Multi-Lot Multi-Timeframe Position trading

I will rarely quickly re-enter a trade that opens with the same strong trend as it closed the previous week. My w/l is better if I let the market settle a bit before I enter, but if all the requirements are met and it's a good strong trend with no indications of weakness, I'll try it. Most of my trades, probably 3/4ths are entered Monday night to Wed because that's just when they show up for me.

Thanks Nefser. I always suggest that everyone prove out their system with either Demo accounts or very small positions, like 0.01 lot or less per trade. That can take years of study and practice and you want to save your big capital for investing once you have it figured out. Best success in the future.

G

Not seeing many good trades this week. I suppose the Middle East problems has the markets all jumbled up.
So, I wait...

GN long looking good now, checking deeper...

Looks good on currency strength chart. This is the only good trade I've seen this week, so I'm going to give it a try. A bit uncomfortable with any trade due to Mideast problems today.

Second lot on GN long now, but still very cautious.

I'll have to say I disagree about opportunities. ;-)

I had been focusing on e/j previously, but I'd started to wonder if that's affected too strongly by fundamental activity and knock-on affects of the more significant (popular?) pairs, u/j and e/u. So I'd decided to switch over to u/j once I was able to extract myself from under some old e/j longs held since june*.

After reading your thread, Graviton, I decided to plant some seeds in a few trades. I primarily use ichimoku, and include multiple overlays of different TF's, and normally have a few pairs in other screens, but my main 'trading' pair in the middle, now u/j.

So, I created a new layout with 5m, 15m, 1h, 4h, 1d, 1w showing and just switched through a few pairs. So much easier to view all the TF's at once and immediately I noted that a couple looked trend 'safe', so I put a few trades on. And yesterday most of those came off, except u/cad. Based on your comments, I just ignored those for the rest of the day and waiting till today to re-consider trades.

Today, u/cad went up and also in (and +) with a/u, e/j and e/a, with +100p pending opens waiting to get added, if the market so decides.

Really appreciate your well written comments, as it had motivated me to broaden my trading viewpoint and consider working in other pairs. I thought it might get too confusing trading more than one (or two), but actually it's fine, after sorting by price. (fwiw, fxcm/trading station)

I have been originally trading on 33.3 spread (in at 30, 62 and 95), rather than waiting for +100p, but thats because I've been working on shorter trade expectations. Trade process is very similar: removing the top (-) and top(+) on pullbacks and adding a new trade as necessary with more + movement. I had really, really caused myself problems in the past from NOT taking profits before, so I've focused on limiting the overall # of trades on at once and thus setting a TP for the bottom trade a few pips below where the 'new' trade will come on, thereby increasing my capital and 'banking' the profit.

However, I believe I've had a serious case of trade 'tunnel-vision', looking at only taking 'bites' from the price action. I need to consider, as you have, keeping the lowest trade in place (or perhaps a few) for as long as I can bear it...and perhaps capture an entire side of beef, rather than just a portion of filet at a time.

Keep posting. Plenty of us appreciate it.


*( With the recent market moves, I worked out of the trades and with a profit, having hedged quite safely, albeit a bit tight margin-wise, during the DD. No-stop losses were used/harmed getting 'out' of these trades.)

Wow, that's great Nefser. Slow and steady wins the race. This multi-lot trading is like dynamite. It's a very useful tool but it has to be handled carefully or it can blow up an account. I'm watching other pairs too, but taking it slow today. I just have the one long GN trade going and just put the second lot on. I'm up +85 total and have sl set to BE, so I'll just let it run for a bit. If it goes up enough, I'll raise sl a bit and put a third lot on. Here it is:

So when trading this, here is a situation we come across quite often. Price turns down and Take profit signals are flashed with crosses of 5emaX10sma and RSI(10) falling below 50%, but we aren't far enough ahead on the largest lot to take profit yet. We just can't be impatient here and take profit too early. We just have to let this one go by and catch the next swing down for a take profit and wait for the turn back up to put another lot on. Most pips will be made just waiting. We want to sell high, but this just isn't high enough to allow for good spacing when the new lot is put on at the bottom of the swing to replace the old. If it's a good trade, it will swing back up to a new higher high. If it's not, we wouldn't want to put another lot on it anyway. So, we wait...

Very nice thread Graviton, i like your style of trading, its simple to grasp, thank u for sharing it. I found an indi here on ff: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=94942 , it includes multi indicator selection,multi timeframe selection and also multi pair selection, i think it can help make the multi timeframe scanning process a bit easier and faster.

hodgires

Nice indi Hodgires. Thanks for the contribution!

So, another example. Running the 3-lot cycle on EU short. Getting ready to take +115 profit off the oldest lot EU short and add a fresh lot on. The EU M30 looks like this:

The EU M5 looks like this with a cross already of the RSI coming above the 50% line and a 5emaX10sma confirmation giving a sell (while it's still) high signal:

And here's M15 EU after the +115 pips are taken off as profit. Now I wait for a buy signal with a cross of the RSI back below the 50% mark to put a fresh lot on, thus completing one round of the cycle. The cycle repeats until the remaining two lots that were left on threatens to go negative after profit is taken off, then I just close them both a little better than BE having pocketed 100 pips or more for each round of the cycle before the major retracement that forced the exit.

Now since we know precisely where the remaining two lots would go negative, with stops right in the middle of the two, we can set stops to BE and let this thing run on it's own while we do something more fun than taking pips off trades in 100 pip chunks. Here is the EU short M15 with stops now set to BE for the remaining two lots:

And here is where the new lot is placed back on as the RSI crosses below the 50% line giving a short sale signal:

And backing out to the M30 to give a more clear picture of the three-lot short cycle set-up now.

See how boring this is, just taking off 100 pip chunks of profit over and over all day? Ho Hum. Good trading should be very profitable and very boring. If you find your self excited. Close everything and go get your oil changed or mow the yard or something until you have control of yourself.

Doing the same trade on EG. Almost time to take a 100 pip chunk off it...Ho Hum. BORING.

LOL, any questions? Coments? Come on you lurkers, I know you are out there.

Hello Graviton

I've just discover your thread. Read only 3 pages so far but I have to give it to you - Its really good. Well presented , humble it shows lots of good character qualities. Once I get up to speed I'll definitely will participate.
Regards

We had talked a bit about trends getting smaller over time. Here is a chart of the Monthly EU for the past 7 years or so. While it's clear trends are getting smaller over time, they can still swing 1500 pips or so, plenty enough for retail traders to make a nice income.

Thanks for the feedback rew2k7. Welcome aboard!

So, the 3-lot EU short has completed another profit cycle and I'm ready to take another lot off at about +115. It looks like this now:

When I get to this point, I have a few questions to ask myself. First, do I even want to take a lot off in profit right now? After all, one of the four tenants of good trading is "Let your profits run". So, how long should I let them run? Well, there are a couple things to think about here. One is, after I take the latest lot off in profit somewhere above +100 pips, I'd really like to put another on at a good price to keep running 3-lots on this trade and take it for another profit cycle. So, in the best case if I take profit off right at a local maximum, have a very shallow retracement, and put a new lot right back on, would the spacing be right? No! The newest lot is only 26 pips in profit. I have 50 pips spacing between the newest and middle lot. If I'm going to increase my spacing on each cycle, I'd need the spacing to be somewhere between the current spacing and about 1.5X current spacing, or 50 to 75 pips.

The other point is, I want to take profit off as near a profit maximum (a local maximum) as I can. That will always entail taking it off just as a retracement begins, since I can only know it was a local maximum in profit after the fact. Remember the, "I'm not a clairvoyant" speech. So, have we hit a small retracement yet? No. Even looking at the smallest TF, the 1M, the RSI has not crossed above the 50% mark yet. This trade has not hit a local maximum in profit yet as shown below and it's not quite time to take profit off yet. So, what do we do when we have made a lot of pips, we are still making pips, and it's not time to take profit yet? We wait. Remember, most of our pips will be made just waiting.