Plan the Trade

You too H!

played a couple of 2b breaks

nice work H happy thanksgiving

bring creative ras. when we are above the profile and its driving try and find ways to get in via pullback hook or even pullback to last high

these were my 2 hooks today

these tend to work pretty well if its driving.

happy thanksgiving all!

Despite the reaction at the lower TL, there is quite a strong possibility that an Ending Diagonal has finished and we might see a larger corrective pullback, thus i was tight with my SL chase and resulted in +13.



I was at expecting any reversal to happen around the red circled area, (prior subwave 'i'), where my target was in last post, but it just proves that it is very difficult to hold out. Right now, i find myself 50/50 on next direction, so a gain is a gain...

I already cursed twice in this run, that i didn't take profits and reload, but that is always the way with the benefit of hindsight. I did tell myself to hold instead!)

I took two more trades and ended up +23 yesterday, but i realise that i am only posting winning days. The truth is that i traded a couple of replay sessions on Monday and got a mawling from the market, -22 and -12, with an absolutely horrendous failure rate. It was only my tight SL strategy that kept it from being double that.

The sessions were mid morning and early afternoon and i can see that i was trading in a much faster, heavier volume environment, (especially for 133 tick) where i was behind the action consistently. Typically taking the pullback of a reaction, when the trend had not actually changed direction yet. I did not feel in control. I felt that the speed was pressurising me into making (the wrong) decisions. The market was in control of me.

Taking the trade at the reaction point, gives the safety of a +1, whereas taking the retrace, only to see it move beyond to stop out is careless and yet i did it several times over before i quit. Not one time did i wait for a 123, trigger and retrace, (the plan), why?!

I think this is an ongoing battle for me. My plan works generally very well during corrective waves, (they are easy to determine - you will see patterns with many crossovers, counter-trend to a previous strong move). The problem is, that we have had a lot of strong trending (impulse) days recently and a combination of boredom and over-confidence leads to that same old feeling of invincibility and bad decision making.

By limiting trades to the 123, trigger and retrace method, you have to sit on your hands for far too long. Having the discipline for this is proving nigh on impossible.
Going with the main (impulse) trend, the 123 triggers themselves are a better plan, but that means any pullbacks will see you stopped out at what would usually be the entry point of the pullback method... hmmmm

Taking the retrace to prior demand zone works well, (without waiting for a 123) and buying the fresh high of shallower pullbacks is generally a good idea, but of course C&H set-ups will often see you stopped out.

My point is, the market has an answer for every method. All you can do, in the end is trade probablities, thus taking losses is part and parcel of successful trading. In the end it becomes a 'feeling', in your subconscious, from your interpretation of what you are seeing in the chart. A culmination of Candle action, Supple/Demand zones, Wave counts, Profile Lines or whatever you have experience of.

I started taking trades off of retrace levels where i was expecting price to reverse last night, thus as soon as i had a nice bullish candle off of the level and the next candle continued a tick above, i took the trade. No waiting for a 123 (which might never come) and it worked well. But the main thing to note - the couple of successful trading sessions since Monday's disaster, were both late afternoon, where the volume had dropped. Guess i will be sticking with that for now.

In all fairness, if i total up the previous weeks results, i have made more than i've lost, but the losses have a far greater effect on me than they should. Until i stop making these kind of fundamental errors, i will not be making the switch. There is more work ahead yet.

Hey, i'm just writing my thoughts. I'm sure many will recognise the same battles. That's why everyone here respects Harold as much as we do. When you finally get to break past these mental battles, gain the discipline req'd and simply trade, regardless of outcome, trading will be the best possible 'job/hobby' that you can find!

But we all know that H has also been there and got many t-shirts in his cupboard. I'm still collecting mine!

I don't make a mistake once or even twice.... i make it many times, just to make sure!)

I mentioned last night (afternoon for you guys across the pond!), that there was a strong possibility that an Ending Diagonal had played out and that we would correct further (ABC). Recap the chart;



and subsequent;



So you can see, that it was correct and we printed a simple ABC corrective move (likely 4th wave of a degree), which made a fresh low, before returning to the main trend (Long).

Again, it is later in the day, that i seem to be able to decipher EW counts or patterns more easily. Even if i was only 50/50 about the count, at the time, it still creates a plan to work too. If the trend starts to follow that plan, it's about using pullbacks etc, to join the ride.

Here's a chart with some lovely trending. The session was afternoon of 14-11-17. The blue lines are retracement levels where you could expect a reaction, the red lines are entry after a bullish reversal candle. The idea being as i mentioned a couple of posts back...

Sometimes we are unsure of quite whether PA will reverse at a certain level or we do not have the confidence to take the trade there and then. But by witnessing the reaction off of the level, we gain the confidence to take the trade. This is 233 tick. Of course, all candles change depending what scale you watch, but that's why it has to be off of a prior level. This is effectively creating profile lines to work off of, throughout the day. 233 tick works well here, giving you an entry quite close to the reversal point, as volume is quite slow;



Ok so it is with the benefit of hindsight, but still, you can see how this works. Sometimes the level is obvious and an order should be placed regardless, but other times, we need that little green light!

I traded this live recently and the trade in the chart is one that i took.

So, i haven't been posting so much until the last week or so, but here's typically what i've been working on.

Using the 'Chart replay' option is really handy! You can fast forward the times where there is nothing really happening and also pause along the way, to record your thoughts.

I'm now going back and trading each afternoon over the past month starting from 15:00, for the final hour, just to see what results it brings me.

So, i started a little earlier, with the 01st November and by first, looking at the slightly bigger picture, i decide that we will most likely be heading Long;



I don't really see any reason for PA to reverse until it hit's the blue line (although there might be a Market Profile line that i do not know about, so we still need to trade the plan and keep entries tight. If it is indeed an 'LD', we still need another high to complete the count too.

A small corrective abc move saw me get filled, when i thought i had missed it. Things went the right way and i've now locked in 20, with Limit sell order a tick below my preferred reversal (blue) line from earlier;



I included the Diagonal ABCDE count, but i don't like the shape of it, regardless, it served a point that either way, i wanted to see a fresh high.

So we didn't connect with the line and result was +20, didn't really see a decent short trade thereafter, but a little later, we then print a 123 back to the Long side, starting close to previous HL, thus maintaining the sequence and trend. A likely place for reversal and thus i took the pullback after trigger with confidence. One of those trades that i didn't need to think about. Interesting point, don't you think? What if i only waited for those?!



That's me up to date. I will play on and post the result in a while. I'm fully expecting that my SL is too tight and will result in +10, but that will still be a great result from this session and i expect i will stop there anyway...

So, it was to be... +10, but we went higher;



If i were still in that trade i would be trailing my SL a tick below each finished candle.

Anyway, it takes too long to write and post all these workings, of course. We generally do them in an instant as we follow PA. Yet again, another successful trading session late in the day. It is seemingly my most successful time to trade, but i need to cover a couple of weeks worth yet. Plenty to try out. :et's see. Cuppa time for me, now, as you all get ready for open!)

one n done

Started off with -15 but I wasn't trading my rules and I was trying something new, and again I'm in a trade in SIM and I didn't follow my rules so I got in like 8 ticks worse than I would have. But if I keep on making this mistake on SIM eventually I'll learn not to do that
I followed my rules and got plus12.

ok. so I'm posting this to remind myself that every day this week would have been better had I followed my rules. so a good learning experience.

Good stuff CG! Loads of info there! I'll digest through it this Thanksgiving weekend. (see what i did there..."digest"....thanksgiving....)

Also, don't forget that NQ will close at 12:15 Eastern time on Friday.

Do pins and engulfing candles at pullbacks form part of your armoury ?

Pins, definitely, as it is more likely to be similar on multiple tick scales.

I guess it depends where one candle ends and a new one starts, cos they both show sellers taking Price down and then buyers coming in and taking control, (or vica versa), but i tend to think that engulfing candles are better the larger they are and that often means a riskier entry.

Change of subject.

I have never bothered reading many of the various threads here on FF. But recently, i thought it would be a bit of fun to do so...

Wow! It's full of bullshitters!

Years ago, whenever i did venture onto someone else's page, my outlook was far different to the one i possess now!

I naturally respected people and felt that i knew a fraction of what the general FF population knew about trading. So many people in the business of making money, with so many variants on how to do so. It is only now that I realise that there are very VERY few really good traders out there, (such as Harold), who really do know what they are doing.

There is thread after thread, with similar themes. People who claim to be 'profitable', returning 3% a month etc. So many traders scaling into positions and not using stop losses! People who claim to be doing so after 3, 4 or 5 years of trading experience. Hell! These guys haven't even reached first base yet.

Firstly 3%/month is investing territory (36% return a year) very healthy, but surely it would be better to buy Defensive stocks with high yields to get that kind of return. Besides, you need a lot of Capital to make a nice living.

What no-one owns up to is the losing positions that sit there in the account, getting worse everyday. The only way to survive such, is for those positions to be so small that they do not matter. If that is the case, how will you ever make any sensible amount. We all know that you will bank the winners far earlier than those losers that run away and never stop. These same traders have not even begun to fight their fear of losing and that is where the real journey begins.

I'm not here to knock anyone. Hell, i'm sure i've exaggerated plenty of things in the past and the only person i was kidding, was myself, but...

I am jealous of anyone who has stumbled upon Harold's threads (or here) in the early years of their trading lives. I took my first positions 18 years ago. I've lost a lot of money since then. Think of a mistake to make and i've made it, several times over. It is the last 10 years that i got into TA and reading charts and i've covered all sorts of ground since then, 7 years of Elliott Wave and all the usual common chart patterns etc but i do believe there is a lot of wasted time there too.

Supply/Demand is all you need to know and that is exactly what we do here, combining Market Profile (or in my case EW) and pullbacks within a trend.

We all know that the difficulty lies in determining which trend you are watching, as it is fractal. What is currently a main (impulse) trend, will be corrective on the next bigger scale etc. I go to great lengths to explain that a 123 which triggers (HH/HL/HH or vica versa) is the minimum req'd for a trend to form, but that same basic pattern is also a simple ABC corrective move at that stage, thus there lies the risk.

It is so natural to constantly expect a change of trend and there lies the fear, but that's when you rely on your system. A pullback to last S/D zone (especially if it went up quick and similarly came down quick), will likely see a reaction as a minimum or a return to trend and fresh highs (or low's). A buyer sits there, the reaction was his order. Join in with him, cos his money is moving the market!

Here i've marked a chart from late yesterday's afternoon session. Again, i am getting the patterns that i like at this time of day. I do not need massive swings and fast moving PA at this stage. When i am trading Live the same as i am on Demo (and trust me, i treat Sim as close to the real thing as possible. I still feel euphoria with each successful session and gutted when i make mistakes and lose, through pride), i might go back to profiles and trade the open again, but for now, i need to find a way to trade with a relative calmness. Every trader must find what works for themselves and work on it until achieving success.



I've marked a counter-trend 123 in the circle, which did not breach it's last HL, thus trend is still up. Taking it as a short at that stage (without a very strong case of Negative Divergence present) is suicide. A 123 forms back to main trend, triggers and retraces. It is a far greater probability at that stage that the 123 long is the way to go and that is all we are doing. Trading the most probable outcome. In any case, main trend will be more powerful and see more movement than the counter-trend moves. Again this means it is in your favour both in probability and with R:R.

There is no Holy Grail. Stop looking for it. Experience is the only thing that can get you to Harold's standard. Some learn quicker than others and that is NOT a reflection of intelligence. It is far more linked to a calmness of character.