How I trade forex and make a profit

If a picture is worth 1000 words than a video is worth 1 million, so I made some videos for other traders to see how I trade the markets. This is not the only way to extract money from the markets but it's how I do it. This first video is on learning how to trade the markets for the beginner.
This next video is what my desktop looks like.
Then I have a video of how I prepare for the trading week.
This next video is on how I managed trades.

Then I have a couple more on understanding volatility and trade volume.



I hope you all enjoy these videos and maybe gain some knowledge to help you along your path to being a profitable trader. I am not commercial in any way nor am I selling anything. I am just a home-based retail trader like most people on the forum. Good trading to all, TraderAllen

I believe after several years of studying everything there is about Forex trading I have come to the conclusion that there is only two ways to efficiently take money from the Forex market one commonly called scalping that's what going to discuss here. The other is long-term trading.

Let's start by discussing what scalping really is. Scalping is a trading method where we take advantage of the in balance of order flow. We are not trend traders or range traders. We look to take advantage of a temporary change in buying or selling pressure. For example when we see that the current market direction is up we look to go along when there is a lack of sellers or an abundance of buyers.


While there are many scalping techniques out there the method I use is a modified version of price action scalping that I learned from Bob Volman in his book "Forex price action scalping". If you're going to be scalping in Forex in this book is a must-read. There are seven basic setups that I look for my entries there all versions of range breaks were pullback entries. But the real secret is understanding price action being able to watch the charts and see the order flow and determining the best time to enter based on the absence of buying and sell orders. This is not as hard as it sounds, the seven setups are easy to learn. That is just a matter of watching for sufficient order flow and trade volume. This is something that you will only master with lots of screen time.

When you're going to be scalping the less you have cluttering your desktop the better off you will be. The human mind is only capable of processing a small amount of data at a time when we have too much information coming into our brains we get confused and end up making the wrong decision. Although the method that I use for scalping can seem very boring and slow and you sit and wait for a valid set up to our occur, when a trade set up is getting ready to fire off you need to be able to think fast and clear. You will not be proficient at scalping if you have an abundance of charts loaded up with many different indicators to the point you can't even see the price action. Believe it or not this is how many people attempt to trade the markets. Basically there trading indicators and not the price and since all indicators lag they will always be getting into and out of the markets at the wrong time.
What you need on your desktop is one chart of your trading instrument for example the Eurodollar. This should take up about 80% of your screen. I find it helpful to also have a level II screen with time and sales streaming. This will allow you to see the order flow coming in. The only remaining thing that you need to have displayed is your order entry screen now you are set and ready to scalp the Forex market. Now that you are set up and ready to trade you need to know when to trade although the Forex market is open 24 hours a day, it is not always volatile enough for having us order flow to make scalping methods work. For US traders you should be at your trade station somewhere between 730 and 8 o'clock in the morning and be ready to scalp until noon. European traders can trade during the same times for from the European open till 6 AM New York time. If volatility is low or there are few orders coming in but there's no sense sitting in your computer waiting for set up that is likely to fail due to a lack of participants in the market.
Your order entry method needs to be comprised of an entry, a profit target, and a stoploss. All three price levels need to be entered one time with one push of the buy or sell button. Therefore your order needs to go in as a market or limit with thresholds triggered orders commonly called TTO or OCO. Mental stops cannot be relied on because it's too easy to lie to yourself.
When you first sit down in your trade desk you need to be prepared to trade right away. So before you do there are a couple of housekeeping items to. First you need to be alert so you need a good night sleep and a good cup of coffee to get your brain up and running. Your computer needs to be restarted to refresh your Internet connection this is important because you want the fastest path to your broker server. And this may have changed over night due to weather or server maintenance somewhere, so get it rebooted. Also if you use a wireless router power it off to refresh as well some cable modems also need to be refreshed to ensure you have the fastest possible speed. At this point you should be refreshed in your computer should be refreshed and ready to fire off some trades.
Now you're sitting on your computer initiate your trading software, I use and recommend Ninjatrader the cost to purchase the program is reasonable and it's a good fully functioning charting in order execution platform. I find the ability to create ATM orders a valuable asset. While your chart is loading you want to bring up a new service you don't need anything special Forexfactory.com will do just fine. Make note of the daily news events any of the critical news items I plan trades around. I love news trading and find it highly profitable, however it is very risky I don't recommend it for someone starting out. What you need to know is what time is the news going to be released and it's absolutely imperative that you close any open positions regardless of profit or loss prior to the news release. I know what you're thinking "What if I'm sitting in a small loss and the news comes out in my favor and the market turns and shoot straight up to my profit target I just missed out on a budget pips'. Yes this can happen but more likely than not you will get burned from having a trade open when a news or event is released.
Now I go back to my chart which is typically the Eurodollar 70 tic chart. I take note of how trading is been overnight as the euro been inching its way higher or lower is a trading your attire is a trading near its low or is it still flat line from the Asian close. How do we determine if it's trending arranging it simple look for high-rise and higher lows that's how we determine the trend you don't need any indicators to muddy the water. If you're making higher highs and higher lows that I start looking for a pullback entry method. If the market has started ranging sideways where we have at least two equal highs and two equal lows that I will look to trade the breakout of that range. It's important on the range breakout that I see volume coming in on a level II screen. I'll have two ATM's ready one with a full-size order and what they half-size order if I have sufficient order flow I jump in with a full-size order ATM. If the order flow doesn't change much at the breakout point I will sometimes initiates a half-size ATM just to be conservative. Then I just rinse and repeat this method until volume starts to dry up around 1030 to 11 o'clock New York time.
The key to longevity in learning how to trade his proper money management. You often hear and it's correct to never risk more than 1% of your total account on any trade and this is correct. However this can sometimes be confusing as you try to calculate exactly how much you're going to risk so were going to keep it simple. You need to open a micro accounts with a Forex broker with roughly $500 some brokers allow you to open an account with $200 and that would be fine also in less you need to put more in the account because you want to use a specific broker there's no reason to put anymore in the account at this time. That will be more than enough to cover the margin requirement as you start learning. Once you've studied your trading methodology like Forex Price Action Scalping. You will take your first trade at one micro trade size. You will not profit a lot at the moment trading only one micro but that's beside the point this is what you need to start as you work through your trading methodology and become proficient. You won't win big but you won't lose big either. Once you are proficient and your profiting the majority of your trades you increase your position size to two micros and repeat the process as you're comfortable and still making profitable trades you then doubled to four micro's, then you repeat the process until you reach one mini. At this point if your profits with enough you may have to add additional funds to your counts to be able to increase your trade size. You use this method of stepping up your position size until you reach your maximum risk of 1% of your account value. If you cannot add funds to your account to get you up to the one or $2000 level that's fine you'll just trade smaller and to you created enough profits to increase your size. This is not just about proper money management this also steps your emotions into the market using baby steps. Fear and greed rule market and you'll never trade profitably as long as you're afraid or greedy and since we are not robots or Vulcans are emotions will always be in our trades to some extent. Becoming your own manager is also important at the end of your trading session you'll just call it quits, you have to get the paperwork done. Using ninja trader it's easy to take snapshots of your trades and record them in a monthly log book. Along with your profits and losses for each trade. I find it better if you have a spouse or someone you can talk to that's familiar with the market a little bit that you can show your trades to each week. This helps keep you honest as they will be asking questions like 'why did you buy that for why did you sell there' when you know you have to explain what you're doing to a boss you tend to work more efficient this is just human nature. Once this work is done you can enjoy the rest of the day knowing that you put money to work for you so you didn't have to go to work. So enjoy the rest of your day and be prepared for the next trading adventure tomorrow.

Nice thread
Like the video about volatility and SL placement.I often talked about the very subject myself similarly.
Have not watched all vids yet but I will.
Green pips

Very good.
Thanks!

I use several entry methods for scalping the Forex market there are seven basic methods. Plus I also news trade, which I love it's a big moneymaker for me. The example I show here is a trade I made yesterday on the euro dollar. This trade was using a block break entry method. It was taken on my live account as all my trades are. I am not a believer in using a demo account at all.

So far for the month of June trading has gone extremely well, I don't think I could be more pleased. I had a total of 20 trades so far only one of which was closed for a loss. That gives me 211 pips profit so far. Averaging about 10 pips per scalp.

I'm ready to start the third trading week of the month with 241 pips in my PIP basket.So far my trading has done extremely well I had 24 trades which include only one loss in one break even. The added profits bring added position size so I'll be looking at hopefully even more profits by the end of the week with my new larger position size.

Tomorrow marks the end of my fiscal year of trading. I have done extremely well trading my method over the last year. I've had 238 trades, of which 91.6% paid off, for a total of 623% profit. This was my best year since I started trading in 2001. It has taken a lot of hard work to get to be this efficient at trading. Most people are not willing to do the work that it takes.
At this time I'd like to give a special thanks and to Bob Volman for "Forex price action scalping" and Tim Lucarelli for "Forex secrets trading from the dark side" their books and gave me a whole new perspective on the markets that I was able to roll into the methodology that I use and have profited so well from this last year.

Thanks for the beneficial thread...  im starting to trade Bob Volman method...  and hope to see more of your trades  ...  hoping you are still doing great trading this method

Very clean video. Also trading Bob Volmans methods and going through what I like to call the big 3: Al Brooks, Lance Beggs, and Bob Volman. All theoritical work of course but the practical application seems a bit more heavy handed. Wondering if they were any take aways from Bob Volman's first book (scalping) that overlap with longer time frames such as that of 4 hour, daily weekly and monthly?

Although the book is prefaced with the notion that any of these methods can be scaled upwards i find it more difficult to consistently profit as you scale up.?

Happy to discuss these thoughts with anyone!

Respectfully,
A.T.