I copied what follows below from someone else. I know it was a trader, and the connection he was making was the spider and his relationship to his web and the trader's relationship to his trading plan (assuming the trader bothered to do the work to construct a trading plan at all). I'd cite the source if I had it, but unfortunately, though I was moved enough to write this down (probably word for word?) I failed at that time to note the source. I've read hundreds of trading books, pdf's, articles, and watched untold number of trading videos over the years. Add to it social media such as twitter, and there is no way for me to find it. I actually pasted it into google and it came up with nothing. I say all of this so that if the person who did come up with this analogy does somehow happen upon this thread he (or she?) doesn't call me out for plagiarism. If I knew the original source, I'd credit that person 100%.


The spider does not need to feed every day . He is content to wait until a morsel comes his way, patient and secure in the knowledge that he has taken the steps necessary for his survival. His carefully crafted web transmits to him all sorts of information. But he knows how to identify the false signals - the wind vibrating his web, a drop of rain - from the real thing enmeshed in it.

Why does he know it so intimately? Because he has carefully constructed his web himself. No one else can build it for him. As a result, the configuration of his web is as uniquely his as his fingerprints (so to speak). Most important, the spider is patient. He waits until he sees a convergence of most of his "tells" before he acts; but when he does, he pounces aggressively and without hesitation.

The patience of the spider eludes me. That is why the fixed bar methods are so attractive to me. I know, for example, that the best trade set ups, the ones where you can risk the range of just a single bar, an M15 at most, but often just an M5 or even just the range of an M1, and potentially achieve a reward 3, 5, even 10 times that risk, are those set ups that occur from either a breakout-pullback-continuation at a pivotal level, or the breakout-failure-reversal at a pivotal level. Look at the NQ this week. Monday just after 9 AM NYC gave a great low risk, high reward long entry at the today's open, yesterday's close pivots. Tuesday gave a similar opportunity to short for potential 230-point profit. Wednesday saw several opportunities for longs and shorts at the same level, with the cleanest being longs between 11:15ish through 11:50ish, and again at 12:30. Thursday the trade du jour was long on the failed breakout below last week's high, and finally, Friday gave several opportunities, though even a quick acting spider trader may have felt a little whipsawed if one wasn't well practiced at recognizing and trading inside of trading ranges bewteen these pivotal levels as price spent most of the AM session (after a brief sell-off) bouncing between the today's open/yesterday's close pivots and the previous day's high pivot.

The key problem for me is that there is no way to know in advance which of the 81 M5 bars will generate the signal during the course of the NYC session. Add the additional 18 bars from the institutional start (8 AM NYC) and, well, you have to have the patience of a spider! As a result, I would often jump the gun, chase and FOMO into the market. That is not the formula for long term success. Quite the opposite. It almost assures that you will be stuck in a cycle of wild wins and wilder losses.

Meanwhile, using a simple fixed bar plan on the M5 NQ, 1:1 reward to risk, and the week would have offered a rather stress-free +3R, with wins on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and a -1R loss on Wednesday.

I wish I were the type of trader who could wait patiently for his pitch, fighting off the marginal strikes and sitting on that hanging curve and then swing for the fences.

I wish, like the spider, I could sit in my carefully crafted web of pivotal levels and wait for a morsel to happen by and then pounce!

I am not that trader. I think very few of us are. If you are that type of trader, congrats. If you are not, then fixed bar trading might be the method around which you should consider spinning your own web trading plan.