The best way to time the market is to stay in it. You don't need to sell. If you think, you're at a top, you just sell your most risky investments and replace them with much safer ones and rinse and repeat. That's the correct way to time the market. Accumulating cash is probably the dumbest thing to do, especially if you're far from being fully invested.
Gold has been moving between a pretty tight range recently (around 4800 area).
It looks clean on the chart,
but actually trading it feels different.
Sometimes it respects the range perfectly,
sometimes it spikes just enough to take stops.
I’m trying to scalp inside the range,
but execution matters a lot more in this kind of market.
Are you guys trading the range
or waiting for a breakout?
I’m on the journey to becoming a trader and putting in the hours. 100% of my time has been focused on price action. Candlesticks. I’ve just recently started studying orderflow. IBKR desktop and TWS was not it for this. I setup Motivewave + dxFeed and it’s a lot cleaner. I look at the chart, DOM and Time&Sales.
My question is: does anyone rely on the tape (time&sales) more than/instead of DOM? If so, why?
My perspective on DOM (specifically regarding the Bid and Ask columns) is that it hints of what “could” happen. Possible support, possible resistance. But since orders can get placed and pulled anytime it’s not reliable for gauging S/R. I look at the tape as the real reliable source since it prints orders that have actually been filled. Color clusters and volume showing the shifts in the market. Time, Price and Volume are the only columns I keep on the tape. I really only use the DOM to see if price is holding while the tape is printing aggressively. As far as the sizes of the Bid and Ask columns on DOM, as much as I’d think to use them to show strong support behind me or as a warning that there’s a resistance above, or vice versa, I don’t really pay attention to them because they seem to appear and disappear so fast and almost randomly (spoofing).
I’m not claiming to be correct. I’m extremely new to this. It’s been about 2 weeks. This is just how I am currently processing it. Any insight from someone with experience would mean the world. Love is love.
The tickers I’m focused on are SPY and QQQ.