TMS and Me

Hello everyone. Welcome to my journal.

I would like to use this thread to record my trades and also share my story how I got here. I was introduced to FOREX somewhere in 2012 and only recently have become very satisfying with my trading.

TMS is not the only method I trade. However it's the one I like the most and trade most often, hence the name of this thread, TMS & Me. Also I love Marley & Me Picked it up for the 7th time, still enjoying.


I had run into may road bumps along the way, hopefully what I share here would be more than a useless rant that could help you attain the right mind set and psychology for successful trading

You may have heard the saying "FOREX is a psychological game," it's true.

Heads up that I trade less and less these days so I may not post that often. I have quite a lot of things going on that distract me from trading. However, the more distractions I have, the better my trade results. Sounds weird but I'm not kidding.

Trading Method & Me

Today I trade with 2 methods. Hourly TMS, and daily price action.

I like TMS. Signal is simple. Identifying good TDI can happen at a glance.
The only extra thing on my chart is TMA true.


To a lesser extend I like daily price action as well.
I like it less than TMS due to its longer term nature.
My trades would often be in the negative for weeks during which I can't take any more trades, else I'd be over trading.


You can probably tell now that I like clean charts. That's just personal preference, whatever make pips, make pips.

I'm also having fun watching/reading Jarrat Davis' fundamental analysis.
I don't trade his method, his analysis however is a lot cooler when you talk about it.
Imagine you're hanging out with non-trader friends. You say, hey, here's what the Bank of England is up to... in oppose to, hey, I see a pin bar in this chart.
The former actually sounds like you know something, right?

... ok kidding aside, it's just fun to know what's going on

Newbie Trap & Me

My brother introduced me to FOREX somewhere in 2012. Right away I made a few lucky wins on demo for some hundred pips. I then jumped straight to live account despite his warning that I needed at least ... some amount of demo time I can't recall, and that I needed a proper system. I wanted to make money NOW and didn't want to miss the opportunity.

And that was how I started my journey; a few thousand $$$ down the drain. In less than a week!



Only then that I started to listen to my brother. He taught me his system, SMA cross trade to catch long move. He would happily take 10-20 small losses to catch 1 big move. Not really my thing, so I began to search the web.

TMS thread here at FF was among the first places I stumbled upon.

FOREX Education & Me

Big E's characteristic captured me; he was enthusiastic, positive and full of energy. May his soul rest in peace. His chart and entry rules were clean and simple. Participants were raking pips left and right... I was hooked.


Big E and his wheel barrow™

However my demo trading failed pretty bad.

According to Big E, TDI was the king of TMS. "Look for good TDI cross" was the word I saw a lot, yet I had no idea what it looked like. I kept on reading hoping to find the answer, but the more I read, the more analysis diverge away from TDI. Until at 1 point everyone were completely talking about other things; price action, yesterday's low, last week's high, etc. TDI got demoted to secondary confirmation tool.

I'm not against it by the way. As I said, whatever make pips, make pips. I have to admit however that the analysis in TMS thread started to overwhelm me. How could people look at so many things, so many lines? How could they make sense from such huge amount of information? But those seniors were making pips! So it must've been my own fault for not knowing enough.

I decided to take my time to study price action. That led me to J Fox's price action thread over at Babypips. I ended up learning and demoing his method for almost an entire year and had very impressive demo results. Last 4 months of 2013 I haven't had even a single loss.



TMS & Me

After studying price action for I think 5-6 months, I revisited TMS thread. Suddenly I was able to understand everything. Senior's analysis no longer overwhelmed me. I was able to comprehend everything they were talking about.

So I should be well on my way to become a successful TMS trader! I thought.

Nope.

Despite all my understanding, I still couldn't get consistent result with TMS. My original question was still unanswered; what is a GOOD CROSS? The answer was probably there somewhere in the thread, but I couldn't find it.

Curiosity turned into frustration. That was when I had a chance to talk to senior TMS trader who no longer posted in the thread.
He pointed me to Dean Malone's video, creator of TDI himself, explaining what TDI was suppose to tell us.
His guidance and Dean's video together finally answered my question.
4th video on the left list - http://www.compassfx.com/synergy/web...gy_Method.html

Once I know what TDI is telling me, TMS truly becomes simple.
I can finally look at TDI first before anything else, the way Big E wanted it to be.
I can flip through my chart and identify a good cross at glance. If TDI doesn't look good, there's no need to do anything further.

As of October 2014, I have 21 trades. Only 3 were losing trades. Do note that I don't go for big move. I want to capture a bit of momentum, that's all. Which is what TDI is telling me - momentum.

You can probably spot the similarities among these TDI crosses, I hope? These were all H1 trades I took in October.

Good Day DIREWOLF,

Very interesting to me,... just so simple,...

Kindly share with us the indicator which you use for H1 trades,.. as well as the template please,...

I will try to follow this journal,...

Cheers,

Budi

Hi Direwolf,

you are right tms, and i hv being using it for awhile. please carry the forum here.


good luck

Hi Buddi.

I pretty much just had 3 things in my chart - TDI, Heikin ashi, and TMA.
You can trade this method with just 2, TDI and Heikin Ashi.
I will post my dropbox below with indicators and template.
You can pick them up, and more, at the TMS thread as well.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ezbt6dmcj...qweS7HCQa?dl=0

Dean calls Heiken Ashi "Synergy Bars." They're the same.

Psychology & Me

There were 2 turning points in 2014 which greatly affect my psychology. 1 good, 1 bad.


The BAD

January 2014, I quit my job. Not to trade FOREX, by the way, but due to personal reasons and workspace drama. FOREX however was 1 of my solution... since my demo in 2013 was so awesome, I decided to go live for the second time.

And that was where the bad one began. With no other source of income, I felt so much pressure to make money with FOREX. I had to, I NEED to, was all I could think of. All the things that I've learned, forgotten. I broke everything rules I had. I took random trades, trades without any signal at all because I HAD TO MAKE MONEY.

Few thousand $$$ once against lost in 3 weeks.

Since toilet is the best image to demonstrate my situation, here it is again. Sorry. I'll keep it small.


I did regain control of myself but the pressure to make money was still there. I couldn't leave my charts, my signal could come at any candle. Once I was in a trade I couldn't stop myself from checking it every 30 seconds to make sure it's making me my money. The stress was unreal, my head was ready to explode, I couldn't sleep well at night. Talking to other traders and seeing the pips they made didn't help either; instead it fueled me with so much fear of losing out and the need to get even. I couldn't stop myself from taking bad signal. It's not as bad as the first 3 weeks but still pretty bad.

I was going insane.. my saving account was running out. Yes, I was running out of money to trade, and to live.

And then came a day I decided I need to give up.


The GOOD

Around April I decided I couldn't rely on FOREX to be my primary income anymore. I needed other source of income.
Maybe find a new job, or start a bakery.

Unexpectedly, that WAS my turning point.

I'm a 3D artist and to land a new job I need to have something impressive in my port folio. I decided to go for digital sculpting and had been trying to hone my skill ever since.

That distracted me away from FOREX.

I started to miss signal. In fact, I miss almost 80% of the signal to the point I don't even care anymore. If a signal showed up when I happened to look at charts, great, I made a few pips. If not, I don't care. Pips that other traders were producing also started to not affect me so much.

Now... it sounded like I was trading a lot less. Yes I did...
I didn't have a whole lot of funds left in my trading account now, but what I had left, I almost doubled it in 4 months with TMS alone.



This may not apply to everyone but I had come to 2 conclusions,

1. Don't give too much f***. The less you care, the better. If you find yourself too attached to your chart and your trading, find something to do, something to distract you.

2. Less is more. You want to trade less. You make more money that way. If your entry rules have 10 check points and you miss even 1 of them, you have to be very happy, because you are trading LESS!

An excellent start to your journal Direwolf, I'll be following

Me too. You have been showing good crosses. Do understand that correct triggers are only part of the equation however.

Hi mate, great wrk I will be following

Glad to hear from you guys, lastingwell, jmn, Bizzzle. Hope you are all doing great!

Subbed also! Interesting story, I can relate kind of )

Subscribed

Subscribed. Should be an interesting journey

Subscribed.......

Just got back from playing Tennis. My EURAUD got closed at +3
Entered M30 chart a few hours ago. Must have triggered my trailing stops.
TP was set at 12 pips around TMA 2.0
Small R, stop was 30 pips behind the signal candle. TDI was nice enough.

At least my journey doesn't start with a loss. hehehe



That's probably all for today, got stuff to do.

Thanks and welcome everyone. Glad to see many familiar names

Touching, real story.... Thank you.

@heispark, just noticed you're quoting an artist as well. Good one.