Semi, I think you've missed the value. If you use sentiment, you will know BEFORE the volume followers whether a move is likely to get legs. It's generally or often predictive, not reactive--though the reactive sentiment data can be hugely valuable on a short-term basis.
Mark
I disagree completely. We are in two different Worlds. Most of the people on the site are concerned with issues such as bull or bear market, rally or crash. I'm just working swing points here. Those other arguments don't interest me. I'm looking for high reward/low risk trading opportunities. Whether the overall market is in a rally or retracement is just one part of the picture. And within those rallies and retracements there are areas of strength and weakness. Example: How many times have we seen a day with the Nasdaq solidly down and the SOX up big. Plenty of them. And last weekend for example when the board was bearish, I projected a rally back to 2496. Yes, I missed on the retracement target of 2438 by 6 pts, but I got the spring part of it right. I don't know what your sentiment said a week ago last Friday because I don't follow it. But one thing for sure, your sentiment polls couldn't give you ANY idea of what specific highs and lows would be tested... but using dynamic volume/price analysis I pretty much NAILED it, didn't I.?
As far as knowing BEFORE... I monitor volume in time slices. I know the outlook for the daily in the first hour of trading for the most part. Not only that, as far as knowing BEFORE, for example we look at the Nasdaq, we go back and examine past trading trends for the clues to future price behavior (i.e. what is it trying to test?) We look at February, Februaries are low volume months. The most bullish pattern for low volume trading in front of a HIGH Volume Month like March is a light volume pullback. We know that the probabilities are good with a light volume pullback in February going into March that the Outlook for March is most likely a bullish spring going into the first part of the month. Dynamic Volume and Price analysis helps you understand from an even greater perspective of what is going on in the market. For example: we look at what's going on with this trading range, and what is being rationalized. In this time frame, we're rationalizing the volume spike of 1/3/2001 - the day the Fed dropped interest rates by 1%. Trading range 2251-2618. Bottom line, this is a consolidation move
http://bigcharts.mar...&mocktick=1.gif
The highest volume month is January 2001. All of this compression over 2251 is a reaction and rationalization of that high volume month. Right here we are only moving sideways higher and not the FAST UPTREND that the Nasdaq likes to move up on... So the bottom line is we're in a consolidation. The move into this area failed last Spring on a bearish upthrust off the high volume candle of March 2006. I have to suspect this could happen again. There is cause to continue to retest 2251-2000 from a bearish point of view as well as cause to retest the Jan 2001 highs(2892high). Right here we're in the middle of that Jan 2001 candle price range. Eventually the Nasdaq will finish this sideways move and we either move smartly down to 2251 or we advance in FAST UPTREND firstly to the 1/3/2001 high of 2618 and then probably after another consolidation go for the weekly and monthly highs. So while sentiment may give you an interim sense of direction, it doesn't offer any clues as to what the underlying agenda is, in terms of targets. I would argue this methodology gives you a lot more clarity than trying to understand the weekly whims of polls..
So to me, sentiment polls are a waste of time on too little information returned... AND, I seem to do pretty well identifying market turns. So I don't want to confuse what works very well with stuff that partially works... that's why I stay away from sentiment.