8 Years Later - Still Not Winning

Assuming... assuming... assuming...
too much theory

Well again, isn’t that the goal of a forum ? You do indeed very small talk...

Please do elaborate in something constructive instead of showing your ego wound.

Keep your 'ONE THING' as long as making profit.
Dont let too much talk person give you bad influences.

Green pips, always

Talk is the goal of this forum, why would you be here if it was not to read all this talk ?

Tell us more about your one thing, or would it be too much talk and theory ?

I think it’s very disrespectful to say that, how can you say too much talk to peoples that participate to this forum giving their opinions when the only threads you opened was for seeking help, because it doesn’t suit you ? If you were a 20 years experienced trader you would be humble.

So please I am asking you to post constructive answers.

Tell us more about your “one thing”, it took you 2 years to be profitable, so you are now profitable since 18 years ? Then a lot of readers would want to know about that, why not telling instead of reading and participating with so little talk ?

And what made you think that I was not a profitable trader ?

I do not want this thread to be a scene for ego wounded person with small talk seeking an audience, I hope other participants will back me up, otherwise I am out, for the sake of this thread.

This is a common assumption but it really doesn't hold true. The Forex market is driven by fundamental factors and not technical analysis. You only have to look at the news catalysts for price moves to see that this holds true. Furthermore, having worked for the last 20 years at investment banks and hedge funds in very close proximity to traders and trading related data, I only ever observed them applying fundamentals to derive trades, financial models to report on risk, and price testing models based on formulas of which the components are derived off fundamental data. I never, not once, observed them trading off the back of chart setups. In fact when i started trading and was looking at TA, i asked traders at one of the big investment banks i was working at the time for information about the setups they use. I was literally laughed at but over time they gradually softened towards me and a few of them told me the ins and outs of this market from a traders standpoint which was the basis of me beginning the journey to trading fundamentally.

I'll give you an example to feed this debate. If you were to take a standard type of TA trade, say fibs with a pullback to the 38 with added support on 10 different occasions. If 5 are successful and 5 are not, how can you explain those failures. in fact take any setup and replace fibs with that setup and now explain why you have losers. Patterns in data exist in all walks of life and you can see remarkably similar patterns you see in price charts:

(Random data)
https://static.infragistics.com/mark...v=201801310900

(part time workers)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iAB1Q5iheC...0/employ02.jpg

(global temperatures)
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/atta...lobal-temp.jpg

(Virginia cooling period)
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/atta...ool-period.jpg

(US deaths in Vietnam and Iraq)
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/atta...etnamgraph.jpg


To turn this on its head, if TA was a way to interpret most participants, then why is nearly everyone that is doing it failing? if it's a case of emotions then automation should resolve this but i have yet to see any example of it working. I can tell you now that the investment banks and hedge funds are not undertaking automated trading where the parameters are solely scoped at TA. The very few i have seen make it work in the retail side have very slow growing accounts or blow out when market dynamics change. I have yet to see anyone with a successful TA approach that is making money over the long haul consistently and with min draw down.

This is obviously a heated topic that is sure to rustle some feathers but it is what it is and in my experience commercially in this industry i have never seen anyone apply it on its own. You have to ask yourself, why would IBs and hedge funds spend tens of thousands on news terminals if all they needed was price charts! (food for thought)


Every trade i make has a fundamental reason behind it. I don't even look at charts until i enter a trade and the price at which i enter would be deemed by most TA traders as madness because it is often coincidentally at levels that would be subjective to the opposite trade technically or at least a hold pattern until a breakout. i manage the trades using a chart but not in a TA sense. I am watching price action and defining an exit strategy based on the strength of the catalyst and the average daily range but in context to price structure. What i am looking for is follow through based on time or clear levels where TA traders will start interacting. As much as i dislike TA trading, the traders using it do cause price interaction at given levels which is my signal to exit.

My trading is effectively taking advantage of the market pricing in new information. If I do my homework when the data is released be it scheduled or unscheduled, the confidence i have in a trade when the conditions are right is an element to my trading that no TA trader in this market can have. I am not after all entering a trade and hoping the market will react at some point. I am entering a trade where the market has digested new information and as a result of that information are reacting. In a TA sense it is the holy grail. You have an action followed by a reaction and so long as you have the right context you will make money. I don't get them all right but unlike a Ta trader i can explain every loss which is either down to human error or an overlooked piece of information. I can also explain the underlying reason the market was buying or selling in any given trade I took. This alone is valuable information because it allows the trader to highlight problem areas in a tangible way instead of putting it down to "another loser" technically. I must be doing something right because my account is up over 130% in under 12 months (next month is my 1 year anniversary trading this strategy).

I don't wan't to get into an argument with any TA traders. If anyone has a problem with what i have said then feel free to offer constructive criticism backed by evidence. This isn't directed at you LDFX but the thread participants in general. I am tired of having arguments with people that can't show hard evidence and dress-up assumption as fact. RichyRich was a prime example of this and he is now banned but there are others who like him offer no constructive debate only assumptions and misleading facts. I have no problem backing my claims with evidence and look forward to constructive open debate because it can be an immensely advantageous opportunity to learn something new.

Interesting debate

I agree that news drive the price. I think the problem of most traders is they try to guess where the price will go instead of riding the wave. They lack patience (like waiting some time after news) and they have problems to do stop&reverse if the price goes against them. Instead of having TA support the move, they use TA to predict the move.

I learned that trading really takes time, at least 2+ years, a lot of negativity, margin calls and mental pain. Only after that you can start to realize that loss is not fault in the system, but part of it. I'm not married to a pair (often a classic mistake) or position, I watch news but don't interpret them (I let the market do it), I do strictly price following. I avoid pairs with no clear daytrend (BB is awesome for that).

What is much worse are those unexpected f*** tweets that mess up the price action, now happening more often than ever.

i have made hundreds of pips off the back of those tweets. I absolutely love Trump as a source of trading opportunity as i do with brexit

I agree simple is nearly always better than complex, but but to say there is just "one thing" is over simplification. Learning to trade is a process, and a process involves more than just one thing.

I did too and it's not Trump actually but rather cable tweets. But sometimes it really messes up a nice trade and you don't know whether to reverse or not as price can zigzag for a while. But I remember days when cable for example was having a nice daily uptrend only to suddenly drop 50-75 pips on some unexpected news (and recover right after). That is like extended stop hunt and can be really painful.

Simple usually means lower success rate. Complex trading (looking for confluence on several indis with different ways of calculating) can push your success rate up a bit and filter bad trades. Because when everything points up or down, price very often goes that way (price movement will fit any system traders use).

Ecotrader,

you won't have any arguments with me, I am sorry if you feel this way.

I think the market is driven by fundamentals in absolute but more by the interpration of it by the big players, which is different, we alone in our trading room don't know the sentiment unless we can read the TA.

I think that the way for us, at least for me, to follow the most of the participants (aka hedge funds, banks) is with TA (chart patterns).

Now you say that most of retail traders fails because they use TA, this we do not know, maybe they use Fundamentals, but it is common knowledge that many retail traders take profits when available and let the loss run if not adding to their loss.

Also what is the perfomance rate from the banks ?

And do not get me wrong, I do believe you can have an edge trading fundamentals, that just does not mean that TA does not work, something I think you can not argue about is that TA is way less subjective as FT, in my humble opinion though, in a bank this might be different.

I do trade 4h minimum and daily at most so the price moves after news is not a problem, I do trade chart patterns that devellop the most during price news, so I agree that the price is driven by news, but as retail traders, what drives us ? For me it is the TA.

I do not doubt it but what I would like to understand is how do you manage your stops and TP ?

I can only manage it with a true TA set up.

What is it you do ?

Of course dude, I can only agree, it is simple as well as complicated though, I do trade only naked chart, the complexity comes from the money management, SL, TP, only experience can give us that.

I would also say that most of the TA are indeed over complicated, like the harmonic book that says a gartley should be at 78.6% fibonacci, butterfly, bat, etc..., for me that it is just to sell to peoples that think trading is complicated.

With experience and a good trendline you can see the patterns forming like the pattern a ball makes when hitting the ground several times.

This among other things, that is mostly volatility and money management, does the trick to get 3/5% a month while risking not more than 1% per trade.

TA works for me, Fundamental, for me, does not.

Fibo, butterfly and other price patterns are rather predicting tools and they fail quite often as they rely on self-fulfilling prophecy. Unfortunately they are being taught widely in retail, although only a few and in high enough TF actually work (cup&handle, H&S, etc).

Indicator can have a complex calculation with smoothing and/or filtering and still give you simple up or down signal without guessing. I admire naked chart traders but I prefer using indis as they help to develop discipline & patience.

Stops I initially set at 25 pips and move to break even as soon as possible where I leave it until I close the position. Targets are based on the scope of the opportunity and tied into the average daily range. By scope of opportunity I mean each trade has a catalyst and the important of that catalyst in terms of central bank influencing data or political uncertainty. The bigger the opportunity the more likely I ride out the trade either to the end of the session or into the next session. I also monitor price action and do close trades if after 20 minutes price is failing to flow through. It's a multi faceted trade management process and the 20 minute rule has saved me from taking a loss more times than I have lost out on a delayed follow through. So in a nutshell trades initiated fundamentally but managed through observation of price and time.

I also close out trades into risk events or close them if an unscheduled event can affect my trade (often this leads to a new trade however)