Free info on economic indicators

OK, click here for the link.

Now for the caveats and provisos:

1. I'm strictly a technical trader myself. So please don't ask me to explain the material, LOL.

2. The info happens to reside on an MT4 broker's site. I'm in no way affiliated to them, and I've never used them...... so I'm not endorsing them in any way. All I'm saying is that the info on economic indicators is reasonably comprehensive, and I hope that somebody finds it useful. And it's cheaper than visiting your technical bookstore. (Of course let's not forget that the FF calendar provides some good info, also....... click the little icons in the "Detail" column)

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here, Hanover. If it's stuff for nothing, then forget it. Nothing is for nothing.

I knew a bloke once, he was so tight that when he dropped a coin, he was down for it that quick it dropped on his head...

I wasn't asking anything, merely providing a link that others might find possibly find helpful.

I don't understand your "nothing is for nothing" comment. The information is available free of charge, by merely clicking on the relevant links.

How dare you post a free link!

Hi Hanover,

I have been inspired by your previous posts. May i know what sort of technical trader are you? Do you mainly use pure price action, S&R levels to carry out your trades?

Sorry for deviating from the thread purpose but i am eager to know your technical trading style to learn good things from a smart trader.

Thanks for your time.

Yeah! What have we here? A chuffing Communist?

I'm afraid I will disappoint you. I'm a programmer rather than a serious professional trader; I only trade demo and microlots. For better or worse, I can't resist the temptation to continuously 'improve' my approach. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, here is my current strategy, which I've been experimenting with for 2-3 weeks. All I can say is it's my most promising approach thus far; there's no track record of profitable trades.

Setup: the goal is to try to synchronize congruent trends in two different TFs. For now it's D1 and M30/M5. Trend is the topmost priority.

Longer TF: At the start of each day (MT4 midnight), I use relative strength (D1, but I also look at H4 and W1) to establish which currencies are most negatively correlated, so that I can trade the strongest against the weakest. This gives me maybe 3-6 candidate pairs. Then I look at their D1 charts, to find the start of a 'trend continuation' (high momentum) candle, following some kind of lull/pullback. The best continuation candles are outside bars, railroad tracks, engulfing bodies, and pinbars, probably in that order. I also check out major S/R points that might impede a trade, and also upcoming news.

Entry on shorter TF: Once I've established trend direction and candidate pairs, I look time my entries off either the M30/M15 chart; sometimes I look at the M5 chart for details. My S/R indicator plots the same daily S/R levels on this chart, and I also look at prior session highs/lows, local S/R (especially flipovers), and draw fibos (key retracements are 50, 62 and 38, in that order) and any obvious trendlines. I also have indicators that plot round numbers and intraday pivot levels. At this point the chart is a seething mass of lines, and I manually delete many of them that I regard as less important. This is a highly discretionary process that I'm very slowly becoming more proficient with. I'm also session oriented; for example, I try to pick which way price is likely to move in the London session, by looking at the first hour's movement; if that coincides with the long term trend direction, we could be in business.

I also look for points of confluence. I'm a strong believer in visibility. I wait for price to break strongly (in the same direction as the longer TF trend) thru a series of tightly packed barriers, then I enter with a SL on the opposite side of the barrier. The ideal SL distance is no more than 10-15 pips. If I'm 'wrong', i.e. price reverses by crashing thru anything between 2-6 significant barriers, then I want losses to be trivial, because I'm seeking BIG RR trades. Only once it looks likely that the price won't re-test the entry point, will I move the SL to breakeven; I'd rather accept a 10 pip loss than risk missing a 200 pip win, due to a re-test.

I sometimes look to add to positions, thus: following a larger than normal M30 candle that breaks key candle highs/lows, I look for price to retrace back to these points, anticipating a 'flipover' that would cause trend continuation. The more candle highs/lows near a certain point, and possibly backed by other S/R types, the better (visibility theory again). The whole key to entry is understanding how price behaves around S/R, and the way in which levels are used and then later discarded, as price then uses the next available level; which levels are more likely to be respected; and so on, a never-ending learning process.

There are a couple of other setups that I look for: e.g. multiple consecutive M30 candle tops/bottoms, as providing strong S/R. (If I'm bored, I'll sometimes try to scalp a move between consecutive S/R levels, which is not part of the strategy....... I'm just having some fun in my demo account )

Exits: to get the big RR, I move back to the longer TF for exits. I draw a fibo across the (D1) setup candle, and use the extensions (138, 162, 200) as a rough guide for exit points (the deeper the retrace into thes etup candle, the poorer the expectation of a long extension). However, I generally look to scale out at what I see as being key daily S/R levels, but (since I'm trying to trade the strongest trending pairs, and provided the retrace wasn't too significant) I try to let some of the position ride as long as possible (e.g. until a large candle occurs, or a candle of the opposite color), or by trailing a SL along candle highs/lows (still very much experimenting with these ideas). So we are talking targets of anything between 50-500 pips for an initial risk of 10-15 pips.

This is nowhere near as easy as it might sound. Many trades reverse back to the entry point before they get anywhere near their target(s), and it might take 3-4 entries during the day to catch an entry that's successful. But it's occasionally possible to get 10:1 or 20:1 RR trades, as compensation.

Everywhere I read that exits are more important than entries, but exactly the reverse is true with this approach. The strength-based pair selection, high momentum setup candle, and congruent TF trends are designed to capture the longest possible moves, with a decent degree of probability; and it's the low risk entry that makes the high RR possible, hence picking the best entry points (to whatever extent that's possible) is crucial.

To anybody who says that this is way too complex, I say fine, each to their own. But MACD and stochastics are not for me.

I'll post some charts if/when I get a chance. But I will probably have 'improved' the 'system' even further, by the time I get around to it, LOL. For me, developing a strategy is a very evolutionary process. I love demo accounts; they allow me to experiment to the max.

This material is offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Use any part of it as you see fit, and at your own risk.

Thanks Hanover for your wonderful and detailed response. RR in your trading set ups is extremely favourable.

Here's a short trade I've just taken on GU. It breaks the rules on long term trend/currency strength, but I found the quadruple confluence** too hard to resist. With this kind of trade, I trade against the move, anticipating a bounce down due to the heavy resistance, with a 5 pip SL, a very low risk entry (at 1.5645). Then after the trade is 5 pips in my favor, I move SL to BE, so that whatever happens, I (now) have a free trade.

** Confluences:
1. White line and arrows: flipover S/R at a very strong S/R area (includes two session highs from 2 days ago).
2. Yellow line: 38.2 fibo retracement of an 'obvious' fibo plot (fibo stretched across previous session highs/lows).
3. Dashed green line = daily pivot point.
4. Dotted gray line = round number 1.5650.

And also:
5. Overbought on M30 - top of the Bollinger band.

Let's see what happens........

Heres a site that has an incredible amount of economic info, I must have picked it up on another thread somewhere..

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/default.aspx

I think you will like it.

Amazing site, many thanks Shabs.

________________________________

Trade (see post #9) got stopped out at BE, no damage done.

Interesting how price used the next significant S/R point as its bounce (magenta line and arrows). This was a daily double-session high from 3 days back, and also yesterday's Asian session low. (Also a 50% Fibo retrace between US session high/low, but this is a rather far-fetched way to draw a fibo, so it's probably nothing more than coincidence). Alas, I was away from my PC and missed this trade.

Anyway, this thread started out on the topic of economic indicators, and I wasn't intending to start a journal, so I'll end here.