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  • #3,401
  • Mar 11, 2011 9:05am Mar 11, 2011 9:05am
Quoting lovejoy80
An example of why, to be truly successfull at touch trading IMO you NEED to know what else is going on in the market and understand how 'we' react to certain events.

By itself this was a good technical setup (1st time back to a daily PPZ, BRN, 50% retracement confluence) and if I was only watching this one pair and making a decision whether to trade it on the technical setup on this pair alone I would have taken this trade...but there were signs from elsewhere on both FX pairs and other correlated assets and in the news (the unfortunate disaster...
On my pricefeed I got a 2-day PB on monday after that price kept consolidating between the low and the left eye of that 2D-PB. Yesterday price broke out of this range from the downside and validating that 2D-PB via a daily DBHLC. I wanted to enter on a pullback, there were a few keylevels to consider to look for a sell PA: 1. the low of the 2D-PB 2. previous daily bar low of the DBHLC 3. the BRN @ 11500 or 4. the left eye of the 2D-PB. Zooming into the lower TF to fine tune my entry I finally spotted a valid sell trigger on the 30m-TF right @ BRN 11500 via a nice BEOB. Intraday targets are the floorpivotpoints S1,S2 and S3. Notice how nicely price reacts @ these floorpivotpoints.
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Pipcrawler
  • #3,402
  • Mar 11, 2011 9:35am Mar 11, 2011 9:35am
Quoting squeezy
im good LJ, trading in a relaxed manner
nice yen trades, knew ull be in some of them....kudos



went short only cadjpy on break of beob as it was telling the best story imho
if u check, uj, cadj & chfj were at double tops but wasnt my style to short based on that alone but we all know what happens at double tops/bottoms...its either a bounce or break ( hmmm! isnt that the same concept of s/r?)
aside yen, been holding oil, anzd and some others for a while so just taking it easy (looking for ways too tighten my trades)
anyways
Trading relaxed is the only way to trade

I was short form the daily BEOB on AJ and CJ...they were telling a story and when I got the unforunate fundamental confluence I just loaded up more.

Nice top picking on oil, I dont normally trade oil directly but wasnt paying attention to it or could have used that to pick the bottom area on UC...missed opportunity in an otherwsie slow week.


  • #3,403
  • Mar 11, 2011 9:40am Mar 11, 2011 9:40am
Quoting xmzhang
On my pricefeed I got a 2-day PB on monday after that price kept consolidating between the low and the left eye of that 2D-PB. Yesterday price broke out of this range from the downside and validating that 2D-PB via a daily DBHLC. I wanted to enter on a pullback, there were a few keylevels to consider to look for a sell PA: 1. the low of the 2D-PB 2. previous daily bar low of the DBHLC 3. the BRN @ 11500 or 4. the left eye of the 2D-PB. Zooming into the lower TF to fine tune my entry I finally spotted a valid sell trigger on the 30m-TF right @ BRN...
Nice entry, I was very close of selling EJ this moring at the 115 RN but chose to add to CJ and AJ trades instead.

I investigated floor pivots a long time ago and found them useful to an extent as confluence on lower TF trading, but they just weren't for me.

Thats one of the beauties of trading there are countless methods, systems, techniques to suit different personalities, risk appetite , mind set etc
  • #3,404
  • Mar 11, 2011 11:26am Mar 11, 2011 11:26am
Took another loss here on EU. Not sure of the reasons why this one failed. Maybe i should not be taking trades this late on a friday? I can see on the usdx that the dollar was very week. There was trendline fib and daily ppz confluence. Had a 30 pip stop.
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  • #3,405
  • Mar 11, 2011 11:54am Mar 11, 2011 11:54am
Quoting Majestic12
Took another loss here on EU. Not sure of the reasons why this one failed. Maybe i should not be taking trades this late on a friday? I can see on the usdx that the dollar was very week. There was trendline fib and daily ppz confluence. Had a 30 pip stop.
Yea, late on Fridays is often profit taking and very thin market.

I am pretty much done on Fridays after about 9 AM NY time. Not sure if this is the correct strategy all the time, but I have seen a lot of nice set ups fail on Friday afternoon, due to nothing more than profit taking.
  • #3,406
  • Mar 11, 2011 12:08pm Mar 11, 2011 12:08pm
Quoting Majestic12
Took another loss here on EU. Not sure of the reasons why this one failed. Maybe i should not be taking trades this late on a friday? I can see on the usdx that the dollar was very week. There was trendline fib and daily ppz confluence. Had a 30 pip stop.
Yeah I woldnt recommend taking setups at that time of day on Friday, I normally stop trading about 9-10 EST and definitely wouldnt take a touch trade at this time as wouldnt want to leave a trade like this open over the weekend and most of the times there are limied moves in NY PM session.
  • #3,407
  • Mar 11, 2011 12:25pm Mar 11, 2011 12:25pm
Quoting Majestic12
Took another loss here on EU. Not sure of the reasons why this one failed. Maybe i should not be taking trades this late on a friday? I can see on the usdx that the dollar was very week. There was trendline fib and daily ppz confluence. Had a 30 pip stop.
I liked that one too, but I don't trade late either. Would you guys say, that this hit the FTA? Generally overly conservative with the FTAs, but this one seems good, right? Thanks

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  • #3,408
  • Mar 11, 2011 1:15pm Mar 11, 2011 1:15pm
I took the same loss. It's Friday, Japan news is impacting the markets, addition to shock from yesterday's move.

It was a good setup in my book. Don't focus too much on the what and why, as long as there were no glaring red flags for the trade.

Quoting Majestic12
Took another loss here on EU. Not sure of the reasons why this one failed. Maybe i should not be taking trades this late on a friday? I can see on the usdx that the dollar was very week. There was trendline fib and daily ppz confluence. Had a 30 pip stop.
  • #3,409
  • Mar 11, 2011 1:29pm Mar 11, 2011 1:29pm
Hi Sam, I think in this case the glaring red flag was the time of the setup. As other posters have stated the Friday factor is real and markets can act more unpredictably after noon ny time. Also as LJ has stated its risky to hold these types of trades over the weekend.

I'm putting it in my Cardinal Rules of Trading - no more trades late on a friday!

GL
  • #3,410
  • Mar 11, 2011 5:11pm Mar 11, 2011 5:11pm
Quoting Jlr
I liked that one too, but I don't trade late either. Would you guys say, that this hit the FTA? Generally overly conservative with the FTAs, but this one seems good, right? Thanks

Attachment
Not quite sure where you were looking at as you fibs aren't drawn from the swing low. I think this was the technical setup.
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  • #3,411
  • Mar 11, 2011 5:20pm Mar 11, 2011 5:20pm
Quoting sam0182
I took the same loss. It's Friday, Japan news is impacting the markets, addition to shock from yesterday's move.

It was a good setup in my book. Don't focus too much on the what and why, as long as there were no glaring red flags for the trade.
It was a good intraday technical setup...why do I say intraday because its off a small intraday swing not a big daily swing and thus for this type of setup to work out you need the same continued momentum and and sentiment that caused the recent down move.

Everyone's red flags for not taking a touch trade will be different, some just consider the technical setup on the pair in question which is where everyone starts off...I go much further than that and consider other factors which I believe can help minimise losses from touch trades whilst providing extra confluence to identify the relly high probability setups. Finding what works for you and fits in with your personaility and risk appetite is the important thing IMO.

I will generally wave more red flags at setups than most but thats what works for me and this was definitely a red flag setup for me.

  • #3,412
  • Mar 11, 2011 6:51pm Mar 11, 2011 6:51pm
Quoting lovejoy80
It was a good intraday technical setup...

Quoting lovejoy80
Everyone's red flags for not taking a touch trade will be different, some just consider the technical setup on the pair in question which is where everyone starts off...
Quoting lovejoy80
Finding what works for you and fits in with your personality and risk appetite is the important thing IMO.
The above quotes are what I was going for. Personally, my focus now is based upon taking my setups consistently as I see them...ie, overcoming psyc issues associated with over thinking trades, finding reasons (red flags) to invalidate otherwise sound technical setups, etc. Once mastered, I’ll be consistently (monthly) net positive.

Of course, I can understand if Majestic is seeking further clarification and/or reasoning. I feel I’m in this grey zone right now where further clarification is almost the enemy...second guessing, I loathe it. And then the witch hunting after a SL hit, why did this happen, etc...I feel this takes a toll on my psyc.

Question for you LJ - if you look from every possible angle at your recent trades, there would always be at least one or two reasons as to not take the trade, correct? Meaning, isn't there always SOME reason to stay out of a trade? Thus, it's an act of outweighing the cons with pros?

This is the definition of discretionary trading, I suppose. And quality discretionary decisions is correlated directly with screen time.

Thoughts?

I appreciate your posts, charts and insight LJ. Have a good weekend!
  • #3,413
  • Mar 12, 2011 12:58pm Mar 12, 2011 12:58pm
Quoting lovejoy80
Not quite sure where you were looking at as you fibs aren't drawn from the swing low. I think this was the technical setup.
Oopsy, didn't redraw when it made that new low. I see the swing you use too, I think that works better as well.
Do you think the 1.3831 area would of been a reasonable fta? I get so many breakevens, where my fta is hit, and then I'm taken out... I think I always am a bit conservative. Looking at your chart, would the 1.38 rn be your fta?
  • #3,414
  • Mar 13, 2011 9:58am Mar 13, 2011 9:58am
Quoting sam0182
The above quotes are what I was going for. Personally, my focus now is based upon taking my setups consistently as I see them...ie, overcoming psyc issues associated with over thinking trades, finding reasons (red flags) to invalidate otherwise sound technical setups, etc. Once mastered, I’ll be consistently (monthly) net positive.

[color=black][font=Verdana]Of course, I can understand if Majestic is seeking further clarification and/or reasoning. I feel I’m in this grey zone right now where further clarification...

I definitely agree, adding a discretion element to your technical setup is not easy as it is very easy to overcomplicate things or let your minf effect your decision making process..say you decide not to take a perfectly good technical setup due to some discretionary reason and because your mind effected your decision making process and that technical trade worked out perfectly...that is something that is seriously frustrating and can really affect you mindset going forward.

Personally I think the best way to start touch trading is to treat it as a mechanical system i.e. have a set of written rules as to what constitutes a good tradable setup, also important is to apply the same rigid rules (e.g. take half profit at FTA and move SL to BE) to your trade management process, how you manage a trade is often much more important than the entry setup IMO.

Once you get into the swing of regularly taking setups in accordance with your rules and applying the rigid trade management then your mindset and emotions become no issue as you are then taking trades without even a second thought as you have trained yourself into knowing what your rules are inside out...i.e. it has become second nature to you.

I, of course have a discretionary element to my touch trading, I broadly use the following as a means to potentially provide me with extra information about a particular setup:

- FX correlations
- Intermarket correlations
- Risk sentiment
- News & Fundies

I then attempt to interpret this information and decide whether it is providing anything useful, does it support my particular setup or does is raise some doubts.

For this extra information to cause me to not take a particular setup it would need to be quite substantial i.e. everything else really has to be glaring at me and telling me the touch trade setup actually has a lower probability of shooting off than it looks on paper, so it's not just one peice of information that needs to tell me this for me not to take a touch trade it's everything as a whole i.e. the whole picture together.

Of course sometimed the information is useless, sometimes it provides even more certainty to the setup and sometimes is screaming at me not to take it...and sometimes I get it completely wrong!

So for example I think from memory there there were about 5 touch trade setups that I either did or would have taken last week (I missed a couple and one missed my order by few pips)...so you can see I am picky but not so picky I only take one trade every full moon lol!

But you are correct IMO, adding a discretionary element is not easy, takes time to master and workout what suits you and is directly correlated with the amount of chart time.

As mentioned above, I would definitely recommend that people treat touch trading like a mechnical system first as this will provide a lot of confidence and most importantly will help conquer any mindset issues before moving onto adding discretionary elements to their trading.

  • #3,415
  • Mar 13, 2011 3:17pm Mar 13, 2011 3:17pm
Quoting Jlr
Oopsy, didn't redraw when it made that new low. I see the swing you use too, I think that works better as well.
Do you think the 1.3831 area would of been a reasonable fta? I get so many breakevens, where my fta is hit, and then I'm taken out... I think I always am a bit conservative. Looking at your chart, would the 1.38 rn be your fta?
Yeah I would say 1.3830-35 would be a reasonable FTA and where I would have been looking to get to BE if I had taken this setup. It didn't get there so would go down as a failed technical setup.

What might help is to keep a log...keep pictures of all your setups and what you did and why, not down how managing the exit would have affected the trades, then you can build up a picture of what exit method might work best e.g. take half profit at FTA or if with higher TF trend move SL to BE at FTA etc.
  • #3,416
  • Mar 17, 2011 10:56am Mar 17, 2011 10:56am
Hey LoveJoy, hope you are doing good.

I was curious as to how you were handling the very volatile market conditions due to the horrible situation in Japan.

Have you taken some trades? Said "to hell with this" and stayed away?

I had to ask, curousity got the best of me.
  • #3,417
  • Mar 17, 2011 11:08am Mar 17, 2011 11:08am
Quoting unlv_tj
Hey LoveJoy, hope you are doing good.

I was curious as to how you were handling the very volatile market conditions due to the horrible situation in Japan.

Have you taken some trades? Said "to hell with this" and stayed away?

I had to ask, curousity got the best of me.
Hi,

There have been a few nice setups this week on the USD pairs...of course I'm not touching the CHF and JPY pairs at the moment what with the extreme volatility and uncertainty...I'm not trading for the rest of this week after the moves last night too but earlier in the week there were some nice touch trade setups.

Been struggling with Flu most of the week so lots of sleeping and missed some of the nice setups but got some others.

What about yourself?
  • #3,418
  • Mar 17, 2011 11:21am Mar 17, 2011 11:21am
Thanks for the above reply LJ, that was a great write-up.
  • #3,419
  • Mar 17, 2011 1:51pm Mar 17, 2011 1:51pm
Hey LJ. Thought i would let you know that i ahve started my own journal of trades. A lot of them will be based on what i have learned from this thread so it would be great if you could take a look now and then. I will still be posting plenty of charts and questions in this thread as they arise though.

My initial target is to make 4R a month trading (hopefully) high probability setups and taking quick profits as i'm not very good at holding on for the big winners (i hope i will improve when i start taking setups with better potential).

I Wasn't around to trade Monday or Tuesday but i took a quick oil trade yesterday and UCAD today and both were winners so its a good start. The CAD wasn't at a clear recent daily level but had a huge amount of other confluence and i though it was good for a quick move.

I think the biggest challenge will be sticking to the high quality setups and not overtrading which has always killed me in the past. As you say the methods are the easy part, its mastering the self that sets the tone for successful trading. I know having a journal helps me with these mental issues so hopefully i can start being profitable in these coming months.

I always eat raw garlic when i have flu! disgusting but it seems to work. Hope you feel better soon.
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  • #3,420
  • Mar 17, 2011 2:32pm Mar 17, 2011 2:32pm
Quoting lovejoy80
Hi,

There have been a few nice setups this week on the USD pairs...of course I'm not touching the CHF and JPY pairs at the moment what with the extreme volatility and uncertainty...I'm not trading for the rest of this week after the moves last night too but earlier in the week there were some nice touch trade setups.

Been struggling with Flu most of the week so lots of sleeping and missed some of the nice setups but got some others.

What about yourself?
I went long on the daily BUOB on the GBPUSD on Monday, then short the EURUSD on the IPB (inverted Pin Bar) on Tuesday. So two winning trades and added to my account.

I didn't see any true touch trades, maybe I over looked them.

I stayed the heck away from the JPY, that thing has been a monster.

And I 2nd the notion for raw garlic. It might burn, eat it with something else, but that stuff is pretty tough.
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