StewartR - I want my trading to be boring.

Hi Everyone.
I've traded part time for years and its time to get focussed on one strategy, and accept that it makes me money if I can get over the boredom that comes with it. All the big-dogs say the trend is my friend - so I'm going to see if I can follow a trend. I've never been able to do it before and I am nervous about showing my trades to the world. But here goes!

My Goal is to take my next 20 trades as Rifle Shots; taking only "A trades".

At the end of 20 trades I'll review what I've done and learned and see what needs to be changed.

I will try to post live, so you can see my orders placed live.

Trend Following "A Trade Setup":
Identify the trend and only trade in that direction.
What's the trend? 21 sma 55 sma 89 sma all confirming the same direction. 21 > 55 > 89 for long trend. 21 < 55 < 89 for short trend
Charts
4 hour charts
Entries
Price action confirmation of trend continuation after pull backs to the moving averages.

Stop loss
Swing high or low of the entry signal bar

Take Profit
Price action counter to trend or obvious support and resistance. I have never been able to let my profits run. That's my goal here. I want to let the market take me out.

Very simple and easy to do - now its up to me to follow it!

Performance update:
2 closed trades: +158 pips (2 wins and 1 B/E)

Here is a trade I entered earlier today.

Edit - closed this trade for + 74 pips


My exit on this one was a trailing stop. However I could also have gotten out on the price action - when the inside bar was broken to the down side. For this trade, price action exit was as good as a trailing stop. I wonder if this will be true after 20 trades.

The goal is only to take A trades. I'll post the next 20 then see how I feel about life, the universe and trading. http://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

You can see that I am posting these trades live.
Closed two bars later for +87 pips

Total of 2 trades: +158 pips

My goal is to follow the trend. Pretty simple huh?
Price is finding support on the 89.
Moving averages confirm the trend.
I think this is an A trade too. (But I'd feel better about a pin bar or a DBLHC or something like that.


Edit - 6 bars later the market has not moved much. I have moved the stop to break even. I would normally have closed out this trade for a profit by now. My emotions say 'close the trade'. But what do the big boys say? 1. trend is your friend (ok - entered in direction of trend) and 2. never let a profit turn into a loss (ok - moved to B/E) 3. Let your profits run; which is boring just waiting around for it to run. This one is crawling not running! But that's what this thread is for. Its a place for me to keep myself busy (doing this blog) instead of tinkering with trades.

Edit#2 - closed this trade at B/E

3 trades: +158 pips
2 wins: 158 pips
1 b/e

Trade number 4.
Its close enough that I will call it an A trade.
1. The trend is still up. (21 > 55 > 89)
2. Price has retraced to the MA
3. We've had 6 bars touch the s/r line at near 1.4725.
4. Price action is moving away from support.

What more do I want?
I'm in.

I've put my TP at 2 x my risk (about 120 pips away). Frankly I dont think it will get there. So I have a 50 pip trailing stop set and we'll see what happens.