LOL …. Salsa dancing and tape reading? Am I serious? Have I lost my mind?  Grab your dance shoes I’m serious.

NYC style salsa dancers believe they are the best salsa dancers in the world. The style they dance is called On2. The On2 style allows for the performance of intricate turns and steps within a small space. The steps in On2 are tight and precise and require some sort of advanced level training. The turns and patterns they perform require extra work and practice. Not something one is “born with”.

Regular salsa dancing is a much wider and loose style. The type of dancing you can just pick up naturally.  This style requires much more space to perform the turns and step patterns. The NYC On2 style allows for high level performance on the small jam packed dance floors of NYC.  On2 was born out of the need to adapt and adjust so they could perform at a high level under conditions that would have normally constrained their style or worse forced them off the floor altogether. The On2 dancers took their skill level to another level not only for the want of being better, but the necessity to continue doing what they loved on the tight crowded dance floors of NYC. The skills they have acquired let them boast that other salsa dancers “dance to the beat” while they “dance IN the beat”.

Tape reading traders are like the NYC On2 dancers in many respects. They have worked hard on acquiring the skills that allow them to trade in all market conditions. They are not “born with it”, but out of want and necessity they have learned the skills that help get them to another level. These skills can make for tighter risk parameters while maintaining the same reward potential. A trader not employing tape reading may see a certain trade as a 3 to 1 trade while the tape reader can do the same trade but find smaller risk to make it a 5 to 1 trade.

Under certain market conditions some styles of trading are virtually forced off the dance floor because conditions don’t allow their style to perform well. A skillful tape reader can always find space on the dance floor to perform well. A skilled tape reader is operating “IN the tape”.  A trader trading “IN the tape” and not only “to the tape” means always find a spot on the dance floor.

Jeff Davis

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