|
I recently had a student tell me of an experience in her trading that marked a step towards her deeper learning. One morning, she found herself waiting for the wave of price's unfolding without the usual attendance of discomfort—she was waiting without that anxious feeling of waiting. Price would either return to balance or seek another extreme. In either case, she was detached from any one outcome. Price did pullback, she took her trade, and then later took her profit. It was effortless. As it all unfolded, there was also a slo-mo, real-time awareness that brought to the fore her knowing that she had, in some new way, evolved in her trading. That's when she realized something had sunk deeper into her bones, an understanding of principles she had, until then, only superficially grasped. She saw what Alan Andrews saw, beyond the mere mechanics of it, that markets move in swings and that price often seeks a return to center. Brilliant!
Just like this student, we are each of us capable of seeing the truths that Andrews saw. The Median Line simply points to what we are setting out to see. It's our job as traders to make the trip and discover for ourselves the full story of what price is telling us. My student reminded me of this and of my personal experience when I first started trading. In the beginning, I saw only what I was told to see from the many experts that I had obsessively studied, including Andrews. But I wasn't actually seeing what price was doing. I was too filled up with dogma and this left no room for personal discovery. Then one day I erased everything from my charts and my memory, tossing aside all instruction, and really looked for the very first time. It was terrifying, but it was also liberating. I saw for myself, with my own eyes, that markets move in swings as if no one had ever seen this before. From this place of direct experience, I was now ready and able to make good use of tools like Andrews' Median Line.
Every trader needs to know beyond mere belief that markets move in swings and that price continuously seeks balance. It's not enough to open a chart and follow instructions—anyone can locate 3 alternating pivots. True learning, and brilliance, can only happen through the conscious project of personal insight that's derived from a continuum of experience through practice. This leads to the kind of meaningful learning that settles into our bones. Anything short of this is mechanical and renders little in the way of intimacy with price flow. So don't just see the lines that merely describe swings. See the swings. Feel them, touch them, smell them, hear them, dance with them. Engage all your senses in experiencing them fully. In doing so, you'll find your own personal way of connecting with them. This is the kind of knowing that comes from deep within and I invite you to make this discovery for yourself.
—Shane Blankenship
|
