Trading is a business and it must be treated as such. The reason companies like Walmart and McDonald’s succeed is that they consistently follow their business plan. They have a strategy in place and the only time they deviate from that strategy is when it is planned out ahead of time. Adjustments are made when economic conditions change, when trying new ways to increase profits, or if part of the plan isn’t working.

Richard D. Wyckoff was a successful stock trader from the early 1900's and developed a “business plan” of his own. Through conversations, interviews and research of the successful traders of his time, Wyckoff augmented and documented the methodology he traded and taught.

Wyckoff worked with and studied Jessie Livermore, E. H. Harriman, James R. Keene, Otto Kahn, J. P. Morgan, W. D. Gann, and many other large operators of the day. His thought was that you must develop the ability to translate price action, and the volume that drives that action, into trading opportunities. The chart below is an example of his observations about what happens to markets.