Dear EagleOne,
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You said that S&R indicate path one should adopt.. but is this true? Like I always wish to trade based upon S&R but whether given S/R will hold or break can only be determined either by other indicator price action.
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That's how most of the people expect from support/resistance, that these levels should hold and when it doesn't happen, they discard them and move on to the search of next best indicator.
IMO, during uptrend, all resistances are at risk, and they get broken. In downtrend, all supports are at risk. Having said that, on of the resistance in uptrend /or one of the support in downtrend will hold and price will turn from that level. So rather then putting ego on the support /resistance that we have indentified thru our analysis, and expecting mkt to follow our view, We got to wait for market to prove our view and let it show that our analysis is correct.
When support gets broken, our long gets stopped out (so what, as a trader aren't we prepared for it), but we get opportunity to short with target of next support level (most of us miss this second trade cause we are still recovering from the prev stopped out trade).
Accept that fact and formulate your strategy around it.
Wait for price to show you if it is holding the level, or after breaking, it is holding on the other side of the level.
My trading revolves around these levels and
I believe in them cause they show me the psychology of mkt participants. People (specially professionals) have changed their views, took decision and traded those decision around these level and mkt is showing it lout and clear on chart by new swing starting from these levels, so who am I to argue it. In ohter words, it boils down to your belief - if you believe that these levels work, then they do, and if you don't then you are still right.
There are various types of S&R levels. VPOC is just one of them. Just pickup 1 or 2 of them and see how to trade them, observe what happens around these levels, how you can trade them etc. If your software doesn't give you Vpoc, then move on. You can still see other S&R levels on chart. (It is typical of traders journey, that we trust more on complex and unknown thing and avoid simple but known things - "They are Ok, I am not Ok").
Just sharing my thoughts on S&R. Hope this helps.
Happy Trading
(ps - would love to see this thread eveolving in how to trade the patterns given in first post. There is enough stuff that needs to go into how to filter wrong v/s right patterns in real time..and make a tradable system around it.)