Plan the Trade

Hey cg try and incorporate some hooks with the ew

And to me, the sheer speed slowing down helps some . . . Lol

Hi H, I've actually been doing just that in the last few trading sessions. Starting to get some results from it.

Sometimes it feels like i'm going around and around in circles, but in fact it is just part of a huge jigsaw coming together.

Firstly, my fave set-up is the 123, trigger and deep retrace back to start pin. As stated yesterday, i'm using EW to try to give me an indication of when to expect PA to make a deeper retrace, (but then return back to main trend).

I'm constantly noticing things that were catching me out a short time ago and deciding to leave them alone now and it is seeing my success rate improve bit by bit.

Anyway, if i could sit on my hands throughout everything else and just trade the above plan. I would be profitable. I have tested it for long enough to know that i can get at least a 50% success rate (improving all the time) but with 6 tick risk and winners being a fresh peak/trough in the trend equalling multiples of that - it's good enough, but......

How often do we watch these massive impulse moves, where the pullbacks are much smaller. I have been useless at trading them up until recently. Using pins and hooks, i'm starting to find that i can get onboard smaller pullbacks now too. Of course, trying to keep your mind open to a variety of methods is trickier and that's when the all important 'experience' comes in. I still think in the end, it all comes down to just that. Like your ability to recognise the 2B and long trade yesterday, when others still see it as a downtrend.

That is why i posted the chart. After 5 (subwaves) expect the last LH (or HL) to be breached, before returning to trend. Again, that is an experience thing.

I was looking for as close to 100% success rate as possible for far too long, afraid to take a loss, but in reality it is just about taking trades with a favourable R:R ratio.
This has been my biggest challenge of all... changing my mindset.

Harold, you make it look simple and i'm sure that it feels to you, like everyone else over-complicates what is a very simple and effective method, but.... if it really were that simple, everyone would be bagging 160 ticks each day and we all know it doesn't work like that! It takes years of experience to view a chart a certain way and to then trade what you see or feel as PA unfolds in front of you.

What is a trend on one scale, is always countertrend to another scale. Trying to match them is what really matters, (hence 5waves, expect a larger pullback).

One thing that i have learnt recently, is that i don't do so well in heavy volume. My tight stops see me whiplashed out regularly and not just that, but i am constantly about a split second to a second behind the action. It's kind of hindsight as opposed to foresight, but there lies the idea of trading pins. It is often only the reaction that you see, that makes you want to take the trade, but you want to take it where it has just reacted from, not where it is now!

I'm in awe of the market. I love the way it has an answer for absolutely every method you care to name and exactly why the ONLY answer is experience.

This is the kind of thing i really need to work on - when to trust my intuition/experience?!

What i've done here, is gone back and replayed a part of a session that i traded earlier and i've paused and placed the orders where from memory, is where i took them originally and taken screen shots;

Firstly, this is how i saw the PA pattern in EW terms;



A likely ending expanding diagonal in abcde with crossover between waves a&d. Here wave 'e' is 100% of waves a-c, thus i think the reaction means we go lower to retest top of wave 'a' as a minimum. We have also been trending up in corrective fashion for some distance now and so, it actually might have been an ending diagonal on a larger scale, thus we might even be back to the downside to fresh lows, (but that's for later).

I'm not going to wait for a full 123 to set-up and trigger on the evidence, so i set and order at the small 123 at the start of the move and hope to get filled.



I get filled, but am a little too aggressive with my stop chase and bag a +15. Let's hope it pulls back my limit set in the chart. I'm not entirely sure how to get back in right now. It might run without me.



I missed getting filled by a tick and so bring it down, still hoping for a pullback. I'm reluctant to just use a pinbar as recently i've not had too much luck getting in at the low of one, (only to see it retrace and stop me out).



I survive the pullback, but now it leaves my entry in an awkward place. Do i over-ride my auto stop? surely it's gotta start to run on now, if it is going too?



No! Stopped out for +1 and didn't choose to get back in. This is where i needed to use a hook, or treat it as a flag break, but regardless, the market beat me, even though if i simplified things and left my stop in it's original position from the first trade, i would have bagged 40+ ticks...

Is it a case, that i will be able to do that in the future? I know that if i went back to trading Forex with smaller positions, that is what i would likely have done. So there lies my battle. How to use EW tied in with the pullbacks and not worry about all the action inbetween? or on another set-up, i wouldn't have got pinched just before the drop? or if i was more confident generally, i would have over-ridden the auto-stop etc.

So many if's, so many possibilities. The desire to want to lock in profit and not watch a +20 position come all the way back to something trivial is way too powerful for me right now!

2b

I have made nothing so far

Couldn't get in on anything wasted day

I made 23 points with pinbars including two -15s. The two losses were (obviously) trades I shouldn't have taken. So was one of the winners. H and CG you are my inspiration.

Thank you so much again for the video.

another 2b/123 break pb:

approaching 31.25

H, if you didn't get anything this morning, try looking at it from 3:00 pm to close.

Down and now up . .

Stalled around 6263 before breaking higher huh?

I'm at work and not able to look at my trading platform. Did it just go long 160 ticks in 10 minutes?

Push down to about 6237 just before open then up to 6284 . . .

Then pullback to 6263.50 or so took off long again

Hello All. Yesterday was very fast action. Huge vol. I stayed out of the market for the first 1/2 hour and ended up taking zero trades. I traded it again later in the day in replay being more aggressive taking the early hooks and made over 90 ticks in 4 trades. When the market is moving in one direction you need to find a way in. So today I was aggressive with my trades. A very poor start today (first 2 trades) then got it going. My first 2 trades I believe are both invalid hooks and should have been avoided. Live and learn.

CG - I look forward to reading thru your posts from yesterday. They look very interesting!

looks like some nice signals around poc and vl:

Ok, so i've gone back to my Spreadbet platform for a mo. I've been watching the Dax and the Dow for a few days. The idea is to go back to live trading, but with smaller position sizes, until i can trade as fluidly as i do on Demo. The spread is fixed at 1 pip for the Dax, during hours, so no slippage and to be honest, 1 pip is not that bad.

I do not like the Dow, but the Dax is pretty damn close to the NQ in the way that it moves.

It regularly revisits prior S/D levels and also reacts at them often, even when trend is against you, giving you chance for BE at least.

It trends very well according to EW too, so for me, reading wave counts often gives me a 'head's up as to what i might expect next. It's just a road map, but great when you get PA, candles or 123's which confirm what you're already expecting.

I sat and watched yesterdays open and really should have traded it. Everytime i told myself mentally, that it should react at a zone, it generally did. I was actually pretty excited by the end of the open hour, although as we all know, it was obviously just a nice trending day, but still...

So, here is today's results;



I added the extreme from yesterday as a usually important profile line, but got chopped about a bit early on, with two losers straight off.
After that, it came good. I absolutely nailed the last trade!

I haven't labelled the EW counts as it will only clutter and confuse, but i could count three sets of 5 waves and was expecting the top when it came. Incredibly, i still could not hold for the bigger drop though.

So, it could have been much better though. I didn't add the missed orders on the way down, as i tried to get back in, where i was the usual, second too slow. Even with small position sizes, it's surprising how i'm still being a bit too cautious. Anyway 55 pips and no comms to pay. It's only small fry for a mo, but i reckon i will be able to increase position sizes over the coming months and then we will see about going back to Futures again.