Following Price

I have been trading for the better part of 5 years and have seen and tried a great many trading approaches, if your not open to learning in this business your screwed before you even get started, some of which were wildly successful and others not so much. Over the course of this time I have experienced many ups followed by a few downs. I am currently in the process of rebuilding my approach after a real rough patch that was caused by a serious lack of patience on my end, something I thought I had completely in control and was doing well with, and decided to sit back and fully examine my trading method(s) and id what worked, for me, and what didn't. In reviewing my own trading I found that the times I simply followed price and where price was going I did the best, and what this means for this journal is NO s/r trades, no picking tops / bottoms using chart patterns that fail as often as they work, no to trend lines, no trying to imagine your chart as tea cups, peoples heads, buckets, no fibs, nothing that requires me to have to look at anything more than a couple of moving averages and a macd.

I don't mind if people post in this thread and ask questions which I will gladly answer. If you are going to post nonsense or are not respectful of others your post will be removed and you will be banned from this thread.

The method is comprised on 4 emas 5/10/35/50 and a macd set to defaults (12, 26,9) using the 15 min charts

Why these specific MAs:

- I have traded using the 5/10 for quite a while and have always found that taking trades off of them in a strong trend is quite profitable, just look at any chart with them on it and you should see what I am talking about
-the 35 ema is a very close substitute for the 1 hour 10 ema, I use this rather than an MTF ma indi as it is cleaner on the charts,
-the 50 ema determines the overall trend for for me.

There are 2 basic trades to this method:

1. the bounce or dead end into the 5/10 emas so if price is going up you are looking for a down candle to be rejected off either the 5 or 10 ema, you could also use an up candle that was rejected off of the 5 or 10, but doing so increases the size of your stop. For these trades to be valid all the mas have to be pretty much parallel to one another.

2. the rejection of the 35 or 50 and preferably the macd signal line heading in the direction of the trade you are going to take, depending on how far apart the mas are spread I may consider taking these as touch trades.

A lot of trading for me is about where I can put my stop and how I control my risk, for 5 bounces the stop is just the other side of the 10 and for 10 bounce trades I like to put my stop at the 35, however if the 35 is too far away I will either avoid the trade or give it a really short leash of only a few pips. For trades taken off of the 35 the stop is the 50 and if the trade is off of the 50 the stop is 5 pips on the other side of the 50. I trade using 2% risk.

I follow 6 pairs (gu, ej, eu, au, eg, uc) so there is always something to trade. my goal is to net 150 pips per week, I don't care about % growth as I take most of my gains out and put it elsewhere so I don't want to hear the BS about % growth pips are what matter to me.

I will post some charts later on.

Best of luck with the new approach Endroute

Very much looking forward to your Journal Endroute.

Good Luck and may you have a prosperous 2011

Bluesteele

Endroute,
Just found your journal. This is relevant to the CHOROS thread so I am following....

Kostas

I think he may have forgotten he started it

Good Luck with your new journal. yes it is hard to find our way with all the information out there. To finally come to grips with the idea that a trully winning system is more of US gathering bits and pieces and finnally having the understanding to put them into a usable ,working idea for our own personality is a worthy goal.

Systems using the fast MA's are normally some of the better ones out there as they follow price quicklly and allow you to join a trend before it ends. They have been used succesfully on all time frames. Entries on 15 then trade management on hrly are some really good ones.

Trade well and stick to your rules and the rest will follow.

The best to you Ken

booking seat http://www.smiley-faces.org/smiley-f...ce-popcorn.gif

this was pretty much DOA, not because the system doesn't work but because I found a better way to trade. Long story short a good friend of my sent me his trading plan to look at that was based on a number of things we had worked on together but was using the 4hr charts as opposed to the 5/15 min charts I had always gravitated towards. Reading this created one of those aha moments caused me to actually put the 4hr charts up and actually trade from them for a while. I know some of your are saying well you should have done this from the get go, and maybe you are right but trading the smaller time frames has been very good to me, and it is hard to move away from what works to try something else.

Going to the 4hr charts required some adjustments to my sl and my trade size. For trading the 4hr charts I use the 8 ema the 20 sma, and some pa and thats it. On the trade management side I am using 1% risk and I am setting the trade to BE after 3 bars or so and then just letting the trade either run to 100 + pips or stopping me out at BE @ 100 pips I will move my stop to to capture my risk for a 1:1 trade at wost case and then let the trade continue on, my stop is typically 25 pips. The great thing about this is that I am now trading 2-4 hours per week instead of 2-4 hours per day with better overall results.

Hi Endroute,

What are the general rules of the system?

Thanks

I've had a million "aha" moments that have caused either a small adjustment or a paradigm shift in my trading approach over the last 20 odd months. Given how the markets evolve and change over time, I expect this to be a consistent theme.

For one, i'd still be interested in what you are doing, if you are still interested in showing us.

I guess we are having different sorts of ah ha moments

Ok on to the trading.
Here is a trade that I took earlier in the week that I am still in atm. The entry is based on a limit order near the bottom the doji identified on this chart with a red arrow. I left the SL at BE after the close of the bullish candle that crossed and closed above the 8ema. I took the trade because it fit nicely within my trading guidelines which are as follows

1. a trend must be in place as defined by the 8ema / 20sma they must be parrallel or close to it.
2. the candle needs to bounce off of the 8ema and close above/below it depending on trend direction, trades are always taken at the close of the candle/bar.
3. if there is a doji that forms that either crosses the 8ema or near it, I know near is pretty subjective but so is trading, and there is a trend in place place a limit order near the top/bottom of the doji in the direction of the trend. I typically place the limit order 5 pips from the top/bottom of the doji. These trades don't always get filled but
4. Dont trade in areas of congestion and if your dumb enough to make sure your trade is at least at the top/bottom of the range

To everyone reading this looking for the holly grail, it does not exist and quit looking, if you are looking for something to land you instant riches this is not it, and most of all remember that some trades will work and some will not and if you can't handle that find something else to do.

usdchf trade update trade closed at .9747 for a 201 pip gain. I am going to probably trade more with just setting the stop to BE and not moving it until the trade is closed

Thanks Endroute.
Nice and simple! So in this trade was a SL of 25p enough (since it seems price retraced for a couple bars and gave a pinbar before going upwards)?

Trying to understand your trade better I put it on my MT4 and with this broker (FXPro, GMT+2) the signals look better and the entries appear more accurate. I know that GMT+2 is used by most traders, so maybe you could find some use for it.

This is one of the crappy things about fx is that charts between brokers are different and it sometimes makes for a difficult apples to apples comparison, but yes in this trade I came very close to getting stopped out I entered at .9544 and the the trade went down to .9523 before moving forward.

I agree I like your charts a lot better than mine, I use an alpari US demo account for the charting since I trade with oanda and their charts suck. I will post charts as I take trades

Cheers man, very nice and simple.

True about aha moments. Being a relative newbie, most of mine have been doh moments more than aha moments. As in "doh, can't believe I never figured that out earlier!"

Hi, I took this trade this morning which so far has progressed nicely. I would like to have your comments please. Could you please tell me which pairs are you looking for your trades?

Thank you

Fantastic setup on the Euro, good trade. 8 ema is still headed down, a doji right near the 8 a nice clean setup. Enjoy those 100 pips. I follow the usdchf, gbpusd, eurjpy, audusd, eurusd, usdcad, eurgbp, usdjpy.

long on usdchf @ 9715, this was at the bottom of the doji that closed just above the 8ema in a strong uptrend. Now it is just a waiting game to see ft I get stopped out or the trade turns into something. If I get stopped out out I will simply look for a new seat on the bus, if the trade goes in my favor I will set the trade to BE after the next couple of candles and let the trade go.

I can relate I have had a fair number of those too, though my doh moments are more like I can't believe I just did that even through everything I know says I should not have. How is your trading going these days?