Trading Against Yourself Stragegy TAYS

This first post #1 will be changed often to reflect the current state of rules etc for this thread so new people can be up with the times by simply reading this message.

Throughout my studies in the few years I have been a trader, like many of you I have tried several different ways and styles of trading. It has been my experience that most of the time when I enter a trade, price goes against my position if not right away then shortly after before it turns back around and heads in the original intended direction. Although I have had and do have some success using experts as my bread and butter trading tools I have always wanted to be able to trade successfully using the manual method; hence, TAYS the Trading Against Yourself Stragegy or to put it in a better way, Trade What You DON'T See.

Because of this trading anomaly, though it may very well be the norm for most traders most of the time, I decided to try something a little different. So I took some of the standard indicators, put together a simple trading plan but when it came time to pulling the trigger, instead of clicking the buy for buy and sell for sell, I decided to try to click the opposite box instead.

In other words, if it were a buy signal I'd click the sell box and visa versa. To my amazement I finally started manually trading rather successfully. Now the trick to this as if I need to tell you is how the mind reacts to this kind of twisted thinking, it can be more difficult than one may imagine at first but on the other hand it is quite fun and gives a "gaming" flavor to trading as far as I have observed to this point.

Because of this, I was thinking of taking a demo or even a nano account (since at least that would be live) and experiment live here on FF with you smart people using this strategy.

So my questions before I decide to begin is this are:
1. Is there any interest in this type of trading experiment.

2. Has or is anyone already doing this since I don't want to be a redundant contributor to FF.

I appreciate the feedback.

If there is little interest I'll just leave this at that and thank you.
Otherwise I will start trading this way posting the trades good or bad and why I took them that way. I'll also be open to insights from all persons who can offer valuable tidbits of trading help and information to further the cause. Lastly, if I continue this thread I will post not only the trades (best I can) but also the account from week to week.

Thanks in advance,
TraderJoe

Edit: ADDED INFO BELOW 5-12-2010 11:55 MST
Alright! I've developed a simple trading format that should be a consistant loser. Why? Because it's going to follow the indictors that are supposed to lead us to riches but always causes losses... right? well we'll see.

Below I will list the indicators I am planing to start out with.
I am starting this thread using a demo account, one I still had about $700. I think I'll probably restart it in a while so everything is zero'd out if things seem to go well.

Caveat:
I reserve the right to change and rechange the rules and the indicator list anytime.

VERY SIMPLE TRADING RULES:
1. TRADE WHEN A MAJORITY OF INDICATORS AGREE IN A DIRECTION
2. CHOSE TRADE BY CLICKING ON THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION THE STOCHASTICS POINT (for now)
3. TP & SL WILL BE COMPUTED USING THE FIB EXPANSION FOR THE TIME BEING.
4. ANY TIMEFRAME IS FAIR GAME BUT I'LL PROBABLY KEEP IT IN THE 1HR TO 4HR AND SOMETIMES I'LL USE THE 15M TOO.
EDIT: adding to the rules here
5. Once within close range of profit target and in nice profit a stop will be moved to lock in up to 50 of the original intended profits or a BE may also be set.

The list of indicators below I feel are pretty solid for signal hunting. I am sure I will be changing this list from time to time and again but for now this is what I'm going to start with.

INDICATOR LIST:
MACD 8, 15, 9
STOCHASTIC 8, 4, 5
TRENDLINES DRAWN BY THE SHI CHANNEL TRUE (used as a range reference and TREND indicator)
TRENDLINES MANUAL (ditto)
SNAKEFORCE (REMOVED)
HEIKEN ASHI ................................................(TREND INDICATION)
SLOPE INDY ON CHART....................................(TREND INDICATION)

All the above indicators are available (here I'm sure) and everywhere, just google them if you want to follow.

Later once this is moving along, IF things are looking good I'll post the indicator package we are currently using at that time. For now I just want to see if this can be a viable manual trading system. Now I have done this in private with some good success but I have never tried it publicly and so I have no idea what to expect here. Also do my best to post charts of trades as time goes on. Please know that I run a full time business at home so there will be times I may not be around to post a few hours but I will answer all posts left for me when I see them.

I believe this is a fun, intriguing and interesting trading experiement...

Much gratitude to everyone who joins me here and helps with their suggestions and ideas. Please feel free to post your own charts provided they are of Trading Against Yourself. Also if you have any indicator suggestions or critiques in general feel free to fire away

TraderJoe

i dont think thats crazy, i often think the same thing, human psych is complex and i often have thought of pressing sell if i was thinking of buying. its an interesting topic.

Would you believe that I made 1200+ pips this thursday, doing this exact same thing. Taking a trade opposite of my thought....and it yield quite a bit. To be honest, it was supposed to just be a gamble trade, or even a throw away trade. Talk about luck...first trade I try this 'strat' on, yields this kind of return..haha. Eitherway, obviously that won't be the case too often as the market crashed that day...but still heck of a coincidence.

So so far, this strategy is working really well. lol.

On a serious note, I am intrigued with this. As I have always believed in not trading what other traders also see, seeing stuff other traders don't see, as this is what hedges look for as well and 'trap' people. So technically, on some occasions we will be on the hedge's side of the trade. Which is good.

However, figuring out when to trade with the crowd, and against it, is the key.

Hi supermatt, yes it certainly is and I find it amazing how many people think it's just plain crazy. I have asked in private in the past well known good traders what they thought about this and 100% of those I have spoken to told me, you can't do that. So I put it off for years in fact. But then one day in disgust looking at my losing streak, I don't remember exactly maybe 19 in a row I decided wtf, if I can lose that many in a row... almost a 100% loss rate lol how could it hurt to try just pressing the other button? So I did and it went so well I could not believe it. At that time I was also working on a small programing project and stopped the manual trading but since then I've wanted to open a dialog here and maybe even try it live. I'll probably do it anyway even if there's not that much interest because it's so darn weird and fun to do. Who knows, it may just crash and burn like most plots do here but then again maybe it will help someone make a buck too. lol

HAHAHA Yes I do believe it and this is a great point! I did a similar thing when I first tried trading this way I won something like 7 or 8 in a row right out of the batting box. It was amazing.

About your point below, I have come to the realization and belief that the market as we see it unfold is designed to make us believe a thing is going to happen that really isn't. We are shown over and over historic price action and based on these ingrained patterns in our thought processes we think we are seeing what we are really not. Now I'm not saying this is some sort of conspiracy or anything like that but I'm also not saying there couldn't be either. All that aside, bottom line is: we see what is not happening, not we see what is happening if you get my drift? I'll plan to begin this real soon... it should be fun

Thanks for the post Tbb...

I feel the first thing to do to begin is to choose a trading platform style using some of the indicators most (not all) traders might have on their platform. The most obvious would be the MACD, Stochastic, and an MA or two and maybe a couple others. Just enough to give us those perfect signals I'll work on putting something together on (maybe) the 15m TF.

lol you mean put up all the common indicators that tell you to go long and make you think to go long that inevitably fail and you shouldve gone short . reverse thinking? it makes sense to me!

be cool if you could bring up some examples

i am interested by this pyschology, its hard to ignore it, i have been trading for a while with no success and hate every trade going against me right away.

Exactly.
I'm working on some kind of standard to use right now and I'll post as soon as possible. Thanks for the post.

TraderJoe

Weekly trend is ranging
Daily trend is up
4hr trend is up
1hr trend is down slightly.

Stochastic was hooked down when I took this trade.
MACD is in down trend
Slope indys are down trend.
Shi and Shake are downtrend.

LONG GAUDUSD
0.89170
tp 0.89550
sl 0.88790

I am using the SHI Channel along with the other indicators to try and guage the trend direction. Below are some example pics.


Pic #1 Weekly Trend:

Pic #2 Weekly and Daily Trends:

Pic #3 4HR and 1HR Trends:

That was cool!

I traded against myself and came out a winner on it.

Lets try that some more shall we?



looking for trades as we speak...

In this pic I drew yellow trendines with a white arrow showing the diver in progress that is highly likely to produce a long to the upper channel in the pic.

Although trading against yourself I believe has merrit, there are some setups that just work most of the time. This is one of them I believe.

Since this is a journal of trading against myself I would not chance this trade against myself.

Ok I'm pretty sure this one should be a loser but let's see.

SHORT GBPUSD
1.50240
SL 1.51160
TP 1.48000

I'm afraid I may have chosen a TP too far away but come win or lose I'm going to leave it this time.


A moments reflection from "As a man thinketh by James Allen"

"Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:-
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass."

CHANGING SL TO BE + A FEW
TP 1.50150

Since this trade is well into profit, I don't want it to turn into a loss so reseting SL to BE + 1 or 2 pips.

Since this trade is in profit and may turn back up at anytime I decided to measure fe on last fractal and from there I am giving the trade 10 pips plus spread =14 pips above that fe line. This wll still leave a decent profit on the trade should it not complete the original trade TP while still giving it room to breath; the dashed line shows the new SL level.

My worry is that should price go above the slope line there's a good chance it will continue possibly strongly.

On a different note, if I just happened onto this chart I would say to myself... hmmmm that looks like it's going long to me... so then I'd short it right So if that is the case then this may very well complete the original profit target.... lets watch.

Thoughts anyone?

Setting TP to 1.48990 (not shown in the pic below yet)

Now isn't this a treat! I was so darn sure that this eurusd chart would go up in price I didn't even bet against it ha ha ha. Look at what actually happened so far. If I had stuck to the plan I would have been in nice profits on this trade Trading AGAINST Myself! Notice the little white up-arrow showing where I predicted price would continue higher based on the diver just preceeding it.

I'm currently checking out USDJPY here.

The 4hr shows:
HA ......... Long
Slope ...... Long
Stochastic Long
Snake ......Long
MACD is not commited though. hmmm better wait a bit.

ok we touched the BE + SL and closed in a decent profit on this trade.

2 for two so far plus one I took before beginning this thread.

Ok I'll be on the look out for the next possible trade.

(sorry, had to delete the previous message because I posted the wrong jpg)

ok let's try this one.
Stochastic is hooking down the shi lines are down but the snake is up. Not sure I like the fact that the slopes are up but what the hay anyway.

LONG USDJPY 93.054
SL 92.065 (FE 61.8 + 4) 92.105 (spread +1)
TP 94.860 (FE 100.0 -4) 94.820