Can Maximum Profits be Consistently Attained?

First of all let me tell you what the holy grail is and that I don't have it.

The holy grail is not just consistently making a couple a bucks out of forex. There are many fine systems on the forum that can get you into good trades and by good I'm talkin anywhere from 21-150 pips. What's wrong with 150 pips? Nothin is really "wrong" with 150 pips but let's say that the currency eventually increases 300 from where you got in. Let's also say that in order for you to have gotten to 300-you had to ride the ups and downs and not close out just because your profit diminished. I'm not even talking about ever actually losing from the point of your original trade, i'm talkin about let's say you're up 125 pips and now it goes down to 50 pips..what u gonna do?

In other words, was there a way to ride the Euro from 2600 on 10/25 to 3550 on 12/4 and always stay in the trade thru all the profit ups and downs, besides just setting your SL to the break even point and walkin away from your computer for a few weeks?

So that's the holy grail-getting into a position and ridin it the max

It can be a wild ride if you are looking for 300 pips in a week. Look at the gbp/usd and gbp/jpy (they will move around 300 pips between the high and low on a weekly basis) on the hourly charts and even 15 min chart and scroll through the week and see how it moves up and down.

The grail as you descibe it is not the most profitable way to trade even if it was possible to time the trades like that.
You i'd make more if you catch all the subtrends/ rallys.

The Grail is also in the eye of the beholder.
I'm happy with a system that averages 20 pip a day with small downdraws.
If it does all this i can spend more time researching or spending time with my family.

Z

Holy Grail is risk/money management!

i agree
most traders dont know how to management their equity and trades
I battle with this...
we focus so much on the "system" yet we stay "get rich quick artist"

i guess we will learn the easy way or the hard way...

I'm sorry but I can't resist...lol


Yep, there's a way.

i think this is the holy grail...hedging 2 different brokers one offering no swap while the other charging interest and end up earning in the process? based on my computation, if i buy 10 lots of USD/JPY from my broker that charges interest and then i sell 10 lots USD/JPY from the no-swap-broker, in theory I will earn around 136 dollars a day or 2,739 dollars a month. this is the link to that thread... http://www.forexfactory.com/forexfor...t=10753&page=1

i have the holy grail..

Holy Grail is psychic powers. Time travels backwards as well as forwards almost simultaneously. Human subconscious exists on all planes of existence. Therefore we can see into the future a little due to lag. Not to say that things are predetermined, just our perception of time and time itself is off a little.

holy grail is price movement - using fibo timezone?

I have the holy grail v2

in my opinion trading is about making good money, not maximum pips.

Pips don't make you money... Pips + Lots makes you money. Therefore, in my way of thinking, the number of pips is not altogether relevant, but the quality of the pips are.

Hmm why don't you calcuate the up and down in between and you will find more than 300 pips... If your going to dream about catching the hole move why don't you calculate the buy, sells, buys, sells....

pips gained dont mean crap til you look at the size of an average loss as well...

i can have a system producing 200 pips total gain over a week, with an average loss of 300 pips per trade

or...

i can have a system producing 200 pips total with average loss of 20pips

once you have that... money management will take you far

Indiana Jones has the Holy Grail.

I think the holy grail is a combination of good money manangement, good risk/reward ratio, lots of discipline, lots of patience and consistancy.

The holy grail is NOT a trading system

All are important, yet, all are useless without a system.

If you don't have entry rules, you'll never take a trade. without exits, you'll never take profit. without stop rules, you'll stay in a losing trade until liquidation.

Discipline to do what? You must have rules, THEN have the discipline to follow them.

And they have to be fairly good rules, or you will lose, even with the best money management.

Nearly all traders have consistency - either they're consistent winners or consistent losers.

Hi all,

I agree with consistency being a very important factor.

Otherwise, I personally consider the often mentioned "quest for the holy grail" a misleading concept.

As someone in the thread mentioned earlier, it is in the eye of the beholder - but I would like to challange that idea.

We can all agree that the word got 'round the globe (and reached pretty much every trader young or old) regarding the most valuable advice in trading (i.e. let profits run, cut losses short, use proper money management, position sizing, etc. to mention only a few).

Why is it then that so many fail to become consistant traders, armed with those most important rules?!

My own answer to that is this: I have to look outside the box. (yes, I know, often used phrase - but what does it actually mean)

It means understanding the market as such and your own personal connection with it.

A little example of how I do it:

I try NOT to be a perfectionist in an imperfect environment like the financial markets. I rather see the market for what it really is: A global bazaar with all its participants:

the wholesalers
the funds
the corporates
the banks (small, medium, large, merchant, market-maker)
the individual investors (small, medium, large)
the central banks
the proprietary traders
the brokers (retail and institutional)
and last but not least, the retail traders

Some trade for profits, some to execute customer deals - unplanned and spontaneous, some trade large, some small, others place orders over time for long durations and others for minutes or seconds, some to keep a currency from dropping below significant leves.

The possible amount of combinations of the above at any one time are infinite and NEVER is there an equilibrium between longs and shorts - like the heartbeat of a billion people - that is the market (price).

With this understanding in mind, I must arrive at the conclusion that price prediction in the mathematical sense is a futile exercise. Despite this, one can read on countless websites, books, etc., how this and that indicator can tell what's going to happen next.

So, I ask on what mathematical grounds does a Fibonacci follower for example prove the validity of the retracement percentages? The answer is, they work as often as they don't because not enough people use them and that goes for any indicator. As many traders throw them out after a while as new traders put them on...on all sorts of different time frames....never enough to make it a "self fulfilling prophecy", because if it did, the markets would cease to exist.

I am not against the use of indicators, but for the spirit of this thread, I suggest the approach of dealing with probabilities, not certainties. Don't look for something perfect where it cannot be found. We as humans are unpredictable and imperfect, but we evolve constantly. The market is made up of humans - a bl**dy great number of them.

regards
daytrading

The holly grail is a state of mind, combined with your own unique approach, of course to get that approach you'd have to learn about countless approaches of other highly sussesfull traders, addapt what is usefull, discard what is not, add your own. There you have it.

The holy grail to me..........is being able to spot the tops and bottoms of any trend no matter what time frame your looking at. I agree with the money management and locking in of profits. But.........adding to the position is the grail. Patience, perseverance, (continuing) education, etc... is key to an arsenal for any trader. Being able to control your addiction and picking yourself up from the big losses will be essential to your growth. I spend about 2 hours a day printing out charts and studying about 8 pairs before looking for a potential position and then I just follow my strategy. You need to have sound tech. analysis and a very good understanding of fundamentals. Good luck to all. Always remember that a good trader learns from others mistakes but a great trader learns from their own mistakes.

Adding to positions is the grail? And what happens when your pyramided postions move against you. The reality is that sometimes it helps and sometimes it hurts.

In the end its a push.

PS) A grail will never exist, because chaos moves the markets.