How to be a trader for a company?

Hi

Are you still short EUR/GBP?

Yes matey still short EURGBP, only 10% of my original position left and looking to add to it at 6780, 6760 and then see if it can continue down if it goes higher then i will close all and re-evaluate my campaign on it - at the moment I will add gleefully on the way down. no biggie - i cut the losses properly and am ready to add should the market come down at all. I am ready for it should this spike prove to be a bear trap...waiting for it in the wings - never afraid of a face-off

Hope this helped

My biggest fear in a market moving like the current one where one can almost feel the anticipation is not having a position and not taking one thats the reason for still having some in the eurgbp. it almost feels like we are at a watershed in terms of the usd as if it wants to deside whether to take out all the bulls before giving up the flag.

At the moment I am very focused on the market and trying to gauge the participants and their actions. Enjoying it a lot and not willing to give up the idea of the trend. Long GBP at 2.0295 as well so we'll see what happens in the next 2 weeks or so...

Lets fight the good fight!

Original post at http://forexfactory.com/showpost.php...&postcount=200


I <3 my charts.

Pulled back to only 73$, then didn't make it to 79$(past last year's high)as it hit the FE 200...then a bearish outside bar/two bar PB and...boom


Funny how that "little" FE 161.8 was perfect s/r =) Also around 23.6% of the last swing.

Just wanted to update the chart since I had posted it here =)


Told a friend to short 76.75$, but he just said he didn't have the charts at hand and now we're trading 4.65$ lower ;p


My current broker doesn't have stocks or commodities other than Gold/Silver :/


Dunno about that EURGBP, it hit it's minimum leg target of .6775 already.
A weekly close above 0.6780/0.6800 would very much be bullish if it manages to hold above 0.6750. Was a really nice long setup off of 0.6680

Post was at
http://forexfactory.com/showpost.php...&postcount=199

Cable fell 470 pips, EURUSD 240. ==> Cable outperformed(even more so than usual, that is) thanks to EURGBP.
EURGBP made the predicted PB off s/r and subsequently rose as anticipated and even broke the channel again.

You can't say that this isn't at least a tiny bit of proof TA works.

<3 charting.

Hi Trader 888,

I'm finding this thread interesting. I have to say though that I have experienced my largest drawdowns when my fundamental view is wrong. You enter a trade, and the market moves against you, so you exit for a loss. So you think ok, I'll get a better entry, and take it....again you exit for a loss....after a 3rd attempt you give up, at which time the market moves rapidly in your direction, and you wait for a retrace....which never comes....and you miss the move.

Have you been through experiences like this, and do you have any advice, especially when a fundamental view that you hold keeps losing, and the market simply disagrees with your viewpoint. Surely this must happen 40% + of the time, as no-one can accurately predict the future from fundamentals.

Thanks,
Matt

Have you ever traded in a situation like we are in now with all of the liquidity problems and the talk of rate cuts by many central banks at the same time?
Do you still have a short dollar bias against euro and pound or could this situation change things. Just trying to gain a little experience from someone who may have been there. Thank you for your time. spike71

Hi people,

Ermm, to answer the last two posters... Firstly, yes you can be wrong a large percentage of the time even up to 80% of the time but boy is that 20% sweet! Thats all you need, I've known a guy who could only scratch out 1 good trade a year but that one good trade got so loaded that it more than made up for the losses in between. I really think 80% of the time it's just staying busy and trying to get into the big one.

Secondly - current situation with "several central banks" thinking of cutting interest rates etc...Spike...all I can say is that every situation is different no matter if you have experienced a situation before. Remember the participants might not be the same as the previous time the situation was similar to now. People act diffirently even given the exact same situation 10 times in a row. So I really don't know how this is going to end but I am still long gbpusd and short eurgbp. there was quite a lot of action since my last post but the more important thing is how we are going to act going forward. I have actually decided to trade the gbpusd as a "figure-trade" that means its going to act around 2.000 the same way it likes to act around 1.9800 or any other round figure- only this time the round about movement won't be in 20 or 50 pips but in 200's and 500's - I have lots of times (by just looking at the ticks) noticed that the market goes to a round number like 1.9800 and then goes through to either 1.9805 or 1.9810 and then pulls back to the figure or even just below the figure 1.9790 before attempting the rise again. it doesn't always happen but you can feel when it is happening. so in this case the market went to between 2.05 and 2.1 and is now pulling back so I'm treating it the same way as a smaller "figure-trade". lets see if I can now get the play right when it does go to 2.000. the fact that it rose to between 2.05 and 2.1 increase my bias for an attempt to 2.1 - but this could take several months or maybe even a year or 2 - especially if this figure decideds to go and test 1.9000 first!! but know one thing - i will be there waiting for it always waiting to make my view a play - then of course before that happens I might be forced to change my view but having formed this view I will remember it when the market does reach that point and at that time everyone might be so bearish GBP while I might be the only one to start going long based on this view formed in july 2007... guess we'll have to wait and see...

Hope this helped

Bullish PB through 70.10$





*dances*

*goes to buy Nostradamus nametag*

Every dog has it's day ;p


Same chart as on http://forexfactory.com/showpost.php...&postcount=200

Yeah this oil call was good Seeking.

I posted the same setup in J16 thread. I made some good money off that.

Trader888,

Just out of curiosity, how are the traders at your bank handling this recent volatility? Any spectacular wins/losses or other stories?

Good question...where has Trader888 gone?

hi people,

It's been a rough ride but if you have a plan you come out on the other side as expected, whether at a loss or win doesn't matter just as long as you planned for it.

It's difficult to say exactly how our traders handled the volatility - some reduced positions - especially those in the less liquid markets while others increased their positions. Like in forex. I think I mentioned a long in cable around 2.0295 somewhere high up in an earlier post and I explained exactly how I was going to work the pullback to below the 2 figure and the market played out as expected so although I was long at 2.0295 I am now in the money on that trade as a whole just because I knew what price action to expect around the 2 figure (from just watching the market in the past). Of course if it went lower then I would have either cut posi or added when it started going back up again. It is something you get a feel for. Seekinglight is trying to simulate that feeling using technicals of some sorts and I suppose it is possible to a certain degree. But I still feel it's like giving someone a gun without him understanding how to use it properly. But you need some deep pockets to trade long term and the question that is very difficult to answer is when to take some money out of your pockets as a loss. You have to commit to taking a loss long before it stares you in the face or even the deepest pockets will run dry.

I will be honest in admitting that I have been looking at some of these technical systems that trade very short term on this forum and most of them are really very random. The one 5min system by Phillip Nel however makes some sense as in effect you are doing on the short term what I am trying to do on the long term - which is buying pullbacks after a new high or selling rallies after a new low. Not exactly the same but close. I'm not promoting his system but I do know from experience that his approach just feels so elegant to me. Yes, there will be losses too. I actually do not care how people trade I just enjoy reading about it and not wanting to blow my own horn I can usually see merit quickly (although humbly I must admit I see the merit only from my own limited reference framework) - like the new thread about the 95pip system or something similar - it's gonna run dry pretty soon. There once was a HANS123 system somewhere and it was going like a boeing for months and it DIED eventually, it and similar systems to it will pick-up again but the inevitable will always happen. A good mathematician or statistician should tell these traders where they are underestimating randomness. YOU cannot say buy 25 pips from the market at time X, the character of the market will eventually change and then the 25 pip will cause losses -"so lets make it 35 pips then we catch only the "REAL" breakouts". This thinking is a recipe for chaos. In anycase enough rambling from me lets see what happens.

Hope this helped



Hope this helped

T888,

Glad to see you're back. I agree with you on the short-lived nature of certain threads/strategies and the under-assessment of risk. Risk analysis and proper backtesting appear to be afterthoughts when any method sees short term gain. I'm a member of an MT4 coding mailing list and it's the same story - a system will be built up to heavenly heights, suddenly underperform drastically (as several did in the August rout), then be thrown to the wayside while the crowd embraces the next system.

What's your opinion on pivot-based strategies?

Pivots are self-fullfilling prophecies. Look at when pivots are mentioned in this forum and it is followed by 100 questions about what time you use to calculate them. The mere fact that pivots can be calculated at different times should light a candle in your mind. Why I believe this -is very simple. If you take the bond market in a small country then chances are at least 90% of traders in that bond market will use the pivot and they will obviously calculate it at the same time (opening hour). If everyone in a small market is watching for the same level then obviously they will act in the same fashion when that level is reached. I have seen just as many pivots being honoured as being broken in the forex market. It falls in the same category as fibonacci retracements. If you think logically about it - the market WILL stop somewhere on a retracement the chances that it is between 62% and 38% is actually very good because if it was less then it won't even be recognised as a pullback if it was more it would be considered a failure. So where does that leave you? 38-62%! and people see it with eyeflaps on. They do not see all the failures or the small pullbacks they only see what they want to see and it becomes a law they want to follow. I don't know any successfull fibo traders...they start looking for "confluence" of other indicators at fib levels etc etc etc...Pure trendlines are more reliable simply because they are time-independant and MANY MANY MANY big players look at them - walk into any treasury in the world and you won't see fibs on their charts you will however see trendlines. So what will happen when price reach that line? Everybody will react - the reason for being at the trendline plays a role in whether it will hold or break and usually a fundamental announcement cause the line to become significant or not.

Hope this helped.

Great to see your comments. I have sent you email, if you can take a look it would be appreciated.

markt

Hiya!
So it WAS true that the DJI TL hit coincided with Bernanke's overnight lending rate cut for a reason!

Well at least that was a small admittal that some TA can matter - trendlines at least

Interesting idea of the TA helping to get that "feeling" for it...well, TA really is just a framework for price to move around in...and I've been having a lot of bad feelings lately, so I guess you might be onto something

Just curious - I'm expecting GBPUSD to bottom out at some point, say in the 1.9845 - 2.0050 range. If not, it's gonna get quite ugly, but that's another scenario.

Just curious where you're looking for your current pullback and what the / whether you have a rough target for the coming rise. Some folks opt for a new high this year, I got no problem aiming for 2.036, 2.046, 2.05, 2.08..but that's already quite optimistic imho ;p


I'm also highly curious as to how the new year rally will go come January, but that is also another thing...although, maybe you got some experience on how months often coincide with rally(bear or bull) starts / ends?

I've seen some pecularities on the charts and I think there's most likely a reason for it..


Nice to see you're still posting

Take care,

SeekingLight

I seldom have targets as it feels too much like cutting profits - BUT yes there are natural areas like previous highs/round numbers where you would like to decrease positions. The feeling at the moment is very negative on the GBP over here. Weird that...

I have been thinking a lot about the different ways to trade - I myself trade like a fisherman (which I am). Put bait on throw it in and see if something bites. If you lose your bait its a loss but as long as you have more bait you can continue fishing. Every now and again you catch something small just to keep the hunger away but every now and again you catch a real mother and you buy a boat or improve your gear by selling it so you can catch more big ones.

I have also thought a lot about these short term scalp traders and they remind me of insurance companies - they take a whole bunch of small premiums and now and again a big claim cause a drawdown on these premiums. They however know exactly what the premiums should be to accommodate worst case scenarios. If claims rise your premium is increased. If you can trade like this - taking small wins and being hit with a large loss less often you should survive. It is however not that easy as we rarely trade in enough volume to withstand say 2 large losses in a row - in other words you have to take say 100 2 pip wins to still make you feel OK in losing 2 50 pip trades. This will still make you survive but if it took you 2 months to make the 100 winners and 2 days to take the 2 losses its a real passion killer so you have to up your frequency of winners to get 100 winners in 10 days and a big loss every month or so. Then psychologically you will survive. The insurance company also have another card up their sleeves called re-insurance. They themselves pay insurance for the event that claims against them exceed a certain threshold - after which the re-insurance company becomes liable for the claims - so the insurance company has ensured its continued existance. WHAT ARE YOU, MY SHORT TERM TRADING FRIEND, DOING TO RE_INSURE YOUR LOSSES? The easiest is probably to decide a direction for the next week?? and take an option against what you are going to trade in the short term so should you be horribly wrong you get some back on the option...Just a thought

Hope you all well.

Looking at this chart - you can ignore the TA if you want - what do you think / feel is most likely the bias / direction, what could it possibly do next?

No worries, I won't trade off of whatever you say, but I am VERY curious what you will say

Sort of an experiment.

Not having any fundamentals on this makes it difficult - if there is a gun against my head I would say - the orange line you are at, at the moment didn't hold as previous resistance (earlier it fell through it to make a brand new low then it pulled back to the bottom orange line where the previous low was and it should have provided resistance for a further down move.) It just went straight up to a previous area of consolidation and came back to the bottom orange line where it is now. Purely from HABIT I would sell this chart with a stop and reverse halfway between where you are now and the previous intermediate top....target previous top, adding all the way going there...

ahem - I have only lately started looking at charts so I guess I am doing TA on this stupid thing hahahahaha...