"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

The title to this post is a well known quote by Mike Tyson, an ex heavyweight boxing champion of the world. While I'm not an admirer of much of Tyson, this quote epitomises what goes wrong with most traders.

So why is it hard to stick to a trading plan. The answer is quite simple if you can take it down to basics. Most traders have a trading plan based on squiggly lines. They trade squiggly lines. They focus on squiggly lines.

To succeed in trading a trader has to see the orderflow. That simple statement separates the winners from the losers. If people are buying more aggressively than they are selling with sellers retreating then the price goes higher until that situation changes. So it makes sense to focus on getting the information that allows us to see that orderflow. But don't forget the context.

I'm not knocking indicators as such. The right ones have a purpose. What I am criticising is how traders use indicators when they trade the indicator rather than use it to give them a piece of information about the orderflow.

When you use your computer to process the datafeed to give you the correct information about the order flow "the punch in the mouth" is usually just a tap that draws your attention to something happening in the orderflow. Most times its a punch you just want to absorb because it is expected as part of normal rotation.

I have been working hard during the last few years to adapt the technology that is becoming available to us all to see order flow more clearly. Back in 2009 when I started writing this blog, order flow information was just beginning to evolve. You can see in earlier but more recent posts in this blog how I have been evolving my charts so that I can see what is being traded.

Now, the technology has caught up. The chart below is what I am using now. I can now see the order flow even more clearly than I could as a local on the floor almost 20 years ago. Ive been fairly quiet on the blog as I did not have much new to say. Now I do.This chart makes it very easy to see the order flow. It has objective triggers and objective stops as well as a trading plan on how to to take profits.

I am still working on how best teach people how to be able to use this chart configuration to see what is happening and trade it successfully. I've been getting a steady stream of emails from traders looking for help in getting to CP. More about this later.