Exceptional day, will it continue ?

somehow I guessed it would end like this....newbies beware...anyone who comes onto this forum with a system and does not outline it in the first post wants your money. PERIOD. If you want a real edge, check out the No Brainer Trades thread, or the trade using VSA thread...both are free, no one is asking for money.

Hi Polish,

I am not entirely sure of the exact entry for Mike's methods but it makes sense to enter directly above the hammer or above a wall. They are both independent of each other so enter either off the hammer or the wall. Personally I think a better entry is for price to go through the wall and wait for price to retrace down to it from above. That way you have minimal drawdown from the start. But price does not always retrace down to the wall. Food for thought, it gives you lots of options. Good to see you making an effort. Now all you need are some basic exit and trend analysis strategies and you have yourself a decent trading plan.
Pete

I agree, I was taught that price will retrace about 80% of the time to the original wall (within 5-10% from wall to new swing high/low) and that entry should ALWAYS be in the direction of the new move after the retrace and not to enter just because price has reached original wall, as price could go further beyond the wall or be a reversal. It should also help to avoid stop hunting.

It's also good to note that these types of trades at support and resistance are high probability and if you get in, in the wrong direction, then there is a high probability of using SAR/CAR orders and making your loss back plus some. There also seems to be a high correlation to the time of day (session) and these trades as to a break out or a bounce.

You are right,waiting for the retrace is the other (and probably better) option.
As for targets,pivots are doing quite good job in that area.

http://i85.servimg.com/u/f85/11/65/36/33/th/141.gif

http://i85.servimg.com/u/f85/11/65/36/33/th/228.gif

http://i85.servimg.com/u/f85/11/65/36/33/th/325.gif

yes, let price come to papa.

Never heard about set times for a higher probability of such trades Limstylz, care to elaborate?

Great trading today on GBP. When you have this sort of market it makes the long term trend irrelevant in so many ways (intraday). I like to let SR tell me where it wants to take price, like a pinball machine. Maybe I will set up my SR areas with the same Pin Ball sounds. Like the pin ball price will eventually roll with gravity (bigger trend) and eventually roll through areas of least resistance whilst being thrashed about by objects (S/R) along the way.

Not really set times, but more to do with s/r nearer opening/closing of sessions and session cross-overs, and also s/r near daily ranges.

I have been trading the Igrok method (I also trade T101 simple trading method, but that's more complex than s/r) as outlined in his book "Beat the Odds in Forex Trading: How To Identify and Profit from High Percentage Market Patterns" with great effect. The times, patterns and daily ranges and trading plans are still as valid today as they were when the book was published 3 years ago. If you haven't already got a copy or read the book, I highly recommend it.

His thread on FF is here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=21887 although it is quite lengthy and he seldom posts anymore as he's too busy spending his money. It is however, still one of the busiest threads on FF.

Had an email from Mike. His membership HAS been revoked so won't be posting here any more.

If he contacts me with further info, I will let you guys know.

applause applause!! you are the men
cannot wait until pure evidence is there???

first negative thing i saw in this forum... sorry

i hope Limstylz can give us good information
i dont expect a holy grail but new wisdom to trade with...

I'm still learning myself to be honest, although I have been a lot more profitable this year. Take a look through all the links that I and others posted here a little while ago. They all really helped me understand a lot more than I did before and even if I don't necessarily trade with all the methods posted, they at least help me understand how others are trading and where they are likely to be in the market.

Its a shame that this thread goes no further as I think that the whole MTF scanning is a fantastic idea and helpful to nail decent entries and exits with relation to support and resistance.

All is not lost though. Mike may still email any updates as he says he hadn't given up on the commitment and says he'll be in touch.

thanks to limstylz for forwarding word and information from mike to us

hope we can rescue this thread somehow because i think that mike totally did not deserve that the thread goes down like this.

Happy to post. He just sent me another email with his results for today. I don't want to risk posting them, just in case I get banned too. However, the results are impressive, to say the least.

He and his team are still working on the indicator and PDF. I don't really want to hassle him too much about this as I am certain that he is 'on the level' and want to avoid pissing him off.

I'll post relevant information, as and when I get it.

Maybe Mike can ask to locate to be in the commercial beta if wanted.

Hopefully this topic continues.

Best Pip Wishes!

His account would need to be reactivated prior to the thread being moved. I'm sure if he wanted to fight this he would. We'll see.

Thanks limstylz for keeping us posted with the developments .

I think we are always learning, otherwise trading would get so boring, which for me it is a little. I think setting higher goals is the key taking you to the next psychological level of the 'game'. Setting challenges and financial goals for yourself. They say you shouldn't trade with the money on the mind. That maybe true when you are starting out but not when you are there and need to raise your game. Although I really like to get involved with the thinking behind new methods and there are some great threads on FF as have already been posted. But it really hasn't changed the way I have traded for about a year now. Simplicity I think is the key.

Please keep me posted on developments Limstylz, thanks.

The following is the email that was sent to his FF distro list...

From: "Michael Luden"
Subject: Exceptional day, will it continue...seems not


Hi guys & girls,



Where to start…..?



Let us start right at the beginning. Sorry guys if I already shared this with some of you. This mail is going out to all 281 people who mailed and PM’s me since the thread went to hell in a hand basket so please bear with me.



Yes you read right, 281 to date and they still come in, from where I don’t know, seems like some FF members are scrounging around in the dustbins (recycle bin). The way it is going on the thread now with the trying out of the commercial section that might just be the very place to go to find the good stuff. Nothing personal but the moderators there need be a bit more objective and not become subjective because a senior member has something to say.



This will be a bit of a lengthy mail but I think to leave anything out will not do the content or context of what I want to get across justice.



OK, so back to the start. Let me just give you a short cramped bio about myself (J…oh oh…the start of the sales pitch)



Born in 1970 in sunny old South Africa in Cape Town (recently voted as 2nd best city in the WORLD as a holiday destination, and Table mountain is on the short list for the new 8 wonders of the world). Been around the block more than once in my years. Did my compulsory military service for 2 years and joined for another 2 years during which I saw more than my fair share of contacts (SA was at war at that stage 87-91). Left and went to study sales and marketing and with papers in hand joined the corporate world. Worked my way up very quickly and held some nice senior positions in three of the largest companies in this old country. Did my MBA and specialised in international finance and joined the Liberty Group (only mention their name as they are international, some might know them). Got involved with forex around 7 years back. Went through tough times and good times.



Three years back stopped everything as I was just not getting anywhere. Re-looked everything and reinvented myself and my strategy. Started again and have never looked back. Three years back (this April) I deposited $45.00 and promised myself that would be the last deposit, I could either make it or not, end of story…no if or buts.



Three years later I own three cars all paid for and another ML63 on its way being bought cash, a nice big family home paid for, large shareholding in 6 odd businesses bought with some of my capital. All that in three years and all from that $45.00. So do not let anybody ever tell you that it cannot be done. It can. I know.



Any yanks here?….”Yes we can”…lol…sorry just could not resist.



Currently I’m a fulltime trader if you can call it that. Interesting thing is that before, I sat at my PC 16 hours a day trading. As things turned around I started spending less and less time trading yet making more money at the same time.

Besides trading some friends of mine and I invest in poor performing businesses which we buy out as cheaply as possible, build it up and then sell it off again depending on its cash generation ability. We stay busy. I’m responsible for all financial aspects and that is why I have been running around lately. Half the businesses we have on hand now must file tax returns at half year, which is now for us, and I was not aware of this as we only recently purchased some of them. So I have had to run around a bit trying to figure out what the previous owners did when they resorted to ‘creative’ accounting methods. So I could not get everything done as mentioned on the thread.



Back to the trading. With me sitting in my home office (where we work from) trading, it was just normal that all would eventually get involved in it. We have a great team, all old school or army buddies each with an area of expertise and each having their respective are of responsibility in our business. All of them are now ‘converted’ traders so we speak a lot of trading in the office as we ‘work’.



When you are in the office and see a good trade coming up you will jump on the phone phoning the others and telling them about it and wanting to know whether you should enter a position for them or not. This eventually turned into a signal service. We coded a robust indicator type thing linked to MT that would send e-mails to our mobiles (Email to SMS) to alert us of trades coming up. This system has evolved many times over the years and so did the base of subscribers or free riders receiving the signals. We got to a point where we had to invest in new hardware i.e. server, better data connections etc…At that stage we had around 43 people receiving the signals i.e. family, friends, neighbours etc.. You know how quickly a good thing spreads.



We made the call that all these ‘free riders’ should contribute to our weekly BB fund (beers & braai - for those that do not know…a braai is Afrikaans for a barbeque). And that was how the signal service was born. It has grown (without any form of marketing at all) to a base of just under 300 people all contributing about $80 a month. More than enough to take care of the beer and braai account every weekend and then some.



Last year November we decided to stop the signals for December and January in order to make some updates and fix errors that we could not do while it was running. Those two months led to a lot of experimenting with ideas conceived during the run-up to the ‘dismantle’. All in all what was born was an even better indicator/alert system with a new technology at its core namely multiple scanning of multiple time frames (MSMF as we call it). This turned out to be the x factor we were always looking for and we now send out signals on which our subscribers easily net their 100 odd pips a day. Just for interest, this is a closed group, we do not take on any subscribers anymore, not my call to make so don’t ask…and this is not a hook line sinker story…it is closed period.



What happened to the old system we used? That is what I started playing with telling the guys that I will invent our next brain child from this first indi that I wrote. Rise of the phoenix is the project name. I started incorporating the MSMF code into the old indi and testing it and that is the signals you all saw. Still some tweaks necessary to cut down on the amount of signals etc. This has now been done and it is looking good i.e. yesterday on 4 pairs, total of 15 trades netted over 1,000 pips. Today? Not good…down just over 400 so far on 9 trades but still early days yet for today. Looking at the charts I recon at least another 800 pip day today.



Back to the story at hand; When asked by my mates why all the trouble I told them that I would like to post it on FF and see how many views and downloads we can get. They were firstly against giving it out but all eventually agreed when I told them that a person do not grow and move on unless he can give for free to others who were still on their way there. For me this would have been my big thank you to the forex ‘gods’ for getting me through that 4 dark years and make me see forex for what it is.



Yes there was definitely some vanity in their in that I wanted to show off a bit but who would not if you were the creator of a strategy that enabled you to take yourself from the dumps right up to where I’m today, and that in just over three years?



So with that idea I hit forex factory albeit a bit unprepared. I initially thought that I would start out and explain my background, then go into the strategy I use i.e. H&W and then end with the indi. So yes the first post was to create some hype and get some people involved. After starting the thread I though that it would be more conductive to rather set everything out in a pdf document. In that way everybody could download it and then contribute from there. Then the thread would not be like the others where you had to read hundreds of pages just to get the facts of the system between all the noise. So I backtracked to do that and also to get the indi sorted out. I thought that it would be a quick fix to get it into MT, big mistake, still battling with it.



Then some of the ‘experts’ chirped in and everything went south. Been a member of FF for close on 4 years and within a week straight into the recycle bin. I did some mailing explaining it in detail to Twee but no response has been forthcoming so it seems like it is the end of the road.



My mates is taking the p**** out of me because of what happened. I keep on hearing ‘Do not give it away for free, people never appreciate the value of something they get for free and half the people will not realise the potential of what they have in hand”, ‘Worst sales man around, cannot even give an ATM machine away for free”, “Read the headlines, man banned because he tried to give to much money away”, “ATM machine found in recycle bin, forex police investigating” etc…etc…etc……and so it goes everyday. They are really having fun with me; all I can do is shake my head and join in the laughter.



My mates and I had a nice long talk last night until the small hours over a couple of beers, which I can clearly feel today. We discussed this whole thing and the way forward for me etc..In the end it was decided that I should just drop this whole thing. I’m quite well known in the forex and other financial circles in this country as we are a small group of P&P traders, as we call ourselves (Professional and Profitable). Some of this group are also on FF i.e. Philip Nel comes to mind, and my mates recon that me being canned from FF cannot reflect to well on my reputation as that whole thread, if not read with the right background, will seem like another scammer trying to make a quick buck or two.



I can honestly assure you that money was never an intention so this is no further sales pitch. I have enough money at this stage thank you. More would be nice but I’m working on that J. When I spoke about going commercial all I meant was too expand our current forex ‘industry’ by putting up a website and offering some of the excellent indicators, we have coded over the years, for sale. Want to know the price? A silly $5 an indicator or strategy, all once again just to cover costs. Something my father taught me many moons ago; if something cannot pay for itself it is not worth looking into.



Would I have charged you guys? A honest flat out no. I stated that clearly. There would have been more than enough run off business to bring in enough to pay for the website, datalinks etc..So the mention of ‘commercial’ was as stated, outside the forum.



So what is the way forward from here? I’m sorry to say that I have to agree with what my mates had to say last night. Drop this whole thing as another lesson in life learned and move on. I’m very sorry to have to do this but I have nothing to prove to anybody and I have to agree with my mates that this whole thing can blow up in my face and do more harm in the long run. Remember that I’m a registered financial services provider in this country. If you know what it takes to get a licence in this country to become one you will understand. I think our legislation must be some of the strictest in the world, definitely stricter than the UK to start with. Any misstep by me and my licence could be revoked. I’m fully accredited to sell financial (including forex) advice, products and training and I am also accredited to work as a forex broker. There are only a handful of us in this country having such a high accreditation. You are more than welcome to check up on this. Search the FSB (South African Financial Services Board) for Michael Luden cc. My business is registered in my name i.e. Michael Luden Closed Corporation. Another thing my dad taught me, your name is your business. It is one of the only things you have that nobody can take away, look after it and it will look after you.



So guys in short, I’m legit. Been around the block and know what I’m talking about. Have both the street smarts as they say, together with the book knowledge to back it up and at the end of the day a nice bank statement to back it all up as that is what it is all about no matter how you measure success.



I always say you can look at win ratios, RR ratios, hell anything you want to….but at the end of the day there is but one piece of paper that will clearly tell you whether you are making it as a trader or not and that is your bank statement. We joke in the office by saying “What do you do if you want to know whether your new strategy is working or not? Phone your bank manager, he will be honest enough to tell you”.



What happened on FF was a bit of a slap in the face but I’m not one to hold grudges and I’m a big boy that can take my punched so no hard feelings there. It however makes it difficult to share what I had to say as coaching is a requirement. My strategy might be simple but it takes some coaching to get the hang of it. So until I change my mind there will be none of that now and thus no need to share anything further. Sorry about this but that is life, never your own making but decided by the ones not having a clue what is good for them and or others.



To close off I just want to cover the following. There are quite a number of people who mailed and PM’ed me that are in dire need of some help to get their trading back on track. Whether they were honest about their circumstances or whether they are taking me for a ride I do not know. I know I have made some commitments in this department and will try to stick to this. I just need a bit of time to get my head around this whole thing.



Another thing to remember; when you are on FF, be very selective in what you take in. Our minds are shaped by what we allow in. There is a tremendous amount of junk on FF but every now and then you will find a gold nugget in a single post. Your first step to become a successful trader is to be able to decide what information has merit. Also, if you look for the answer in one single place forget about it. I do not know of one trader in the top 5% (or at least the 5% that apparently make money) that took a system from another person. They all have one thing in common and that is that they took what work for them from several sources and eventually came up with their own system.



For interest, I taught all my mates on my strategy yet not one of them trade it down to the letter. Each one has something borrowed from somewhere else and tweak here and there etc..In the end we all make decent money. It really is about you. If you have the right mindset and you can read a chart (i.e. supply & demand, the why and how) you can load up any system and you will make money with it.



It is important that you always be as objective as possible especially so in your learning stages. Question everything. There is nothing as powerful as common sense, the world is build on it. Use it and make up your own mind. Do not let others do it for you. A good example is FF. Do you know that most of the ‘senior’ traders there all have a day job? I wonder why, maybe not making it in trading or not being able to trade at all. Hell, if I could go fulltime on $45.00 why cant they?



There is a lot of truth in the saying those that cannot do teach. Not to blow my own horn but I have all the papers and training to provide training on forex or any other financial market yet I’m not teacher. I battle with it. But you are welcome to pull up a chair next to me and I will show you how it is done. So be extremely selective in what information you allow in. This business is a very easy straight forward business. Price can go but wo directions and that is up or down. Those who say it can go sideways as well, I do not agree, price goes only up or down, time goes sideways.



So in this game it is a matter of determining the probability of two options. When playing a standard 6 number lottery your chances to win are something like 1 in 16 million. On forex it is 50/50. You do net getter odds than that in any business.



So your first aim is to swing that 50% a bit more to your side and this is done by doing any or all of the following:



a) Know what it is that you want to achieve,

b) Know down to the last cent how this will be done and allow enough room for error, this is not a perfect accounting business,

c) Know what to do when it goes wrong and importantly know what went wrong,

d) Constantly monitor your performance,

e) Have fun and take all the market has to offer.



It is really as easy as that. Guys, when I said that you could make a 1,000 pips a day I was not joking. Do I make it? No. Why? I don’t need it. I trade with between 3 to 8 standard lots per trade and usually bank around 80 to 150 pips a day. Work that out over 15 days per month. I do not scale my position size according to account size. I trade fixed sizes adapted for different scenarios and strategies. I do not need to increase my position and take on additional risk. I earn enough as our local currency is around 8 to the dollar meaning that each dollar banked gives me R8 on this side. A big factor people in other countries do not have. So 1 pip for me is like 8 for a guy in the USA. So my 150 pips are in actual fact equivalent to 1,200. Yes spending parities etc.. not taken into account but you get the idea.



Ok let me close of here by saying a big thank you to all for your kind words during the threads life and your support.



Give me a week or so to relax and get my head back where it belongs, I might then reconsider. If you want me to drop your e-mail address just reply and say so and I will delete it.



Thanks and good trading



michael luden

I know that was comming-- I was sarcatic but I know it was comming-- But he Mike should not program people to hope or look out for his pdf what looser

okay, people like mike, which did not do something (yet!, noone knows) get banned.. und assaulting people like zamanibcan write what they want?

I guess that's why Mike put his money where his mouth is and opened a FREE forum with FREE information, then?

THINK before you open your poisoned pen again... there will always be ignorant people, but you don't need to be one of them!

No, I'm not going to post the link to his forum as I don't want to get banned from FF as there are so many good threads and knowledgeable members here. It's a pity that it came to this as I know mike wanted to share here.

So be it.

Can you or anyone please PM me where i can find Mikes free forum. That would be much appreciated. Thanks