A Simple Amalgamation

After talking about the EUR/JPY reaching the end of that move I decided to test run this demo. Slow time of the day +20.5. I may use this broker for my $100 MT4 account and set it up on a trade explorer. It will be end of next week if I do.

Something for the London session EUR/USD traders.

Not really unexpected. The world knew that the rate would not change. The EUR/USD has been in a trading range at these levels for a month.

I started this thread after letting a few people know I was thinking there might be some interest. So far its been me talking to myself. Oh well. I will continue as i like the conversation. Not much of any disagreements or questionings.

Seriously, I plan to open a small account with an MT4 broker and doing the TE thing. It will be at the end of this week. If for nothing else than sh!ts and giggles. See where I can take a $100 or so dollars. Should be fun. I make no guarantees for success or failure. What happens, happens.

This forex market has changed a LOT since I first started trading it. In some ways for the better, others for the worse. Volatility has mostly gone away. Most pairs spend months in trading ranges. Yet people still hold onto trades for weeks on end. Never could figure that one out. And the results are horrid. No matter how much people claim in posts to be making gazillions of whatevers all you need to do is look at the positions of all who have TEs on the Trades page and you know most are losing.

Then there is the fact (i say fact because I do trade equities and futures) that the way the currency market is set up for retail traders leads to some very bad habits and expectations. Things like hedging (nedging). You can NOT do that with any other instrument on the same account. This is some dark manifestation of the forex broker world that should never have seen light. Another big thing is the leverage. People in the US were all upset when it went to 50:1 here. But there are no other instruments that can be traded for more than 20:1 afaik.

Just a few things that go through my mind about forex.

Even with that, forex can be fun. And if your available cash is limited it does give you the opportunity to trade. If done properly one can make some decent monies trading forex. You need to stay disciplined though because how forex is set up they make it easy for you to squander all those hard won gains.

That brings me to this little system I have here. The thread is properly titled. The system is fairly simple. It has elements whose ideas for them came as I was reading some other threads. In all honesty, I think what I have here has as much merit as anything else on FF. Then I am biased toward myself.

This week I will go over the system again and talk about some concepts (time permitting). Nothing in depth. Any minor indi tweaks I made will be posted.

I'm still with you.. Just taking it all in. Have not had time to experiment with this strategy yet.
I appreciate what you are doing.

Hey, you know me. I need some feedback every now and again.

Been a busy (real work not trading) week so far. Done for awhile. The live account may be delayed some. Waiting on "verification" for the account. Also had to set up an e-wallet account to fund it (off shore broker) and that is in a verification stage. Must be because I'm a US citizen and they don't trust us.

I will be posting some stuff the next few days. Some may find it interesting. I like to trade forex short term. So I lean toward pairs that tend to move more. I like the GBP/JPY particularly. It has a reasonable spread and decent movement. Margin is steep. Not sure what the off shore account margin will be. Have been all over their site and no luck finding it. I know it will be better than my 50:1 US broker.

For now I am returning to game 7 of the World Series. Go Houston Astros!!!!

I would be interested in who your offshore broker is if you are satisfied with them. However, I will email you
privately for that information at a later time.

I send you an email covering the process. Hopefully I will be up and funded soon.

The first broker I was going to use for the trade explorer is still in limbo due to having to apply to a web wallet company that has yet to verify me. After reaching patience wall I applied at the one in the current trade explorer. Took a day for verification and they accept deposits by card.

It is raining here where I live and will be raining all week and getting colder. I will be posting and trading here this week (and maybe beyond with winter coming)because I don't go out in cruddy weather unless I absolutely have to.

Currencies can be a tough trade. That's why I stick to short term trading. Most pairs over the last few months have been range bound. It seems things are starting to shake out. Then you have times like the start of this week with no "news" to move the market.

The account I have for this project is tighter pip ECN (or so they claim). I opted for the max leverage (1000:1, yeah I know that is extreme), but will most likely trade it how I'm used to.

As I have stated many times, I am in a new learning phase. Currently studying price action trading and implementing as much of that as I can without becoming too convoluted. Whilst I do this I use my few crutches to help me see better.

A note on the M5. If you use the H1 smooth equivalent on the M5 you will need to ensure there is enough data on your M5 to get the correct setting. Not an issue with a computer like mine (maxed with speed and memory - built it myself). But could be a killer on slower, older machines or on mobile.

Once you get set up you need to decide what pairs to trade. As I trade currencies short term that usually ends up being only one, maybe two pair. Any more than that and I lose focus. I prefer to put on a trade then set the platform on the extra screen so I can keep an eye on it. I really don't see how one can trade on a short term basis and keep track of a bunch of pairs and trades. It would be different trading for longer periods.

The pairs I tend to gravitate to are the ones with more volatility. With this ECN account, the tighter spreads open up more possible pairs. I will still likely focus on some GBP/xxx pairs.

A couple of off pairs I looked at today are the USD/MXN and the USD/TRY. Big movers. Only real downside is not much per pip payout. They look like they could be fun though.

Here is a site that gives you volatility for a large number of pairs on both a daily and hourly basis based on the number of weeks you want to cover (default 10 weeks).

https://www.mataf.net/en/forex/tools/volatility

The two USD/xxx pairs are best traded during the USA session. Looking at them earlier today the spreads were very reasonable on this br0ker.

Trading currencies, at least for me, comes down to the cost to trade a pair. The overall best times are from an hour before London (Frankfort) to US ET lunch time which is close to London close. Best spreads and liquidity are during those periods. Then you need to consider the margin cost of the pairs you want to trade. With this offshore br0ker things are changed somewhat. So it may take a bit of trial and error before I hit on the right amount to trade.

edit: the two USD/xxx pairs mentioned above

I'm still with you. Looking forward to your progress.

Alan

Just closed a GBP/JPY long trade for 20 pips. Poor entry.

This was a poor entry. I am good at violating my own rules.

Rule: Take entry as close as possible to the Hull. Here it was > 15 pips away. Too far. It was also at a recent M5 resistance area. I will discuss this in the next post.

Acceptable areas to enter would have been the open of the bar before my entry or one of the three circled areas. (1) was the retrace to hit off the Hull. (2) was a test of M5 support area. (3) price had established inside the Hull. Entry on the open with the stochastic near the OS area.

That poor entry resulted in a 20 pip draw down. The exit was when price retested the 120 smooth. Stop was just under that.