Professional forex traders

I like this post,

Can I ask though - When you say you trade bounces and re-tests of breaks off S/R lines - Which time frame are you drawing your S/R zones on? Are you using .00's and .50's or just anywhere there was a previous high and or low?

Could you show us an example of your S/R lines?

Thanks for sharing,

VB,

Sorry I think you have it wrong my friend.

The first thing that I would teach a new trader is how to manage risk.

How to calculate position sizes based on how much you risk per trade and where to put your stop is the number one priority in this market.

If you get this wrong from the beginning then you will not succeed.

Could not of said it any better myself.

Thanks for your in sight Ehrek,

I have struggled for a while with lower time frame S/R - I am a firm follower of the Silent Service thread by Chris.

Where it's all big round numbers and 500-1000 gaps between S/R zones in which you wait .... and wait.....- However, once a move is made and your on it, it's usually a good one and well worth the wait.

I'll be following this thread, I have found it to be quiet interesting.

All the best,

VB,


---------------- Where'd you go????

Thought a few times about replying to your post, as your first post seems contradictory in a few comments, and what you are asking has been asked and asked countless times.

You state you are a professional trader but yet you are looking for other professional traders to share their methods, without having put your method out first.

There are 'professional' traders on this forum but most of them usually post snipets of information, very few actually share their entire methodology. Some do, and it would not take much digging around to find them.

To quote one of my favourite members, HiddenGap "Professionals operate on all timeframes".

I would have to agree with the poster earlier on, MM is definitely not an edge. Basically all trading methods would fall in 2 categories, high hit rate, or high r:r. Your mm would be devised around the strategy.

The nemesis of all aspiring traders are basically the same, unrealistic expectations, not following the key mantra's of trading - "know thyself". Trading is as much psychological as it is mechanical., and training the mind takes longer than anything else.

Like I said first up, am not sure what you are trying to acheive with this thread considerig you are already a 'professional' trader.

Regards,
K.

hehehe......couldnt be further from the truth

risk is the first thing that should enter a traders head when assessing a trade opportunity.

Too true, once again Razzle is spot on!

and how is this?

Well, firstly, there seems to be a lot of confusion between MM and discipline and secondly, are you going to tailor your system(one presumes you have a fair idea of potential targets and stops) around your trade size or your trade size around your system? And yes, I've condensed MM into "trade size".

Anyway, I was just teasing with my first comment.

Trade size and how much I'm willing to risk is the first thing I determine before I enter a trade. In fact I set my stops before I set entries . I know exactly where I want to enter and where I'll take profits. The entry order is the last thing I set. So I guess I tailor MM around my system....

I would have thought your trading strategy tell you where you would be placing your stops, is it above/below the last factal, pivot, lh or hl etc. Then the trader would decide if the closest sl position for their method is too to high or not? there are respected traders here who will not take the setup they look for just based on the fact that the sl would be beyond what they like.

Once all the above has bee ascertained, then the trader would place their trade based on the % willing to risk. The way I see it, mm dictates trade size, which is dicated by where your sl is, which is determined by your trading strategy. Hence, the pattern I see is: strategy -> sl determiniation -> trade size (MM).

I see you have 10+ vouches, so you obviously better than me in trading, so sorry if everything I have said may come across as condesending (which it is not).

Regards,
K.

EDIT: oops, looks like you posted before I finished typing my post.

good points kermut ....i guess it all depends on the traders strategy in the end. As long as you turn a profit....There are so many strategies and MM techniques as well as ways to combine them out there that can be profitable. Ive seen some crazy stuff.....I stick to the maxim KISS

Razzle, don't worry. Some will never understand or accept that MM is only a tool, necessary to trade profitable but very far from being sufficient.
Anyway, for those who believe that MM is very important but don't have the brain power to discover the error, please go to a casino. Use the best MM you can devise and play 1000 times. Don't forget to tell us how much you won.

Posts like this that pretty much say it all are largely overlooked, it seems. Posts that tell you how to trade. Even if he wanted too, Daytrading can't transfer his experience to me though. I just have to acquire my experience myself by trading. True, he could mentor me and, most likely, greatly accelerate the process. But, why would he? He probably paid his dues - now I have to pay mine. Like he says - the pips aren't going to just jump in my pocket. This business is for self-starting and persistent types - those who prefer to gain the experience to succeed on their own. That's how I see it.

hi, i have been trading a while and 12 months ago started in forex, i had some good returns and some big mistakes in trading too.

I used to use a system which works well but also would cause losses too which if have too many of them in a row can hurt a traders confidence believing they need to change since something is wrong. Many of those losing trades ended up being profitable trades but once you exit a trade its hard to get back into the same trade in the same direction that just caused a loss.

Once traders are able to accept that we need to take losses at times to be able to get in on a new trade that could end up being more profitable then the loss we had to take to be able to enter that new trade some traders might be able to start improving and increasing their profits.

Im a young trader i had some very good returns with shares, cfds and forex and also some big losses.

My biggest mistakes is not following a longer term trend when using a smaller time frame to enter a trade, i also wouldn't use a stop loss set in place and would tell myself that i will exit a trade once it reaches a certain level if goes against my position. The hard part about that is once we see a loss on the screen its not always easy to close that position out and instead we hope it will come back in our direction to reduce the loss or get to break even.

This mistake has cost me a decent amount because a small loss becomes a big loss and eventually when close out is a lot worse then it originally would of been.

I used to pay for a software package that had good indicators to help make trading decissions but no matter what trading system a person uses losses will always be a part of trading.

I started to look at moving averages, i used to use small moving averages such as a 3 ma and 5ma cross over on a daily or 4 hour or a 1 hour time frame, this does work well at times but also can have a few cross overs that might not work very well either. An example of it working is on the 1 hour aud chart a cross over happened at 12 noon on the mt4 platform at 8867-8882 candle which worked for a 100 pips. Just before that happened a cross over down did happen which would have caused a loss but might of been small if exited as soon as a cross back up happened.

Because the cross overs happened so much i also looked at longer moving averages and read how some traders use the 50, 100, and 200 ma as good indicators for support and resistance points.

using a 200 moving average either sma or ema with a smaller moving average to cause the signal entry can also be profitable there will be trades where it doesn't work but there are also good trades where it could keep you in a trade for several hundred pips.

Theres 2 ways that using a 200ma could be used and one is using a longer time frame such as a 1 hour 4 hour or daily for the trend and then a 5,15 or any smaller time frame for the entry this will help get into a trade that has a higher chance of success since moving in the same direction as the trend, but if the trade says to exit on a smaller time frame it might be best to exit the trade if a cross occurs in the opposite direction and wait for a new signal since it could continue for a while in the opposite direction which could cause a bigger loss if don't exit quickly when it suggests to exit a trade.

The other way is use the longer time frames and just enter the trade and hold until reach a target or it says to exit, this will mean bigger losses when they go against you to a small time frame but also keeps you in trades for the bigger moves too. An example is euro/chf on a 1 hour chart since the start of august only 2 trades on a 1 hour has been given one at the start of august at around 1.3665 it crossed the 200ma back down around 13750 but it did reach 1.39 before that happened. On the 11th of august the signal crossed at 1.3720 and is currently still saying down which is still 600 pips of profit for about 18 days and had been lower.

Sometimes simple methods can be very profitable, the hard part is deciding what time frames is best for the person to use, longer time frames on bad trades means bigger losses but good trades means decent profits, smaller time frames means chance of more smaller losses but could get more losses but also more trades that could be profitable too.

Hi ab1.
Since I started trading, in 2009, I have spent some money buying some robots, some time reading a loooooot of things, books, some more time studying strategies and everytime I came to FF or Babypips I found some new strategy. These new strategies were just like new toys. So I used to open my MT4 plataform and backtest the new strategy manually.
I found some good strategies. Some of them really work.
During my search, I found a lot of strategies, no money and some EAs.
Just about 2 months ago, i found the way.
Most of us, want a system to give us signal of buy or sell.

"When the 2 moving average crossover, you buy/sell."

It is easy to trade this way...but everyone is able to do what is easy.
Not everybody wants to make the difficult things.
Most of us are lazy. We want to sit in front the computer and just wait for the price to hit the pivot point to buy or sell.
About 2 months I realize that if it was so simple, why does not everybody earn tons of money on Forex???
Why only a few lucky people really earn money on Forex???
I found the answer...
Thats why most of us are lazy. We want a system to buy or sell without thinking and the real traders dont mind to THINK about what they are doing.

The most important thing in any strategy is WHO takes the decision.

Most of us spend a lot of time looking for a perfect strategy that will never lose...believe me...such thing does not exist.

The real trader THINK and FEEL.

The lazy trader only wants to follow a perfect system while the REAL TRADER knows that HE/SHE is the most important piece of the puzzle.

You dont need to look for the latest version of the latest robot...You need only to realize that the REAL TRADER lies inside you.

An EA cannot think or feel. It does not have emotion and the whole market is only a reflection of human behavior and people are composed by emotions too, desires, fears.

No robot will be able to achieve what you are able to do.

You have the most powerful weapon...YOURSELF.

The difference betwen the winner is patience, discipline, ability to think and take decisions quickly and above all... THE ARE COMMITTED TO THEMSELVES AND THEY KNOW THAT EVERYTHING HAS ONE PRICE.

regards

Where is gone a EHREK post!!!!?????

perhaps we need to make a distinction between an 'one-man,self-employed' Professional and an Institutional Professional.

There's a lot of generalisation being posted here as usual. What defines a Pro trader to me is a winning system period, nothing else. Why? Because a winning system when followed will return results. How hard should it be? Well if you're an emotional wreck, you will probably find it hard to trade as 90% of it is your brains emotion fighting against your what your eyes are telling you.
Experienced traders will be back me on this point. You don't have to be Einstein to be able to trade for a living, in fact you need to dumb yourself down. IF you have a winning system that you KNOW is a winning system, you simply stick to the rule base, you WILL KNOW 100% that you will have losses, but if trading a decent system the losses will be very small in comparison to the Wins, so who cares right? = emotion GONE!

There you have it.

Hi Everyone thats been kind enough to post on my thread, some great comments.

Id like to cover a few points that were said and cast my humble opinion on things, I still dont get the debate about money management, it is vital to your account survival that you employ a reasonable MM system.

Regardless of the Technical system that you employ, (i.e. your "method" for entry and exit, for anyone new to forex terminology) I think it is necessary to consider what your loss will be first on any trade that you think has a creditable opportunity for success. It is the only way that you can arrive at an appropriate position size.

The debate about is it an "Edge", isnt it an "Edge" etc, this is just a distraction from the main point, which is.....MM is an essential part of being profitable trading Forex.

Ok, so maybe we will call it an "Ingredient" rather than an "Edge". There are many ingredients and MM is most defiantly one of them.

I am going to post a spread sheet at the bottom of this post. I took it from an idea I saw, then redesigned and elaborated on it further. I added a few things of my own.

What it capable of doing everytime you hit the "F9" key on your keyboard, is it will randomly simulate 100 trades, it will generate them based on what information you tell it about your system and account size.

There are only certain boxes you can input figures into, so have a play with it if you like and see by changing your system success rate and risk what your predicted equity curve could be for a given combination.

The smoother that curve then the less stress you will endure from draw downs. Its quite amazing to find that your trading system can have a very poor win/loss ratio and still make a substantial profit with disciplined money management.

Have fun

cheers


ab1