Extracted Thread (per thread starter's request)

Just a few thoughts, whipsaws are inevitable and are going to happen, get that ingrained in your head now because it makes things that much easier to swallow when it happens. How you minimize the damage is what's important. As forexhard has mentioned before, he can tolerate up to 4 reversals by increasing his lots accordingly to recoup any losses on his trades. Now before anyone goes nuts on me, this is not recommended unless you have the proper funding in your account and are well prepared for any worst case scenarios (which means don't attempt this with money you cannot afford to lose!).

Now you do not have to go to extremes (as some people will) by using a full martingale approach. For example, if you started out the first trade with 1 lot and were stopped out, go ahead and use maybe 1.2 lots on the next one. You may not recoup everything you lost on the previous trade, but you'll gain more back than just staying with 1 lot.

For example, a great CZ formed and if it whipsaws you have your stoploss calculated at 20 pips. Let's say your first trade stopped out at 20 pips X 1 lot, you would've lost $200.00. Now let's say another trade opportunity has popped up on the opposite side of the CZ and you enter the next trade at 1.5 lots. Here the real breakout occurs and you close out the trade at +20 pips.

Now let's do the basic math here (spreads not included). If you would've stuck with the same 1 lot again on the second entry you would've earned back your $200.00 and be even for the day. By increasing to 1.5 lots, you have now made $300.00 on the breakout and are now +$100.00 instead of being BE for the day. So in recap you've banked a total of "0" pips for the day (-20 + 20), but earned $100.00.

Now, if you are using extremely tight CZ's as forexhard has highly suggested over and over again, the odds of running into 4 reversals is going to be very rare, if at all (and I'm sure forexhard will attest to this).

There are other ways to tackle minimizing losses, but unless forexhard gives the okay, I won't post anything here as they are very different from the original strategy.

Im well aware of Martingale type trading. I know that post is not meant directly for me.

Whipsaws are fine but my point was I wouldn't trade over GDP, especially today, it had the potential to be quite volatile. My price gapped down anyhow as it broke short on the numbers. My spread was also 10 pips at that point in time. Not for me, in that instance.

Daz.

Watching this one. Closed earlier posted EU trade for 9 pips.

Mr. Reed, I don't usually watch U/CAD, but your post got me curious. Were you watching this zone come and go, or was it gone by the time you checked in?

After having read the thread in about 18 hours I'm still getting to know things. Since I'm not using the indi I make my own artifacts and then try to find the most recent valid CZs. So on this pair where I have the current long green box I am watching for a break out. I know the actual CZ may have already been past up but price action still seems to be in the range of the CZ. Anyway watching and I'm glad to have spoken to the master himself directly. I am honored.

I admit I look at other threads to get the lay of the land. Most have little to offer. I had seen this thread numerous times and I don't know why but I passed it up. Yesterday I opened it up and after the first 5 posts I couldn't stop reading. Like I said before I trade supply and demand with no indicators and have done well with it but sometimes when price enters into a supply or demand area and can't decide which way to go it can be difficult to trade out of the area. This method has provided me an answer. Looking forward to posting more FH.

Just spent about 9 hour reading the whole thread
Will start playing with it

Great Job and alot of hard work here
Cheers!

Wow, that's lot of time. Make sure to tell what's the results!

UJ last night +5pips left a lot on the table but that is ok
I have the majors all set waiting for signals

Looking back at my charts this looks promising

Thanks to all for the hard work here

Does anyone have the mql4 code and preferably where to insert it for:

a. When a box is formed for the first time.

b. When the buffer is breached for the first time.
The magnificent squalou indicator will paint an arrow at the buffer line when you set the MinBarsClosedOutsideBO to zero (0) but the indicator gives no alert then.

Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post direct.

Catch a fallen star and put it in your pocket never let it get away.... catch a fallen star and put it in your pocket save it for a rainy day.

http://i45.tinypic.com/2jb7d42.gif

Start with a small lot but still looking good so far. Hoping for a larger move later during US Session. Either Up or down. Hopefully we are all gonna be ready.

Cheers

Hey FH, the trades worked out great! I got 5 pips on the long for GBP/USD and 20 pips on the USD/CAD. I am working towards improving my discipline and not overtrading. This strategy definitely helps with that. Thanks again for this great strategy.

PR

Wow! The thread has gotten a lot more active these days. Great to see all this positive discussions.

Dryclean, welcome to Stairsteps. Your fame precedes you. Glad to have you around.

Yeah, we've had more than our share of troublemakers, that's for sure. If being copycatted and flamed and trolled are a sign of success, then Stairsteps is the most successful system ever developed here at the FF!

I agree though, it seems like that we've come through some sort of barrier where the good guys finally get to post and participate. I can only hope that it stays this way...

Hi there!

First I would like to thank FH for kindly sharing your knowledge. SQ for the indi, mer for those martingale ideias, alien frog for your wise interventions all those other who made this thread a better source of knowledge.

Now about me: I started reading this thread about a week ago, and having no live trading knowledge but having been reading for about 3 years (started with No Brainer wich taught me quite a lot, then other famous threads followed), I can honestly say that this thread had an imense appeal for me, it's simplicity being it's most remarcable characteristic (it's soo easy it's hard).

Having finished reading the thread completly (can you say toothpaste eyes?) I started my week long manual CZ drawing drill about 1 hour ago.

I have 2 questions for forexhard:
1 - In ancient times (lol) you advised some noob to draw 100 CZ's and place 20 trades on demo before prociding. I'm going to take this advice, but I wonder what you mean by drawing 100 CZ's. I mean, the way I'm doing the manual CZ drawing drill is draw an 30x30 CZ and then put it and the end of my demo charts (see the charts below to see what I mean), kinda like my box is a pac man eating candles on the charts.

2 - My box is 30x30, but by moving it thru past data, I detected some very good tradable situations where the box was not enterely "full" before the BO ocured. My question is, using manual CZ's how many candles should I want to be inside as a minimum to consider it a good set-up?

Thanks a lot in advance, have a nice one!

Welcome, drgdrg. I may be in Las Vegas at the moment, but back in the winter of 2006 I spent about 100 days in Portugal. Beautiful place. I'd love to see it again some day.

Regarding your questions, what I will say is that you are jumping in too soon with them. For now the best thing you can do is pick a few pairs, draw your boxes on them, and watch them very closely for the next few weeks. Whether you even take any trades or not is up to you. What is most important is that you begin to take notice of the types of S&R zones the boxes pick out. After a while you will start to predict the zones before the boxes do. That is the moment to look for, when you know a pairs behavior so well that you can regularly predict when a CZ will form. This is basically what I was doing all the way back in Post #8 on the very first page. I always try to lead by example.

Nothing will serve you better at this early stage than a few weeks of staring at the charts and ignoring your family. When you start dreaming of CZ's and forgetting your kids' names, come on back!

Thanks for the warm welcome! Yes Portugal has some very beautiful places, it's worth a repeated visit : ) .

Ok, I will take my candle eating box and apply it to GBP/USD (if you like that one I'm sure that can only be a good thing), EUR/JPY, EUR/USD and GBP/JPY. For the next 3 weeks I won't place any trades (I placed that one above and another one on EUR/JPY while I was waiting for your reply) because the only thing that would imply was setting the buffer and wait for the double candle consecutive close outside of it, and I was only gonna put the SL on the opposing side of the CZ and make the TP=SL, soo it's not like I'm losing anything by not putting on any trades now.

One thing I can't quite understand and that's really making me curious is what purpose the longer artifact serves... I will keep using it out of discipline, because my only guess is that maybe it has to do with past S/R and PA having an impact on CZ formation (when our square pac-man stays still), but I don't really know.

Thanks again for everything, have a nice day!

Hey guys, firstly just wanted to introduce myself and say what an interesting system this is. I've been fiddling around with the indicator all week and reading through the thread slowly but surely and I must say this system is excellent!

Personally I've traded the one hour charts as I find I don't perform as well on the lower timeframes and for me, and it is only my personal opinion and style, it just feels a lot simpler having less bars on the chart.

One thing I have noticed since I switched though is when the indicator pierces the box line, no alarm sounds? All my settings seem to be in order and alarm signal is set to true, bars to close outside of box is set to zero.

I tend to set a pending order 5 pips outside the box and it seems to be working well so far. Averaging just over one box a week and 100+ pips for buy and sell in the stats window for the pairs I'm using.

Hope people have been earning/learning!

You are too kind ... hope I can contribute

Thanks
DC

Hi FXH,
Lovin your style, your almost fatherly approach reminds me of my first chief dealer. I'll keep my first post fairly short as I havn't followed your full instructions (I'm only up to page 67) but I just wanted to check that I had absorbed the correct message as it seems too simple (I know, I know 'So simple it's hard) and almost at odds with how I've been mentored on S/R levels.
30min Cable chart attached, does it look like I'm on the right track?

If so I'll continue to page 160, if not I think I'd best start over.