How do you decide when to enter?

Sometimes I hate myself for my entries. One entry can ruin my calm and balanced mood and force me to close this and other trades way to early just to see how everything went right after some time (and making me more unbalanced).

My question is how do you determine entry points. I like structure and some rules in every aspect of my life and it would be interesting to hear tricks and tips from other traders, which fortunately will help me with my trading. So how do you decide your entry?

Your question is interesting but maybe too general. Entry points are the main component of any trading system (automatic or manual). Basically, you'd have to read many long threads in this forum that discusses trading strategies and systems, to find the different entry techniques.

I used to trade manually some time ago, using support and resistance lines, fibonacci retracements and arcs, and a moving average as a confirmation of trend. I looked for breakout and breakout rejection during the busy hours after New Your open. I was moderately successful for a while, but found that the process of waiting for clear signals required a lot of patience. Sometimes I ended up taking less than optimal entries because I was bored or tired of watching the charts. For this reason, I am directing most of my efforts now to the development of automatic strategies.

There is no quick and easy answer to your question. Many people will tell you that their system or method has x,y,z component and when a,b,c conditions occur they enter at the market or use pending orders. I would be wary of those that go into such detail. Their are many others like myself, who will tell you that your entry/exit criteria must be self determined. YOU have to put in the time and research to find something that works for YOU. Telling you what works for me or listening to someone else tell you what works for them is useless and a real waste of time (IMO). Only you know how or why you are trading or envision yourself trading in the future, and only YOU will be able to find a method that "resonates" with how you see the markets.

I would offer you this small piece of advise however. Find someone either here on this forum, or close by where you live, that is willing to meet with you and discuss ideas to explore together. This person should probably have a little more experience than you do and be willing to befriend you for the sake of your relationship, (not to charge you money). You can then discuss, privately, what it is you envision your trading to be and seek out information to realize those goals.

This may or may not involve exploring "ready made" methods and systems either here on this forum or other places. However, in the end, and after many years of frustration, you will come to realize that nothing works like your own method, because YOU created it, and therefore you understand it best.

After you do this you must test it and find the probabilities inherent in your method. All methods have a certain probability of success or failure. The real work comes when you try to design a method to place those probabilities of success in your favor, then maximize those probabilities when they present, and minimize them when they don't.

If you're still reading this at this point I will give you in a nut shell MY very simple method:

1. Identify a trend (use what ever method you want)
2. Identify the swing points of that trend (highs and lows)
3. Using the Fibonacci tool, identify the most likely area (using probabilities of your method), that price will retrace to and still have an intact trend.
4. Enter in this area.
5. Hold this trade until your trend definition tells you the trend is no longer intact.

That's about as specific as I can make it with out putting any of MY preformed opinions into the mix. Hope that helps.

You can only define your entry point relatively to your system, there's nothing else to do. You test and tweak your system until it gives you a great entry strategy, then you stick to it.

Uncover a person either here within this community forum or perhaps within reach in your geographical area that is happy to speak to you and also go over tips to check out collectively. That man or women really should possibly include somewhat more knowledge in comparison with you choose to do and be happy to befriend you in the interest of your marriage

Entry not important
Exit not important

What really matters is the account balance.
Just add to it ..
and repeat...

wrong....not account balance, should be account equity

ok. Account equity, not balance.

try this easy entry..

idea behind it is the breakout of trend indicator, standard psar in mt4

1. EU M15
2. enter at price breakout of interchange dot
3. tp=20, sl=20

when sl hit, double the lotsize at next signal
when tp hit, remain initial lotsize

check yourself the probability in past price.
if start with equity USD3000, monthly ~25%

when you trade
you have some choices

buy or sell
|
when you buy you have some choices
put stop loss and take profit or not

when you put stop loss and take profit you have some choices
|
how many pips to profit and how many pips to loss




no matter you will buy or sell (you can win in any of them)
the important thing is how much to profit and how much to stop

example
if you in a trend of long (you have to buy to win)
if you sell with profit = 0.00001 pips and stop = 0.0010 pips and spread = 0.00005 or less, you can easily win
(but don't trade from the same point twice)

Thank you, but you've just quoted first page from "Trading for dummies", but I look for real answers :/ No offense.

And how do you do that? O_o

Keep you account positive.
Too many variations on the same theme to explain.
I will give you 1.
If you spend time researching at what price you should enter - for example "buy @ 100" then the price should never be at 90 ...

you can decide if you know (predict - forecast) the next prices.
how you know?
i have the method to know the next prices
but i cannot tell it now,know one here can (understand - believe) it now, may be later!!

the analog (Fourier FFT) formula, (not digital or math formula) .
with the new waves shape (not only sin & cos waves).

Well, I guess it all came around back to discipline. Don't try your luck, just follow the system (of course if it works well for you).

The idea is simple but interesting. Thanks for sharing it!

You could add these to make it better:

1. One profitable trade per day is enough for me.
2. ONLY trade at high liquidity of day time = London time: 8:00 AM ~ 17:00
3. Use an ATR to include volatility change; target could be 3 X ATR
4. Be prepare to react @ BIG news coming

Regards,