Pivot point spot strategy

Really? Which pivots did the professional traders tell you they use?

Telling whoppers on your very first post. Shame on you.

Yes philmcgrew,it was my first post (on forex factory).I have been trading full time for 3 years and have tried every system under the sun.In the end everyone will end up with a system that they fell comfortable and confident with.If you are dead against pivots,why are you even bothering to get involved with this thread?I notice from most of your other posts that you are negative about almost every system anyone bothers post.

So whats you system then?

Your first goal as a new trader interested in a new system, posted on an open forum or not, should be to prove it unprofitable. You should try your hardest, with accurate data, to tell yourself that it sucks. In my opinion, Phil is saving a lot of new traders time and money by being negative to systems that suck. I tend to take the same approach. If a system is truely worth trading, I doubt he would be negative towards it just for a little personal entertainment.

As much as he sounds like an asshole to you, he's helped more traders, myself included, than anyone I could possibly name.

Pendennis,

Could you please post an example of your pivot setup criteria(00:00 GMT- 00:00 GMT....)? I have recently decided to focus only on the cable. I am very interested some of findings and stratergies.

Thanks in advance

At the end of the day twinchell, philmcgrew is entitled to his opinion but no one is "Right" its the pips that count.I trade on a 5 min chart taking cues from a 15 min.That means i have to act fast.All im interested is price action around pivots and trend line breaks,S/R reversals.Every big move has to start somewhere at a turning point.I try to concentrate on these points.Pivots help with this.By no means am i saying that pivots are the holy grail.There is no such thing.I draw also the previous 2days highs and 2days lows on chart for extra S/R.I dont use any indicators RSI Stoich etc.But i do use on 5min and 15 min a 6sma set to open and a 6sma set to close.When price starts to reverse you will see the sma's cross over, that is the turning point.Then you place the trade.You end up usually with a small sl of no more than 15 pips.If you catch it right on the 15min you can catch moves of 30,40pips.Also,whilst the sma's are not crossed you can stay in the trade.Cable has a tendancy to retrace vquickly so when i enter i immediately place a sell order say 20 pips away,if price spikes up quickly i take the money.By taking 12 pips here,8 pips there 20 pips etc in a short period of time it adds up quickly.Also this system can result in some scratch trades(0 pips)Losses will be 15 pips +spread approx.But because you are very close to the price action (some might say scalping) you have to be confident with it.It has a win rate of over 85%.It suits me because im not patient and i dont like having to put large sl on trades and then wait for hours for it go into profit.It is not a beginners system or part time system.

I like to look at pivots the same way that I see a moving average. You are trying to bring the relevance of floor traders into the argument, but the way in which I interperet them, it is completely irrelevant to me. Pivots are a way of calculating an average price for that day based on the previous day, regardless of your method. You can change your method to give more weight to certain factors and you don't need to follow any rule. If I feel that certain points in the day because volume is higher has more significance, I can give more weight to that in my calculation. Either way, its a way of taking the previous days whole trading, and calculating an avg price that would represent the dividing line between a seller or buyer dominated market for that day. Take this down to a smaller timeframe and now you have a point of reference on whatever bar you like. A close above a 15 mijnute pivot would mean that buyers have dominated for this 15 min period.

now, lets say your pivot is based on 5 minute bars, and lets say for your calculation, you use high+low+close/3. Nevertheless, you do not feel comfortable with a five minute pivot, you trust 1 hour pivots more, but the 1 hour pivot also allows for too much risk for your account. Well, what you can do is create the 1 hour dynamic pivot. Instead of high+low+close/3, you would use highest high of last 12bars+lowest Low of last 12 bars + close of the last bar/3. Now your 1 hour pivot is dynamic, it is updating every 5 minutes.

You can come up with many strategies, what is important is that you have tried, tested and belive in it so that you may execute like a pro, which in reality, it is what seperates a pro from an amateur.

I like to use these methods as well as other variations I have come up with. They are not smart or exotic or anything of the sort, they are just methods that make sense to me and have been working for me. As long as I understand the meaning behind my method, it becomes much easier to adapt to changing market conditions.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling on. Best wishes for a happy new year.

Hope to here more from you. On your pivots resistence supports do you use the mathematical calculations(I know there are several) and or do you use fibs.[quote=Leugimp]

Hey, I'm not knocking you for using pivots. If they work for you then that's great. One question though: when does the day start in a 24 hour market?

I like pivot math if it calculates off of recent highs and low within a given time period of your choice. I have seen price bahavior patterns based on this type of pivots that can be capitalized on. However, I can't imagine them working on fixed or system type rules. I would consider them quite viable for defining range and timing entries once you have some technical of fundemental basis for direction.

To me this would be an ideal reaction to support resistance pivots. Pivots off the daily heads south meets resistance at previous days low (green 0.0) meets the daily support (S1) bounces off and is done for the day. The only suprise here it is only an 82 pip run where the daily average for the gbpusd is 138 pips from days high to low more commonly 120 pips.

Actually I correct my self the chart from the previous post is from the first day of the week and the average range for the first day of the week is 88 pips. Played out to a T so to speak.

D- Daily

W- Weekly

M- Monthly

Pvt- Pivot Point

R- Resistance

S-Support

MR-Mid Range Between Resistance Level of daily, weekly, monthly

MS-Mid Range Between Support Level of daily, weekly, monthly

Green Fib lines are base on previous days high and low with trend

Yellow Fib lines are based on previous weeks high and low with trend

White Fib lines are based on previous months high and low with trend

Blue Rectangle daily range (the daily range for the gbpusd on the first day of the week was 88 pips and the average for the year is 138 pips) I call the 125 pips the mean, which means one of the most common levels it moves.

The gbpusd had a range of 90 pips the difference between days high and low 211 of 261 days giving a statistical probability that it will move atleast 90 pips.81%

The gbpusd had a range of 100 pips the difference between days high and low 190 of 261 days giving a statistical probability that it will move 100 pips are more 73%. Just had another thought writing this most of its sub par 100 pips day happen on the first day of the week. So after the first day of the week the statistical probability goes up. I will check into this but I am sure taking that into count it is probably 90% or better. Any way we will see how the day plays out in regards to the points marked on the chart . The placement of the blue rectangle will be adjusted once market opens and trend defined.

for GBP/JPY what would you use then?