Strat's Long Term Stress Free Trading

Check out page 1 on this thread, all you need is in the index

Also Strat says

The very first thing we have to do is learn basic PASR. This involves learning and UNDERSTANDING exactly what PASR is.

We then have to learn how to IDENTIFY accurate SR levels to SUIT our particular trading style.

We then have to learn the basic price reversal candles – Hammer, Shooting Star, BUOB, BUEB, BEOB and BEEB, nothing else. At this point we have to learn the classical definitions of these candles. Do NOT think about or study other candles or patterns as they are NOT reliable and/or consistent for PASR trading.

I'm not certain of your wording there because shooting stars occur at the end of uptrends or swing highs. The candle you are referencing would be a good one but location counts and its location only makes it a plain old bullish bar.

Some would argue it's an inverted hanging man but again I'll point out location...it isn't a swing low either.

PA to show the way real soon.

By the way, my comments are to be taken with a grain of salt since I am still very early on the path...but I can tell you for sure you are correct in saying that isn't a shooting star.

Why am I suspicious when you are specific about direction?

sorry if my wording was confusing. I was saying it is a shooting star look alike but like u say...its nowhere closer to the SR lines. we have to let this one go and treat it just like any other bar

The market seems to be waiting for the BoJ press conference and interest rate announcement Friday (Thursday night US/UK time) before making its move. Apparently this is often leaked or pre-empted so we could see some moves before then. It will be interesting to see if GBPJPY can squeeze another day or two into that wedge.
With a big options expiry as well at the end of this week we could have some volatility coming up too.

Nicola
PS I am skipping trading for a couple of weeks to move house but looking forward to getting stuck in again in December.

Is this a reverse head and shoulders about to go up?

OR

Is this the continuation after the correction wave?

OR

Is this 5th wave?

In my unsuccessful days of charting stocks, my favorite thing to do was just watch the charts and draw trend lines. Time frame didn't matter, I was mesmerized by how the price just moved in series of fractal wedges. I had no idea what bars meant or what Elliott waves were or even patterns. I had no one to consult with and this was before the internet was prevalent so I was fairly isolated in this process. As a result of all those hours of drawing, I can draw some pretty scary accurate lines even though they don't look like they're relevant.

I wish I'd found this thread 10 years ago but it was only a twinkle in Strat's eye.

In the proceeding years after giving up on trading with money, I continued to draw lines and dabbled with Elliott, but not enough to get into time frames. Library books are SO boring. The fractal nature of waves within waves fascinated me. I would start only with the daily and move down to the 5 minute and draw my trend lines (I wasn't really aware that weekly and monthly were tradeable). I'd watch price move the wave and work itself into a trading corner (lol, that's what I'd named coils before I knew that's what they were) but because I never knew about bar meaning or SR I could never act on a move. It was like flipping a coin as to which way it would go next (little did I know that would have worked too).

I still traded my own 401k and as an investor I did ok (and still do) but as a trader, as I mentioned before, I was spectacularly unsuccessful. Investing is NOT trading.

It's been difficult for me to 'forget' what I half-assed taught myself back then and look at this material with a fresh mind but I determined last October that I was going to learn how to trade successfully come hell or high water. So, I put away my 'trading corners' and my trend lines and began looking for secrets and answers.

Found indicators, found snake oil salesmen, and found a few forums. After endless hours of searching for threads with decent info and coming close to giving up, I found Forex Factory and found James16. One day, I saw Strat's thread on the main page as a recent posting. "Strat's Long Term Stress Free Trading". I thought to myself "ok, one more, why not? This one might be IT, who knows?"

Flash forward 6 weeks (this one IS it by the way). I'm learning slowly but I'm learning. Trading is easy but trading well is difficult.

Every month since June, when I became net profitable, I've made it a monthly reality check to go back and look at some of the indicators and get rich quick systems I used prior to then. I laugh at what I see...squigglies in front of the bars I'm trying to read. It feels good to know that I've moved past the consumerism of Forex and am in the business of making money in Forex by trading successfully.

I'll say again publicly, and for anyone new stopping by this thread, if you are serious about learning to trade the right way and are ready to put in the hours, you can stop looking. You'll find no better instructors than Strat and his team. Go to page 1 and we'll see you in a few weeks. Post occasionally to say hello and ask questions because everyone here actually wants to help you and will answer your questions...provided you are actually reading of course!

So, my posting this chart is just scratching the occasional itch I get to look at the things I used to know and see how they look to me now. Please pardon the walk down memory lane but I find it does me good to purge occasionally.

-m

P.S. Not to imply that I am already successful but that is my mindset

Nicola,
You have my sympathies. I moved 3 months ago and just now feel settled in. I don't envy you today! Good luck on the move...do what I did; hire movers! Best money I ever spent.
-m

I don't know.....why are you? I've hardly been vague about my yen views!

Congrats, m.

Sounds like you have come a long way and you're finally finding success.

Check out the PA at these SR levels on EURGBP almost exactly 100 pips apart.

Hmmmmmmmmm coincidence? I don't think so.

What is the website address for FXPRO please, I cant seem to raise them on a search

thanks
Larry

A couple of issues on your chart:

1- When you look at the bigger picture, some of your SR levels are minor or negligible.

2- You cannot trade this chart with PA from daily unless you put limit orders at SR levels, because when you have a PA, you are almost arriving in next SR level due to 100 pips apart SR levels.

My suggestions:

1- Always look at bigger picture.
2- Keep your charts as clean as possible.

Blackeagle and Strat please throw the book at me if this is blasphemy. After seeing Dan's post I realize that I'm not doing myself any favors if I don't put my thoughts out there for you to check. When I did what was probably a day long exercise of drawing support and resistance levels on my charts here are some of my realizations (I still don't always get it right).

I looked for prices especially on the monthly and weekly chart where there was a repetitive change in direction or reaction around that price. But more importantly I looked for comfirmation candles of the BREAK of support and resistance? And conversely price action that showed a lack of follow through to break the support or resistance level. For example the NZDUSD pair. The key level 7089. Its obvious resistance. But how big? Well to me it looks like a warzone, and everytime price gets there, the most interesting thing is the number of times price fails to follow through on a break of the level. I know I'm probably saying something that everyone knows but I saw it differently after reading most of the thread. So during the exercise on the weekly and monthly I looked for the usual suspects, shooting stars, BUOBs BEEBs etc, along with follow through or lack thereof in order to ID S&R.

If you just look for reversal areas you won't get the right levels because many times the all important confirmation bar. The key to me is to locate the line where there is obvious follow through or an obvious lack of follow through, if you survey the line, and find areas where you would have gone long or short on PASR and you would have been wrong, then your line is probably wrong.

That's true.

Blackeagle, do you consider the SR you drew from the boss and the big boss as the major ones or you consider the major swing highs and lows?

Could you show some examples if you don't find it too much trouble?



Fuman

Hi Fuman,

In case you missed them, Blackeagle has given many examples that are in the index here http://sites.google.com/site/stratstrading/blackeagle , perhaps they will help somewhat.

If not I am sure I have seen answers to your questions elsewhere in this excellent thread.

Me neither. First of all, I can say that your SR levels on NZDUSD are similar to mine, but I also believe that someone else may have different SR levels and trade successfully. I am not claiming my levels are the best. Keeping that in mind, I like your way of thinking while determining these levels. Because those PAs are strong indications for follow through or reversal. But on the other hand, we may have SR levels tested without these PAs, we should also keep that in mind. To be honest, I am not drawing them as you do, I am mostly using open-close prices and also high/low of important shooting stars/hammers.

I am receiving a few emails everyday re. how to draw SR lines. Although this issue has been addressed several times in detail, I'd like to share my way of drawing SR lines once again. And I'll show you how to do it step-by-step.

Due to Donadoney's NZDUSD practice, I'll do the same. First of all, open a Big Boss line chart and put horizontal lines where you think the levels are important (preferably tested a few times). This is how my chart looks like after completing this exercise. Then switch to candlesticks and compare both with respect to the lines you draw. I have also attached this. Did you all see 0.71 SR level where it was drawn originally from line chart due to 1996, 2005 and 2007 swings/tests but more importantly look at Feb 2004 shooting star where price reversed from 0.7099. Isn't that beautiful? That's why I am also using lows and highs of certain candles.

I have 9 major SR levels on my completed NZDUSD chart and we already drew 6 of them from Big Boss. Then all you have to do is to keep them on your chart and switch to Boss chart to draw additional major SR lines which may not be seen on Big Boss and to fine tune the ones already drawn from big Boss, if needed, based on Boss opens/closes and high/low of certain bars (by doing this, actually I am doing what Donadoney described).

Attached are how both charts look like after switching to Boss chart. Everything looks OK except a fine tune may be needed at all time high and we also need to check 0.5650 SR due to 2008-2009 moves where we see too many violations (not respected). If it is so on Worker, too, then we may downgrade it.

And this is how both charts look like after adding SR lines from Boss chart and fine tuning the ones from Big Boss chart.

I have added 0.6450, 0.6700 and 0.7500 SRs which were not that obvious on Big Boss chart and fine tuned 0.8000 SR to 0.8150. I still couldn't decide about 0.5650 SR so will check it on Worker. Blue SRs are the additions.