Newbies and Oldbies, PVSRA Musketeers Come One, Come All,
Perhaps this will help. The following is the text of a PM I received. The individual (identity kept anonymous) wonders if PVSRA is static, or if it has evolved such that information early on, and at different places around the world, is overshadowed now by current events. Read this for yourself, as I am sure practically everyone will be able to relate to the thoughts this individual has expressed. And at the conclusion of your careful reading of this, I have offered a synopsis that might help everyone.
Dear Tah, hi
first of all I would like to thank you for for putting your effort in giving knowledge to the community. It is a pleasure reading your lessons, hints and detailed analyses that I've found in FF, Donna and here. I'm a newbie and I started to read on PVSRA couple of weeks ago. As you can imagine my head feels like a exploding but that the learning process. Right now I feel like understanding none of it - especially when I'm trying to apply MM's logic/mechanics on current price movement
As I understand it it will take months/years to grasp fraction of the 7th sense experienced users of your technique have. Hoping that I have enough perseverance
I have some question though - there is a lot of material on FF, DonnaForex and here. Then again, someone pointed that PVSRA evolved during recent years. I'm wondering, for a newbie like me is it better to focus only on material given here or to read the textbook threads in FF and Donna also ? what do you recomend ? Reason I'm asking is that I do feel more of 'theory' I absorb (same topics rephrased differently) more chances that I'll understand it correctly (given into consideration the language barrier and not being a pro trader)
My second question is about making sure that I see all the materials I should see on this forum. As for PVSRA learning materials, I can see 5 posts in 1 thread in the study hall section and Golden Posts collection in the archives vault. At first I thought that this is the essence thet you decided is best for newbies - and after reading it they should follow trading room posts. But then I found your post on membership privileges and thought I'm not missing anything.
Thank you once again for your hard work.
Anonymous
Three things now, very briefly;
PVSRA, evaluating setups, and trading limits/
HTMRW.
PVSRA has not changed. It encompasses every technical way there is to assess price action, but keeping the focus on keeping volume involved in the assessment process. This is because volume is the only technical metric other than price action itself which is not just another derivative of price action, which indeed all other indicators are. What MT4 offers for volume is the count of "ticks", which is the number of times price has changed during each chart time frame. True volume would be the actual quantity of currency traded between tick changes, but we are not offered that information. However, what we have is good enough because we are looking for relative changes in activity that are significant. So we do not need actual currency quantities. And all the different brokers might show different tick counts during a chart time frame. This also is not a problem since we are only looking for "relative" activity changes that are significant. Obviously, skill with PVSRA can only improve with "screen time"; time spent viewing charts, studying the state of PA that spawned setups that led to moves that would have been profitable to trade, and studying the difference between that state of PA and the state of PA that spawned setups that failed. This is a skill that can only improve in the same way that the skill a child has doing jigsaw puzzles improves as the child does more puzzles, and more difficult puzzles over time. Time and repetition causes something to happen in our brain to establish "short cuts" to processing the data and seeing the solution.
Now here is a possible key to evaluating setups. As you read this it is presumed you already have read about what our setup is; essentially the solid trend with proper angle in the vicinity of a key level (whole or half level) with PA looking like it might cross, or has recently crossed the key level,.....Solid trend angled up and PA above it for longs, and Solid trend angled down and PA below it for shorts. The key offered here is in two parts. The first part is simple. Look at the PVA bars immediately leading up to this setup. If the setup is for a long the PVA bars should be predominately BELOW that key level. If the setup is for a short, the PVA bars should be predominately ABOVE that key level. If this is the case, odds have it that the setup will lead to a decent move. If this is NOT the case, the setup is probably going to FAIL! Also, while "setups" not involving whole/half key levels can, at times, spawn decent runs, they are predominately FAILURES....unless you are scalping for fewer pips. The second part of the key offered here concerns what happens with PA after the setup "breakout", meaning when PA moves past the previous most significant high/low (for longs/shorts) made while PA ranged before the breakout. By observation, most times PA will at some point retrace to the breakout area, or even to that actual previous significant high/low. This is probably done by the MMs so their SM friends and clients that are "late comers" (a bit late in recognizing the opportunity) can still get in on the action to come. The MMs are always lusting after those commissions to be made. That is their primary interest, not where they need to move price to get them. For us, this is important information because those times that it happens gives us also another EP opportunity, which is especially nice if we missed the breakout itself. We can try to jump in before PA is too far gone on the move, but we can also set a pending order just above the breakout level on the chance that the MMs might return PA down there.
Imposing trading limits on yourself is another important item in our method. Trade very light relative to your account size; recommending the maximum of all open trades be as light as 1 mini-lot per $100 of account balance, both demo and live! Why? This is to allow you to trade with a lot less stress, while also enabling you to take more advantage of better situations when they come, also with less stress. Now, do you remember what has been said above about how our mind, subjected to repetition over time, establishes short cuts to the result? It works both ways; do the wrong thing repeatedly over time and you end up with a detrimental habit. Don't kid yourself about it. And don't kid yourself about it being easy to correct! If you think you already know
HTMRW, and if it is a fact you do but you're still losing money, then you are overtrading. It is as simple as that, and you need to impose very strict limits on your trading because no trader can avoid having some losing trades. And without strict limits imposed losing trades are large trades, sometimes VERY large. And sometimes they take your entire account away from you! I hope everyone gets the message here; impose the recommended limit on yourself and learn
HTMRW with a LOT less stress,.....and losses!
Well, there you have it all, in synopsis form. And a Setup Assessment is illustrated in the attached picture. But I encourage every
PVSRA Musketeer to again and again read the important information on this site....centering on the information in the
Study Hall (where this post will eventually be moved to)....because re-reading is the way to remember what is forgotten, even that which has been forgotten is forgotten! Re-reading (and re-thinking) is the way, together with screen time, for your creative mind to learn
PVSRA and
HTMRW, and create those short cuts that will enable you to process more data, more discriminately, more quickly.....and trade more successfully, so long as you
also trade very light relative to account size.
PVSRA, Patience and Profits,
Tah