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Building an equity millipede

  • #5,741
  • Feb 26, 2013 9:20am Feb 26, 2013 9:20am
Quoting VEEFX
I am unable to upload any attachments... not sure if it's my browser of FF. I had a bit of struggle too scottmoll. The way I tackle this is to spread your risk across 4-5 JPY pairs and then stack heavily on the ones which try to 'befriend' you (for the time being). I had some fantastic runs on chf+cad+aud+nzd/jpy pairs and finally I caught the move today on eur+usd/jpy. For some reason, I cannot tame guppy but getting there soon after watching it's behavior more closely. I fail to understand why guppy did NOT drop like most of the GBP pairs after...
Thanks for the advice. I will have to get used to looking at more pairs. I tend to focus on only a couple right now. I have noticed times of pure momentum in which stacking is optimal. Like yesterday for example. Basically, I could have kept hitting sell all day long and been in profit no matter where I entered. Maybe I'm looking too hard for calculated entries instead of recognizing the momentum real-time and taking advantage of it.
  • #5,742
  • Feb 26, 2013 3:37pm Feb 26, 2013 3:37pm
as a beginner you should concentrate on 1 pair, the weakest of them all.

if you are stacking: always bring your last trade to BE before taking the next trade.
then you`ll know that no matter what happens, only the last trade you are concentrating on is the only one at risk.
  • #5,743
  • Feb 26, 2013 6:08pm Feb 26, 2013 6:08pm
I agree with Yonnie. a few pairs can also generate many opportunities.

What happened on Monday is not really common I think. I went to bed before the big move and woke up next day in the morning found my self missed a nice high speed train. unless I have been monitoring the pricing in front of my PC the whole night, I wouldn't get anything. it doesn't matter, i don't regret at all. I am waiting price to get out of the big candle range and show me the way.

Imagine if I were in front of my PC monitoring the price, to be conservative and following my rule, I would open 1 position after the first 4H candle close (NY close chart), market price, that would be 2am in the morning when I was deep in sleep. I am still struggling between 1H and 4H time frame sometimes, but I now more towards 4H for confirmation, thus within the confirmation candle, I would miss the 4x 1H candles.

Again, it's not usual to have this kind of movement, if you happen to be monitoring the chart, stacking 1 position per 1H at close price would be nice. but i doubt this can be applied to usual trading conditions.
  • #5,744
  • Feb 26, 2013 6:24pm Feb 26, 2013 6:24pm
Quoting VEEFX
I am still in (one long and couple of shorts in loss at the moment) but got sick of zigzag PA movement. Currently focussed on many pairs that are moving this week like crazy. I am already in my 3rd round of 1000+pip stacking episode since Sunday night with 29 position across 10+ pairs ! I will post some screenshots of my positions in a bit.

Edit: finally able to upload.
Just uploaded my screenshot from morning.... last post on stacking as it has become my edge after a couple dozen successful episodes since 1/1 elevating my equity like never before. I now have enough profits booked to 'invest' towards long term position building !

Single or multi-pair... it does not matter as long as you got a screenshot of green pips to hang on your trading station!
Trade what you see in the moment instead of waiting all night starring at your monitor waiting for price to come to your chosen level.
With practice, it should take less than 5 mins to say deal or no deal from 26 charts!

njoy.
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,745
  • Feb 26, 2013 6:32pm Feb 26, 2013 6:32pm
Quoting yonnie
as a beginner you should concentrate on 1 pair, the weakest of them all.

if you are stacking: always bring your last trade to BE before taking the next trade.
then you`ll know that no matter what happens, only the last trade you are concentrating on is the only one at risk.
By weakest you mean choose a pair with low trading range? I will frustrate the hell out of you if you pick pairs that does not move/breakout... and you are giving up on opportunity cost by getting stuck with a position fluctuating in a range of 50-100 pip profit. Momentum at price extremities is your best friend for low risk entries and position building (imo).

last trade to BE - just not possible for FIFO restricted accounts. However, there is a way to implement this right on charts without the hassle of monitoring positions in excel outside of the trading station as bizfx and others have recommended.
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,746
  • Feb 26, 2013 6:52pm Feb 26, 2013 6:52pm
my current practice is to find the fundamentally weakest and strongest currency to form a pair. normally it will give the best momentum.

but i found it more of a joke now since every central bank is printing money like no tomorrow
  • #5,747
  • Edited 9:00pm Feb 26, 2013 8:40pm | Edited 9:00pm
Quoting zxdtrader
my current practice is to find the fundamentally weakest and strongest currency to form a pair. normally it will give the best momentum.

but i found it more of a joke now since every central bank is printing money like no tomorrow
exactly... trade the market at the macro level to pick the fruits that are ripe for harvesting. That's one way to target pairs with compelling momentum. Is there any other way?

currency strength
Event trading around news.
session high/low breakout or bounce
daily high/low breakout or bounce (require price alerts as there always a stall during asian after 5pm ET)
double/tripple wick bounce (require price alerts too)
H1/H4/D1 5/10/200 ema bounce (require price alerts)
Indicator based on what other traders are watching (stock/macd/rsi/pivot/fib/ema cross).
what else??
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,748
  • Feb 27, 2013 2:11am Feb 27, 2013 2:11am
Quoting VEEFX
By weakest you mean choose a pair with low trading range? I will frustrate the hell out of you if you pick pairs that does not move/breakout... and you are giving up on opportunity cost by getting stuck with a position fluctuating in a range of 50-100 pip profit. Momentum at price extremities is your best friend for low risk entries and position building (imo).

last trade to BE - just not possible for FIFO restricted accounts. However, there is a way to implement this right on charts without the hassle of monitoring positions...
Not sure why it is not possible due to FIFO

You cannot just manually close the latest one while earlier one is still running. However, stop loss can be set anywhere including BE or some profit. If price hits it, position is closed. Correct me if am wrong. But I remember doing this.

One other thing; if your lot size is say 1000 you can open 1001, 1002 for every new stack to circumvent the FIFO restriction

Thanks
TS
Haste not to Enter AND Haste not to Exit !-TradeStar
  • #5,749
  • Edited 8:36am Feb 27, 2013 7:42am | Edited 8:36am
Quoting TradeStar
Not sure why it is not possible due to FIFO

You cannot just manually close the latest one while earlier one is still running. However, stop loss can be set anywhere including BE or some profit. If price hits it, position is closed. Correct me if am wrong. But I remember doing this.

One other thing; if your lot size is say 1000 you can open 1001, 1002 for every new stack to circumvent the FIFO restriction

Thanks
TS
stop loss can be set anywhere including BE - not with fxcm. only net SL/TP is allowed.
1001, 1002 - this option is available only with Oanda to my knowledge and the way they increase their spreads during volatile markets is not conducive for momentum based entries.

One way is to put limit orders @ BE in the opposite direction. That should trick the platform into closing individual trades at BE and bypass FIFO.
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,750
  • Feb 27, 2013 9:59am Feb 27, 2013 9:59am
Vee,

I know you are or were with IB as well and I have no problems having trades open long and short.
Everyone of my trades is still open, because I always place them with a very high/low TP and a SL.
My longs are say 150k trades and the shorts 151k, but even that is not necessary I think.
I can close every individual trade if I want to, so no FIFO here.

IB even numbers each order for me, which is good for the administration.

Add to that the incredibly different ways of placing orders and I`m very happy with them.

btw: in a large momentum play like we had with the JPY pairs recently, it would be better for the beginner to
concentrate on the weakest pair on that day (not low-range pairs) for stacking.
  • #5,751
  • Feb 28, 2013 3:07am Feb 28, 2013 3:07am
I still don't know why people don't keep their own spreadsheet of trades, that way they can be managed perfectly. Yes, I know Vee has said numerous times that it's too much work for him (time is better spent on analysis/trading) but he's doing A LOT of trades a day when he gets going, his view is therefore very understandable. But I'd hazzard a gues that most traders here are doing 25% of Vee's daily trades, if that.

FIFO is in my view a massive red herring in all of this, I mean whether your broker offers it or not, it's NOT going to make you an extra penny is it, or lose you less when wrong? Trading, buying and selling is where you're going to make 100% of your money and not the accounting rules your broker has to follow.
Road To Wisdom? To err and err and err again, but less and less and less...
  • #5,752
  • Feb 28, 2013 4:43am Feb 28, 2013 4:43am
Good day all
Who can share good spreadsheet of trades?
Thanks
  • #5,753
  • Edited 7:39am Feb 28, 2013 6:43am | Edited 7:39am
Quoting Calculus
I still don't know why people don't keep their own spreadsheet of trades, that way they can be managed perfectly. Yes, I know Vee has said numerous times that it's too much work for him (time is better spent on analysis/trading) but he's doing A LOT of trades a day when he gets going, his view is therefore very understandable. But I'd hazzard a gues that most traders here are doing 25% of Vee's daily trades, if that.

FIFO is in my view a massive red herring in all of this, I mean whether your broker offers it or not, it's NOT going to make you...
Well said Calc. Accounting rules and regulation should make no difference in trader's ability to profit. To me it is like this.... when you are driving past on ramp trying to get on a interstate highway with your left blinkers ON.

- Your mental focus should be 100%. No one enters a freeway on cruise control :-
- Your mental focus should be on ongoing traffic (i.e. pairs flying with compelling momentum) on the freeway at 65+ MPH and not few cars (i.e. few open positions) that are behind me trying to get on the freeway.
- You focus should be on 18-wheelers/big rigs (i.e. strongest currency pairs) who can do the most damage and who will take the longest to slow down (i.e. strongest currency has the best change of moving pairs into breakeven within seconds)
- If you get on the freeway to find there is a traffic jam, would you rather stay stuck for hours or try to take the next exit, turn on your GPS navigation and take city streets to get to your destination? I prefer to take the next exit and go back home and spend quality time with my family
- Once you get on the freeway safely, you have to speed up and maintain relative speed (i.e. stack/stack/stack) and get on the fast lane (as long as you are NOT increasing risk). I do this by moving SL to BE on average position price level so my risk is almost always zero or negligible even with aggressive stacking even though I might have some newer positions running in tiny loss!!!

I focus on quality instead of quantity. Quantity should become a by-product of good quality trades :-)

Edit: Here's what I look while get on the freeway. Google "Movers and Shakers" for FXCM TSII platform. It sorts all the pairs in realtime based on your preferred timeframe. I could not find anything similar for MT4 so if there is one out there, please PM
Attached Image (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: Snap1108.jpg Size: 79 KB
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,754
  • Feb 28, 2013 6:46am Feb 28, 2013 6:46am
Quoting Goldminer
Good day all
Who can share good spreadsheet of trades?
Thanks
a simple search "trade log excel" is all it takes to find crap on the internet or on FF
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,755
  • Feb 28, 2013 6:48am Feb 28, 2013 6:48am
Quoting VEEFX
I focus on quality instead of quantity. Quantity should become a by-product of good quality trades :-)
The opposite is also true - getting a quantity of trades would eventually yield good quality ones. There's a catch though - it's way too expensive that way.
  • #5,756
  • Feb 28, 2013 8:44am Feb 28, 2013 8:44am
Quoting VEEFX
Well said Calc. Accounting rules and regulation should make no difference in trader's ability to profit. To me it is like this.... when you are driving past on ramp trying to get on a interstate highway with your left blinkers ON.

- Your mental focus should be 100%. No one enters a freeway on cruise control :-
- Your mental focus should be on ongoing traffic (i.e. pairs flying with compelling momentum) on the freeway at 65+ MPH and not few cars (i.e. few open positions) that are behind me trying to get on the freeway.
- You focus should be on...
Any my final word to all the whinners out there complaining about FIFO/hedging restrictions and saying nasty things about regulatory bodies in the US. I used to be one of them and my view has taken a U turn this year. FIFO CAN and should be your best friend as it helps in cutting your losses short. Every newbie 'enjoys' running their losses in the hope that price will turn around. I have been there myself! They try to average down and resort to all sorts of strategies detrimental to the health of their account. FIFO will avoid that by closing your biggest loss which is the best policy. Hedging does the same effect on folks who do NOT want to deal with losses and alllow scammers to fake their account balance statement by running large hidden loss and taking frequent profit. Kudos to the developers of trade explorer here on FF to make traders realize the after-effects of hedging by displaying equity and balance curves.

About those complaining about brokers, spreads, swaps, account freezes etc. They simply don't know how to trade period! If you are complaining about 2pip spread being too big, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for you. These are all NECESSARY costs of trading. Can we trade without brokers? Would you complain about commuting to work, spending money to eat lunch or drink coffee? would you openly complain on forums about how lousy your current boss at work is? would you start hating and cursing computers because you are a lousy developer? It just amazes me now that I used to do all that myself. I still complain about certain things like broker platforms and 50:1 leverage limitations but have come to realization that it is my choice whether to trade FX or not and find ways to leverage on the best features and work around the limitations. It's as simple as that !

I will delete this post before it expires :-
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,757
  • Feb 28, 2013 8:51am Feb 28, 2013 8:51am
Quoting Barbossa
The opposite is also true - getting a quantity of trades would eventually yield good quality ones. There's a catch though - it's way too expensive that way.
I believe you are referring to basket trading strategies found here on FF and elsewhere. I prefer to build a basket once I get on the freeway instead of starting out with a truck full of mixed fruits and them sticking with apples and getting rid of peaches, oranges etc.
Staying in my lane...
  • #5,758
  • Edited 2:58pm Feb 28, 2013 2:45pm | Edited 2:58pm
Quoting TradeStar
Not sure why it is not possible due to FIFO
You cannot just manually close the latest one while earlier one is still running. However, stop loss can be set anywhere including BE or some profit. If price hits it, position is closed. Correct me if am wrong. But I remember doing this. One other thing; if your lot size is say 1000 you can open 1001, 1002 for every new stack to circumvent the FIFO restriction Thanks TS
exactly.....

contrary to what Vee says, I got open buy AND sell trades in the same pair with IB with TP and SL.
customer support did tell me that hedging is not allowed, but the reality is different.

I can buy any number of units I want at IB, so no restrictions at all.

IB is not FIFO: I can close later trades and all other open trades with their SL/TP stay the same.

IB do not have different rules for US residents and aliens.

FIFO at IB is only for tax purposes, but you can also chose LIFO or even Maximise Losses for your tax statement.
  • #5,759
  • Feb 28, 2013 2:49pm Feb 28, 2013 2:49pm
Quoting yonnie
exactly.....
contrary to what Vee says, I got open buy AND sell trades in the same pair with IB with TP and SL, so who says that hedging cannot be done in the US?
IB is not FIFO: I can close later trades and all other open trades with their SL/TP stay the same.

IB do not have different rules for US residents and aliens.

FIFO at IB is only for tax purposes, but you can also chose LIFO or even Maximise Losses for your tax statement.
Hi Yonnie,

In the US, the government (via FTC) now regulates Forex broker/dealers, and now the law is, a trader cannot hedge positions within the same account. However, some broker/dealers have a way around this. Usually, they move your account to the "back office" in another country where the regulation does not affect the account. Or, in the case with Oanda, you can have a main account, and a linked sub-account, and all long trades go in one account and the short trades go in the other account. From there, you can transfer funds between the two accounts at will to cover margin requirements if need be.
  • #5,760
  • Feb 28, 2013 3:02pm Feb 28, 2013 3:02pm
well I dont know about other brokers, but this is my experience with IB.

very happy
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