Reading the Tape - Part One

Reading the Tape:

Before January of this year, I did not know such a thing existed. It was then that I was directed to Fear and Greed Day Trader. I read his blog for a number of days and it was an awakening. I couldn't believe that such a skill was possible. It was, to be redundant, unbelievable. I was very new to day-trading at that time, having only tried it for a few weeks last October. My very limited experience consisted of trying to catch on to other peoples' stock calls in a chat room. I thought day-trading was all about deep background research; technicals and fundamentals, waiting for that special time in a day where everything came together to produce an opportunity to get in. I wasn't even thinking about exits back then. In that context, it was easy to see how I was dumbstruck to find that it was possible to trade with no fundamental analysis, no study of fibonacci or elliot wave or MACD, etc. Possible to trade a significant percentage of the ups and downs of the market intra-day. It was a feast for a starving man. To that point, I had been searching for a method, wandering from position trading to swing trading to trading pump and dump schemes on low-volume, micro-cap stocks to just focusing on catching huge breakouts and breakdowns of micro-cap stocks. I was wandering the desert, so to speak. But, after FNG, I knew my destination, I had a goal. At that time, I didn't even know this skill had a name. Only more recently have I come to know it as "Reading the Tape" or "Trading the Tape." I have found that it is not like some mysterious, undiscovered Tibetan Art form kept in a mountain top monastery. While it is an art form, it is widely known inside trading circles and is really at the source of many successful trading strategies and practiced daily all over the world. As I discover more information on it, I still consider FNG as the gold mine because of his simple, uncluttered approach to this art. Further, his is the only deep-study reference source that I know of which is faithfully updated, intra-day based and exclusively momentum focused, and made available to us at no charge. He has blogged on his disdain of those who charge money for their information, saying (paraphrase)"...dont they make enough money trading?" To the extent that what I put on this blog has any value to its readers, I am committed to never charging admission or putting up ads.
Here are some excerpts from material I found after doing a google search today of "read the tape stock trading." I am breaking it into four successive posts because of size. From time to time, I will continue to post other reference material, being faithful to crediting author and source.