The only thread you will ever need: FX Exposed!

It has been a terrific and enjoyable journey for me since 24th Sep18 when I just stumbled onto Frac’s thread.

I had a feeling at the start it would be a wild ride on the Forum for me. It didn’t disappoint lol.


To those folk who felt I was a reincarnation or whatever of Frac. I wasn’t.

The patterns you must have used to come to incorrect assumptions were not valid.

I hold no grudges, it is what it is. You folk have something excellent to offer here, in your own knowledge which are parts of the overall jigsaw puzzle we all possess. Maybe you could use your energies into posting some FX help for others.

To those folk who offered me hope on here through your thread posts and PM’s, thank you all. You’ll always have a place in my thoughts.

To others, if you enjoy the madness of FX, but are having problems turning it from overall losses over a 3-6 month period (even if you are having more winning trades than losing), to breaking even, I can say this ...

You CAN turn it into a net (if not small) profit venture. It doesn’t take hard physical work, but it will take some hard thinking to nut out what is probably going on in the background once you place a trade.

And it’s not ALL mischief lol.

Then to Frac himself.

Thank you again for starting up your thread and posting your own work on the machinations of price movement. It was a big part of the puzzle for me.

Frac you posted all your work & charts on here for FREE.

And asked nothing else of anyone at Forex Factory, at any point, other than they think about this SM process and raise their own CIQ.

I want just lurk in the background here again. (I know lol , then why don’t you? – small thesis to follow)


Anything I write is ONLY my OPINION, not empirical fact. But I’m entitled to an opinion.

FractalFreak, stop making a fool out of you

forgot about this one lol

WQ (not IQ - sorry lol, I couldn't resist),

Please DO NOT use the same pattern assessments in your FX trading, that you used on your last incorrect comment to me.
It'll lead to more failures I believe.


- and Gros, I do agree, but I give everyone a chance to see clearly if they can
all the best to you for a great Chrissy
Pete

Have a good Christmas people.

GrosDesco, i know you've blocked me but have a good one.

After several months of wasting my precious time here this is a quick summary for those unfortunate people who have just landed here in this godforsaken thread:

There are no facts presented nor shared in this thread.
There are no trade explorers to back up any of the claims.
There are no screenshots showing any of the mechanics of how the claims operate.
In essence what someone thinks could be stop loss levels being hit and eaten could be positions or orders.
The OP is clutching at straws, it is only his idea of how the market works and he cannot prove it.
If I were the OP making claims, I would be damn sure I could prove my claims.
The thread is one big mess with no logic presented and whats worse than that, important questions of logic are avoided.
The thread is absolute chaos.
As a beginner and an eager student I ask myself how this could be the only thread I ever need, when no one here has a clue how it operates and no one here has shown any examples of the claims presented.
Unfortunately the thread has been a complete waste of my precious time.
Not one person has come forward to explain or show any factual based trades on the so called SM and DM.
Is this whole thread possibly someones idea of a cruel joke?
I couldn't care less anymore.

Nice Summary Jenny, We on the scammers thread have been saying this all along, when he started this thread on trading discussions forum, which moved then to the Commercial forum after a brief stint in the Trading Journals forum.

His subscribers were very active in the beginnng, and now they all have but faded away, clearly in frustration as you have expressed here.

This thread has run it's course and will end up in the Recycle Bin pretty soon.
FF has wasted everyones' time as well as his own, but worse is that he has totally confused Newbies with all the SM/DM diatribe.

From the questions you have asked before here and another thread (unanswered of course), I knew you are a smart lady with a rational mind. Therefore you would figure out the truth by yourself. Lies have short legs.

Should be post #1 on this thread

Quoting Pooh123:

Jenny is like the boy who told the truth in the Emperor's New Clothes. The rest of FractalFreak's followers just pretend to be profitable trading his method. They continue cheating themselves, and sometimes they do that unconsciously.

Human mind is a big liar, much bigger than the liar FractalFreak. It tells more lies than FractalFreak does. A human being tends to accept whatever his mind tells him as an accurate reflection of reality. He rarely questions or objectively evaluates his thoughts. Because thoughts are a natural part of him, accepting them seems natural, too, but in trading, this can be dangerous. Part of the danger comes from natural limitations in his cognitive capabilities. One of such cognitive bias is pain avoidance.

A human being tends to reject painful thoughts. Often time when someone catches a husband cheating on his wife and tells the wife about it, the wife will get angry with the messenger, because the truth causes pain on the wife. The same thing is happening with Fractal's loyal followers.

Fractal's method offers false hope to his followers. Firstly, he essentially tells traders that they should not be responsible for the outcome of their trading. It's not their fault that they lose. It's the Market Makers' stop hunting that is to blame. 2ndly, he tells traders, by following his method, traders will be on the side of SM. No wonder his thread is popular with followers. He caters to their cognitive bias of shunning responsibility and optimism.

When we tell those followers that Fractal's method is no salvation for them, it causes a painful thought in their mind. The cognitive bias of pain avoidance kicks in and make the followers reject our advice so that they can keep holding on to their false hope of finding their salvation or finding their "missing pieces". How many times we've seem them talking about "I've found my missing pieces" in that thread ? Yet none of them is able to prove that with the equity curve of their trading accounts.

FractalFreak's method has its value. Used wisely it can benefit your trading. However, it's not a game changer. Used unwisely it can do more harm than good for your trading. And I don't think it can consistently generate profits if used as a stand alone strategy. So far neither his followers nor himself are able to show with verifiable proof that they can trade that strategy with sustained success.

On the contrary, there is proof that it already did harm to some traders. Some followers became dependent on it. They can't trade without it. They beg for the charts everyday. They adopted Martingale/pyramiding on losing trades...

Finally, for Fractal's followers, the only way to objectively determine the value of Fractal's thread/method, is not to use what your mind's telling you, as I've already shown you human mind is a big liar. It tells us whatever we want to hear or believe. The only way to objectively determine the value of Fractal's thread/method, is to look at the equity curve of your trading account. I know it's painful to look at it for the followers. But you have to accept the cold, hard truth it is telling you. Did all that "found my missing pieces", "I can read the market know", all those "eye opening" transform into a growing equity curve ?

Jenny is brave enough to accept the truth, why can't you ?

Happy Boxing Day folks. What a difference a couple of days off makes. (I’m still trade hibernating).

I approach life in the format that everyone has an opinion. And they’re ENTITLED to their opinion.

(someone once said - “I disagree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it).

And when something definitive is said by someone, I also think hard about it.

The ending of Frac’s thread is in sight now I guess. That’s the way it goes.

So the thoughts I’m having are: JUST WHO is the thread directed to?

I see it wouldn’t be for the newcomer to FX. Any reference from their early series of trades couldn’t be balanced against this ‘different thread topic’ and they might not be so well served here. I can see that.

And it can’t be for the elite trader.

And it won’t be for the already successful trader, who would be heavily invested in their own method. BECAUSE it is turning them a profit. Quite correctly not for them.

So the ONE group that could benefit from this SM/DM observation might be trader’s who were struggling to turn a profit in FX over a period of time (ie 1 year plus). Or maybe those just breaking even where their wheels are spinning correctly, but the SUV is going nowhere.

And that’s where I came in I guess, & joined. I am not Frac lol. Never was. Not even in a dream.
The mirror still shows to me - it’s me lol, tho I don’t look at it much these days, with the greying hair and all.

So 2 months into the thread I came in, I missed all the early live chart calls where people following were winning trades NIGHT AFTER NIGHT as I read it.

Thread readers were winning and calling to Frac when he wasn’t there to please post the charts. Please post the charts.

Everyone was making an extra quid and good luck to them.

But he was not showing a METHOD to trade (as I saw it), he was showing us a PROCESS of price movement (price manipulation, price behaviour, all the things we trader’s say what we see – which are pretty much the same thing).

Then Frac’s charts stopped. (And you better not take daily cups of coffee away from people, either, without expecting a major kickback reaction from them lol).

But not difficult for anyone reading this thread, from the beginning, that what was discussed was working for those who were in the moment and at the time.

But lol it missed me, I was late to the party for the early runs that so many enjoyed.

“Such is life” (apologies to the Ned myth). It didn’t matter too much as I’ve always done things my own way, anyway.

But was there anything at all that I could get out of this thread as a latecomer?

Quoting TimeTells

Disliked

So 2 months into the thread I came in, I missed all the early live chart calls where people following were winning trades NIGHT AFTER NIGHT as I read it. Thread readers were winning and calling to Frac when he wasn’t there to please post the charts. Please post the charts. Everyone was making an extra quid and good luck to them.

Ignored

You are delusional and naive, not one person proved that they made money with his knowledge.

This thread was targeting a specific group of people as Pooh's post above mentioned and you are part of that group..

"Fractal's method offers false hope to his followers. Firstly, he essentially tells traders that they should not be responsible for the outcome of their trading. It's not their fault that they lose. It's the Market Makers' stop hunting that is to blame. 2ndly, he tells traders, by following his method, traders will be on the side of SM. No wonder his thread is popular with followers. He caters to their cognitive bias of shunning responsibility and optimism."

Your quote:
"But not difficult for anyone reading this thread, from the beginning, that what was discussed was working for those who were in the moment and at the time."

If you are a flag bearer for FF in the hope that he would single you out for his favours, then you are really up the creek without a paddle.

Your quote:
"But was there anything at all that I could get out of this thread as a latecomer? "

Read this post carefully for your answer:
https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...5#post11819765

Hi Shabs, lol

so

Anything at all? As it turned out – YES.

After looking & looking (and looking some more) at the early charts, I started to see THE PROCESS.

It was the PROCESS of how price moved (or WAS moved lol). But I got to see it from Frac’s charts.

So I dumped all my indi’s, dumped all the guru baggage I had learnt from the generic text books, dumped the S/R, S/D, Trends, Trendlines, etc etc etc. So essentially I dumped TA.

Now I’m thinking the whole of retail industry participants (in their way) are always learning. In essence everyone has a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but not the whole. Make your OWN WAY is best for me.

Then I dumped Price Action (PA), well not dumped it (everything is PA, though I now call it EVENTS) but NOT because PA doesn’t work, but because everyone you ask or speak to has a DIFFERENT definition of what PA is and looks like. This is a fascinating industry, this FX stuff lol.

Am I totally naked charts now. Well no, not quite. I like to see structure on a chart, not a raw chart, so I include some extras. I won’t mention what because honestly that is unimportant. Everyone can read structure in their charts with their own preferred way. It all works, if it works for YOU.

But I’m trading freeform now, discretionary, using (as I pinched from Bruce) - “Using no way, as way”.

I can’t explain the freedom and how good it feels. Not looking anymore for a typical TA setup off the indi or towards or from the S/R lines etc etc etc etc.

I can’t do it by Frac’s way, which when he showed it was clearly trading with the Market Makers, with the SM, with the LP, whatever label you want.

So all I can do is watch for when I perceive (it’s THAT freeform) where an SM/MM/LP move on the chart takes place. I then take it as being a move against common Retail (not ‘switched on’ retail) and will wait for a stall or ending to that event run which has occurred.

I am often DM in a wrong point entry (being just freeform I guess) and price can run past those event areas that I see. I’ll fine tune them over time. Then I’m in a Trade Management situation which includes both assessing whether SM/MM/LP or position traders will take price further away or not. That means playing on with the trade, or closing out the trade for a loss. That’s it.

If all you folk think that I’m the ONLY ONE who has benefitted somehow from Frac’s thread, then you might understand now why I joined the Factory just to say my thanks.

And I also give Pooh credit for the merit in his detailed & well thought out comments (that Shab’s put up a few posts back).

Pooh was the only one of The Mob (as I call them) that actually thought to engage with me in a genuine (written) conversation. And for that I thank Pooh also.

Each to their own method (well Frac never meant to give us a METHOD of trading IMO, just a PROCESS occurring to think seriously about). Each to their own opinion, of course. It’s been a fun wild ride for me.

I would like to sell you London Bridge, are you interested ? LOL.

SLEEP EZY TONIGHT

Cheers FxPrm,

Your vid was good, thx. Where on the spectrum was the music I wonder. I can’t tell.
I like the stuff between 400hz and 600hz myself lol, and I liked yours.
(Binaural beats are interesting also).


And lastly (pls dear god let it be LOL, I want to lurk again).

But I want to say something about Martingale and Pyramiding. Firstly Martingale.

As there are many misconceptions in FX (as most know) & I’m always happy to give out my opinion (wink, wink).

I landed in gambling/speculating in the ‘80s (no retail FX back then of course) but a great time for the racehorse’s in Oz.

I never saw the legendary Tulloch (before my time) but I landed in the era of The King (Kingston Town).

I used to go down to his stalls and just watch them groom him. I didn’t think I’d see another one like him again in Oz in my lifetime. But (after I’ve left the game years ago) we had a miraculous and courageous and awe inspiring mare come along named Winx. These horses just touch your heart. Go and engage with one of them, one day.

So it was nothing like the FX game. Little heart warmth when the GBPUSD runs up 75 pips (well it’s great for you’re a/c balance lol – but SOUL LESS for your inner spirit if you know what I mean).

Anyway back to Martingale as I view it (opinion only).

Forget looking at true Martingale from the losing perspective. There it is purely an account cleaner and wipe out possibility. It should not have a place in an FX trader’s arsenal at all. Many will say they are successful with it, and good luck to them, but as a past speculator (somewhat successful) but never a martingaler let me explain it this way.

FX is a 50/50 chance game (not really) but price either goes up or down.

So what could be so wrong with Martingale. You’ll get a winner eventually, right.

To understand this let’s move over to roulette for a moment. Another 50/50 speculation.
(well it’s actually a hard coded 3% against you in favour of the house with ‘the zero’ – so you cannot win longest term – the original creator of roulette pre computers anecdotally suicided trying to work out a winning method of parlay on paper).

Well this is what is wrong with Martingale from a speculator’s of view.

The best way to assess it is from a WINNING perspective. (From the opposite point of view than a LOSING perspective. Understand?)

Roulette. You’re gonna back the red or black. Choose one. Back it for $10. Loses, back it again for $20, wins. You’re up $10 ($30 invested for a $40 return). You’re ecstatic – you won.

But say the 2nd time it lost, and the 3rd, and the 4th, and the 5th, 6th and 7th times.

50/50 chances only (I’ve seen black’s spun 15 times in a row – the black colour no longer existed on the electronic tower that shows only 14 numbers of the previous number spun).

But say it was the 8th bet on roulette, where you have true martingaled (doubling up each time), and where you finally win. So Martingale won you money and you tell all your friends (and detractors).

You are ecstatic, but let’s have a look at your risk to reward in the process.

You invested $10+$20+$40+$80+$160+$320+$640+$1280 for a total of $2550 (if you had the cash in your pocket that night). And have a guess how much your final $1280 bet on black netted you when you won.

From the $2550 you invested - your return was $2560.

A $10 profit, your original stake is all you can win (so heaven forbid if your 8th bet lost and you were looking to cash stake a 9th martingale try).

So it’s when you look at Martingale from a WINNERS (not a losers) perspective you see the true absurdity of that style. (Investing $2550 to win $10 – give all your money to your mom quick pls)

Just to give you something to think,
Bcos I like roulette.
Forex and roulette inherently different, and that even carries over to your martingale analogy.

The part is correct, of course, that roulette is 50/50 ( not really, just like forex). Every single spin.
But forex is different.
The major difference is that each previous trade/price move is part of an event,
And at some point need to be settled by an opposite more.
The roulette table doesn't need to be settled in the end of the night/week/month/quarter, there are also no major roulette events/political events/natural disasters (or whatnot) that much can effect your roulette odds, or
Make the roulette table settle for a balance of the spins.
Forex however has.
If you sign up for the SM theory, the more you should understand this.
Opening a forex trade in any direction, with big enough size, and you will some point need an equal volume to close it, that likely, at least part will reverse the one way sequence.
Then there is sentiment, for the same effect.
Of course roulette will infinite stay with the odds of 50-50 red or black ( for simplicity), and doesn't matter how many punters see a black sequence happening, it won't change it, for the next spins.
Would forex sentiment work the same?
Would when more and more traders see a one way sequence their sentiment change, but their "bet" this time cause an outcome change too, the least temporarily?
I believe very much so.
Plus remember, your SM will need to settle their order book too.
Yes, traders need to follow rules, that is part of life too as a trader. Risk management department, swap, quarterly bonus checks that apply on booked profits only, to name few.

The end, it comes down to 2 things,
One is shared with roulette, is the bankroll size. Don't he too hang up on the total win, a day is long, and price tend to be going somewhat is circles around most of the time anyway.( even on roulette reds or blacks not that commonly appear in 15 spin same color patterns, then 1-4 a colour before a switch). Rinse and repeat.
The other, is timing.
And this is where forex gives you more flexibility.
There is no restrictions on you in forex, how much you can lurk on the sidelines before committing.
And there is no closing time that sees you end up in middle of your 'it could be another winning 'sequence' at your 7th bet, regardless your bankroll. A casino close. And that render all your current effort useless, if happen to be something ongoing.
That not to happen in forex.

Anyway, just a different view on the same point.

Happy holidays!

Hi Prt Frm,

I have valued your input before, and I do so again, ty.
Pete

I am always open to any discussions, or constructive criticisms. I have my opinions, not WHOLE answers.

We’re not going to solve the world’s problems here. But we might increase CIQ (as Frac used to say).


Now Pyramiding. Also has a dirty connotation in FX. Because IMO it is used in a dangerous way.

Let’s say your stake vs account size has you trading in 0.10 lots for each & every trade you contemplate.

You trade 0.10, the trade goes against you but you’re hanging in & you have another 0.10 trade as price runs against you. You are determined, brave or crazy lol but you do this 8 times (as in roulette) and you now have 0.80 invested in that one trade. 8 times greater than your single original trade size of 0.10

But SM (or whatever lol) run further against you, 75-100 pips so you’re now at Margin Call stage, at your wits end, blown your a/c, call FX rigged and you go back to knitting or something just to ease the pain.

But that is not correct Pyramiding imo. That is Singular Martingale to an extent (just not doubling martingale).

Pyramiding in my dictionary lol & execution would be very different. Here’s what I mean.

Your set lot trade size is still 0.10. SPLIT your trade size into a basket of 10 trades of 0.01 microsfor that one single trade.

(I only ever trade ONE pair at any one time - as a basket - till that trade is a winner or loser, never multiple trade pairs open trying to extract the most from my leveraged a/c – a dangerous game to gamble in).

So price still runs against you for eight of your micro entries. So be it. You are either still happy managing the trade OR you are already cashed out. But if you are still IN, then your total lot size in this 8 x pyramid trade is now just …

0.08 = LESS than your max trade size of 0.10 based on you’re a/c equity safety.

If the trade runs initially as a straight winner you have less in the winning trade than you wanted. Don’t cry. It’s your winner. Do it over and over again. You have a safety net because of the lower size basket of trades (for pyramiding) and you will never exceed your max lot size suitability (in this instance 0.10).

So Pyramiding used in a proper well thought out way imo is NOT absurd, whereas Martingale IS absurd. From any speculator/gambler perspective is all I’m saying.

By then, if version 2 pyramiding ( adding to losers) is taken as valid,
within a framework,
Martingale would be just the same way validated,
Bcos
Keeping with the same reasoning
0.01+0.02+0.04 = 0.07 and is still less than the 0.1
Isn't that in the end all depend on one thing, perhaps,
(And refer back to my previous post)
Timing?

Is this absurd still, Pete from the speculator/gambler perspective? Or makes sense?

PS.
Your likely next thought will be what framework??
Hint: your money management.