Silent Service Method

I am sure we can all empathise with Stefans dillema.
One way of dealing with the current choppy situation is not to move the stop too soon but to take half profits as soon as the price has moved the same number of pips as your stop. This effectively means you have a free trade and can manage the trade 'fearlessly'.
Chris may not agree with this but if it suits your psychology it may work for you.

Yes its a wake up call to us all...there is more to life than forex..been reading her posts and she seemed to be great person..her contributions will be missed..

Very sad news. I learned a lot from her posts and will miss her a lot.

Rest in peace.

Jesus, really don't know what to say. This is just so sad. Thoughts are with her family.

Enjoyed reading her morning posts, and will miss her input very much.

TonyH

While I don't personally agree.....it's not a bad idea if it's what makes you comfortable. Being comfortable in a trade is the #1 thing in my opinion.
If you aren't - then how can you possibly let it make money?

Chris

Hi.

Don't get me wrong, I am fine with my progress and results so far. Just tried to explain to Low what I am doing to hang on the long runners.


Stefan.

Thanks for the blog CW and emerging discussion hereabout Exits.

I believe that Exits are the defining element of a trader's method, style or perspective. And more specifically that it's the quality of one's planning and execution which defines an Exit, not the quantity or amount risked per se. Then I'd say how one Exits reveals more their degree of self-mastery than the market's condition... Not to mention that one trader's Exit is another's Entry and what is that variable?

Far as I see it, there's five versions of Exit:

i. Mathematical
ii. Mechanical
iii. Visual
iv. Psychological

and my favorite

v. Individualized combo-pack of the above

S

You forgot vi. Prayer (lol)

The point is this: Any idiot can find an entry signal, but it's exits that separate the winners from losers.

Heck let's not forget vii. Hope

Let me clarify that an idiot will take my last post and use the information to avoid losing but what about a Master? They consider those things and create their own method from what's present that simply evolves their lifelong practice of Exiting a trade.

Albeit I admit that even the implication of a "lifelong practice" is damn near antithetical to a world hellbent on immediate gratification or the get rich/quick fix to everything But of course if you're a lifelong practitioner of anything, you're a winner, no matter how many times you may lose in-my-opinion.

Just a different way of saying the same thing

Anybody noticing a lot of mixed signals?

Example(one of many) gbp/usd: weekly pin, in conflict with previous pin (suggesting a long) with the big 50% fibo chris mentioned, and hidden divergence (signifying a trend continuation) on the weekly chart, in regards to the downtrend started last year.

Very perplexing.

I'm seeing incongruities on gbpusd, usdjpy, usdcad, audusd, nzdusd.
Potential double top/bottom on nzd and cad, but something seems "amiss".

I'll be looking for contrarian opportunites this week. For some reason I believe the MACD more than the PA, and too many things don't add up.

My watchlist is longer than expected...should be an interesting week.

Also compare monday's dow chart to friday's, they look the same only in reverse, one of those directions is fake, I'm wondering which one.

It is a shocking news...I can't believe until now. She has been very active in this thread and helped many people including me. My prayers with her.

Very well put.

I think this can be traced back to equities. All indexes seem to be at a critical point. I think it's more a situation where the summer is coming to an end, and the real volume is about to start again. Keep your eyes open, and to be honest - it's not necessarily a sin to sit and wait until the obvious break occurs.

When entertaining the thought of how to exit, there are several things one must consider. There are several variables to the equation, making the answer a little unique for each problem. (The problem being two-fold, the actual trade, and the actual trader.)

First, you have to know the trend. The trend really can make a huge difference. If you are going with the trend, you are going to get a lot of help along the way. In my particular way of thinking, if we are with the overall trend - then I don't want to get out too soon. In fact, I want to be greedy, without being reckless.

Don't know the trend? Well I refer you to Jacko on that one.

When going against the trend, you have to ask yourself how much this trade can actually produce for you? Is it realistic to expect a massive move? Often, it is not. Counter-trend trading sometimes is essentially scalping the daily chart for 150 pips. It's alright, and certainly can be done....but by definition can never really be an "A+" set up. It doesn't mean you can't trade them - just be aware that it's pretty unlikely that you are going to be in this trade for months.

Some people will say, "But Chris, what if I get in on the trend change?" Good question. Now quit whining. So what? You get in, you get out and it keeps going. If it's a trend change, it will make itself obvious soon enough. Wait for a re-entry signal.

Remember, we are trading probabilities, not certainties.

The next part is knowing the trader. If you have to be right a lot, go ahead and settle for 50 pips on a daily candle. (Just don't expect to make much money.)

You have to get past your ego, and learn to look at the big picture. (Not only in time frames, but in the only time frame that matters - your trading career. So what if you only win 40% of your trades, if at the end you are ahead? If I said "Hey, I can trade your account and make you 30% this year.....but I will only be correct in my trades 25% of the time." Would you be upset? Or would you be happy with the 30% return. Think about that.

This is why I like to look for the "big areas/potential moves." It takes a little less work in the end.

More to come...

Chris

Nice weekly pin on eurjpy.
I dont think i'll take an entry from the break of the top of it though.

If it retraces to 134.60 and shows a 4hour in then im all over it!

looks messy to me, merge the prior two bars together and what do you get. also there is an obvious resistance point there. RR might not be enough, but maby something off the 4hr may be ok

Agreed. Nice post WG. Good sign when you start adding bars together, and seeing what's really going on.

New audio piece on the blog. Hoping to have a new video tonight for the group, and maybe one for the blog soon as well.

Chris

Would've left this "comment," which turned into my short story/foray into the trading world on your blog, Chris but I didn't have a password or something. Hope you don't mind if I post it here for now; I loved the "remembering" part! And I know I don't post much directly to the method but I think my posts gravitate more towards the philosophical side of it. Maybe? Or we'll see... I post it here b/c this method was significant in aiding my return to the basics then and for practicing them, now.

So when I hated trading, I remember spending 12-16 hours/day (including weekends) looking for the next thing that would get me rich. You name it: charts, indicators, so-called gurus, forums, signal services, etc. That intensity went on for at least a month and I lost nearly everything as a result, not just money but my love life, apartment and self-respect. It consumed me and I became subject to nearly every survival drama you can think of, which scared the crap out of me. It smacked obvious that I was in a steep downward spiral across the board and ironically one that never got to the root of the problem, which of course had nothing to do with the market.

So, after being financially rescued by an old friend, I virtually stopped trading altogether - for many months. Not completely but only enough to say I was still doing it, to show that I hadn't given up entirely to friends and family. (And if there was anything I hated more than trading, it was quitting, being the obsessive I was.) Yet coincidentally I happened to be involved w/a group who was exploring a psychological phenomena termed the Shadow. I won't go into the technical detail of what exactly that means but suffice it to say that it drew out my psychological hang-ups, most of them thoroughly buried below my conscious awareness from well before I could count, into sharper and sharper relief.

It was also at-this-time that I began to understand that money was money, and I was me. In other words, my emotional attachment to money was so ingrained/socialized/acculturated into my psyche that I literally took every trade personally, if you can imagine that - and I know you can And this is when I began to gradually respect trading for its wisdom not just the result or output. When the personal attachment/identification with money began to lose its grip on my beliefs. That money was just a tool, and so was I but that's another story.

Somehow two of the facilitators of the group had recently taken interest in stock trading, so we bonded on that and it wasn't long til I was asked by them to give short presentations to a small group of would be traders and friends. I welcomed the opportunity. They all knew my background, so I couldn't BS anyone that I was some "Master Trader" or whatever, which was good b/c that meant I could look at things more objectively. Sobriety is essential.

So we'd briefly discuss the market and apply psychological insight into our own behavior from it. And what I intuitively gathered was to stick to the basics of trading with them. Don't "advance." In other words, I was gracefully returning to the market w/a "beginners mind," thanks in large part to that group. Now it's something that will never leave me, to have a beginner's mind with everything, no matter if I've done it a thousand, ten-thousand or a million times already. Keep doing it, again and again. You can never step in the same river twice kind of thing

For there's subtleties in every discipline that can only be unlocked by persistently practicing the basics. It is a feat just to discover what the basics really are anyway. It's where all the "advanced" work is derived from, so if you think about, it's really the most important! I know that's obvious but who cares. Thanks for reading my short story/foray with the trading world. Now's the time for me to get back to it, as if I ever left, back when

Soca

great post soca... simplicity is everything...

another thing thats helped me with trading is put $2k in my account and then earn the right to put more in, ive got a heap on the sidelines just waiting for me to prove to myself I deserve to top up my account. When my trading (psychology mainly) get better and im consistent then I will think about topping up the account...

this is probably unrelated to your post (some things send me off on tangents), but just another thing regarding psychology that has helped me lately.. I think it helps cause I know I'm not risking much of my total cash/savings in the market.