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  • #581
  • Feb 11, 2013 9:19am Feb 11, 2013 9:19am
Quoting Olarion1975
Ok, thank you. And what ATR will you use for the weekly open and close? Also the 4week ATR smoothed with the 4EMA?
As I generally trade the Weekly open and close as intraday levels I use the smaller stop based off the Daily ATR.
  • #582
  • Feb 11, 2013 9:28am Feb 11, 2013 9:28am
Quoting square1
Thanks for the response. You are very right. I should have taken the long trade at those weekly levels.
Square 1 here is a chart from today EU. I have a green line at the London open price. Notice price went directly to the previous week close. This is what caused the support that you are describing. The purple line is the privious week close. Based on your charts your broker is GMT+2 therefore 10:00AM on your chart is London open currently. I have labeled the LO on the chart I am posting. I have not traded EU for almost two weeks. It looks as though it is starting to behave again though. I will post my yen trades.
Attached Image (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: eu today.jpg Size: 80 KB
  • #583
  • Feb 11, 2013 9:43am Feb 11, 2013 9:43am
Here are my trades from today. I entered UJ and GU at almost the same time. GU was a fast loser so I entered a pending for EJ and went to sleep. UJ and EJ both worked nicely for a little over 2R each. One R lost obviously on GU. I don't like to have more than two trades open at a time.

The loser:
Attached Image (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: gu today.jpg Size: 70 KB


The winners:
Attached Image (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: ej today.jpg Size: 78 KB


Attached Image (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: uj today.jpg Size: 77 KB
  • #584
  • Feb 11, 2013 9:46am Feb 11, 2013 9:46am
Quoting Seneca pilot
Square 1 here is a chart from today EU. I have a green line at the London open price. Notice price went directly to the previous week close. This is what caused the support that you are describing. The purple line is the privious week close. Based on your charts your broker is GMT+2 therefore 10:00AM on your chart is London open currently. I have labeled the LO on the chart I am posting. I have not traded EU for almost two weeks. It looks as though it is starting to behave again though. I will post my yen trades.
I see. thanks, but...that doesn't obey your method of wating for two candles to open and close away from the daily open price before you make an entry.
  • #585
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:02am Feb 11, 2013 10:02am
Quoting Seneca pilot
Here are my trades from today. I entered UJ and GU at almost the same time. GU was a fast loser so I entered a pending for EJ and went to sleep. UJ and EJ both worked nicely for a little over 2R each. One R lost obviously on GU. I don't like to have more than two trades open at a time.

The loser:
Attachment

The winners:
Attachment

Attachment
  • #586
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:11am Feb 11, 2013 10:11am
Now the two questions I was asked by PM.

1) How do you set OCO with Oanda. Well you can't. I use another broker. I am paranoid about my main account information getting out on a public forum so I have been mirroring my trades on my Oanda test account. I am sorry if this has caused any confusion.

2) This is the question I wanted to have everyone see. The question was "Right on. So the only lines you use on your chart are the daily high/low, daily open, and weekly high/low? Are you honestly able to make a good living using only those?"

With the possible exception of some session close scalps, yes those are exactly the levels I use and yes you can make a handsome living trading them. I have tried to demonstrate with the thread that day trading doesn't necessarily involve taking lots of trades off a very short term chart. I don't think in the month plus that this thread has been going I have shown a day where I took more than three trades. Most days I take two, maybe three trades. Ocasionally I will have to take four if my first trades are losers and I have to reverse. Last night was a good example. I took the first two trades off the daily open and the GU trade stopped out with no return for a reentry. I therefore had three trades as I entered EJ after the GU stopout. Successful trading in my opinion boils down to locating a few very high probability areas where you want to trade and ignoring the rest of the chart. If I were any good at all in holding trades I could probably make just as much taking only two or three trades a week. They key to this is capitalization. I have an account that has a 2xx,xxx balance so four or five percent per week is plenty. You cannot do what I do with a twenty thousand dollar account.

I am torn with what to do. I have been considering opening a trade explorer and linking it to my test account. I am a little paranoid about account info being on a public forum but the balance on that account is small and it is not the broker I have my main accounts with. I think with a TE I can show the strength and returns of the method but I don't want to have a signal service here. I don't know what I want to do. A TE will only show that I can trade my method. It wouldn't really help any of you but it would show the gains possible while only taking a few trades a day. I am thinking about the next move for the thread.
  • #587
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:13am Feb 11, 2013 10:13am
Quoting square1
I see. thanks, but...that doesn't obey your method of wating for two candles to open and close away from the daily open price before you make an entry.
That only applies to trading off the daily open price. I will take a trade off a daily high or low and a weekly level on the first candle of the day if that is when it is triggered.
  • #588
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:14am Feb 11, 2013 10:14am
Back later guys. Have some business with the new house.
  • #589
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:29am Feb 11, 2013 10:29am
Quoting square1
I see. thanks, but...that doesn't obey your method of wating for two candles to open and close away from the daily open price before you make an entry.
As I see it, there are more than two full M15 candles on every chart before the entry...so everything according to the rules.
  • #590
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:31am Feb 11, 2013 10:31am
Quoting Seneca pilot
They key to this is capitalization. I have an account that has a 2xx,xxx balance so four or five percent per week is plenty. You cannot do what I do with a twenty thousand dollar account.
You had hooked some of us, now you are throwing us off your boat back into the waters. IMHO, I think your method can even be traded with a $5K A/C as long as one knows the levels he can place his trades at and is disciplined with his daily target. I have to mention that one with that A/C cannot afford the luxury of your resting hrs.
  • #591
  • Edited 11:19am Feb 11, 2013 11:03am | Edited 11:19am
Quoting square1
You had hooked some of us, now you are throwing us off your boat back into the waters. IMHO, I think your method can even be traded with a $5K A/C as long as one knows the levels he can place his trades at and is disciplined with his daily target. I have to mention that one with that A/C cannot afford the luxury of your resting hrs.
You can trade the method with any size account. What I am saying is you need a large account to make a living. I could never pay my bills with the gains from a 5K account. You can build that 5K account into one that will pay your bills though in a few short years. Three to five percent gains per week is a massive return and compounds quickly. If anyone ever tells you that you can make forty or fifty percent a week or that you can double your account in a month run away as fast as you can.

Edit: how do you think I built the big account :-)
  • #592
  • Edited 12:22pm Feb 11, 2013 12:07pm | Edited 12:22pm
Regarding your last EJ winner I have a question regarding the SL and TP:

The ATR(5) on Oanda today of EJ is 182 pips. The EMA(5) of the ATR(5) is about 204 pips.
So 20% would be a SL of around 40 pips, 25% would be around 50 pips.
As I see on your chart you gained around 75 pips for this EJ trade.

So 2R would be a gain of 80 to 100 pips. Can you guide me to my error in reasoning?
  • #593
  • Feb 11, 2013 1:53pm Feb 11, 2013 1:53pm
Quoting Olarion1975
Regarding your last EJ winner I have a question regarding the SL and TP:

The ATR(5) on Oanda today of EJ is 182 pips. The EMA(5) of the ATR(5) is about 204 pips.
So 20% would be a SL of around 40 pips, 25% would be around 50 pips.
As I see on your chart you gained around 75 pips for this EJ trade.

So 2R would be a gain of 80 to 100 pips. Can you guide me to my error in reasoning?

71.2 pips. I took profit at 124.50. This is one of the discretionary things in my trading. I will vary the percentage between 15 and 25 %. I have seen over the years that thirty to thirty five pips is enough for the stop. Also as the volatility spiked a bit last week there is no reason to think that the huge ranges will continue. A more typical comfortable TP is in the 70 to 80 pip range on EJ. I don't want the readers here to get the impression that I am trading a system, there is discretion involved with a lot of my trading. I am almost certain to make the same entries every day but I change pairs when needed and have some flexibility with my stop sizes. When ranges compress I generally won't let the stops get too small and won't let them get too big when range expands. This is why I stress that people should do their own testing. So that they can learn the nuances of each pair.
  • #594
  • Feb 11, 2013 3:52pm Feb 11, 2013 3:52pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
When ranges compress I generally won't let the stops get too small and won't let them get too big when range expands. This is why I stress that people should do their own testing. So that they can learn the nuances of each pair.
On the general topic of choosing which pairs to focus on - are you looking at previous days behavior ie is pa respecting close/open/high levels nicely to decide which pair is most likely to continue bouncing nicely? Or are you looking at all your pairs near trade time and deciding just before which pair you are going to put your trade on?
  • #595
  • Feb 11, 2013 5:01pm Feb 11, 2013 5:01pm
Quoting stevexyg
On the general topic of choosing which pairs to focus on - are you looking at previous days behavior ie is pa respecting close/open/high levels nicely to decide which pair is most likely to continue bouncing nicely? Or are you looking at all your pairs near trade time and deciding just before which pair you are going to put your trade on?
This is where macro factors come into play a little. For the last two weeks the yen has been dragging all the other pairs around a little. The japanese and the chinese have been using the euro and to a lesser degree the pound to achieve their goals. This has caused the dollar pairs to blow through their levels pretty regularly. Last night for example I would have been better off to trade GJ instead of GU would have saved me the stop out. This will end and the majors will get back to driving the bus but for now the yen pairs are behaving better. The decision to switch back to the majors will be made when the yen pairs start to miss and blow through levels again and the majors get back to respecting and hitting levels.

Look at the difference today between EU and EJ daily open trades. EU drawdown was 17 pips and EJ was only 8. As a percentage of the daily range of each pair that is a huge difference. Same with GU and GJ. GU blew through the open price and never looked back, no chance for a reentry. GJ drew down only about 17% and went on to make a great potential return. Finally UJ which for the last two years has been like watching paint dry drew down only about 5 pips and went on for 180 pips of potential profit. As long as this continues I will stick with it.

Each day I go back and look at every pair whether I traded it or not and check to see how the trades would have worked out. When I start to see patterns like the last two weeks I make changes. One day with a little tougher trading won't make me change but a pattern like the one I just described gets my attention and I make changes. I don't trade fundamentals but I do adjust to how they impact trading.

Hope it helps.
  • #596
  • Feb 11, 2013 9:43pm Feb 11, 2013 9:43pm
[quote=Seneca pilot;6436141].... I have an account that has a 2xx,xxx balance so four or five percent per week is plenty. You cannot do what I do with a twenty thousand dollar account....

./QUOTE]
Hey again,
4 to 5 % per week is plenty... 4 % of 200000 k is 8k... i think that would be plenty enough for anyone honestly, unless you are drinking coffee from a golden cup, enriched with golden coffee beans.. I wouldn't mind checking out a trade explorer, would be good to see which levels you take for my own research and would save you typing up more example posts here as well ...
josh
nollej is power..
  • #597
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:03pm Feb 11, 2013 10:03pm
[quote=nollej;6437596]
Quoting Seneca pilot
.... I have an account that has a 2xx,xxx balance so four or five percent per week is plenty. You cannot do what I do with a twenty thousand dollar account....

./QUOTE]
Hey again,
4 to 5 % per week is plenty... 4 % of 200000 k is 8k... i think that would be plenty enough for anyone honestly, unless you are drinking coffee from a golden cup, enriched with golden coffee beans.. I wouldn't mind checking out a trade explorer, would be good to see which levels you take for my own research and would save you typing up more...
I'm considering it. Would need to add a couple of hundred to the account to make the trade management realistic and I do other trades which I haven't touched on in the thread and I am not sure I want to make public. Not sure yet. You are right though it would make my life a little simpler.

Marry my wife then tell me how much is enough. I was just forced into buying another house.
  • #598
  • Feb 11, 2013 10:12pm Feb 11, 2013 10:12pm
[quote=Seneca pilot;6437621]
Quoting nollej

I'm considering it. Would need to add a couple of hundred to the account to make the trade management realistic and I do other trades which I haven't touched on in the thread and I am not sure I want to make public. Not sure yet. You are right though it would make my life a little simpler.

Marry my wife then tell me how much is enough. I was just forced into buying another house.
Well the choice is yours good sir, you have already done alot for us, but hey whats a couple of hundred to throw into the account, pennies to you
Lol ohh well just think of it as a positive investment, both financially as well as in the interest for you and your wife... at least you have something to use against her for when you want something special for yourself
nollej is power..
  • #599
  • Feb 12, 2013 1:34am Feb 12, 2013 1:34am
Seneca, I have a short question regarding your breakout strategy from post #80.

Where do you set your stoploss after the trade is triggered with a pending order at the breakout range?
  • #600
  • Feb 12, 2013 3:36am Feb 12, 2013 3:36am
Seneca, another short question: would you skip any trade from the daily open if there is e.g. a weekly open line (or any other important level) below that is closer than the 2:1 target? I think of the EU trade today...I shorted at the daily open, but price was clearly rejected by the weekly open.

What you do in this case? Don't trade it at all or close the trade earlier? Or wait for a stopout?

Would you ever close earlier than 1:2 risk/reward?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts about this. Thank you.

PS:
You have my Vouch!
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