Thexder's journey to(ward?) freedom

dude

If I get stopped I'll have +65 on Cable. Something's going on tonight!

News or something? I wonder what caused that.

I checked the calendar and didn't see anything scheduled for this time when it started happening...unless I missed something.
I'm still holding at +86 with a stop for +65 net.

Update: Almost +100 in open trade, a stop to give +71

Have you recovered now?

I got stopped at 175pips and its gone another 120 since.


I love the signature man. Thats all you need to trade

Well...I made a few shall we say...undocumented errors in judgement...both yesterday and last week....and right now I'm breaking even for the past 2 weeks....despite those +165 quoted Friday.

When I become profitable I'm getting it put on a Tshirt. Maybe Bo and Skunny should hand them out at the live training...or mail one with a DVD.

Cable Hourly Scalp Pips (only counting my core method results, not other experimental failures):

Today: +71 + one break even
This week: +71 + two break even
Net result since starting count last week: +71 +165 = +236

Once again this was a bit of a strange trading session so I'm documenting what I did. If this were another average trade I'd just post the numbers.

The orange swing fib was pulled across the most extreme movement before London started so from there I was ready for any break out. Lately I have deviated from the bias requirement prior to break out in exchange for using M1 to trail a stop.

The break from the orange swing was a low short, which hit the target but it came back up for break even by the time the first formed support area was breached. If I pulled the trigger at the 0.382 target level sure I could have taken around +30, but I got out for free anyway. And the reason I tend to hold off for a support or resistance to be broken before exiting is demonstrated in the next trade.

When price returned from the target back to the break out area of the orange fib, I would consider that swing complete as per the Fib trade notes, at which point I'd pull the next swing along the down move that caused the break out and hit the target before retracing. That fib is the grey one and it is pulled across the single candle that broke short, since that was where the high and low of the break out move had originated.

With that grey swing in play, the big up candle was looking very bullish and in keeping with ditching the trade bias for now, I allowed a long entry when the grey swing high was broken, and I used the successive support areas as trailing stop points until I was up between 70 and 100 pips. When I saw a top forming I chose to set myself to a +71 stop and it was filled. Support and resistance either holds or it doesn't.

It was probably time to choose a top anyway because on the hourly chart the intraday fib pulled across the previous day was having its long (61.8% up from the bottom) tested and rejected for two candles, failing to change the daily bias back to long for now.

In this trade if I had manually pulled the trigger at the first target I'd have between 20 and 30 pips out of that trade but I squeezed 71 out of it. So between the break even and this trade, I still did better overall than if I took first-target fixed-exits.

Over time I'll decide what seems more profitable based on my methods and how I feel about what's going on. Maybe if I get too many break evens or small losses for a streak, I'll revert to fixed target scalping (still seems to work well as a fallback) or a combination, double up on the lots, take one fixed target and let the other ride.

Looking at that chart I just posted with the fib lines all over the place and buys and sells in the middle of nowhere, I realize I've come a long way...though I have no idea where I am. GPS anyone?

lol, you need NASA, Galileo and GPS to figure out where you're going!

Seriously though, the first sell and buy, id have taken myself. I wouldnt have touched the last sell, unless you had seen a prior point of resistance.

Re the first sell, im very wary of taking trades from a break of a 0,100 level. I usually need to see a break out candle and then the next candle breaking out past that one too. Of course it all depends on previous levels too

Has your broker raised the spread of cable/ guppy? my guppy spread was 10 pips an hour ago, the chancers North Finance.

My cable is still 5 and G/J is 9, but I think it always was, not sure. Never traded it.

Sometimes I just take the trade based on feel combined with my confidence in the swing scalp method, it lets me put on blinders even if there's S/R issues nearby, especially when I have the M1 stops, if things start turning around I can get out reasonably unharmed, but if it takes off in my direction like last night's long, it's good. I'm working my way up to longer time frames. Normally that long would have scared me away from taking it because it was looking violent and covering too much ground too fast, could have whipsawed anywhere up and then went for an ultimate big down blast, but I put faith in the swing high being broken.

Cable Hourly Scalp
------------------
Today: +10
This week: +81
Net result since Jan 14: +246

This trade was a very unusual one even for me, so once again I'm fully documenting it instead of just reporting the earnings.

I took a scalp within the scalp method going short today, and it was a few hours before London would normally start to move so there was a risk of false breaks, not much of a short-short-term swing (just pulled across 2 candles), etc. So why did I risk it? Based on my belief in what I did, I was able to minimize my risk for a small stop and a potential large gain. If I had bailed by choosing a bottom, I had 3 opportunities to jump out with at least +25, but I'm trying to develop myself to let profits run (even on a scalp) and not try to pick the top or bottom of the trade targets.

So the Asian session was unfolding and the way I set up the scalp swing is I pull it across the largest range I see, and as London approaches I continue updating the swing to the biggest range that forms.

This time I noticed within my first pulled fib there was already a test of the 50% retracement followed by two more hourly failed tests of the swing retracement, supporting a possible short bias early on. I've seen that sometimes a big break comes out of nowhere half way through Asia unexpectedly so if I think I see something forming, I try to find reasons not to take an early trade. I couldn't think of any good reason to stay out of this one after making all my observations.

In addition to the retracement tests, a solid bearish candle had also formed (just before break out candle begins) and it looked like there was going to be a short break.

This still isn't good enough since there can be many false breaks outside London and NY, so I started thinking about Intraday fibs. Today starts out near yesterday's high, which was a solid up move covering 300 pips. One could say there is a daily long bias and to look for long trades, but one could also expect a retracement of yesterday before any new long trades, giving room for a short scalp. In this case there are almost 120 pips between the Intraday high and the Intraday Long (38.2% retracement), so if there is going to be a retracement before a long later on, there is lots of room to try a scalp short.

So now I had a few justifications for a short, but that still isn't good enough. now I wanted price action. I looked at M1 to see what was happening while the swing was about to break short.

After the point where swing low was pulled there was a wide swinging consolidation, first forming higher highs and lows, then spiraling in somewhere in the middle of that, then it broke from that and began what would become the run down for the break short out of the swing.

I watched as the swing low was penetrated and still considered this to be a likely false Asian move. Sure enough there was a pullback slightly, and this is where I made my decision. It started looking exactly like a normal good trade, and one that had potential to move - suddenly the price action was decisive - it made the low break, pulled back cleanly a little and formed a high, then continued on down. That's when I chose to place a pending order - not at the original swing break out, but the low during that break out. My stop would be placed behind that resistance peak that just formed, as in a normal trade already in progress, and if it fails on me, it fails for a small risk.

The low was broken, I was in, and it shot down to both targets and did the consolidation thing. I still gave it a chance to show its potential by keeping my stop behind the first pull back during the original break out until I saw a clear new resistance.

When this new resistance came I moved my stop for +4 and was in a free trade. Price was ranging from +10 to +25 and ended up forming a perfect rectangle of support and resistance so I let it run its course. It would either give me a small gain and some new experience, or it would give me something much bigger if it broke short again.

Eventually there was a slight penetration below the channel, then a lower high formed, and by then I had a few hourly candles to also start observing for an updated opinion.

On the hourly chart it looked like targets were hit, there was a stall, and now it's looking to go back up. On M1, there was a stall near the top of the channel and I had a sense it was trying to break long based on how it was moving, so I chose a bottom finally and manually exited for +10. Just after that, it broke long and shot up.

In the image the up and down ranging after the sell appears to have a higher peak than the little blue resistance marked on the way down originally, and that lower peak is where I set my +4 stop, but with my extra padding of a few pips for my stop, I was able to ride out all those bigger peaks so I left the stop right where it was the whole time, it was sometimes 1 pip away from triggering and that would be fine.

After that small trade earlier today I sat it out because I didn't feel so great about taking another trade so fast. Instead I decided to review my notes and screen captures of the good trades posted.

I've noticed when a trade goes well, the most recent reasonable (subjective) support or resistance level on M1 prior to break out serves as an effective place to put an initial stop. The only times I notice the most recent M1 S/R level being violated after a trade is initiated would be those times that the trade fails, or goes too chaotic to mean anything and you're lucky to get out alive anyway after a few sideways hours. Up to now I've still been placing initial stops in an inconsistent way. Sometimes I'd put it at the swing Pivot as I originally used to as a blind fixed rule. Sometimes I'd put it at a big M1 S/R level (even if it is 3 S/R levels behind the most recent M1 S/R). Etc. Now I think I know where to put it every time. I don't like going -20 without a good reason.

I've also noticed that no matter where I end up locating the scalp swing (although I do walk it along based on my PDF recommendations once I do find a daily start point before London), when trades are triggered they do have a good chance of at least coming close to the first target. And sometimes they continue on and go much farther. However, sometimes they can roll back for a stop at less than T1 profit, break even, or small loss. I don't have enough trade history to decide if it's better to take fixed profit or let them ride and take some very big 70-100 gains but a lot of less-than-T1 gains.

So I'm considering forward testing an approach to further minimize losses and increase gains. I might not implement it until I look at more trades but the idea is place the stop at some M1 S/R that stands out at the time of entry much like the way I chose the tight stop for today's successful short scalp. I will consider entering with 2 mini lots instead of 1. I will set one for a fixed target of T1 minus some padding, and let the other lot ride the way I do currently. I haven't decided if T1 will be the original conservative 34% or the standard 38.2%. Maybe start conservative and make more observations and see what happens. My original testing was conservative so that's the proven method.

I have to remember to be objective about the choices too - all these successful trades with a clean break - did they occur at times when I was trading with the most recent daily trend or did it matter? Was the overall recent activity (days or weeks) trending or ranging and was I again trading with the trend, giving this perceived strength to the trades? If I can determine that the good breaks were clean no matter what, then I can implement the changes blindly (maybe). Otherwise, it's still a good observation and worst case, if it only "works" in trendy times, I can implement it discretionally when I think it'll be ok, otherwise use one of the default fixed approaches with the single lots.

Once I get rolling on something I might start a new journal to count pips and leave this for any new ideas or revisions or discussions as a learning archive.
I'm working on a few ideas, which seems to be the case nonstop since last September.

I think I have a new full time hobby - system development & optimization.

Today was break even assuming I don't take any more trades, so the results are still

Cable Hourly Scalp
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This week: +81
Net result since Jan 14: +246

Nothing out of the ordinary occurred so I won't post any charts, I'm trying to only do that when needed because all the examples are the same by now unless something new happens.

I had a losing short for -30 first, then without letting that bother me I pulled the next fib when the failed trade was complete and ended up on a long. I had managed to pull a stop for +11 on the long but I noticed there was a stall just around the +30 mark, as if it were trying to tell me something like pull the trigger, it's a gift. For about an hour there were 4 oscillations between just above stop loss and up around +33 profit and I figured it's trying to break through psychological 1.9600 and can't yet. Considering it took an hour, and looked very coincidental to my earlier loss of 30, I chose a top and got out for a break even day after being long for an hour following the rules. I figure it's ok to bend the rules sometimes, especially when I'm still formulating my approach - for example maybe this can be a new time based rule. All of my good trades took off and kept going nonstop until they were done. I've seen a few trades now that stalled for about an hour and that usually results in a break even or small profit or loss, so maybe a time-stalled trade can have a top or bottom selected rather than a trailing stop.

There's one more day left this week and so far the net result is half of last week, or an average of +123 a week over two weeks testing.

If this type of average holds, that's quite fine with me in the long run.

Cable Hourly Scalp
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This week: +71 +10 +19 = +100
Net result since Jan 14: +265
Weekly Avg: +132

Took a long trade just above 1.9600, there was a new swing high just under there so I set an order above the barrier.
I made it up to +19 with my stop below a consolidation that oscillated sideways for an hour and ten minutes before it fell through.
There were five attempts at making a new high, which it did (barely) on the last attempt, but then it fell down and did a bunch of noise near the stop and collapsed.

And now a few hours later I missed a good long trade that I could have been in by pulling another swing as I do in my scalp approach (after the high of the +19 trade there was an hourly candle with a lower high, so I'd pull a swing from where the last up-run started, to the high it made, then take the long break again). That trade would have a stop of at least +30 and still be in play at this time, which would easily help make this week's results on par with last week's. But I'm only counting the actual trades I take to help represent a realistic trading style and see how much I can earn.

sell dude

I'm actually watching it - it's breaking below 700 even number and does have a bit of a "it's time to retrace" vibe to it.

Can you explain walking the swing fib? I am not sure I quite understand this yet. I still have trouble placing fibs in the wrong place, and I don't notice until after a market move.

It's using the unconventional method in the PDFs, wherever it happens to have been written, and whether Oct or Nov document, I forget. I start with a straddle across the biggest range of the Asian session, then when a high or low breaks, even if I don't trade it due to the trade bias being wrong, I still watch the movement for completion so it's the same anyway.

I invented a completion as having either a stop out without targets (stop arbitrarily at swing pivot back then), or hitting the T1 target and then waiting for the next peak or valley (that terminology makes me angry now) to form after that target is hit, in other words if it was a long break and T1 was hit, I wait for the first hourly candle to complete that has a lower high, leaving a peak...

Then I pull the next swing fib across the break out move from wherever the move started heading towards break out, to whatever new high or low was left behind after the target. Then watch for the next swing break.

So in today's trade where I got +19, the targets were hit and eventually a new hourly candle closed with a lower high, leaving a peak at 1.9644 on my chart. So I pulled a swing high there, down to swing low at 1.9533. That is a subjective place to put the low because there's 3 prior candles that are all leading up to that one from a lower point, but the one I chose was kind of a pin bar so it had retraced the previous 3 up bars and then things started from there running up for the break.

So with that new swing I could have taken another long at 9644 and gotten out at 710 with an M1 trail, but I missed the trade. There goes a good one.

I can keep moving the swing after ever completion and attempt to trade all throughout the session until 12pm EST when I consider the day to be done and no longer reliable to trade, and that's how I did the back testing and found those hundreds of pips per month and a good chance for T1 with not so many stops. And even if there's a week of almost all stops, I still find the positive monthly balance of several hundred assuming a full London thru NY 12pm EST session taking all swings.

With the M1 trail method I'm finding I only need to trade maybe the first swing break and then I make enough to compete with the full trading day of fixed T1 exits, and I still don't have too many stops so far. Sometimes therefore the day is done within 1 to 4 hours instead of staying up all night and then all morning hoping to net maybe 20 for the day sometimes.