equal length, and for retracements of equal percentage.

No matter in what time frame, always look for supply at tops and support at bottoms. Penetrations should be accompanied by volume and activity. Expect trends, either up or down, to last for either 2 or 4 weeks. The following conditions are fairly reliable indicators for the start of one of these trends (I personally skip the first buy or sell swing when one occurs because the move ensuing could be quite strong): 
  • Narrowest range in the last 7 days 
  • 3 consecutive days with small range
  • The point of a wedge
  • A breakaway gap 
  • A rising ADX (14-period) above 32
Practice
Because a certain amount of confidence in any technique is required to trade it consistently, paper trading can cultivate the faith necessary to recognize and trade pattern repetition. Although the temptation to try too many different styles and patterns always exists, one must strive ultimately to trade in just one consistent manner or at least to integrate techniques into your own unique philosophy.
 
System Characteristics
Certain points about trading short-term swings deserve note. Understanding the nature of short-term systems can help you recognize the psychological aspect of trading. When consistently following a short-term system, you should expect a very high win/loss ratio. Though the objectives with this style of swing trading appear conservative, you will almost always incur "positive slippage". In all systems, winners are skewed. Even though making steady profits, 3-4 really big trades may actually make the month. It is vitally important to always "lock in" your trades. Don't give back profits when short-term trading. You may be astonished at just how big some winners may be from catching the swings "just right!"
 
[...] Finally, I want to leave you with what I believe are two Golden Rules, applicable to all traders but, of essential importance to short-term swing traders: 
  • NEVER, ever, average a loss! Sell out if you think you are wrong. Buy back when you believe you are right.
  • NEVER, NEVER, NEVER listen to anyone else's opinion! Only YOU know when your trade isn't working.
 
See also: