Discovering An Edge

DAX potential short from current price, into Wave B

DAX
Short @ 13032

GBPJPY
Short @ 148.17

Probably not the best entry right on previous lows, but I'm looking for them to break.

Closed +17
Frustrating when it goes into sideways consolidation.
Previous lows his morning containing action as we draw to a day's close. This will probably be it today for trading DAX

DAX ended up dropping down to Daily S1.
I took 3 longs from the bottom and closed for +227

GBP shot up on a retrace.
I've taken another GBPUSD short @ 132093

DAX drops further and I can't help myself.

Long @ 12971

I took a long hiatus from trading and started again last year.
I traded for about 4 - 6 months. End conclusion was a loss/close of account.
I was still suffering from bad money management.

This was actually a good turning point.
My actually trading had improved massively. I had a lot of winners now.
But due to bad money money management, the few losers I had wiped me out.

The journey I took to try and unravel this personal problem lead me down
Van Tharp and Douglas.

I started trading again in 2017 spring/summer. Very light.
By this point I had been introduced to cryptocurrencies and bitcoin.

The beauty of such things was that a trend had been established - you just had to follow it.

It's taken about 4 months and while I still suffer from the same old gripes - I am very aware of it.
I can do something about it and it's not just Stop Losses etc.

Position Size is my biggest culprit.
Until one day, one of my mentors simply said - "just reduce your size!"

Perhaps it was the tone in which he said it. Dunno.
The answer was already there and obvious. But in all this time, my ears and my brain just weren't hearing it.
They weren't internalising it.

This day, I did - and I changed my approach, upon the realisation of it.
Perhaps it was an emotional baggage of needing to be right. I am not quite sure yet.

But in allowing myself room to be patient and "not so greedy", I was able to turn things around.

Like I said - the trading isn't my problem - it's not entry or exit or set up or charts or anything like that.
It's just betting like everything was ALL IN that had to stop.

It's good to document this - as this has been a big monkey on my back.
The fact that I can take an amount and turn it into 6X its worth - that isn't my edge.

Well it is, but it's not complete without the Money Management - specifically the emotional control required to set trading size appropriately.
It's not just an intellectual exercise.

It's got to be a fundamental part of your trading "being".

I've taken almost a 2 year break from Forex Factory and it's been great.

I quite enjoyed my time here and thing I took away from it was that
teaching others (even if you're not an expert or master yet) allowed you to learn those same concepts.

It's as if explaining the steps in my own words allowed the essence to be absorbed.
If I didn't know it, then I couldn't explain it. Etc.

....

Then there was the whole Similarity Thread saga, which to be frank completely exhausted me.
There were alot of negatives from that whole drama. But I can't ignore the positives.

The whole Transient / Recurrent concept was something that allowed me to graduate.
Graduate from just basic Fibonacci, Support and Resistence and Trend Line stuff.

These things are essential but they weren't helping my trading.
In fact, I had amassed a toolbox of "stuff" that in the end, they didn't help with focus.

The transformation with the Similarity Concept was that it allowed me to take ONE IDEA
and apply the concept through different techniques.

This is very different.

Similarity allowed a Moving Average idea to be made "equivalent" to Bollinger Band and to S/R and to Fib and to etc etc etc.
This was a breakthrough. It meant that I wasn't beholden or confined to any one tool.

Why is this important? Because my day job only allowed me to trade online.
I didn't have MT4 and remote desktop/server setups (which I did try) were expensive and a pain in the ass.

In the end, between IG Index, ETX Capital and other spreadbet platforms, I needed to be able to use what was in the charting tool.
So this ended up being Pivots, Bollinger Bands, EMAs, Fractals, SR and Trendlines against a CandleStick chart.
I could swap between any of these tools as I saw fit.

But the glue that started to bind these together was an overarching concept(s) about price.
I could watch a naked chart, and extrapolate an idea, then put on a Bollinger Band and it would give me the same conclusion as EMAs.

This was a revelation.

So this entire period which I think ended up being almost a year, allowed me to trade and practice.
It wasn't perfect, but I went from scalpig 5 pips and 100 trades a day, to 20 trades and 100 pips.
I think by the time towards the end, it was perhaps about 10 select trades and between 50-150 pips a trade.

Of course (as posted previously) my monster of Position Size and Bad Money Management didn't help my accounts.
But at last, the TRADING end (ie. the Charting, Recognising Different Setups, the Pulling of the Trigger, etc) were no longer a problem.

I play guitar. And it's similar to that.
When you start off, you're mainly worried about fingering and getting the chords to ring out.
Then you have to learn to change chords (which is bloody hard).
Then you have to play in time, to some background music - so you have to worry about more than just yourself.
Then one day, you just play. You play without thinking about it.

That's what that episode in FF was like.

Which is why it was a shame that the whole scammer thing came into being.
I forget his FF name, but there was a small group I was involved in that were researching the techniques.
Some had even programmed some awesome indicators and there was a real testing of the ideas.

Whether or not they resulted in anything useful for the public, is debateable.
But I remember that some individuals (including myself) benefited privately from that workshop/lab collaboration.

And as for the originator - well, I'm glad he didn't scam anyone and that he's gone.
It's just a shame.

I can't really look back on it with regret - how could I? I learned to trade.
But I took a hiatus and to my gratitude, I'd internalised alot of what I'd learned.

Now - I don't think I retain ALL the similarity or Transient/Recurrent concepts.
Heck, I probably need to revisit my old thread - but really - I don't need it anymore cos the most useful concepts
that apply to my trading are the ones I use and keep.

Like Bruce Lee says, keep what is useful, discard the rest.

Revised DAX

Note that current forming B Wave went to Weekly S1

It's good to see you back in the saddle here at FF and congratulations.

Jmn! Thanks buddy!
Really appreciate it.

It's good to be back.

Weekend Bitcoin action begins

Long @ 7694.25

Stopped out -15

Posted 2 Bitcoin Longs yesterday
@ 7757 and
@ 7702

Had to nurse these overnight (without stop) but thankfully no more than 80 points drawdown.

Closed both at 8060

Can't remember if I posted my targets here or not.
But the Bitcoin targets are:

8860 and 9325

I can see this retracing to 7800.
I'm not going to short to that level.

If price does come to that I'm going to put my SIPP into this final Wave 5

Closed GBPJPY shorts
Net +150.54

Will be looking to reload at London session

Sell offs on major indices happening

DAX
Limit order triggered

Long @ 12867
Added @12893

Bitcoin
Long @ 8060