Hello everyone. For the new year I've decided it's time that I finally start keeping a trading journal. I've decided to do it online for two reasons. One is that it's easy for me to access from anywhere; whether I'm at home, at work, or on vacation I can always open it. The other is that I hope it will help me to stay accountable to my own rules since anyone can read it. In this way I hope to be more professional in how I approach my trading this coming year.
As of about half way through last year I've completely thrown out the last of my oscilators. I do find both MACD and RSI divergence to be useful on the hourly timeframe when that divergence is indicating a resumption of trend or it's occurring as price is rising or falling towards a supply or demand area but ultimately I don't really need the indicator anymore to tell me that price might be getting ready to fall or jump. Just watching the angles of the HHs or LLs etc. is a better indicator and the oscillator, instead of helping me pull the trigger, can now actually confuse me. Anyways, I mostly just try to follow the trend and if there's no trend I'll try to play the highs and lows of the range. Here are my rules:
Trading Rules:
1) Always enter using buy or sell stops and always know where your stop loss and take profit are before entering a trade.
2) Entries are made based off of hourly candles (inside bars, pin bars, and engulfs) coming off of support or resistance and/or breaks of swing points that indicate a resumption of a higher time frame trend.
3) The highest priority for entries is given to 4-hour trendlines as well as retests of broken support/resistance. Be on the look out for false breaks of these points in order to get some really juicy trades (good risk/reward ratio).
4) Always trade with the trend.
5) The trend is determined by watching the swings starting at the weekly and then moving down to the relevant time-frame being traded. Whatever timeframe I’m trading it’s imperative that I be aware of what every other time-frame above my current one is doing in order to reduce the chance I get caught by any explosive moves against my current position.
It may be a little while before I post my first trade as I only trade EU at the moment and I'm waiting for my broker to fill some funny gaps from the holidays but I'm experimenting with other pairs and hope to gain some skill with them as well.
Good luck to everyone in the new year and many green pips to all.
As of about half way through last year I've completely thrown out the last of my oscilators. I do find both MACD and RSI divergence to be useful on the hourly timeframe when that divergence is indicating a resumption of trend or it's occurring as price is rising or falling towards a supply or demand area but ultimately I don't really need the indicator anymore to tell me that price might be getting ready to fall or jump. Just watching the angles of the HHs or LLs etc. is a better indicator and the oscillator, instead of helping me pull the trigger, can now actually confuse me. Anyways, I mostly just try to follow the trend and if there's no trend I'll try to play the highs and lows of the range. Here are my rules:
Trading Rules:
1) Always enter using buy or sell stops and always know where your stop loss and take profit are before entering a trade.
2) Entries are made based off of hourly candles (inside bars, pin bars, and engulfs) coming off of support or resistance and/or breaks of swing points that indicate a resumption of a higher time frame trend.
3) The highest priority for entries is given to 4-hour trendlines as well as retests of broken support/resistance. Be on the look out for false breaks of these points in order to get some really juicy trades (good risk/reward ratio).
4) Always trade with the trend.
5) The trend is determined by watching the swings starting at the weekly and then moving down to the relevant time-frame being traded. Whatever timeframe I’m trading it’s imperative that I be aware of what every other time-frame above my current one is doing in order to reduce the chance I get caught by any explosive moves against my current position.
It may be a little while before I post my first trade as I only trade EU at the moment and I'm waiting for my broker to fill some funny gaps from the holidays but I'm experimenting with other pairs and hope to gain some skill with them as well.
Good luck to everyone in the new year and many green pips to all.