Trading Institutional Order Flow

i think my answer would start by me saying the reason i enjoy and love trading is because of the many different methods each individual uses to make a profit. there are so many systems and strategies out there that can and may make you very profitable and i believe that is the journey we are on as traders. but not just finding a strategy but finding yourself in the process. as michael stated earlier, i believe you can give 2 people the same strategies and rules and yet they both will have differing results because of the simple fact that we all are different in our own way and we are governed by our emotions. hell you can flip a coin, which i dont recommend, and end up with a huge winner and you could say that is your edge.

my edge is S&D and rather then going into the nuts and bolts of how i will just simply give the why. trading in this way allows me to become mechanical and almost robotic. it has given me the ability to remove as much of the human emotion as possible and see the picture as black or white and taking the guess work out of it. in this arena of uncertainty and where anything can happen i think at the end of the day you want to have peace of mind when you hit buy or sell and that is what the definition of edge is for me. knowing that the trade i am about to take has been decided in a mechanical way and has met certain criteria i am okay with a winner or loser. hi my name is jai and i am a S&D trader have a blessed weekend.

I agree, that mental game is most important. Even if you have solid strategy, your mind can sabotage your efforts.


Some examples of mind heuristics and cognitive biases results in trading:

Hello everyone

A quick announcement please.

The next T.I.O.F webinar will be on the 4th of November 2017 @ 8.30pm UK time

It will be a practical session, analyzing the markets for the week ahead.

If you would like to attend, as usual, kindly send me your email address.

Best wishes

Hello everybody,
NZD/USD. A lot of talks around this pair this weekend which is not surprisingly. What I see is strong and fresh weekly DZ inside strong and fresh M DZ. Any thoughts?
Regards

pm explanation

Hello Yunvic.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the NZDUSD

Allow me to share something on the weekly chart as shown below

best wishes

Hi Akt.
Its beautiful and usefull thread. My friend redirect me to this thread about SAD about an hour ago. So I started to read first and jump to this page. While I am reading until the end.

I would like to attend the webinar if you can include me please. my email is hafiz.mohd [at] outlook.com

Best regards
Hafiz

Dear Akt,
Thank you for reply. Yes, I agree that if entry TF is W, than risc/reward is < 1:3. But there are daily DZs inside that W DZ. What the rules tell us in case 3M uptrend, M uptrend, W TL down but not downtrend because only one SZ was eliminated on the way down, and D clearly downtrend? It seems to me that we can go long at D DZ inside W DZ inside M DZ. Am I wrong?
Regards

Hello Dear Akt. I would like to attend a webinar, but I don't know where to write you e-mail address. Please tell me.

Hello Yunvic

You are not wrong.

However, what I was trying to do was point out the area of supply above where one would expect some selling to start to come in, regardless of the timeframe one enters on, as a way of showing you what i see in terms of potential profit margin. That is one of the primary considerations in any trade.
Even if one has levels on a chart, I was trying to point out that one must always check there is enough of a PM.If there isn't enough of a profit margin then the trader would/should pass on the trade.

best wishes

Dear Akt,
Thank you!
Regards

Hi Akt.
Some post start making sense for me to swing. I am tired of Scalping and takes my time instead of more analysis.
Do you have the video youtube link that I can study on so I will have more and clear on your next webinar if approve.

Have good day Akt.

Regards
Hafiz

This cognitive bias of missing out will make you create more s/d zones and go into lower TF, where there is smaller supply demand imbalances (less orders to buy/sell) and therefore easier to break. Or you see price reacting from the questionable zones and enter at market.

Guys, what do you think about Forex Tester 3? Do you think it'll be a good investment?

Hello everyone.

A chapter from a T.I.O.F series i am writing - TRADING THE S.A.D WAY.
Apologies for the length of the piece. It was necessary.

ALL REAL TRADERS USE INDICATORS

In the ever-growing world of Supply and demand trading of which I have had the privilege of being a part of for close to a decade now, I have observed a gradual but definite trend gaining momentum online.

It is the idea, the belief, the strong opinion, that Supply, and demand trading is against the use of indicators. It purports that if one is a supply and demand trader then using indicators is not allowed or is the equivalent of going to the dark side.

This belief or idea or opinion is not an accurate one although I am now not surprised by it.
I suppose it is part of the age-old debate in modern trading where we have price action purists pitched against indicator and mechanical based systems.
I now ask myself why it must be one or the other? I ask because surely by now traders must all know that there is no singular way to trade the markets. Surely if that were the case then no-one would ever make money in the markets. We would all be taking the same trades at the same time and the markets would never move. The beauty of the markets is that it is just there, a means for people from all over the world to express their view about the future price of an instrument. How they arrive at those opinions is not as relevant as their belief in the opinion.

Indicators are often castigated as lagging, slow and of no real use in trading by traders who don't use them. This category claim that price action is king and removes the lag inherent to indicator based trading.
On the other side we have indicator based traders who swear by their indicators and feel the non-indicator based price action traders are missing massive amounts of information looking at price action alone. They also often believe their indicator based approaches are the only and best way to go.

As always with human nature, we go to extremes – in this case it is an extreme in thinking. An extreme in getting entrenched and defensive of our positions with no flexibility or open mindedness to see things from an alternative perspective.

The more accurate situation is that ALL traders use indicators. What did Michael just say?

Allow me to explain.

Let us begin with a broad definition. The Webster’s dictionary defines the word “indicator” thus – “one that indicates”. It goes on to give many different examples of how the word is used in many ways in different contexts.
In lay man terms, an indicator Is something that points to the current or future state of being of an entity or being. For example, high fasting blood sugar levels are an indication of the state of the patient’s pancreas and the possible presence of diabetes. High inflation figures are an indication of an overheating economy. Rising employment data is an indication of a healthy economy. Rising prices of corn are an indication of the demand for corn. We could go on and on.

So, for non-indicator based trading systems aka the “price action is king” group of traders, their “indicator” is price isn’t it? They don’t just open a chart and jump in to take a trade. No, they don’t and rightly so. They wait for their indicator, price, to tell them when to get in and when to get out.
They get an “indication” of the most appropriate action to take based on what price has been or is doing.
The same way the indicator based trader waits for his/her indicator to give him an “indication” of what the most appropriate action is to take at any point in time.

The main difference between both groups, the price action and indicator based groups is that the indication the traders in each group are waiting for occur quicker than the other.
Now, that should put traders in a couple of categories that I will term, the conservative, and the non-conservative categories.
Notice I refrain from using the term “aggressive” to describe the non-conservative group. That is simply because the term “aggressive would immediately be replaced in the reader’s mind with the term, “bad” when actually it is not that at all. It is merely a separate way of being.

The difference between Conservative and Non-Conservative approaches for any trader should really come down to knowing and understanding one’s own self.
If I am of a type of personality where I am weary of buying a market that is falling sharply with big red candles or bars for example and I prefer to wait for an indicator to give me the green light to buy, then that is me. It is not wrong, and it is not right. It’s me.
Compare that to the trader who has no worries at all about buying a falling market. The one who relishes the idea of getting in whilst everyone else is getting out. Is he right or wrong? None of the above. He is being him, being true to his ideas and opinions and beliefs.

So I think it is time traders, and I especially mean, retail traders, for us to get some perspective on these affairs rather than constantly trying to castigate another person’s approach simply because it is different to ours. Even within approaches the application of the same rules and ideas will differ from trader to trader.
Like I often say to the members of the Roundtable, it is never about the methodology, it is always about the person applying the methodology, the trader.

I wish you well.

It was for me.

Awesome write up Mike!

Just curious as to how many pairs traders here follow? I look through about 15 pairs on Sunday night. Set up my S&D zones and alarms. That gave me 5 potentials and 3 really good setups. My account is small so I took the 2 best setups and had my first week with no losing trades. I know we will all have losers, but I actually understand what I'm doing (I still have a lot to learn) and having a set of rules I know and can follow has helped me immensely. I've also changed my thought process as far as not setting a weekly or daily target for pips. I let the setups come to me. If there's no trade, there's no trade. Anyway, would really like to know how many pairs people follow. Thanks in advance.
Best regards

Dear Isaacpeh, you don't have it yet? How do you test the metodology, plans, rules? It worth for sure.

Dear Clayton,
I observe more than 30 pairs plus stocks and indexes. Depending on TF sequence you have different numbers of entries per week or month. Read the post #4953.